ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the cases for war for oil. The pragmatic case against war for oil, which rests on basic economic analysis, is fundamentally strong. This case rests on a few facts. First, no oil-producing country, no matter what it does to its oil supply, can cause people in another country to line up for gasoline. Second, an oil-producing country cannot impose a selective embargo on a target country because oil is sold in a world market. President George Bush, snr, stated that his military action in the Persian Gulf was partly about access to energy resources that are key to the entire world. Bush claimed that if Saddam Hussein had gotten greater control of oil reserves in the Middle East, he would have been able to threaten our jobsand our way of life. The organization responsible for that fiasco was the US government. President Nixon had imposed a freeze on all prices on August 15, 1971.