A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order

by F. William Engdahl

Book Overview

"Control the oil and you control entire nations," said Kissinger. Oil is an instrument of world domination in the grip of the Anglo-American empire. This is a story about power, power over entire... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 074532309X
• ISBN13: 9780745323091
• Release Date: October 2004
• Publisher: Pluto Press (UK)
• Length: 312 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Shocking - read this to learn how the world really operates

If you want to understand how the world economy runs and how it is dominated by the United States, why most of the `big events' in international affairs of the 20th century occured, why the US invaded Iraq, and why the US is threatening Iran, in short if you want to know the facts that are driving the headlines, READ THIS BOOK. This book is far from perfect, as I explain below, and you may not agree with everything that Engdahl says (I don't), but I guarantee that it will change your worldview forever. The fundamental theme of this book is to describe the relationship between international monentary policy, banking, and the geopolitics of oil, and how the confluence of these three economic factors has central link between virtually all of the great events of the 20th century. Engdahl starts by discussing the state of the British empire at the end of the 19th century, the threat posed by the industrial rise of Germany, and the role that new technologies play in this rivalry. Central to this technological revolution is an energy revolution and access to oil. He described how the large banking conglomerates of NYC and London formed and grew in power as a result of WWI and their intimate link to oil. This is tied in to the growth of the US economy before and during WWII, and the supreme position the US found itself in after the war. There is a lengthy discussion about the Bretton Woods conference in which the world formally accepted a link between the dollar and gold. The most interesting part of the book is the discussion of the floating of the dollar in the late 60s and the relationship between the dollar and 1973 oil shock. Finally, Engdahl explains how manipulations of the price of oil and the strength of the dollar have been made over the last 30 years to carry out various policy objectives. There is some discussion of peak oil in the final chapter. There are several serious drawbacks to the book. Most importantly, the author does a great disservice to this subject by stating or (more often) implying that everything that occurs is part of some vast, organized conspiracy. It could allow critics/skeptics to dismiss the otherwise strong arguments of this book. Engdahl states that certain people `mysteriously' die, or brings up vague connections between various participants, but never explores these in depth. Second, there are not nearly enough references in this book to provide independent evidence to support many of the claims. The author should have done a MUCH better job documenting independent sources for his claims. Third, there is way too much hyperbole in this book, the language is just way overblown: everything is enormous, catastrophic, etc. Even with all these negatives though, I still rate this as a five star book because I believe that Mr. Engdahl's central argument regarding the relation between monentary policy, international banking, and the geopolitics of oil is correct, and this is the best single volume source

Never have so few, taken so much, from so many

This book tells the hidden history of oil and money, and how they have been the underlying cause of almost every conflict since WWI. At the turn of the century oil became the new fuel to power naval fleets and provide energy. Ever since, the Anglo-American powers and their cohorts have never ceased to interfere in the affairs of other nations. In the cold calculating hands of a few, they have become the strategic weapons of choice to extend their sphere of global hegemony and domination. The first few chapters lay the groundwork showing how early British `balance of power' politics produced a long and bloody history of colonial subjugation of developing nations and her subsequent steps taken to insure a war against an economically rising Germany who had embarked on a Berlin to Baghdad rail project. Maneuvered out of her isolationism, the United States joined WWI just as Britain, seeing a colossal opportunity at colonialism and control over oil, issued her mysteriously timed Balfour Declaration to Zionist Lord Rothschild during the darkest days of the war, and secured her foothold in Palestine by means of secret agreement. The decades after, saw an increasingly close association of U.S. and British interests (among others), with many current US organizations being born out of their British counterparts who brought their Malthusian and social intelligentsia views along with them. So close in fact would this relationship become, that Henry Kissinger once admitted in his own words: "I kept the British Foreign Office better informed and more closely engaged than I did the American State Department" Mr. Engdahl then takes us on a journey to show how the politically rich and powerful along with their accomplices in the private sector have created chaos out of order and used the depravity of each situation for their own ends as they played out their Faustian fantasies on the world. With their organized looting of nations, each new cataclysm preceded the charade of loaning `new money" to pay "old debts" and is ongoing to this day. The number of victims in this book is startling, hence the play on words to Churchill's speech. As Bush and his wrecking crew are busily working on a script written long ago, their Iraqi exit strategy is most likely the balkanization of Iraq or imposition of "dollar democracy". Take your pick as either will suffice. And throughout the decades, the mother of all harlots is the system of fiat currency, which is the mechanism by which endless wars are financed while sucking the life of the tax paying middle class dry. America has been hijacked by minds that have their roots in certain sociopathic ideologies that have gone out of their way to promote policies that lead to exploitation, inequality and despair. We were the first nation to free ourselves from British rule, and sadly in many ways. `A Century of War' shows just how much the former colonies have bought back into the very system our forefathers revolutioned against

