ABSTRACT
In Oil Crisis, Abrahamian repeats some of the claims of the last volume. He insists that it was not the Cold War that inspired America’s opposition to Mossadegh, but oil. Anti-communism was thus invoked to justify a resource grab. This view neglects to mention that oil was important because of the global effort to contain the Soviet Union. Iraq has the dubious distinction of being one of America’s most vexing challenges in the Middle East during the past three decades. A state cobbled together out of the debris of the Ottoman Empire, Iraq never achieved any form of national coherence. Putin’s Russia could have solidified its position as the petroleum supplier of choice for Europeans concerned about the reliability of Middle Eastern oil, but this was to become one of many important national objectives sacrificed on the battlefields of Ukraine.
