Globalizing Oil, Unleashing Capital: An International History of the 1970s Energy Crisis

Abstract

This dissertation explores the transformation of the world order during the 1970s through the prism of the First Oil Shock. It is premised on the paradox that, until 1973, successive U.S. administrations had relied on Venezuela and Canada as the country’s main energy partners and had actively restricted oil imports from the Middle East. However, with the promise of Saudi petrodollars inflows, the U.S. ended these longstanding partnerships and tied its economic fate to that of the Persian Gulf. This dissertation follows this shift and its long-lasting consequences: Not only did the U.S. make itself vulnerable to the Arab oil embargo, but the First Oil Shock gave rise to the world’s current monetary architecture, entangled the U.S. geopolitically in the Persian Gulf, and destabilized the Middle East by spawning the Iranian and Iraqi nuclear programs. With an interdisciplinary, multi-archival and multilingual approach, drawing from the archives of several states, corporations, and international organizations, this project argues that the 1970s Energy Crisis was a major period of transition in world order in which the U.S. lacked an overarching or coherent grand strategy, being at the mercy of decisions taken in foreign capitals and corporate boards from Caracas and Riyadh to Paris and Tehran. And yet, through ad-hoc improvisation and the consolidation of a U.S.-Saudi financial partnership, the U.S. reasserted its claim to global leadership, all while creating an opportunity for interest groups to test ideological agendas hinged upon liberalizing, deregulating, and financializing the international economy.