ABSTRACT
THE literature on international oil affairs—and there is no lack of it—does not really deal with petroleum. Either it A consists of more or less accomplished disquisitions on the game's protagonists, based rather on fiction than on facts, or it is straight political argument. This is no one's fault, but it does reflect the fact that, contrary to popular opinion, oil affairs are not the fons et origo of what is going on, they are but one of the manifestations of the course things have taken.
