Geostrategically
speaking, Hitler had very few options, and therefore it is very easy to see the
world through his eyes.
Image Hitler
The first thing to note is that during the Interwar
Period (1919-1938) oil was mainly produced in United States, Russia, the
Persian Gulf, mainly Iraq, and South-Eastern Asia, mainly Indonesia. The oil of
North Africa and Saudi
Arabia had not been discovered yet.
Map Oil
Production in the Interwar Period
During
World War 1 the British and the French had managed to take control of the oil
of the Persian Gulf, the Russians had the oil of the Caspian Sea under their
control, and Germany
had nothing. The Germans could only count on the smaller oilfields of Romania.
Map The
International Order After WW1
The Italians
were importing their oil through the British and the French, and they knew very
well that in case of war the British and the French could immediately cut off their
oil supplies.
What Hitler wanted was to destroy the world
order that was established after WW1, in order for Germany
to take control either the oil of the Persian Gulf, or the oil of the Caspian Sea, or both. To do that Hitler had only five
choices. At the following map you can see four of them.
Map Inside
Hitler’s Mind
The option
for Hitler was to repeat the strategy of the German Empire during World War 1
i.e. to march to the Persian Gulf through Austria
and Turkey
(yellow line).
However if
Hitler was to do that the Russians, the British and the French would do what
they did during WW1. They would leave their differences aside for a while, and
they would attack Germany.
Moreover,
during the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 the British, the Russians and the French
had used Greece and Serbia to form a geographic wall between Germany and the Ottoman
Empire. In addition, Turkey was scared by her defeat in WW1,
and she preferred to remain neutral.
For all the
above reasons Hitler did not want, or could not, repeat the strategy of the
German Empire during WW1, in order to reach the Persian Gulf and the Caspian
Sea through Austria and Turkey.
The second
option for Hitler was to form an alliance with Mussolini, in order to jointly attack
the British and the French at Palestine and get
hold of the oil of the Persian Gulf (purple
line).
Map Inside Hitler’s
Mind
This option
was partially used by Hitler and Mussolini with the Arab Spring of Palestine of
1936-1939 (Arab Revolt 1936-1939). Mussolini was the main supporter of the Arab
Spring of Palestine, and he was sending money and weapons to the Grand Mufti of
Jerusalem and the Muslim Brotherhood, in order to cause an Arab Revolt against
the British. But Hitler was also a close ally of the Muslim Brotherhood, and
therefore it is a sure thing that he was behind the Arab Spring of Palestine
too. See “The Alliance
Between Hitler and the Muslim Brotherhood”.
Many Jewish
terrorists were also attacking the British, most of them supported by Stalin
and Russia.
It is said that Jewish terrorism against the British was also supported by
Hitler and Mussolini, but Hitler and Mussolini were allies of the Muslim
Brotherhood, and therefore Stalin had a lot more space to support Jewish
terrorists against the British.
Remember
that many of the Jews of Palestine were Russian Jews who had fled Russia
to escape from the Tsar. The Jews were allies of the Ottomans, and Tsarist
Russia was very anti-Semitic. Palestine was an
Ottoman colony at the time, and many Jews were leaving Russia for Palestine,
were they were welcome by the Ottomans. When the Russian Communists came to
power they were recturing some of these Jews of Palestine in order to carry out
terrorist attacks against the British. However during the British mandate of Palestine most of the Jews
of Palestine were British allies i.e. the Haganah.
Therefore
Hitler did use this second option, even if only partially, and he attacked the
British in Palestine
with Mussolini. What is interesting is that Mussolini had almost become an ally
of Britain and France
against the Nazis in 1935 with the Stresa Front agreement. With the agreement
of Stresa Front the British and the French agreed to give Mussolini some space
in Africa, in order to convince him not to
become a Nazi ally.
However
things went wrong because Mussolini wanted Italy
to have direct military control over the agreed regions in Africa, while the
British and the French were willing to offer Italy diplomatic and economic
control.
