• Privacy
  • Terms of Use
  • About
  • Contact

Cold War

Before, During, and After the Cold War

  • Podcast
  • Red Scare
  • Cuba
  • Iran
  • Urbanization
  • Spy
  • Afghanistan
  • Taiwan
  • Vietnam
  • Timelines

AFTER THE COLD WAR: 18 GOOD BOOKS ABOUT OIL

July 20, 2011 by Lisa Reynolds Wolfe

In the wake of the Arab spring, there’s been a lot of talk  about the changing balance of power among the Middle East’s major oil producers. Conversation has centered, especially, on the role of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Analysts report that Saudi Arabia came to the OPEC ministerial meeting in Vienna (June 2011) determined to get oil producers to raise production quotas for member states in order to lower oil prices around the world.

Lowering oil prices is seen in the Saudi Kingdom as a way of increasing economic pressure on the Islamic Republic.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Prince Turki al-Faisal told his audience that

Iran is very vulnerable in the oil sector, and it is there that more could be done to squeeze the current government.

He went on to say:

Saudi Arabia has so much [spare] production capacity — nearly 4 million barrels per day — that we could almost instantly replace all of Iran’s oil production.

Prince Turki al-Faisal is highly regarded since he was once Saudi Arabia’s intelligence chief and served as Ambassador to the United States.

According to a post in Race for Iran:

Saudi officials apparently hoped that, by getting OPEC to raise production quotas, it might be possible to ‘de-throne’ Tehran as the long-time holder of the group’s second-highest production quota (after Saudi Arabia). Iran currently has little surplus productive capacity which it could quickly bring on line to take advantage of an increase in its own quota.

The Islamic Republic, of course, was determined to retain its prominent position in the OPEC hierarchy. To the surpise of many, they won the battle, drawing strong support from Algeria, Angola, Iraq, and Venezuela.

Although the Saudis announced that they would unilaterally increase production, the Obama administration undermined the Kingdom’s efforts by engineering the release of 60 million barrels of oil over a 30 day period from the strategic petroleum reserves of the US and other International Energy Agency (IEA) members.

From this outcome, it’s easy to conclude that Saudi Arabia doesn’t have as much clout in the oil market as it used to have. In fact, it’s hard to imagine relying on Saudi Arabia to make up for the volumes that Iran currently puts on the international oil market.

Because of these events — and because many of you have contacted me privately for more information on oil — I thought that now would be a good time to post a list of the best reading on oil. The list draws on the recommendations of many of the best minds currently working on oil.  Although some are slightly out of date, many of the books listed below are from a Foreign Affairs reading list published in December 2009. Others have been recommended independently.

The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power.By Daniel Yergin.

The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World. By Paul Roberts.

Petromania: Black gold, paper barrels and oil price bubbles. By Daniel O’Sullivan.

Oil, Dollars, Debt, and Crises: The Global Curse of Black Gold. By Mahmoud A. El-Gamal and Amy Myers Jaffe.

Hubbert’s Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage (New Edition). By Kenneth S. Deffeyes.

Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy. By Matthew R. Simmons.

The Myth of the Oil Crisis: Overcoming the Challenges of Depletion, Geopolitics, and Global Warming
By Robin M. Mills.

Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia. By Robert Lacey.

Thicker Than Oil: America’s Uneasy Partnership with Saudi Arabia. By Rachel Bronson.

Good Governance in the Middle East Oil Monarchies. See Oil Monarchies: Domestic and Security Challenges in the Arab Gulf States. By F. Gregory Gause III.

Petrostate: Putin, Power, and the New Russia. By Marshall I. Goldman.

The Oil and the Glory:The Pursuit of Empire and Fortune on the Caspian Sea. By Steve LeVine.

Russia and the Caspian States in the Global Energy Balance

The Vital Triangle: China, the United States, and the Middle East. By Jon B. Alterman and John W. Garver.

China’s International Petroleum Policy (Energy and Security). By Bo Kong.

The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes. By Bryan Burrough.

The Age of Oil: What They Don’t Want You to Know About the World’s Most Controversial Resource. By Leonardo Magueri.

Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. By Ron Chernow.

Also, focusing specifically upon the economics of oil NOW, you might want to take a look at the excellent and free publications from the International Energy Agency.

Recommendations? Let me know if there are worthy books that I have missed.

If you’re interested in oil you might want to read some related posts:

Libya’s Cold war Residual: Oil or Migration?

Cold War Libya: All About Oil

Filed Under: Oil Tagged With: after the cold war, barrel of oil, Cold War, oil companies, oil drilling, oil prices, The Cold War

CHINESE INFLUENCE IN EARLY COLD WAR TAIPEI

July 6, 2011 by Lisa Reynolds Wolfe

Taipei is Shaped by Chinese Decision-Making, Not American Influence

Clearly, during the early Cold War period, Taipei was shaped by Chinese decision making rather than by American influence.

