In 2007, the United States imported 58 percent of the oil it consumed. This book critically evaluates commonly suggested links between these imports and U.S. national security and assesses the economic, political, and military costs and benefits of potential policies to alleviate imported oil?related challenges to U.S. national security.
Findings: the U.S. energy system and the role of imported oil and gas -- Findings: how dependence on imported energy affects U.S. foreign policy -- Findings and recommendations: U.S. domestic energy policy -- Findings and recommendations: The conduct of U.S. foreign policy -- Additional view.
U.S. reliance on oil risks the economic costs of disruption in global oil supplies. The United States would reduce the national security costs of importing oil by supporting well-functioning oil markets and imposing an oil excise tax.
From the author of Resource Wars, a landmark assessment of the critical role of petroleum in America's actions abroad In his pathbreaking Resource Wars, world security expert Michael T. Klare alerted us to the role of resources in conflicts in the post-Cold War world. Now, in Blood and Oil, he concentrates on a single precious commodity, petroleum, while issuing a warning to the United States-its most powerful, and most dependent, global consumer. Since September 11th and the commencement of the "war on terror," the world's attention has been focused on the relationship between U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and the oceans of crude oil that lie beneath the region's soil. Klare traces oil's impact on international affairs since World War II, revealing its influence on the Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon, and Carter doctrines. He shows how America's own wells are drying up as our demand increases; by 2010, the United States will need to import 60 percent of its oil. And since most of this supply will have to come from chronically unstable, often violently anti-American zones-the Persian Gulf, the Caspian Sea, Latin America, and Africa-our dependency is bound to lead to recurrent military involvement. With clarity and urgency, Blood and Oil delineates the United States' predicament and cautions that it is time to change our energy policies, before we spend the next decades paying for oil with blood.
First Published in 2011. This book presents the results of the third phase of our analysis of U.S. oil imports in relation to U.S. energy policy. It presents a definitive history and analysis of the United States' experiment with formal oil import controls and addresses three questions: The first is how the U.S. energy situation, especially energy security, was affected by what was going on in the rest of the world. The second is the more narrow issue of what energy security options appeared available to the United States from the perspective of the special conditions which existed during 1974-75. The third question, the main subject of this book, and the one with which we initially began, was what lessons might be learned from earlier efforts to limit imports, especially through the Mandatory Oil Import Program.
