Blood and Oil The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum

Since the tragic events of September 11 and the commencement of the war on terror, the relationship between U.S. policy in the Middle East and the oceans of crude oil that lie beneath the regions soil has come under close scrutiny. In Blood and Oil, international security expert Michael Klare traces oils impact on foreign affairs from World War II to the present, delineating, with clarity and urgency, Americas current predicament. By 2020, the United States will need to import twice as much fuel per year as it did in 1990. Since most of this oil will come from chronically unstable, strongly anti-American regionsthe Persian Gulf, the Caspian Sea, and Africaviolent conflict is sure to follow. It is time, Klare concludes, to change our energy policies, before we spend the next decades paying for oil with blood.

Michael Klare is the director of the Five College Professor of Program in Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College in Amherst and the author of Resource Wars. The defense analyst for The Nation and NPR, he lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.