An argument that America's addiction to crude oil has driven a foreign
policy of intervention and exploitation hidden behind a facade of
liberal internationalism.
The United States is addicted to crude oil. In this book, Andrew
Price-Smith argues that this addiction has distorted the conduct of
American foreign policy in profound and malign ways, resulting in
interventionism, exploitation, and other illiberal behaviors that hide
behind a facade of liberal internationalism. The symbiotic relationship
between the state and the oil industry has produced deviations from
rational foreign energy policy, including interventions in Iraq and
elsewhere that have been (at the very least) counterproductive or (at
worst) completely antithetical to national interests.
Liberal internationalism casts the United States as a benign hegemon,
guaranteeing security to its allies during the Cold War and helping to
establish collaborative international institutions. Price-Smith argues
for a reformulation of liberal internationalism (which he terms shadow
liberalism) that takes into account the dark side of American foreign
policy. Price-Smith contends that the "free market" in international oil
is largely a myth, rendered problematic by energy statism and the rise
of national oil companies. He illustrates the destabilizing effect of
oil in the Persian Gulf, and describes the United States' grand energy
strategy, particularly in the Persian Gulf, as illiberal at its core,
focused on the projection of power and on periodic bouts of violence.
Washington's perennial oscillation between liberal phases of institution
building and provision of public goods and illiberal bellicosity,
Price-Smith argues, represents the shadow liberalism that is at the core
of US foreign policy.
