Oil imperialism theories

Oil imperialism theories assert that direct and indirect control of world petroleum reserves is a root factor in current international politics.

Control of oil

While economists and historians agree that access to and control of the access of others to important resources has throughout history been a factor in warfare and in diplomacy, oil imperialism theorists generally tend to assert that control of petroleum reserves has played an overriding role in international politics since World War I. In recent years, oil resources were certainly important considerations behind the Gulf War, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the Libyan Crisis. Some theories hold that access to oil defined 20th-century empires and was the key to the ascendance of the United States as the world's sole superpower, and explained how a transitioning country like Russia was able to obtain rapid GDP growth for a time (see Economy of the Soviet Union).

Criticism

Critics of oil imperialism theories suggest that because the United States has historically been one of the leading oil producers in the world,[1] the United States would be unlikely to predicate its foreign policy on the acquisition of oil with such an undue focus. They point out that, relative to its consumption rate, oil is not an expensive commodity in the market.[2]

gollark: In any case, maybe I'm just used to hilariously powerful mods, but a turtle which digs slowly and might randomly break is just... not very good compared to a quarry.
gollark: Er, you need three diamonds.
gollark: Where it shines is in performing random useful tasks which there isn't dedicated hardware available for, linking together disparate systems (much more practically than redstone), working as a "microcontroller" to control something based on a bunch of input data, and entertainment-/decorative-type things (displaying stuff on monitors and whatnot, and music with Computronics).
gollark: For example, quarrying. CC has turtles. They can dig things. They can move. You can make a quarry out of this, and people have. But in practice, they're not hugely fast or efficient, and it's hard to make it work well in the face of stuff like server restarts, while a dedicated quarrying device from a mod will handle this fine and probably go faster if you can power it somehow.
gollark: I honestly don't think CC is particularly overpowered even with turtles. While it can technically do basically anything, most bigger packs will have special-purpose devices which are more expensive but do it way better, while CC is very annoying to have work.

See also

References
  1. "Oil Market Basics - Supply". United States Energy Information Administration. Retrieved 2008-03-03.
  2. "The Price of a Gallon". cockeyed.com. Retrieved 2008-03-03.


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