The Geopolitics of Oil Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

The Geopolitics of Oil - Assignment Example Hence, it got imperative for the West to dominate the politics and economy in the Middle East, a resolve that only strengthened with time. As the world began to reap the benefits of industrialization signified by mechanization and automation of most of the salient aspects of social, industrial and economic existence, oil and natural gas emerged to be the primary drivers of industrial growth, economic progress and social mobility in the developed world. The developing nations were still marred by colonial suppression, conventional economies, poverty, political marginalization and scientific backwardness. Thereby, the expected outcome of this scenario was that if on the one side the industrialized West became the primary consumer of the world oil and gas resources, the concentration of the world petroleum reserves in the Middle East made it a strategic imperative to tighten the Western grip over the region. The following decades only saw a continuation and expansion of this planned Western hegemony. The meddlesome mentality adopted by the political class in Europe and the US was conveniently followed by the Western corpo rations, once they realized that petro resources surpassed any other sector, when it came to maximizing returns on investment. In a post World War II scenario, the victorious powers that are the UK, France, and the US did assure that the nations they had artificially carved out of their erstwhile fiefdoms were governed by autocratic rulers, who relied on their military and political backing to hold on to power. In contrast, the common populace in the region deeply resented these West backed dictators. Consequently in many Middle Eastern nations, this popular aversion for the meddlesome, oil hungry West led to the rise of nationalist, Islamic or socialist political forces, the most salient examples being Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Egypt. This didn’t change the Western mentality or the urge to control petroleum wealth in the