The Connection Between Terrorism and the Commodity of Oil

This chapter by Michael Klare titled "Oil, Geography and War" says that no industrialized society can function without a "substantial supply of oil". There will always be a conflict over oil because it is such a precious commodity to countries such as the United States who can not or will not survive on their own oil supplies alone. The link between oil and military policy began when Winston Churchill decided to convert its combat vessels from coal to oil production in 1912 and continued on through both World Wars to today. There were several embargos on oil placed on the United States by the Middle East such as the one in 1973 over the U.S. support of Israel in the Arab-Israel conflict. This scared the U.S. profoundly, So much so that Henry Kissinger told Business Week in 1975 that the U.S. "was prepared to go to war over oil" (Klare 2007). The untapped oil supply at the Caspian Sea was valued at $4 trillion in 1997, which would be much higher today.

There are fourteen countries that own all but 10% of the known world supply of oil. Among those fourteen the control of oil is even more highly concentrated within these five: Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the UAF, Kuwait, and Iran, together these five countries hold nearly two thirds of the global reserves of oil. This means that the availability of oil is closely tied to political and socioeconomic environments of these few countries to run the entire industrialized world. The multiple nations that produce oil allow the consuming nations to switch from one nation to another when a crisis erupts in one supplier but there aren't many that leave then entirely free of conflict.