Author: Michael Quentin Morton Publisher: Reaktion Books ISBN: 1780238614 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 265
Book Description
Oil lies at the heart of the modern history of the Middle East. For decades, the world’s largest oil reserves have enriched the region’s nations. But oil wealth has not brought with it universal prosperity. It has, though, transformed the Middle Eastern people and societies—enriching empires and engendering anarchies. Empires and Anarchies is an unconventional history of oil in the Middle East. In Michael Quentin Morton’s account the burnt-out remains of Saddam Hussein’s armaments and the human tragedy of the Arab Spring are as much of the story as the shimmering skylines of oil-rich nations. From the first explorers trudging through the desert to the excesses of the Peacock Throne and the high stakes of OPEC, Morton lays out the history of oil in compelling detail, arguing that oil simultaneously enriched and fractured the Middle East, eroding traditional ways of life, and eventually contributing to the rise of Islamic radicalism. The book is essential reading for anyone interested in the promises and peril of the world’s oil boom.
Author: Kjetil Selvik Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1317498135 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 335
Book Description
Oil has been central to regime survival for oil states across the Arabian Peninsula and has been at the heart of their attempts to defuse the wave of Arab revolutions. However, in 2011 revolution hit Libya, the most oil dependent regime in the Middle East. The political storm winds that have swept this region have thrown into doubt the resilience of Arab rentier states, and highlight how the political effects of oil vary across the oil producing countries. Oil States in the New Middle East brings together leading experts to critically assess the centrality of oil and the relevance of Rentier State Theory in light of the post-2011 upheaval across the Middle East and North Africa. It combines overall reflections on the political dynamics in oil states with focused case investigations of individual countries. Taking as its starting point the centrality of oil in explanations of regime survival, the book analyses how the oil states have responded to and fared throughout the Arab popular upheavals, resulting in a critical assessment of the continued relevance of Rentier State Theory. While observers have asked how the uprisings varied between oil and non-oil states, this book turns the comparative focus inward, arguing for a more fine-grained understanding of the political effects of oil in different oil producing countries. This book would be of interest to students and scholars of Middle East, North Africa and Gulf Studies, Oil and Politics, as well as Comparative Politics and International Political Economy.
Author: Martin Beck Publisher: Manchester University Press ISBN: 1526149087 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 205
Book Description
The downhill slide in the global price of crude oil, which started mid-2014, had major repercussions across the Middle East for net oil exporters, as well as importers closely connected to the oil-producing countries from the Gulf. Following the Arab uprisings of 2010 and 2011, the oil price decline represented a second major shock for the region in the early twenty-first century – one that has continued to impose constraints, but also provided opportunities. Offering the first comprehensive analysis of the Middle Eastern political economy in response to the 2014 oil price decline, this book connects oil market dynamics with an understanding of socio-political changes. Inspired by rentierism, the contributors present original studies on Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The studies reveal a large diversity of country-specific policy adjustment strategies: from the migrant workers in the Arab Gulf, who lost out in the post-2014 period but were incapable of repelling burdensome adjustment policies, to Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon, who have never been able to fulfil the expectation that they could benefit from the 2014 oil price decline. With timely contributions on the COVID-19-induced oil price crash in 2020, this collection signifies that rentierism still prevails with regard to both empirical dynamics in the Middle East and academic discussions on its political economy.
Author: David M. Wight Publisher: Cornell University Press ISBN: 1501715747 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 360
Book Description
In Oil Money, David M. Wight offers a new framework for understanding the course of Middle East–US relations during the 1970s and 1980s: the transformation of the US global empire by Middle East petrodollars. During these two decades, American, Arab, and Iranian elites reconstituted the primary role of the Middle East within the global system of US power from a supplier of cheap crude oil to a source of abundant petrodollars, the revenues earned from the export of oil. In the 1970s, the United States and allied monarchies, including the House of Pahlavi in Iran and the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia, utilized petrodollars to undertake myriad joint initiatives for mutual economic and geopolitical benefit. These petrodollar projects were often unprecedented in scope and included multibillion-dollar development projects, arms sales, purchases of US Treasury securities, and funds for the mujahedin in Afghanistan. Although petrodollar ties often augmented the power of the United States and its Middle East allies, Wight argues they also fostered economic disruptions and state-sponsored violence that drove many Americans, Arabs, and Iranians to resist Middle East–US interdependence, most dramatically during the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Deftly integrating diplomatic, transnational, economic, and cultural analysis, Wight utilizes extensive declassified records from the Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations, the IMF, the World Bank, Saddam Hussein's regime, and private collections to make plain the political economy of US power. Oil Money is an expansive yet judicious investigation of the wide-ranging and contradictory effects of petrodollars on Middle East–US relations and the geopolitics of globalization.
