Empires and Anarchies


Book Description

Oil lies at the heart of the modern history of the Middle East. For decades, the world’s largest oil reserves have enriched the region’s nations. But oil wealth has not brought with it universal prosperity. It has, though, transformed the Middle Eastern people and societies—enriching empires and engendering anarchies. Empires and Anarchies is an unconventional history of oil in the Middle East. In Michael Quentin Morton’s account the burnt-out remains of Saddam Hussein’s armaments and the human tragedy of the Arab Spring are as much of the story as the shimmering skylines of oil-rich nations. From the first explorers trudging through the desert to the excesses of the Peacock Throne and the high stakes of OPEC, Morton lays out the history of oil in compelling detail, arguing that oil simultaneously enriched and fractured the Middle East, eroding traditional ways of life, and eventually contributing to the rise of Islamic radicalism. The book is essential reading for anyone interested in the promises and peril of the world’s oil boom.




Energy and Environmental Challenges to Security


Book Description

On 21 November 2007 the grand and elegant Delegates Hall of the Hungarian Parliament was the scene of the opening of a conference to discuss some of the most pressing issues of the day, those related to our unending thirst for energy, its environmental consequences, and the challenges that these bear on security. Over the next 3 days scientists, parliamentarians and their guests confronted, challenged, teased and cajoled each other in a NATO Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) entitled “Energy and Environmental Challenges to Security,” affirming that knowledge and public service hold the keys to solving our greatest challenges. The magnitude of the security challenge was confirmed while this volume was being prepared. In mid-2008, the International Energy Agency issued a report concluding that US$45 trillion would be needed over the next half century to prevent energy shortages and greenhouse gas emissions from undermining global economic growth. But lest such large numbers cause us all to shrug, this volume brings attention to some of the more manageable aspects of the environment and energy security challenge – from addressing conflict resources such as illegal timber that contribute to corruption and regional instability, to means and mechanisms to enable the diversification of energy supplies, to environmental risk reduction strategies for particular installations. The participants in the Hungarian Parliament building were atypical for a NATO Advanced Research Workshop.




Twilight in the Desert


Book Description

Twilight in the Desert reveals a Saudi oil and production industry that could soon approach a serious, irreversible decline. In this exhaustively researched book, veteran oil industry analyst Matthew Simmons draws on his three-plus decades of insider experience and more than 200 independently produced reports about Saudi petroleum resources and production operations. He uncovers a story about Saudi Arabias troubled oil industry, not to mention its political and societal instability, which differs sharply from the globally accepted Saudi version. Its a story that is provocative and disturbing, based on undeniable facts, but until now never told in its entirety. Twilight in the Desert answers all readers questions about Saudi oil and production industries with keen examination instead of unsubstantiated posturing, and takes its place as one of the most important books of this still-young century.




Oil for Food


Book Description

"In Oil for Food, Eckart Woertz analyzes the geopolitical implications behind the current investment drive of Arab Gulf countries in food insecure countries like Sudan or Pakistan. Having lived in Dubai for seven years, and drawing on extensive archival sources and interviews, he gives the inside story of how regional food security concerns have developed historically, how domestic agro-lobbies shape policy making, and how the failed attempt to develop Sudan as an Arab bread-basket in the 1970s carries important lessons for today's investments drive." --




The Quest


Book Description

“A sprawling story richly textured with original material, quirky details and amusing anecdotes . . .” —Wall Street Journal “It is a cause for celebration that Yergin has returned with his perspective on a very different landscape . . . [I]t is impossible to think of a better introduction to the essentials of energy in the 21st century. The Quest is . . . the definitive guide to how we got here.” —The Financial Times This long-awaited successor to Daniel Yergin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Prize provides an essential, overarching narrative of global energy, the principal engine of geopolitical and economic change A master storyteller as well as a leading energy expert, Daniel Yergin continues the riveting story begun in his Pulitzer Prize–winning book, The Prize. In The Quest, Yergin shows us how energy is an engine of global political and economic change and conflict, in a story that spans the energies on which our civilization has been built and the new energies that are competing to replace them. The Quest tells the inside stories, tackles the tough questions, and reveals surprising insights about coal, electricity, and natural gas. He explains how climate change became a great issue and leads readers through the rebirth of renewable energies, energy independence, and the return of the electric car. Epic in scope and never more timely, The Quest vividly reveals the decisions, technologies, and individuals that are shaping our future.




Oil and the political economy in the Middle East


Book Description

The downhill slide in the global price of crude oil, which started mid-2014, had major repercussions across the Middle East for net oil exporters, as well as importers closely connected to the oil-producing countries from the Gulf. Following the Arab uprisings of 2010 and 2011, the oil price decline represented a second major shock for the region in the early twenty-first century – one that has continued to impose constraints, but also provided opportunities. Offering the first comprehensive analysis of the Middle Eastern political economy in response to the 2014 oil price decline, this book connects oil market dynamics with an understanding of socio-political changes. Inspired by rentierism, the contributors present original studies on Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The studies reveal a large diversity of country-specific policy adjustment strategies: from the migrant workers in the Arab Gulf, who lost out in the post-2014 period but were incapable of repelling burdensome adjustment policies, to Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon, who have never been able to fulfil the expectation that they could benefit from the 2014 oil price decline. With timely contributions on the COVID-19-induced oil price crash in 2020, this collection signifies that rentierism still prevails with regard to both empirical dynamics in the Middle East and academic discussions on its political economy.




The Middle East


Book Description

The Middle East provides a thematic analysis of major forces and trends in contemporary Middle East and a thorough examination of individual countries in the region. This comprehensive anthology, the first in more than two decades, explores the political environment, religious and ethnic factors, economic factors, the Arab world, the Palestinians and the territories, Israel, the role of the superpowers, and the Middle East's relationship with the rest of the world. Every informed reader will want to consult The Middle East to understand this important and complex area of the world.Contents (partial): William L. Cleveland, "Sources of Arab Nationalism"; Carl Leiden, "Arab Nationalism Today"; Opoku Agyeman, "Pan-Africanism versus Pan-Arabism"; Elbani Hermassi, "The Maghrib and the Middle East Conflict"; Lenore G. Martin, "Boundary Disputes in the Persian Gulf"; Bernard Lewis, "The Return of Islam"; Daniel Pipes, "Understanding Islam in Politics"; Emanuel Gutmann, "Religion and Its Role in National Integration in Israel"; George Moutafakis, "Minorities in the Modern Middle East Societies"; Stuart E. Colie, "The Shiites and the Lebanese Tragedy"; Kenneth J. Arrow, "Energy"; Fred M. Gottheil, "Saudi Arabian Economic Power"; Eliyahu Kanovsky, "Arab Oil Power"; Victor T. Le Vine, "The Arab World in the 1980s"; Bernard Lewis, "Islamic Political Movements"; Raymond N. Habiby and Fariborz Ghavidel, "Khumayni's Islamic Republic"; James P. Jankowski, "Nationalism in Twentieth Century Egypt"; Sheikh R. Ali, "The Iran-Iraq War"; Raymond N. Habiby, "Quadhafi's New Islamic Scientific Socialist Society"; Moshe Aumann, "Land Ownership in Palestine"; Fred M. Gottheil, "Arab Immigration into Pre-State Israel"; Yehoshua Porat, "The Palestinian-Arab Nationalist Movement"; Yonah Alexander, "The Nature of the PLO"; Sammy Smooha and John E. Hofrnan, "Arab-Jewish Coexistence in Israel"; Michael Curtis, "The Evolution of Israeli Politics"; Aaron S. Klieman, "Zionist Diplomacy and Israeli Foreign Policy"; Jay Adams, "Assessing Israel as a 'Strategist Asset'"; Saul B. Cohen, "Jerusalem's Unity and West Bank Autonomy"; Meron Benvenisti, "Postive Thinking in Jerusalem"; Steven L. Spiegel, "Recent American Policy in the Middle East"; Alan Dowty, "U.S. Decision-Making in Middle East Crises"; Michael Curtis, "American Interest and the Middle East"; Aaron Wildavsky, "American's National Interest in Israel"; Adam M. Garfinkle, "U.S. Policy in the Near Term"; James R. Kurth, "U.S. Policy and the West Bank"; Alvin Z. Rubinstein, "The Soviet Union's Imperial Policy in the Middle East"; Michael Curtis, "Africa, Israel, and the Middle East"; Victor T. Le Vine, "The Arabs and Africa"; W. Howard Wriggins, "South Asia and the Gulf"; Roy Licklide, "Arab Oil and Japanese Foreign Policy"; Linda B. Miller, "Western Europe and the Middle East"; Dan V. Segre, "Israel and the Third World."




Oil States in the New Middle East


Book Description

Oil has been central to regime survival for oil states across the Arabian Peninsula and has been at the heart of their attempts to defuse the wave of Arab revolutions. However, in 2011 revolution hit Libya, the most oil dependent regime in the Middle East. The political storm winds that have swept this region have thrown into doubt the resilience of Arab rentier states, and highlight how the political effects of oil vary across the oil producing countries. Oil States in the New Middle East brings together leading experts to critically assess the centrality of oil and the relevance of Rentier State Theory in light of the post-2011 upheaval across the Middle East and North Africa. It combines overall reflections on the political dynamics in oil states with focused case investigations of individual countries. Taking as its starting point the centrality of oil in explanations of regime survival, the book analyses how the oil states have responded to and fared throughout the Arab popular upheavals, resulting in a critical assessment of the continued relevance of Rentier State Theory. While observers have asked how the uprisings varied between oil and non-oil states, this book turns the comparative focus inward, arguing for a more fine-grained understanding of the political effects of oil in different oil producing countries. This book would be of interest to students and scholars of Middle East, North Africa and Gulf Studies, Oil and Politics, as well as Comparative Politics and International Political Economy.




Sedimentary Basins and Petroleum Geology of the Middle East


Book Description

The wealth of petroleum has made the Middle East one of the most actively explored regions of the world. The volume of geological, geophysical and geochemical data collected by the petroleum industry in recent decades is enormous. The Middle East may be a unique region in the world where the volume of subsurface data and information exceeds that based on surface outcrop.This book reviews the tectonic and geological history of the Middle East and the regional hydrocarbon potential on a country by country basis in the context of current ideas developed through seismic and sequence stratigraphy and incorporating the ideas of global sea level change.Subsurface data have been used as much as possible to amplify the descriptions.The paleogeographic approach provides a means to view the area as a whole. While the country by country approach inevitably leads to some repetition, it enhances the value of the volume as a teaching tool and underlines some of the changing lithologies within formations carrying the same name.




Oil Money


Book Description

In Oil Money, David M. Wight offers a new framework for understanding the course of Middle East–US relations during the 1970s and 1980s: the transformation of the US global empire by Middle East petrodollars. During these two decades, American, Arab, and Iranian elites reconstituted the primary role of the Middle East within the global system of US power from a supplier of cheap crude oil to a source of abundant petrodollars, the revenues earned from the export of oil. In the 1970s, the United States and allied monarchies, including the House of Pahlavi in Iran and the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia, utilized petrodollars to undertake myriad joint initiatives for mutual economic and geopolitical benefit. These petrodollar projects were often unprecedented in scope and included multibillion-dollar development projects, arms sales, purchases of US Treasury securities, and funds for the mujahedin in Afghanistan. Although petrodollar ties often augmented the power of the United States and its Middle East allies, Wight argues they also fostered economic disruptions and state-sponsored violence that drove many Americans, Arabs, and Iranians to resist Middle East–US interdependence, most dramatically during the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Deftly integrating diplomatic, transnational, economic, and cultural analysis, Wight utilizes extensive declassified records from the Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations, the IMF, the World Bank, Saddam Hussein's regime, and private collections to make plain the political economy of US power. Oil Money is an expansive yet judicious investigation of the wide-ranging and contradictory effects of petrodollars on Middle East–US relations and the geopolitics of globalization.