This article presents a critique of the ‘oil-spot’ strategy, which has been advertised as a solution to the dilemmas confronting U.S. policy towards Iraq. The occupation of Iraq in 2003 did not create a stable democracy, as policy-makers forecast, but turmoil, resistance, and insurgency. The oil-spot strategy aimed to resolve these problems by creating secure, functioning localities that would spread to other areas. The policy, however, is fundamentally flawed. It rests on mistaken historical precedents and it involves a long-term and costly commitment at a moment when the pressing priority in Washington is to find a rapid way of extricating the U.S. from the quagmire it has entered. The policy, and the thinking underlying it, are manifestations of out-dated attitudes. The age of great empires has passed and attempts to resurrect them by military means in the twenty-first century are destined to fail.