Full spectrum dominance

H. Kissinger has said: 'control energy and you control the nations.' W. Engdahl explains the all importance of oil in world domination, and more specifically its geopolitical, military, economic and financial impact. Oil became for the first time an important raw material during World War I, when air, mobile tank and swifter naval warfare held the upper hand. After WW I the British sought to secure their petroleum supplies, by creating the League of Nations, which was only a facade of international legitimacy to a naked imperial seizure of territory. British imperial power was based on 3 pillars: control of world sea-lines, of world banking and finance and of strategic raw materials. Through its free trade policy (liberalism) it tried to preserve and to serve the interests of an exclusive private power: a tiny number of bankers and institutions of the City of London. Its hegemony was attacked and replaced by the US after WW II, confirmed by the Bretton-Woods Agreements with the creation of the IMF and the World bank. The new hegemon was (and is ) built on 2 pillars: military power and the dollar, but those pillars are fundamentally intertwined with one commodity: petroleum, the basis of the world economy's growth engine. 10 % of the Marshall aid to Europe after WW II served to buy US oil. The big US oil companies asked top dollars for their exports and obtained also that the aid could not be used to build refineries. The Vietnam war constituted a massive diversion of the US industry into the production of defense goods (pillar 1). The first oil shock of 1973 made the US banks the giants of world banking and the oil companies the giants of world industry: 'The artificial oil price inflation was a manipulation of the world economy of such a hideous dimension that it created an unprecedented transfer of the wealth of the entire world into the hands of a tiny minority. It was no less than a global world taxation through petrodollars.' (pillar 2, confirmed by Sheikh Zaki Yamani). The oil companies also took the 'blossom of the nuclear rose'. A cardinal goal of US foreign and military policy is control of every major existing and potential oil source. Such control would permit it to decide who gets how much energy and at what price: 'a true weapon of mass destruction'. William Engdahl's brilliant but frightening analysis puts in the same framework Iraq, the Balkan wars, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergency of the oligarchs, the financial crises across Asia, the civil wars in Africa, the IMF and World bank policies, the fall of the Shah (after the collapse of the negotiations with BP), as well as the murders or 'accidental' deaths of W. Rathenau, I. Krueger, E. Mattei, J. Ponto and A. Moro. At the start of the new millenium, the US has a near monopoly on military technology and might, commands the world's reserve currency and is able to control the assets of much of the industrial world. It fights for a near monopoly on future ene

