American presidents have long been accused of plotting to control foreign oil. But while the United States has built relationships and even intervened abroad for oil, it has never simply seized control of another country’s oil reserves.
Oil has shaped U.S. foreign policy at least since 1941, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt imposed an oil embargo on imperial Japan to check its aggression in Asia. Japan responded by attacking Pearl Harbor, which dragged the United States into World War II.
The war’s industrial nature showed that national security depended on access to oil. By 1946, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff were warning about the risk of “an oil-starved war” should the United States lose access to Middle East supplies. That mind-set gave birth to America’s courtship of Saudi Arabia, where huge oil reserves were discovered in 1938.
Iran also emerged at the time as a major Western oil supplier. But a crisis erupted in 1951 when Iran’s new prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, nationalized his country’s oil industry. Worried that Mr. Mossadegh could cut off the West and “deny Iranian oil to the free world,” as a National Security Council policy memo later put it, the Eisenhower administration joined with Britain, which had lost a major oil stake in Iran, in fomenting a 1953 coup that overthrew the Iranian leader.
In his 1980 State of the Union address, President Jimmy Carter made a dramatic declaration: America would fight a war for oil.
“Our excessive dependence on foreign oil is a clear and present danger to our nation’s security,” Mr. Carter explained. Thus, any attempt by an outside power to control the Persian Gulf and its oil “will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America,” and would “be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”
The Carter Doctrine, as that position came to be known, was prompted by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan months earlier. U.S. officials worried that Soviet troops might continue west, into the oil fields of neighboring Iran.
In August 1990, Iraq invaded its oil-rich neighbor Kuwait. President George H.W. Bush quickly decided to respond with force. He argued that it was vital to defend global order. But he did not hide his economic motive to free Kuwait’s oil fields from Mr. Hussein’s control. “We cannot permit a resource so vital to be dominated by one so ruthless,” Mr. Bush said.
When Mr. Bush’s son George W. invaded Iraq in 2003, many skeptics dismissed his main rationale — a false claim that Mr. Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction — as a cover story for the secret goal of controlling Iraq’s oil.
Bush officials disputed the charge. “That’s just not what the United States does,” Mr. Bush’s defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, told an interviewer shortly before the invasion. “We never have, and we never will.”
“This idea that the war was meant to be a permanent oil grab is false,” said Emily Meierding, an assistant professor at the Naval Postgraduate School and the author of “The Oil Wars Myth: Petroleum and the Causes of International Conflict.”
Before the invasion, she said, a team of White House officials drew up plans for Iraq’s oil industry. “They were very clear that Iraq’s resources belonged to the people of Iraq, that oil production should belong to the Iraqis and that the U.S. should transfer control to the Iraqi people as soon as possible,” Ms. Meierding said, noting that she was speaking only for herself and not her institution.
“I can’t think of a military operation that the U.S. engaged in to actually take oil from anybody,” said Richard Fontaine, the chief executive of the Center for a New American Security.
Until now.
Immediately after U.S. forces captured Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, in January, President Trump announced plans to take control of the country’s oil industry.
Venezuela’s parliament passed legislation in late January opening the country’s mostly state-run oil sector to more foreign investment, a decision critics note was made as U.S. warships floated near Venezuela’s coast.
Mr. Trump’s fixation with Venezuelan crude is somewhat puzzling, given that global oil prices are relatively low, and that the United States is now a net energy exporter no longer dependent on foreign oil supplies.
Despite that, analysts say that Mr. Trump is confirming some of the worst suspicions about U.S. motives worldwide. He also risks infuriating ordinary Venezuelans, who could oppose American efforts to drill their oil — possibly with violence — and resist a political alignment with Washington.
“One lesson that emerged from Iraq,” said Meghan O’Sullivan, a former Bush administration official who worked closely on Iraq policy, “was how toxic the oil narrative can be — and how potent it can be in fomenting anti-Americanism.”
The mere perception that America was stealing Iraq’s oil inflicted severe damage there, Ms. O’Sullivan said, helping to fuel a bloody insurgency against American forces and undermining public trust in Iraq’s U.S.-backed government.
Critics say Mr. Trump’s plan revives bitter memories of colonial exploitation and flagrantly violates international law, including a 1974 United Nations resolution that asserts that every country has full rights to “all its wealth, natural resources and economic activities.”
Mr. Trump has sought to turn the tables, charging that Venezuela “took our oil away from us” and “stole our assets” in 2007 when it increased state control over its oil industry and forced two of the three U.S. companies operating in the country to abandon their projects at considerable expense.
Whether that is Mr. Trump’s true motivation is unclear. He has asserted a U.S. right to “take the oil” from other countries, from Iraq to Syria to Libya, although he has not previously done so.
That is a sharp break from decades of precedent, Ms. O’Sullivan said.
I wonder what O’Sullivan thinks Halliburton was doing in Iraq at the time. Why are BP, Shell and Chevron there now? I don’t think those are Iraqi companies.