The capital was militarized, certainly. But that militarization derived from domestic Chinese forces — not from superpower leverage.

The US had begun to sway some decisions — land reform is a good example.  But it is not until the late 1950s that American influence began to promote a  more mixed economy between the public and private sectors.

American influence would be exerted  primarily through the extra-ministerial Council on US Aid, whose funds were administered outside the government’s regular budget.

Even after the 1960s, Taiwan’s economic policies retained many features directly associated with the pre-1949 industrial planning that had been in place on the mainland.  This is because many of the most prominent individuals associated with Taiwan’s economic policy had roots in the pre-1949 bureaucracy.

The National Resources Commission

The National Resources Commission(NRC) provided the majority of the heads of Taiwan’s state-run industries for the first four decades —  and 8 of the 14 post-1950 Ministers of Economic Affairs.

As late as 1987, both the Minister of Economic Affairs and the Chairman of the Council for Economic Planning and Development had been associated with the NRC.

Nevertheless, Taipei had a head start on cities throughout the developing world that were eventually influenced by superpower prestige and funding.

Industrial Leadership

The personnel discussed above included several thousand Chinese engineers who were sponsored under Lend-Lease funds for advanced training in major American industries.

This group formed the industrial leadership of China’s postwar development. While most remained on the mainland, some made their way to Taipei.

The first and most selective group of young engineers was sent to the US in 1942. It was composed of 31 men from all major divisions of the NRC who were given internships over a two-year period in organizations like Westinghouse, RCA, Du Pont, Monsanto, the Tennessee Valley Authority, US Bureau of Reclamation, US Steel and American Cyanamid.

Out of this first group, only 7 found themselves on Taiwan in 1949. However, as a group, they have enjoyed great distinction.

The prominence of such individuals carries forth a trend from the late Nationalist period on the mainland, in which essentially non-political economic bureaucrats played an increasing role in government, receiving cabinet-rank positions and sometimes more . . . . In this regard, at least, the economic bureaucracy of pre-1949 Nationalist China may be seen as a problematic predecessor of the contemporary developmental state on Taiwan.

While in the early postwar period these development oriented technocrats were overshadowed by the military, by the end of the 1950s they had regained their independence.

American Influence

As American influence grew stronger, military reconquest of the mainland became a secondary goal to that of economic development.

US advisers strongly backed the technocrats, and Chiang Kai-shek reasserted his support.

Taipei was soon to  undergo one of the most remarkable economic transformations in recent history, led by technocrats whose training had been funded by the United States government and who had sharpened their expertise and experience in American corporations and bureaucracies.

Economic transformation linked to military objectives was an integral part of the growing militarization of Taipei.

Filed Under: Taiwan Tagged With: Cold War, Cold War Taipei, Cold War Taiwan, Taipei, Taiwan, The Cold War

EARLY COLD WAR YEARS: TAIWAN AND THE MAINLANDERS

December 14, 2010 by Lisa Reynolds Wolfe

The first Nationalist soldiers arrived in Keelung on the northern tip of Taiwan in October 1945.

Their arrival provoked mixed reactions.

The Taiwanese who were already living on the island expected to be freed from strict Japanese colonial rule.  The arriving Chinese also wanted freedom from Japanese exploitation. At the same time, they respected the efficiency of the over 200,000 professional police and military forces who had kept political order during the long period of  Japanese rule.

The almost 60,000 troops who disembarked in preparation for the Japanese surrender on October 25, 1945,  looked bedraggled and seemed to be lacking in discipline.

The troops from the mainland anticipated a short stay. Their purpose was to accept the Japanese surrender, disarm the Japanese occupation forces, and make sure that Japanese troops left the island.

Afterwards, they expected to return to the front lines of the civil war which was still raging on the Mainland. In actuality, all but 5,000 troops returned home to fight the communists. However, the troops that remained on Taiwan were corrupt and undisciplined. Several incidents occurred between them and local Taipei residents who thought “the mainlanders to be dirty, dishonest, and technologically backward.”

According to John F. Copper in his 1990 book Taiwan: Nation-State or Province:

Stories circulated about mainland Chinese who stole bicycles and did not know what they were, who spent hours staring at elevators they had never seen before, and who were unable to maintain the basic public services, power plants, trains, and buses over which they were given jurisdiction. The Taiwanese also had to adjust to a new legal system. Nationalist soldiers claimed ownership of houses and land based on forced occupation; the Taiwanese considered this stealing. Eviction laws were weakened. Some other laws were changed; many were not enforced.