Map The
Mussolini Ambitions
During WW1
the British and the French had taken control of East Mediterranean and the
Persian Gulf, and Mussolini thought that it was only fair that they allowed Italy to control Libya
and Ethiopia, in order to
reach the Indian Ocean through Africa. As I
said the oil of North Africa had not been discovered yet, and Egypt was in Britain’s sphere of influence.
But if
Mussolini controlled the Horn of Africa with his army, the British and French
spheres of influence in the Persian Gulf would be constantly under threat,
because Mussolini could attack them from Ethiopia,
the Russians could attack them from the Caucasus and Iran,
and Germany could attack
them through Turkey.
Moreover Mussolini could attack the British and French ships at the Straits of
Bab el Mandeb at the Red Sea, and he could cut
off their oil supplies from the Gulf. Remember that the oil pipelines of the Middle East were constructed after the end of WW2. See
Foreign Affairs “Pipelines in the Sand”.
Therefore the
British and the French were willing to grant Italy with the political and
economic control of the Horn of Africa, but not with militarily control. That was
not enough for Mussolini, who finally decided to enter the war on the side of Germany and Russia
against Britain and France.
Map The
Italian Corridor of Mussolini (Green Line)
Hitler’s
third option was to form an alliance with the British against the French and
the Russians. The Russians were fighting the British in India and the French were fighting the British
in Africa, and therefore the Germans could form an alliance with the British,
in order to take the disputed borderlands at their borders with France, and in order to take the oil of the
Caspian Sea from Russia.
And in return they would leave the Persian Gulf
to the British (pink line).
Map Inside
Hitler’s Mind
That was
the so called Lebensraum i.e. the “living space” of Germany, which you can see at the
following map.
Map
Lebensraum
But the
British were not interested in helping the Nazis promote the Lebensraum i.e. to
take the oil of the Caspian Sea, because Hitler was not reliable, and they were
sure that once he had taken control of the Caspian oil he would march to the Persian Gulf. The British were proposing Hitler and
alliance with Germany
accepting the international order that was created with WW1, which meant that Germany would import oil from Britain and Russia,
but would not stretch her muscle to the Caspian Sea.
But the British proposal did not satisfy Hitler.
The fourth
option for Hitler was to form an alliance with Stalin against the French and
the British. The Germans would attack the British at the Persian Gulf from the
West, and the Russians would attack the British from the north at the Persian
Gulf and India.
Map Inside
Hitler’s Mind
This one
was the option that was finally promoted by Hitler, but in a version proposed
by Stalin. The Russian Communists agreed to supply the Nazis with oil, iron and
wheat, in order to help them beat the British and the French, but they did not
want to exhaust their army in a war against the British, because they knew that
once Hitler had got hold of the the Persian Gulf he could march to the Caspian
Sea too.
Therefore
they agreed to help Hitler beat the British and the French, while they would
keep their army fresh, in order to defend their oil supplies if Hitler decided
to attack them after the British and the French were finished, and in order to
attack the British in India if they lost the war against the Nazis.
This plan
was a good one for Stalin. The Germans, the French and the British would
exhaust themselves in a war, and that would increase the relative strength of Russia.
And that was what actually happened up to a point. But in the end the
Nazi-Communist alliance was broken by Hitler, because the oil that was sent to
him by the Russian Communists was not enough for his thirsty army. And Hitler
invaded Russia in 1941 to
take control of the oil of Baku.
These were
the 4 out of the 5 options that Hitler had at his disposal. The 5th
option for Hitler was to follow the British advise and respect the post WW1
international order. But that meant Hitler would not go for neither the Persian
Gulf nor the Caspian Sea, and it was an option
not interesting for Hitler. Therefore Hitler decided to form an alliance with
the Russian Communists, and go for the oil of the Persian
Gulf instead.
Map the
Nazi-Communist Alliance
References
I read
various things and I normally do not mention my references. But sometimes, when
something really helps my thinking, I have to mention some references, as I
have done with Murray Rothbard in some of my economic essays.
Therefore I
have to mention Henry Kissinger’s Diplomacy. Three of the chapters of his book
really helped me understand the geopolitics of World War 2 i.e. “The End of Illusion
– Hitler and the End of Versailles”, “Stalin’s Bazaar”, and “The Nazi Soviet Pact”.
