A Century of War; Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Orde

by F. William Engdahl

• ISBN13: 9780745323091
• ISBN10: 074532309X
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2004-10-04
• Publisher: Pluto Press
• More Book Details
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Summary

This book is a gripping account of the murky world of the international oil industry and its role in world politics. Scandals about oil are familiar to most of us. From George W. Bush's election victory to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, US politics and oil enjoy a controversially close relationship. The US economy relies upon the cheap and unlimited supply of this single fuel. William Engdahl takes the reader through a history of the oil industry's grip on the world economy. His revelations are startling.

Author Biography

William Engdahl has written on issues of energy, politics and economics for more than 30 years, beginning the first oil shock in the early 1970's. After a degree in politics from Princeton University and graduate study in comparative economics at the University of Stockholm, he worked as a free-lance writer in New York and later in Europe, covering subjects including IMF policy in the former Soviet Union, Third World debt issues, hedge funds and the Asia crisis. Mr. Engdahl has contributed regularly to a number of publications including Japan's Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Foresight magazine; Grant'sInvestor.com, European Banker and Business Banker International. He has spoken at numerous international conferences on geopolitical, economic and energy subjects, from London to Jakarta to Moscow. He currently lives in Germany and in addition to writing regularly on issues of economics, energy and international affairs.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
The Three Pillars of the British Empire	1	(10)
The Empire needs a new strategy	1	(1)
Free trade and the sinews of British power	2	(3)
Britain's informal empire	5	(3)
The Great Depression of 1873	8	(3)
The Lines are Drawn: Germany and the Geopolitics of the Great War	11	(8)
Germany's Wirtschaftswunder	11	(3)
A Berlin bank panic	14	(1)
The necessity for ship and rail infrastructure	15	(4)
A Global Fight for Control of Petroleum Begins	19	(16)
A British admiral sees beyond lamp oil	19	(1)
D'Arcy captures the secret of the burning rocks	20	(2)
By rail from Berlin to Baghdad	22	(6)
The new Dreadnoughts	28	(1)
Sir Edward Grey's fateful Paris trip	29	(1)
Fashoda, Witte, great projects and great mistakes	30	(5)
Oil Becomes the Weapon, the Near East the Battleground	35	(15)
A bankrupt Britain goes to war	35	(2)
Oil in the Great War	37	(3)
Britain's secret eastern war	40	(3)
`Selling the same horse twice'	43	(1)
Arthur Balfour's strange letter to Lord Rothschild	44	(2)
Balfour backs the new concept of empire	46	(4)
Combined and Conflicting Goals: The United States Rivals Britain	50	(15)
Morgan finances the British war	50	(5)
New York bankers challenge the City of London	55	(3)
Britain moves for oil supremacy	58	(1)
Churchill and the Arab Bureau	59	(1)
A battle for control of Mexico	60	(1)
The secret of British oil control	61	(4)
The Anglo-Americans Close Ranks	65	(20)
A conference in Genoa	65	(1)
Sinclair and the American bid	66	(2)
Germany tries to outflank the British	68	(2)
Military occupation of the Ruhr	70	(1)
The real origins of Weimar hyperinflation	71	(3)
The Anglo-American Red Line	74	(2)
Deterding, Montagu Norman and Schacht's Hitler Project	76	(9)
Oil and the New World Order of Bretton Woods	85	(20)
A new empire rises from the ashes of war	85	(2)
The dollar standard, Big Oil and the New York banks	87	(1)
The Marshall Plan forms a postwar oil hegemony	88	(2)
The power of the New York banks tied to U.S. oil	90	(1)
Mohammed Mossadegh takes on Anglo-American oil	91	(6)
Italy attempts independence in oil and development	97	(2)
Mattei's bold development initiative	99	(6)
A Sterling Crisis and the Adenauer-de Gaulle Threat	105	(22)
Continental Europe emerges from the rubble of war	105	(2)
Anglo-American grand designs against Europe	107	(2)
1957: America at the turning point	109	(1)
`That `58 Chevy'	110	(1)
The dollar wars of the 1960s	111	(3)
The Vietnam option is taken	114	(3)
The beginnings of America's internal rot	117	(3)
Sterling, the weak link, breaks	120	(5)
De Gaulle is toppled	125	(2)
Running the World Economy in Reverse: Who Made the 1970s Oil Shocks?	127	(23)
Nixon pulls the plug	127	(3)
An unusual meeting at Saltsjobaden	130	(5)
Dr. Kissinger's Yom Kippur oil shock	135	(3)
The economic impact of the oil shock	138	(3)
Taking the `bloom off the nuclear rose'	141	(2)
Developing the Anglo-American green agenda	143	(4)
Population control becomes a U.S. national security issue	147	(3)
Europe, Japan and a Response to the Oil Shock	150	(28)
The petrodollar monetary order devastates the developing world	150	(6)
From Colombo comes a political earthquake	156	(6)
Atoms for Peace becomes a casus belli	162	(3)
Gold, dollar crisis and dangerous new potentials from Europe	165	(4)
The Crash of 1979: Iran and Volcker	169	(9)
Imposing the New World Order	178	(45)
Volcker borrows a British model	178	(5)
Gunboat diplomacy and a Mexican initiative	183	(8)
Wall Street replays the 1920s, IMF-style	191	(8)
Reagan's chickens come home to roost	199	(8)
`We'll get by with a little help from our friends'	207	(2)
The fall of a wall panics some circles	209	(4)
Saddam and Operation Desert Storm	213	(6)
The target: an independent Europe and Japan	219	(4)
From the Evil Empire to the Axis of Evil	223	(23)
Finding the new bogeyman	223	(2)
Japan: wounding the lead goose	225	(4)
Phase two: shooting Asian tigers	229	(2)
Washington revisits Halford Mackinder	231	(2)
Russia gets the IMF Third World cure	233	(5)
Yugoslavia gets the shock therapy	238	(3)
U.S. oil geopolitics in the Balkans	241	(5)
A New Millennium for Oil Geopolitics	246	(25)
Bush brings Big Oil back to Washington	246	(2)
`Where the prize ultimately lies'	248	(2)
`The New American Century'	250	(2)
From Kabul to Baghdad: war on terror or war on oil?	252	(3)
`You've got to go where the oil is'	255	(3)
The peak of oil?	258	(5)
Oil and bases: removing the obstacles	263	(5)
`Full spectrum dominance'	268	(3)
Notes	271	(14)
Appendix I: Founding Members of the Trilateral Commission (1973)	285	(1)
Appendix II: Participants at the Saltsjobaden Meeting of the Bilderberg Group (1973)	286	(2)
Index	288