ABSTRACT
The rise to high politics of oil pricing prompted greater scrutiny of the importance of threats to the supply of key economic resources to states. The 1970s also saw the rise in concerns that global overpopulation could drain the world’s resources (see Chapter 4) and greater recognition that resources could be threatened by environmental degradation as well as through political action. It was not until the 1990s, however, when the agenda of international politics was allowed to broaden, that environmental degradation as a potential state security threat began to take prominence in academia and mould the thinking of foreign policy-makers. Economic statecraft had been revived as an instrument of foreign policy by the oil crises but, interestingly, it was not until the strategic constraints of the Cold War had been lifted that a full manifestation of the Carter Doctrine was put into practice with the US-led action against Iraq in the Gulf War. A Just War and long-awaited display of collective security it may have been, but few would dispute that securing oil supplies was a key motivation for the allied forces’ action.