Very simple
writing, very clever writing, very informative writing.
Image Henry
Kissinger’s Diplomacy
Articles
In March 1938 the first oilfield of Saudi Arabia was discovered.
“History of
the oil industry in Saudi
Arabia”
Saudi
Arabian oil was first discovered by the Americans in commercial quantities
at Dammam oil well No. 7 in 1938 in what is now
modern day Dhahran.
Libya’s importance was enhanced in the 50s, when there were
signs that Libya
had oil, and in 1959 oil was discovered.
“COLD WAR LIBYA:ALL
ABOUT OIL”
1-5th
Paragraphs
When
the Cold War began, Libya
held little importance for either superpower. Yes, it was the home to Wheelus
Air Force base, one of the major American bomber bases in the Eastern
Hemisphere, but that’s about it. Leading exports
were esparto, a type of grass used to make paper for currency bills, and
scrap metal scavenged from the rusting tanks and trucks and weaponry that had
been left behind by the Allies and the Axis powers.
The
country gained some recognition when independence was declared on December 24,
1951. The Soviet Union had been stymied in its
efforts to establish a Mandate over the country following the end of World War
II. Now, Libya
was the first country to achieve independence through the United Nations. It
was also one of the first former European possessions in Africa
to gain independence.
Proclaimed
a constitutional and hereditary monarchy, the new United Kingdom of Libya was
made up of three arbitrarily joined provinces: Cyrenaica, Tripolitania, and Fezzan. The kingdom formed a federal government with
three capital cities.: Tripoli, Benghazi, and Al Bayda. Idris as-Senussi, the Emir of Tripolitania
and Cyrenaica and the leader of the Senussi
Muslim Sufi order, was declared king.
Two
years after independence, on March 28, 1953, Libya joined the Arab League.
In
the mid 1950s, Libya
gained further significance with the growing suspicion that the country might
produce oil.
8th Paragraph
The
first round of negotiations in 1957 saw 17 companies bid for a total of 84
concessions. Early exploration results were disappointing, but this changed in
1959 when Standard Oil of New Jersey made a huge strike about 100 miles south
of the Mediterranean coast. The US State Department summed it up: “Libya
has hit the jack-pot.”
13-18th
Paragraphs
While
the Libyan government at that time was friendly — or at least neutral — toward
the United States,
the Libyan business environment was hostile, permeated with corruption.
Soon
the political environment would be hostile as well. On April 25, 1963, the
federal system of government was abolished and the name of the country was
changed to the Kingdom
of Libya. More far
reaching changes were soon to come.
The
monarchy ended on September 1, 1969 when a group of military officers staged
a coup d’état against King Idris while he was in Turkey for medical treatment.
The coup was led by a 28 year old army officer named Mu’ammar Abu Minyar
al-Qadhaffi. King Idris was exiled to Egypt.
The
new regime, headed by the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), abolished the
monarchy and proclaimed the new Libyan
Arab Republic. The
new RCC’s motto became “freedom, socialism, and unity.” It pledged to remedy
“backwardness”, take an active role in the Palestinian Arab cause, promote Arab
unity, and encourage domestic policies based on social justice,
non-exploitation, and an equitable distribution of wealth.
The
new government soon negotiated with the Americans to evacuate the Wheelus Air
Base from Libya.
The agreement had just two more years to run. In December 1969, the US
agreed to vacate the facility by June 1970.
“Oil - Oil
and world power”
The
United States
dominated world oil production in the first half of the twentieth century.
U.S.
fields accounted for slightly more than 70 percent of world oil production in
1925, around 63 percent in 1941, and over 50 percent in 1950. The U.S. oil industry operated in a unique
regulatory environment that included a permissive legal regime, generous tax
treatment, and a cooperative system of national production control centered on
the state of Texas, which accounted for almost
half of total U.S.
production. During the Great Depression, the federal government, several state
governments, and the oil companies worked out a control system that placed a
ceiling on total
output and allocated production so that marginal producers
could survive in the face of considerable excess capacity. Although Texas authorities
refused to require producers to pool their extractive activities in each oil
field, thereby allowing wasteful extractive processes to continue, the system
allowed high-cost marginal wells to continue to produce, thus preserving
lower-cost fields for future use. Higher prices also somewhat reduced
consumption. With the Texas Railroad Commission as a balance wheel,
the system remained in place until the early 1970s, when domestic production
alone could no longer fill national demand.