Author: Mostafa Elm Publisher: Syracuse University Press ISBN: 9780815626428 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 444
Book Description
This work deals with the oil crises of the 1950s, precipitated by Iran's decision to nationalise the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The roots of the revolt against British imperialism are explored here, along with the long-term consequences of instability in the Middle East.
Author: Andrew Scott Cooper Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1439155186 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 544
Book Description
Relying on a rich cache of previously classified notes, transcripts, cables, policy briefs, and memoranda, Andrew Cooper explains how oil drove, even corrupted, American foreign policy during a time when Cold War imperatives still applied, and tells why in the 1970s the U.S. switched its Middle East allegiance from the Shah of Iran to the Saudi royal family. Amid the oil shocks of the early 1970s, there was one man the U.S. could rely on: the Shah of Iran. The Shah sold us oil; we sold him weapons. But the U.S. and other industrialized economies could not tolerate repeated annual double digit increases in oil prices. During the 1976 election campaign, President Gerald Ford decided that he had to find a country that would break the OPEC monopoly and sell the U.S. oil more cheaply. On the advice of Treasury Secretary William Simon -- and against the advice of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger -- Ford made a deal to sell advanced weaponry to the Saudis in exchange for a more moderate price hike in oil. The Shah's economy was destabilized, and disaffected elements mobilized to overthrow him. The U.S. had embarked on a long relationship with the autocratic Saudi kingdom that continues to this day.
Author: Valerie Marcel Publisher: Brookings Institution Press ISBN: 9780815754725 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 348
Book Description
A Brookings Institution Press and Chatham House publication Ninety percent of the world's oil reserves are entrusted to state-owned companies. Originally created as political instruments, these so-called national oil companies (NOCs) face new demands amid today's dwindling oil reserves and simmering social pressures. Increasingly, state-owned oil firms—particularly in the Middle East—are having to balance the political demands of their governments with the need to be commercially competitive. In this ground-breaking new volume, Valerie Marcel draws on unprecedented access to the politicians, engineers; and businessmen directing five Middle Eastern state oil companies to shed light on one of the most secretive segments of the international oil industry. The author tells the stories of Saudi Aramco, Kuwait Petroleum Corp., the National Iranian Oil Co., Sonatrach of Algeria, and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co.—oil titans which together produce one quarter of the world's oil and hold half of the world's known oil and gas reserves. Dr. Marcel explains the complex bond between each state and its oil company, tracing the relationship's evolution from the politically charged days of foreign concessions to today's world of profit-driven decisionmaking. Drawn from over 120 interviews with company executives, middle managers, and oil-ministry officials, the author identifies a number of surprising new trends in these companies' strategy, and she paints a picture of their nascent sense of corporate identity. The book provides rare, up-to-date insight into how state-owned companies are striking a balance between their national mission and their commercial needs. The book also provides an insider's guide to these companies' unique culture. Executives and researchers in the region—both inside and outside the oil industry—will find it a valuable tool for understanding business in the Middle East.
Author: University of Toronto. Middle East Studies Committee Publisher: Washington : American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research ISBN: Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 136
Author: Jill Crystal Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 9780521466356 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 262
Book Description
This book asks why in recent years the social and economic upheavals in Kuwait and Qatar have been accompanied by a remarkable political continuity.
Author: Steven G. Galpern Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 9781107657182 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
This book is an important political and economic history of the unravelling of the British Empire and its connection to the decline of sterling as a leading international currency. Analyzing events such as the 1951 Iranian oil nationalization crisis and the 1956 Suez crisis, Steven Galpern provides a new perspective on British imperialism in the Middle East by reframing British policy in the context of the government's postwar efforts to maintain the international prestige of the pound. He reveals the link that British officials made between the Middle Eastern oil trade and the strength of sterling and how this influenced government policy and strained relationships with the Middle East, the United States, and multinational oil firms. In so doing, this book draws revealing parallels between the British experience and that of the United States today and will be essential reading for scholars of the British empire, Middle East studies and economic history.
Author: Michael Quentin Morton
Author: Kjetil Selvik
Author: Martin Beck
Author: David M. Wight
Author: Mostafa Elm
Author: Andrew Scott Cooper
Author: Valerie Marcel
Author: University of Toronto. Middle East Studies Committee
Author: Jill Crystal
Author: Steven G. Galpern