“It’s all about the oil,” many commentators said about the US assault on Iraq in 2003. Attributing a war to a single cause is almost always an oversimplification, but protecting access to the 20th century’s most important energy source has been a priority of US foreign policy since World War II. In part one of this series we considered the effects of the US military complex which has ringed the world for the past 75 years. This complex has depended on vast amounts of fossil fuel energy to move troops and munitions, and the US became a world power in significant part because of its endowment of oil. As Daniel Yergin recounts in The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power Petroleum was central to the course and outcome of World War II in both the Far East and Europe. The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor to protect […]