A Prelude to the Foundation of Political Economy Oil, War, and Global Polity

At the intersection of two important questions of our time, namely global peace and sustainability of the planet Earth, stands a commodity beyond all commodities that has wreaked havoc with the material and mind of humanity in recent times. This commodity is none other than oil, whose realityas well as its fictionalimpression has both made a consequential impact upon the public opinion today. This volume will demonstrate what is right and what is wrong with the learned opinion across the board, before showing what is amiss with the popular perception. This book is not intended to be a technical volume, though the analysis will rely on specific materials that are highly specialized in nature. The scope of this book encapsulates an interdisciplinary analysis, including economics, international relations, area studies (i.e., Middle East), history, and US foreign policy.

Cyrus Bina is Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Minnesota (Morris Campus), USA. He is the author and coeditor of several scholarly books, including The Economics of the Oil Crisis, Oil: A Time Machine, and Alternative Theories of Competition: Challenges to the Orthodoxy; and has written more than two hundred scholarly and policy pieces. He has also spoken extensively to the international media on issues pertinent to global sea change. He is currently editing a three-volume work entitled International Economics: An Encyclopedia of Global Trade, Capital, Labor, Technology, and Innovation. Bina is a fellow of Economists for Peace and Security, and an editor for the Journal of Critical Studies in Business and Society.

IntroductionChapter 1 - World Oil and the Crisis of GlobalizationChapter 2 - World of Modern Petroleum and the Oil RentChapter 3 - OPEC: Beyond Political Battering and Economic RomanticismChapter 4 - The Globalization of OilChapter 5 - Oil and Capital: 'Logic' of History and 'Logic' of TerritoryChapter 6 – Globalization of EnergyChapter 7 - War, Oil, and Conundrum of Hegemony