ABSTRACT
After the 1973 oil crisis, energy security was a thriving topic. It seemed an imperative in its own right – a chapter in the great book of security issues, a long way below nuclear weapons but certainly alongside strategic materials and technologies. One did not discuss autopart security. A central reason for this was that the 1973 oil crisis represented a triple threat:
Day-to-day life was disrupted: there were lines of motorists in the United States waiting impatiently to refill their automobile tanks with gasoline.
There was an economic threat: negotiations between OPEC and the transnational oil companies ceased and OPEC began increasing prices, apparently at will, against a prospect of the world running out of oil.
There was a political threat: the Arab oil embargo of supplies to the United States and the Netherlands (the entrepôt for Europe), and month-by-month reduction of all exports, were aimed at securing a change in US and European support for Israel in the face of Egyptian and Syrian attacks as these countries tried to reverse their losses in the 1967 Arab–Israeli war.
