international canadian

With energy being the driving force behind economies since the industrial revolution, and oil being a primary source of that power, the ability to produce and control this resource has become a prominent source of international power in the modern world. Oil became “black gold” when prospectors started striking oil in Texas, and while the term has fallen into disuse, it still applies as a concept. Oil has become power; both for those who have it as a resource and for those who are able to control it as a resource. These are not always the same thing.

In the case of Canada, oil sands in Alberta and Saskatchewan could provide enough oil for domestic and international consumption. Canada sees the successful use of the oil sands as crucial to their ability to ensure domestic economic security in energy. But not all countries are able to maintain control of their own resources when they are so highly sought after.

In contrast, while Kurdistan has one of the largest oil fields covered in that part of the world in history, they are reliant on foreign companies for the exploration and development of oil rigs in the hills and cities as they are the ones able to shoulder the financial risks involved. Politics play both a domestic and international role in Kurdistan. As a semi-autonomous region of Iraq the regional and central governments do not see eye to eye about the contracts to those foreign companies who are looking for a stake. The issue of who will receive the huge profits derived from the oil contracts causes new investors to find negotiations stalled on the stumbling block of Iraqi politics. The Kurds feel vulnerable since the withdrawal of US military forces in the country. The potential of another “Arabization campaign” like that led by Saddam Hussein the late 1980s seems possible because of the huge economic and political power Kurdistan could wield due to the abundance of oil in their territory.

The United States imports the majority of the oil it needs, and thus has strong security interests in the many middle eastern countries that are currently the largest suppliers of oil. Many accused former President George W. Bush of using a falsified claim of “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq so as to be able to declare war on the country and protect its oil interestes there. There are many actions taken during the war that could support such a claim; the most notable of which is the amount of money and effort spent on protecting the oil pipelines. That is not to say that the protection of those pipelines was not crucial to the national security of Iraq, and thus fell under the United States’ mission statement in that country, but it does force one to consider the possibility that foreign countries can choose to become involved in the domestic and regional issues of others based on their own national interests, and less due to the more altruistic reasons of the protection of democracy and human rights.

But the United States is by no means the only country reliant on foreign oil. Japan and the United Kingdom import the majority of their basic necessities, and oil is no exception. In the case of Japan, four-fifths of their oil imports come from the Persian Gulf countries, and is the second largest buyer of Iranian oil. Where a country gets its foreign oil from has international political implications. The decision to become involved in another country’s domestic politics takes on a more international implication when that country is considered a threat to the ideals of the United Nations. Iran is viewed as a potential nuclear threat, as they have, for years, been openly working on a nuclear program that the West charges is aimed at building weapons. They are also openly defiant of other international norms and agreement. The most recent development has the United States calling for sanctions on the purchase of Iranian oil.

Iran, true to form, reacted with a threat of their own, naval drills in the Straight of Hormuz, where one fifth of the worlds oil passes to get to market. The fear from the point of the Japanese is that the demand that they reduce their dependance on Iranian oil could undermine their economy. A retaliation from Iran could threaten four fifths of their oil imports, which come through the Straight of Hormuz.

What will happen to the economically unstable Iran if the US is able to continue to enforce sanctions of this sort cannot be predicted, but they do have the very threatening bargaining chip of the Straight of Hormuz. That sanctions on the purchase of oil is used as a major international bargaining chip, in which the economies of more than the country at which these sanctions are aimed can be threatened is a pretty clear indication of the international power of oil. It would appear that the best move we could make as a society would be to reduce our reliance on oil at all. I’m sure the major oil conglomerates would have something to say about that.