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Oil Kings: How The U.S., Iran, And Saudi Arabia Changed The Balance Of Power In The Middle East (2012)

by Andrew Scott Cooper(Favorite Author)

4.15 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1851689389 (ISBN13: 9781851689385)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

One World (UK)

review 1: With a title like The Oil Kings, I suspected this book to be mostly about foreign policy of OPEC countries their under-the-table wars in the latter half of the 20th century. I was partly correct.The Oil Kings is more of a detailed investigation into US-Iran relations during the (primarily) Nixon, Ford, and (sparsely) Carter administrations. As someone who was not alive during this time period, I found Cooper's research to give an excellent overview of the backroom dealings between Nixon, Kissinger, and the Shah of Iran. It certainly serves as a revealing backdrop to Iran's current Islamic republic. It also puts the current US & Saudi Arabia relationship in proper historical context. As with any backroom/secret dealings, it's hard to know if we're getting the full and ... moreaccurate story. But the author draws on a wealth of telephone transcripts, official memos, and other detailed research... documented well in the Notes section at the end.
review 2: I tend to think of book jackets as the publisher's exaggerations written to build up book sales, but here's a book which hit the mark with its description. It's touted as being "...Brilliantly reported and filled with astonishing details about some of the key figures of the time (early 1970's), and a history of an era that we thought we knew, an era whose momentous reverberations still influence events at home and abroad today", and I couldn't agree more. It's generally recognized that the U.S. suffers from a conflicted policy, with dependence on Mid-East Oil from Countries which frequently express extreme anti-American, anti-Western policies. The Oil Kings describes the processes and policies which brought us to the current position. The book also provided behind-the-scenes insights into the workings of the White House and Secretary of State during those critical years. Clearly not the book for you if you're looking for a sweet romantic novel, but excellent for what it was intended to do, i.e., provide an insiders view of the politics and policies of oil producers and oil consumers in the 1970's leading up to the status of oil policy today. Especially interesting were the insights of the powerful Secretary of State under Nixon and Ford, Henry Kissinger. Also enjoyed the portrail of the Shah of Iran, and the kind of friend he was (or was NOT) to the United States. It was also very interesting to read about the parallels of the U.S. economy during the mid-1970's compared to the end of the Bush years and beginning of the Obama years. In both times, the banks teetered on collapse, and were criticized for greedy profit-driven motives seeking high profits with little regard for the high-risks of these loans. (Apparently, no lessons learned here). Also similar are the collapse of the housing markets, falling stock market, and high unemployment in both financial hard times. It also seemed like an old story to hear about how the rising oil prices led to imperilled economies in the West, especially in Greece, Spain, Portugal (sound familiar?), etc. To me, history can be compared to a multi-piece jig-saw puzzle, with each book providing one or two additional pieces of the puzzle. A few pieces may provide a glimpse of the shape or picture of the puzzle, but each new book completes the picture that much more. This book provides more pieces to the puzzle of the U.S. oil policy and the nations involved than expected, and fills in a lot of the blank spaces, especially how Saudi Arabia became our key ally in the region and our preferred provider of Mid-East oil, our role in the fall of the Shah of Iran, and a look at many of the back-room deals made by Nixon & Kissinger in the early 1970's. less

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