The troops were not prepared to keep internal order. The Nationalists believed that the Taiwanese considered China their ancestral home and source of culture. So they thought that Taiwan’s residents would be anxious to return to Chinese rule and would not mount any resistance. They were wrong.

Problems between the two groups erupted into violence on February 28, 1947 when Monopoly Bureau agents killed a Taiwanese woman who had been selling black-market cigarettes.

In the aftermath of the shooting, a crowd attacked a police station, set fire to a police vehicle and went on a rampage. Violence spread in the next few days. The authorities treated the protests as a pro-communist rebellion.

On March 8 a large contingent of Nationalist troops used heavy weapons against unarmed Taiwanese.

Order was restored at the end of March but by that time several thousand Taiwanese had been killed, including most of Taiwan’s local political leadership. The incident cemented the ethnic distrust  which had been gaining momentum in Taipei. Ethnic  rivalry continued to shape the city’s social and political climate for most of the Cold War period.

Filed Under: China | Manchuria Tagged With: Cold War, Cold War Cities, Cold War City, Cold War Studies, Taipei, Taiwan

Follow Us On Twitter

Cold War Studies Follow

A Cold War historian, Lisa holds a Ph.D. in Politics from New York University and a MS in Policy Analysis and Public Management from SUNY Stony Brook.

Avatar
Avatar Cold War Studies @coldwarstudies ·
21h

Check out this article from @nytimes. Because I'm a subscriber, you can read it through this gift link without a subscription. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/27/opinion/sunday/knitting-fabric-michelle-obama.html?unlocked_article_code=1ew_IOkoQKL6pwCvaRQwqw7kaWYxQwBmX4RM8ZwtFdZYqpOghTnXUxbK7NmSwILpgVkTsehpl3Au4GhqUs1-dQP4onemJRdEVXYlONemCl8eqaGxUhfyGFeV0mwhRgrGJBllB6l7bc09s40JuyYDCn-Pzj_QRnzJRPcBVqRfaOwmRVceyoxIxg3hjSG4aJC0jFK7rVqZ3d-HPGkCAInMKNtJNaRye6_h-msXKJWjY1ipfpuF4gvQQjACg6r618EQKLx4kY3mXwdfk4DYZAbtqtAoHTE9btePy6OljFN7QC_ZDdcEA_0JCp2Cqwlnrht_EQUuLBsVhjEs-doVEvBw0WJ9hFHqwu9kVp9GTguk1Q&smid=tw-share

Reply on Twitter 1619318960922714113 Retweet on Twitter 1619318960922714113 Like on Twitter 1619318960922714113 Twitter 1619318960922714113
Avatar Cold War Studies @coldwarstudies ·
25 Jan

Cold War Nuclear Bunker Lures Tourists Worried About New Threats https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/25/world/canada/diefenbunker-museum-ottawa.html?smid=tw-share

Reply on Twitter 1618235296033943554 Retweet on Twitter 1618235296033943554 Like on Twitter 1618235296033943554 Twitter 1618235296033943554
Avatar Cold War Studies @coldwarstudies ·
13 Jan

UWS Has Grown More Than Any Manhattan Nabe Since Pandemic: Study https://patch.com/new-york/upper-west-side-nyc/uws-has-grown-more-any-manhattan-nabe-pandemic-study?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=share

Reply on Twitter 1613907759782858752 Retweet on Twitter 1613907759782858752 Like on Twitter 1613907759782858752 Twitter 1613907759782858752
Avatar Cold War Studies @coldwarstudies ·
13 Jan

In Captain America Cold War: Steve and Sam https://www.theworkprint.com/in-captain-america-cold-war-steve-and-sam/123

Reply on Twitter 1613905207896772608 Retweet on Twitter 1613905207896772608 Like on Twitter 1613905207896772608 Twitter 1613905207896772608
Load More

Affiliate Disclosure

Cold War Studies is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn a small commission by advertising and linking to amazon.com. You never pay more if you puchase your Amazon product from one of our links. Thanks for supporting Cold War Studies!

 

How Much Do You Know About the Cold War?

Want to find out how much you really know about the Cold War. Click here to take our quiz. 

 

Most Popular Posts

Cold War Fashion: The Early Years (1950s-1960s)

History of Colonization in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA): Precursor to Cold War Conflict

Cold War Chile

The Rise of Fast Fashion: Globalization and Waste

The Red Scare

10 Little Known Facts About the Peace Sign

Immigration to the US During the Cold War

The First Red Scare: A Timeline

Korean War Music

Cold War Argentina: The Dirty War

The Cold War: Decolonization and Conflict in the Third World

Check Out Our Red Scare White Paper

Read all about the Red Scare. Just click on the cover below.

Copyright © 2023 · Metro Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in