Summary
The cartel of oil-producing countries, come together in the 1960s, whose 1973 oil-boycott Rose treats as the most serious challenge ever to Western control of Middle East oilfields, and whose defeat and division after the 1973 war restored the American initiative in the region (Israel: The Hijack State — America’s Watchdog in the Middle East, lines 245-269).
Details
- In 1973 the oil-producing countries in OPEC demanded both a better deal from the West for their oil and some restraint of Israel, backed the demand with a threat to cut off oil supplies, and then put the oil-boycott into action (lines 245-251).
- The boycott’s most vocal exponent in Rose’s account was Libya’s ruler Colonel Gadaffi, who had triggered the first oil price rise in 1970 after toppling King Idris the previous year, playing the independent oil companies against the Seven Sisters (lines 251-255).
- The boycott succeeded only because it temporarily united the most radical oil-producing countries with the most reactionary, including the two most decisive and pro-American, Saudi Arabia and Iran (lines 255-257).
- At the crunch of the 1973 war Nixon and Kissinger ignored both the oil companies and the pro-American OPEC countries and supported Israel, seeking the most massive Arab defeat possible; a military defeat weakening the Arab countries would also weaken OPEC, and breaking up the Arab united front was the first element of the American strategy Kissinger described (lines 261-269).
- The West and the oil companies lived with the quadrupling of oil prices; after the war and the ending of the boycott the Saudi king and the Shah of Iran spent their new oil-dollars on US arms, and Kissinger’s peace process detached Egypt, preparing the Camp David Accords (lines 267-273).
- Early in 1986 oil prices collapsed, which Rose says sent shivers down the spine of the US administration for fear of instability in the oil-producing countries and those depending on them for oil revenues (lines 273-277).
Related pages
Israel: The Hijack State — America’s Watchdog in the Middle East, Seven Sisters, Imperialism, Watchdog state