ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the implications of the convergence of three geopolitical trends – al-Qaeda-inspired terrorism, surging worldwide dependence on Persian Gulf petroleum, and the increasing militarization of American foreign policy in the Middle East over the past three decades. It is an attempt to understand the motivations and potential consequences of a major terrorist campaign directed against the petroleum infrastructure of Arab oil-exporting states. It also considers the motivation of successive US administrations in turning, since the late 1970s, toward increasingly explicit military means to ensure access to energy sources in the Middle East, and the probable reactions that might follow a concerted Qaeda campaign to reduce the flow of Persian Gulf oil to the world market. I argue that the potential for al-Qaeda to use oil as a strategic weapon to achieve political ends, such as the retreat of the US from the Middle East, for example, is not as great as US policy-makers and petroleum experts would like to believe. The motivations of Qaeda terrorists and the exigencies of the type of war they are waging require different types of targets than those afforded by the petroleum infrastructure of the Gulf. In contrast, I contend that America’s increasing reliance on its armed forces in effecting foreign policy in the region suggests that the American reaction to indications of a systematic terrorist threat to Gulf oil infrastructure, or to an attack whose horrific grandeur compares to that of 11 September 2001, might well prove to be highly escalatory in military terms. Such actions may well be interpreted by other states, which lack comparable military alternatives of their own, not as a defense of the global economy, but as a self-interested expression of American national interest, potentially at their expense.
