Oil and world power

Oil was the key to world power during the 20th century.  It still is.  Reading Daniel Yergin’s The Prize: the Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power reminded me of just how much military and political power rest on oil.

The power of the 20th century British Navy rested on oil.  In the years leading up to World War One, the British Navy went from coal to oil because of the German naval buildup.  The British wanted something that would give their navy an edge.  Oil would give British ships greater range and speed than coal-fired ships.  But while the United Kingdom had coal mines within its border, it had no oil.

Britain needed a secure source of oil.  The British government decided for that purpose it needed to control the oil of Persia (now Iran).  This involved stopping the emerging Persian democratic movement, and installing a dictator with the title of Shah, and giving the British government control of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (later British Petroleum, then BP), which held the British concession.  This drama was replayed in 1953, when U.S. and British intelligence services helped overthrow another democratic movement and installed the previous Shah’s son, with consequences that were felt in 1979 and to this day.

It was oil supplies from the United States, not Persia, that sustained Britain during the two World Wars, a reason why the “special relationship” was so important to the British government.  Yergin wrote that about 90 percent of Allied oil in the Second World War came from the United States.

The German army was severely handicapped by lack of oil in both world wars.  The main oil-producing European country prior to the discovery of North Sea Oil was Rumania, which was allied to Germany in both World Wars.  But the oil of Rumania was insufficient.  One of Hitler’s motives for attacking Russia in 1941 was to seize the oil of Baku; that is why he ordered his generals to break off the siege of Moscow and move south.  Yergin said the German army might have succeeded in Russia or North Africa if it hadn’t literally run out of gas.

The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941 after the United States threatened an oil embargo.  They hoped to cripple the United States naval forces long enough to seize the oil of the Dutch East Indies, and might have succeeded, according to Yergin, if they had launched another wave of attack and destroyed the oil tanks storing the U.S. Navy’s fuel reserves in Hawaii.   Instead the U.S. was able to mount submarine attacks to such a degree that most of the oil never reached Japan.

Russia under the Tsars, the Bolsheviks and their successors was always one of the world’s top oil and gas producers.  Whatever their government’s failures in economic policy, they always had that to fall back on.

Access to oil—specifically, to oil as a source of aviation fuel—is essential to U.S. world power.  Today the power of the United States rests on the U.S. Air Force, as much as British power rested on the Royal Navy.  Supremacy in the air gives U.S. forces the power to invade and occupy small countries almost at will, although not necessarily with success.  The U.S. Navy has nuclear ships, but the U.S. Air Force requires aviation fuel.  Someday there may be an alternative to gasoline for hand-based vehicles, but the Air Force will always need a secure source of oil to avoid being grounded.

When you think about the need for oil and access to oil, many world events are easier to understand.

Tags: Daniel Yergin, Oil, Oil and World Power, Oil industry, Oil Supply, The Prize, World Power