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The Oil Wars Myth: Petroleum and the Causes of International Conflict
"The Oil Wars Myth challenges the popular belief that countries fight wars for oil resources by identifying overlooked obstacles to these conflicts and reexamining the presumed petroleum motives for many of the twentieth century's major international wars"--
256 pages, Hardcover
Published May 15, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 5, 2020
Like most of us, I’ve grown up steeped in a culture that sees oil wars as indisputable fact. It’s in the news, it’s on the protest signs, it’s part of the common cultural understanding of our time. Dr. Meierding untangles the assumptions that underpin the myth of “classic oil wars”, laying out a clear case for a rethinking of these conflicts. A fascinating read.
May 25, 2024
This idea of oil conquest really does get an outsized role in discussions around geopolitics, especially with regards to the US and the Middle East. And in the past when I've briefly looked into this issue, I didn't really find much. There just wasn't that much oil-specific analysis. Now, these were just cursory searches online.
With that in mind, and that I just previously finished Yergin's The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power, I feel like I have a satisfying and balanced analysis in hand of this idea. This book's subject matter brings out some fascinating angles, like its analysis of Saddam Hussein's motivations for the invasion of Iran and also Kuwait. Without reflexively falling back to oil conquest as an explanation (which is common in contemporary discourse), Meierding teases out some really interesting details about the conflicts that I had never heard of. All of this is to say that I think her substance is really great. It's super well thought out and researched.
I think some parts that explained the conceptual framework of her argument were repetitive. Unlike The Prize, the writing was not exciting, but this is very much an academic work. It felt like a very long article from International Security. All in all I would recommend this to someone basically only if I was talking to them about oil conquest and they were interested in the topic to begin with. This book was extremely informative, but not gripping. More and more I let this influence my reviews- I think I treat reviews as a measure of how recommendable a book is, not how useful it is (this book is useful).
With that in mind, and that I just previously finished Yergin's The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power, I feel like I have a satisfying and balanced analysis in hand of this idea. This book's subject matter brings out some fascinating angles, like its analysis of Saddam Hussein's motivations for the invasion of Iran and also Kuwait. Without reflexively falling back to oil conquest as an explanation (which is common in contemporary discourse), Meierding teases out some really interesting details about the conflicts that I had never heard of. All of this is to say that I think her substance is really great. It's super well thought out and researched.
I think some parts that explained the conceptual framework of her argument were repetitive. Unlike The Prize, the writing was not exciting, but this is very much an academic work. It felt like a very long article from International Security. All in all I would recommend this to someone basically only if I was talking to them about oil conquest and they were interested in the topic to begin with. This book was extremely informative, but not gripping. More and more I let this influence my reviews- I think I treat reviews as a measure of how recommendable a book is, not how useful it is (this book is useful).
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews