Michael T. Klare
Author
Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Petroleum Dependency
January 15, 2005
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In his pathbreaking
Resource Wars,
world security expert Michael T. Klare alerted us to the role of resources in conflicts in the post-Cold
War world. Now, in
Blood and
Oil, he concentrates on a single precious commodity, petroleum, while issuing a warning to the United
States-its most powerful, and most dependent, global consumer.
Since September 11th and the commencement of the "war on terror," the world's attention has been focused on the relationship between U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and the oceans of crude oil that lie beneath the region's soil. Klare traces oil's impact on international affairs since World War II, revealing its influence on the Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon, and Carter doctrines. He shows how America's own wells are drying up as our demand increases; by 2010, the United States will need to import 60 percent of its oil. And since most of this supply will have to come from chronically unstable, often violently anti-American zones-the Persian Gulf, the Caspian Sea, Latin America, and Africa-our dependency is bound to lead to recurrent military involvement.
With clarity and urgency, Blood and Oil delineates the United States' predicament and cautions that it is time to change our energy policies, before we spend the next decades paying for oil with blood.
Michael T. Klare is director of the Five College Program in Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College in Amherst. Defense analyst for The Nation and National Public Radio, he is the author of Resource Wars, Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws, and Low Intensity Warfare. He lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.
Publisher Contact Information
Henry Holt and Company, Inc.
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New York, NY 10011
tel 1 (212) 886-9200
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