In
addition to being blessed with a thriving and productive domestic oil industry,
five of the seven great oil corporations (the so-called Seven Sisters) that
dominated the international oil industry from the 1920s to the 1970s were
American companies. U.S. oil
companies, along with British firms, dominated the oil industries of the two
main producing countries in Latin America, Mexico
and Venezuela,
and had smaller holdings throughout the region. During the 1920s and early
1930s, the United States
successfully supported efforts by U.S.
oil companies to gain oil concessions in the Middle East.
U.S.
companies were also involved in regionally significant oil fields in the
Netherlands East Indies. By the eve of World War II, U.S.
companies accounted for nearly 40 percent of oil production outside the United States and the Soviet
Union.
More
importantly, the United
States possessed the means to ensure the
stability of the producing regions and gain access to their oil. The United States Navy had emerged from World War
I second to none, thus providing the United States with the capability
of securing access to overseas oil-producing areas. The United States was already firmly
entrenched in the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico–Caribbean region before World War I
for security reasons that predated oil's emergence as a strategic commodity.
World War II and the Cold War reinforced traditional U.S.
determination to maintain an economic and strategic sphere of influence in Latin America. Securing the Persian Gulf, which emerged
as the center of the world oil industry following World War II, was more
difficult for several reasons, including the region's distance from the United States,
the involvement of rival great powers, and the dynamics of regional politics. Great Britain had emerged as the leading power
in the Middle East following World War I.
Following World War II, the United States
gradually assumed Britain's
role as the main guarantor of Western interests in the Middle
East.
Oil
became an important element in military power in the decade before World War I
when the navies of the great powers, led by Great
Britain and the United States, began to switch from
coal to oil as their source of power. In addition, the major military
innovations of World War I—the submarine, the airplane, the tank, and motorized
transport—were all oil-powered. Although the surface fleets of the great powers
played a relatively minor part in the fighting, German submarines wreaked havoc
on British and French shipping and helped bring the United States into the war. In
addition, oil carved out a role in the manufacture of munitions when the
British, using a process developed by Royal Dutch/Shell, began extracting
toluol, an essential ingredient in the explosive TNT, from oil. Access to oil
became more important toward the end of the war with the transition from static
trench warfare, with its limited demand for oil-powered machinery, to a more
fluid operational environment in which tanks, motorized transport, and aircraft
played a larger role.
Britain and France were able to draw on over-seas sources of
supply from Iran, Mexico, and the United
States, while the Germans were limited to oil from Romania.
By the last year of the war, the United States
was supplying more than 80 percent of Allied oil requirements, and the American
navy was playing a key role in supplying and protecting tanker transport of oil
to Europe. Although Lord
Curzon's boast that the Allied cause had floated to victory on a
wave of oil was an overstatement, severe shortages of oil in 1917 and 1918
threatened to immobilize the Royal Navy and the French army. In both cases,
urgent requests to the United
States for help led to the provision of the
needed supplies. In contrast, without such external assistance, oil shortages
hindered German military operations at critical points.
In
addition to being a tremendous military asset, access to ample supplies of oil
provided the United States
with important advantages in the industrial transformation of the first half of
the twentieth century. By the 1890s, the United
States had overtaken Great
Britain as the leading industrial power in the world, and
by the 1920s, the U.S.
economy was larger than the combined economies of the next six great powers (Great Britain, France,
Germany, Italy, Soviet Union, and Japan).
