217 8 17MB
English Pages [213] Year 1987
Foreword
The world seems recently to have put another era of high-priced oil behind it. The duration and price stability of cheap oil is, however, highly uncertain. We know that the oil market is likely to tighten in the future. The question is when and under what circumstances again oil will become a high-priced commodity. How will the United States react at this future point in time? Under what domestic, national, and international pressures will American policy evolve? What repercussions will these policies have on the political economy of the international oil market? We will not be able to answer these questions without examining the previous eras of highpriced oil. The purpose of this text is to develop an insight into the political mechanics of American international oil policy in the past long decade from 1973 to early 1986 of dearly priced crude oil. It is furthermore the intention to delineate the link from United States policy to the political organization of the international oil system. In so doing, this graduate and college textbook develops an easily discernable methodology that is presented to the readers in Chapters 2,8, and 9. Heavy theoretical arguments have been deleted or placed in notes. This book is thus mainly empirically oriented, and incorporates the latest research from well-known international scholars in the field. The composition of theoretical approaches and historical evidence, however, aims at providing the reader with a fresh angle from which to understand American international oil policy. The text is organized in a way that enables the reader to approach Part I1 independently of Part I. Those readers who have a primary interest in the international oil system, its history, and the American role connected with it may thus commence with Chapters 1, 8, 9 and 10.