The Real Story of Last 100 Years of War

We cannot improve on the review below. With the authors permission we ofer it here i the hopes it will encourage others to buy this book as well. EW I've been continuing to read William Engdahl's, "A Century of War: Ango-American Oil Politics and The New World Order," and have it to be a uniquely revealing red pill. I thought I had escaped from the Matrix, but here I found a whole new coherence to actual reality that I hadn't known about. Lots of things click into place more neatly, and Engdahl's scholarship seems to be first rate. I haven't been able to absorb it all on first reading, but what I've learned so far is, I think, worth sharing. I'd like to briefly trace a few parallel threads in British and U.S. history. Many elements are involved, but the interesting thing is how clear the picture becomes when the elements are seen in their true relationships. The words below are my own: this is my updated analysis after having been informed by Engdahl. --- The first thread has to do with the evolution of capitalist states in general, and in particular the relationship between industry and banking. Not all capitalist states succeed in following the full course, but those that have done so seem to follow this basic trajectory. In particular, this has been true of the U.S. and Britain. In the first phase, the state becomes rich and strong by industrializing, building up its infrastructure, and gaining wealth through profitable trade arrangements. To the extent that diplomatic or military initiatives are deployed in support of these operations, they tend to focus on (1) opening up markets and gaining access to resources needed by home industries, and (2) maintaining position within the geopolitical arena (aka competitive imperialism). During this phase, the elites which dominate state policy-making tend to include very strong representation from industrialists, as with Herr Krupp, J.D. Rockefeller, the early factory and mill operators in Northern England and Scotland, etc. While the early days of phase 1 might be characterized by sweatshop labor conditions, the later stages tend to be characterized by high-employment and improving living conditions for the general domestic population (Victorian England, 50s USA). In some cases, as with Germany and World Wars 1 and 2, a state is prevented by competitors from developing beyond phase 1. But if phase 1 develops fully, it breeds the seeds of its own demise, ushering in phase 2. What happens is that accumulated wealth increasingly concentrates in banks and related financial institutions, out of the process of (1) financing industrial development, (2) financing the wars that are required to maintain geopolitical position, and (3) managing deposits, settlement accounts, etc. Phase 2 begins at that point where the wealth and influence of the financial sector (Wall Street, The City) eclipses that of the domestic industrial sector (Detroit, Manchester). The focus of state policy formulation, which in p

The Truth is Out There

I first ran across this book referenced in a footnote about three years ago and tried to track it down. First I tried to purchase it, but found that it was out of print and used copies were going for $100.00+ on the internet. I found this curious since it was relatively recent (1993) and, given its topic, was certainly of tremendous interest to US readers, even before the events of 9/11 and the subsequent Gulf War II. I was fortunate to find it in my university library and have since read it several times. I am tempted to go 'on and on' about this book, especially since it is not easily available for people to read. Nor does anyone seem to feel that they can (or are able to?) republish what should be a 'best seller' in the current geopolitical climate and circumstances. Engdahl, whose personal background includes engineering and law (Princeton), working in Texas oil industry, and international economics (University of Stockholm), does a penetrating and eloquent job of sorting out the complex web that connects the controlling interests of international politics with the goals and objectives of global oil and financial interests, these having merged in the last century into the powerful and dominant hegemony of an Anglo-American consortium.There are so many revelations that are so well documented that one has to slow down and completely reorientate his or her conception of and attitude toward recent history. His tone is neither particularly vindictive nor is it conspiratorial. It looks at people and events and provides plausible motives and methods that are not part of the conventional awareness. For example, (fact) the British navy decided in the late 19th century to change their primary fuel source from coal to oil, thereby (objective) needing to secure access to oil reserves, basically in perpetuity. (result) British agreements for oil resources with the Sheikh of Kuwait date from 1899. (fact) Oil then comes to supplant coal as the primary energy source for all of the industrializing world, and a decade later Germany threatens to become the leading industrialized nation in Europe and (objective) needs a secure source of oil, so they begin construction on the Berlin to Baghdad railway intending to capitalize on agreements to import Iraqi oil. (question) How does Britain meet this emerging geopolitical threat. (objective) Block Germany's access to Middle East oil. (result) Curiously WWI begins with an out-of-the-way assassination in Croatia that just happens to occur near the route of that railway. War ensues and not only is the B-to-B railway cut off, but Germany loses all colonial power in the Middle East. Shortly after WWI the leaders of the seven major western oil companies meet and agree to not compete with each other but to cooperate, and in 1928 drew up the Red Line agreement that gave virtually control of virtually all Middle East oil to the Anglo-American cartel. Even France's portion was minimalized to Turkish reserves.