Summary
Through market excesses and shortages, complicated by periodic anxiety over the exhaustion of fossil fuel sources, balancing the international quest for oil with reduction of dependence on foreign oil has been a persistent but elusive goal for U.S. governments. United States Foreign Oil Policy since World War I offers a comprehensive analysis of the evolution of American global oil policy from the administration of Woodrow Wilson to George W. Bushs current regime. Stephen Randall demonstrates that U.S. foreign oil policy since World War I has been consistently based on ensuring an adequate supply of oil and oil products at reasonable prices to meet the industrial and military needs of American society. The result has been an ongoing search for energy security that has taken the United States into regions of the world where its national security interests would not otherwise have been at stake, even at the height of the Cold War. Randall explains that the continued tensions with Iraq and Iran and the increasing instability of Saudi Arabia indicate that the future holds little hope of permanent stability. His analysis extends from the remote shores of the Caspian Sea in the post-Cold War era to the U.S.’s close neighbours such as Canada and Mexico. Exploring the relationship between the state and the private sector in the development of foreign oil policy, Randall concludes that policy has consistently involved the search for a delicate balance between the public and the private interest.