Cheap
and plentiful supplies of oil were a prerequisite for the automobile industry,
which played a central role in the U.S. economy from the 1920s to the
1960s. Oil became the fuel of choice in land and sea transport as well as the
only fuel for air transport, and challenged coal as the main source of energy
for industry. Oil also played an important, if somewhat less crucial, role in
heating and electricity generation, but oil-powered machinery became crucial to
modern agriculture, and oil became an important feedstock for fertilizers and
pesticides. Indeed, with the development of the petrochemical industry,
oil reached into almost every area of modern life. Already almost one-fifth of U.S. energy consumption by 1925, oil accounted
for around one-third of U.S.
energy use by World War II. Outside the United
States, in contrast, oil was a secondary fuel reserved
mainly for transportation and military uses and accounted for less than 10
percent of energy consumption in western Europe and Japan before World War II.
The
Soviet Union was the only other great power
that possessed significant quantities of oil within its borders. The Russian
empire had been the world's leading oil producer in 1900, accounting for more
than half of world production. Soon thereafter a combination of geological and
political problems caused output to plummet. Soviet oil production recovered
rapidly in the 1920s, and by 1939 the Soviet Union was the second-largest oil
producer in the world, far behind the United
States and slightly ahead of Venezuela. Although the Soviets reentered
exports markets briefly in the late 1920s, by the end of the 1930s almost all
Soviet oil production was being devoted to internal uses.
The
other great powers (Great Britain,
France, Germany, and Japan) lacked indigenous oil
reserves and were therefore dependent on foreign sources. Although British
companies held concessions in Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia,
maintaining access to this oil required stability in the oil-producing areas
and control of the sea routes linking the oil-producing areas to Britain.
British security policy called for the Mediterranean and the Middle East to be
defended because they lay athwart land, sea, and air routes to India, the Far East,
and the Pacific dominions. If the Mediterranean were closed, a prospect that
seemed increasingly likely as Britain's
relative power declined in the 1930s, access to Middle
East oil would be very difficult, assuming that the oil fields and
other facilities could be defended. Production in the Far
East was not great, and access to its oil would be even more
difficult to defend in wartime. Wartime access to Western Hemisphere oil would
be dependent on the acquiescence and probably the assistance of the United States, to which Britain had conceded regional supremacy shortly
after 1900 and whose help would be needed to transport the oil safely across
the Atlantic. This dependence on the United States for vital oil supplies was a
critical weakness in Great
Britain's power position.
During
the 1930s, the British government studied the possibility of reducing its
reliance on imported oil by using Britain's ample coal supplies as a
source of synthetic oil. It rejected this alternative on security grounds,
concluding that, given the British position in the major oil producing areas
and the strength of the Royal Navy, reliance on imported oil would be less
vulnerable to interdiction than large synthetic oil plants that would be
conspicuous targets for air attack.
France's stake in foreign oil
was largely limited to a share in Iraqi oil production and a few holdings in Romania.
Access to Iraq, which by
1939 supplied almost half of France's
oil imports, was dependent on British assistance to keep the Mediterranean open
and the Middle East secure. Romania was able to fill only a small portion of
French oil requirements, and access to Romanian oil would be unreliable in the
event of a conflict with Germany.
Access to Western Hemisphere oil, the other source of French imports, was
dependent on U.S.
goodwill and assistance. The French also explored extracting oil from coal and
using alcohol as a motor fuel, but neither alternative provided sufficient
supplies to relieve France's
dependence on imported oil. France
was thus doubly dependent, needing British and U.S. cooperation to ensure access
to oil.
German
and Japanese oil companies had been shut out of the major foreign oil-producing
areas, leaving both nations dependent on foreign companies for necessary
supplies and thus vulnerable to economic and political pressure. Moreover,
their access to oil in the Middle East and the Western Hemisphere was
threatened by British and U.S.
control of the oil-producing areas and Anglo-American command of the sea routes
to these regions.
Convinced
that oil was essential to fuel his ambitions, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler moved to
promote the development of a synthetic fuel industry in Germany shortly after taking power
in 1933. By the outbreak of World War II, coal-derived synfuels accounted for
nearly half of Germany's
peacetime oil needs. The process of extracting oil from coal was complicated
and expensive, and the huge installations required massive amounts of steel and
were very vulnerable to air attack. Therefore, obtaining access to oil that did
not depend on sea routes subject to interdiction by enemies remained an
important part of Nazi expansionist strategy.
Germany received large
quantities of oil from the Soviet Union under the terms of the 1939 Nazi-Soviet
Pact, and in November 1940 gained assured access to Romanian oil when Romania
was forced to adhere to the Tripartite Pact. These supplies were inadequate for
Germany's needs, leading
Hitler to look to the conquest of the rich oil fields of the Caucasus as
a way to gain oil for Germany's
highly mechanized military machine. Thus, the desire to gain assured access to
oil was an important factor in Hitler's decision to invade the Soviet Union in June 1941.
Obtaining
access to oil was also a key factor behind Japan's
decision to attack the United
States. By the end of the 1930s, Japan was dependent on the United States for 80 percent of its
oil needs. Most of the rest came from the Netherlands East Indies, where Shell and the
Standard-Vacuum Oil Company, a jointly owned subsidiary of Standard Oil (New
Jersey) and Socony-Vacuum, controlled production. The Netherlands East Indies
possessed the largest reserves in East Asia, and control over its oil would go
a long way toward meeting Japan's
oil needs. On the other hand, seizing the Netherlands East Indies would lead to
conflict with Great Britain
and the United States.
Nevertheless, the Japanese chose this course after the United States, Britain,
and the Netherlands imposed
an oil embargo on Japan in
the late summer of 1941 in response to Japan's
decision to take control of all Indochina.
World
War II marked the apogee of oil's direct military importance, and the role of
oilpowered weapons systems demonstrated that oil had become the lifeblood of
the modern military machine. All the key weapons systems of World War II were
oil-powered: surface warships (including aircraft carriers), submarines,
airplanes (including long-range bombers), tanks, and a large portion of sea and
land transport. Oil continued to play an important role in the manufacture of
munitions, and the development of petroleum-based synthetic rubber helped
relieve Allied dependence on Southeast Asian natural rubber supplies, most of
which were in the hands of the Japanese for much of the war.
The
United States entered World
War II with a surplus production capacity of over one million barrels per day,
almost one-third of U.S.
production in 1941. This margin enabled the United
States, almost single-handedly, to fuel not only its own
war effort but that of its Allies, once the logistics of transporting the oil
safely across the Atlantic had been mastered.
In addition, U.S. leadership
in oil-refining technology provided the U.S. military with such advantages
as 100-octane aviation gasoline and specialty lubricants needed for high
performance aircraft engines.
The
Soviet Union also benefited from having
indigenous oil supplies. The Soviets were able to retain control of the vital
Caucasian oil fields, and rushed new fields in the Volga-Urals region, safely
removed from the fighting, into production. These successes helped Soviet
forces attain the mobility necessary to repel the German invaders and go on the
offensive.
German
and Japanese failure to gain secure access to sufficient oil supplies was an
important factor in their defeat. German synthetic fuel production proved
barely adequate for wartime requirements, and failure to gain control of the
rich oil fields in the Caucasus, coupled with setbacks in the Middle East and North Africa, left the German military vulnerable to oil
shortages throughout the war. Indeed, Germany was able to hang on as long
as it did only because the absence of a second front until the summer of 1944
kept oil requirements at manageable levels. In the late summer of 1944, the
Allied bombing campaign began belatedly targeting synthetic fuel plants. By the
end of the war, the German war machine was running on empty.
The
Japanese gained control of the Netherlands East Indies in 1942, but many of the
oil facilities had been sabotaged and took time to restore to full production.
More importantly, transporting oil from the East Indies to Japan proved increasingly difficult owing to the
remarkable success of U.S.
submarines in interdicting Japanese shipping. By late 1944, Japan faced serious oil shortages,
with crippling military consequences.
With
the exception of the jet engine, the major military innovations of World War
II—radar, ballistic missiles, and the atomic bomb—were not oil-powered.
Nevertheless, oil remained central to the mobility of land, sea, and air
forces. Despite the development of nuclear-powered warships (mainly aircraft
carriers and submarines), most of the world's warships remained oil-powered, as
did aircraft, armor, and transport. In addition, each new generation of weapons
required more oil than its predecessors. Thus, while the advent of the atomic
age meant that access to oil would not have been a key factor in a full-scale
war between the United States and the Soviet Union, which presumably would have
been fought primarily with nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, such
conflicts as the wars in Korea, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf were fought with
conventional, largely oil-powered weapons, thus demonstrating the continued
centrality of oil-powered forces, and hence oil, to military power.
Oil's
economic importance increased after World War II as the United States intensified its embrace of
patterns of socioeconomic organization premised on high levels of oil use, and
western Europe and Japan
made the transition from coal to oil as their main source of energy. U.S.
and world oil consumption skyrocketed in the 1950s and 1960s. Between 1950 and
1972, total world energy consumption increased 179 percent, much faster than
population growth, resulting in a doubling of per capita energy consumption.
Oil accounted for much of this increase, rising from 29 percent of world energy
consumption in 1950 to 46 percent in 1972. By 1973, oil accounted for 47
percent of U.S.
energy consumption. Western Europe and Japan were even more dependent on
oil for meeting their energy needs; by 1973 oil accounted for 64 percent of
west European energy consumption and 80 percent of Japanese energy consumption.
Control
of oil played a vital role in establishing and maintaining U.S. preeminence in the postwar
international system. Adding to its domestic power base, the United States consolidated its
control of world oil in the decade following World War II. By the mid-1950s, U.S. oil companies were firmly entrenched in the
great oil-producing areas outside the Soviet Union.
Equally, if not more important, the United States, as the dominant power in the
Western Hemisphere, controlled access to the region's oil, and the United
States alone had the economic and military power to secure Western access to
Middle East oil.
The
Soviet Union also possessed a powerful domestic oil industry, but despite
geographical proximity, extensive efforts, and widespread anti-Western
sentiment in Iran and the
Arab world, the Soviets failed to achieve a secure foothold in the Persian Gulf and had little impact on the region's oil
industry. The Soviets had even less influence over the Western
Hemisphere's oil producers. Indeed, the U.S.-led economic boycott
of Cuba forced the Soviets
to supply the one foothold they possessed in the Western
Hemisphere with oil at subsidized prices.
The
strong position of the United
States in world oil provided multiple
advantages. In addition to being central to military power and economic
prosperity, control of oil gave the United States leverage over its
allies and its former and prospective enemies. U.S. policymakers saw economic
growth as essential to preventing the recurrence of the divisive ideological
and social conflicts of the interwar years. Soviet expansion into eastern and
central Europe as a result of World War II left the Soviet Union in control of
almost all of Europe's known indigenous oil reserves as well as important
sources of coal in Poland
and the Soviet zone of Germany. Making matters worse, postwar western Europe
faced a coal shortage of alarming proportions owing to wartime overproduction
and destruction and postwar food, transportation, and other problems.
To
fuel economic recovery and to prevent western Europe from becoming dependent on
the Soviets for energy, the United
States sought to ensure that this critical
area received the oil it needed. Economic growth, in turn, was crucial to
mitigating the divisive class conflicts that had divided European and Japanese
society in the first half of the century. Economic growth and prosperity
undercut the appeal of leftist parties, financed the welfare state, perpetuated
the ascendancy of moderate elites, and sustained the cohesion of the Western
alliance. By controlling access to essential oil supplies, the United States
was able to reconcile its aim of German and Japanese economic recovery and
integration into a Western alliance with that of ensuring against the recurrence
of German and Japanese aggression.
Economic
growth in western Europe and Japan
was central to the containment of Soviet power and influence during the Cold
War because it helped prevent these areas from falling to communism through
internal processes. Finally, for many years after World War II the Soviets
lacked sufficient oil to fight a major war. Hit hard by wartime damage,
disruption, transportation problems, equipment shortages, and overuse, Soviet
oil production dropped after the war, and the Soviet Union was a net importer
of oil (mostly from Romania) until 1954. Exclusion of the Soviets from the Middle East retained oil for Western recovery, and kept
the Soviets short of oil. In addition, U.S.
and British strategic planners wanted to keep the Soviets out of the Middle
East because the region contained the most defensible locations for launching a
strategic air offensive against the Soviet Union
in the event of a global war. Throughout the Cold War, ensuring Western access
to Middle East oil was a basic objective of U.S. foreign policy.
