The Rest Is History - 167. Oil: The Making of the Modern World

Episode Date: March 24, 2022

Tom and Dominic are joined by Helen Thompson, Professor of Political Economy at the University of Cambridge, to talk about the incredible influence of oil over the last couple of centuries. Discussion covers the first oil well ever drilled, how it's hard to overestimate Hitler's obsession with oil, and the formation of OPEC in the aftermath of the Suez Crisis. Helen's new book 'Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century' is out now. Catch our second episode with Helen tomorrow, or get it right now by going to restishistorypod.com! Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Jack Davenport *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Oil is above all a great temptation. It is the temptation of ease, wealth, strength, fortune, power. It is filthy, foul-smelling liquid that squirts obligingly up into the air and falls back to earth as a rustling shower of money. To discover and possess the source of oil, it feels as if,

after wandering long underground, you have suddenly stumbled upon royal treasure. Not only do you become rich, but you're also visited by the mystical conviction that some higher power has looked upon you with the eye of grace and magnanimously elevated you above all others, electing you its favourite. The concept of oil expresses perfectly the eternal human dream of wealth achieved through lucky accidents, through a kiss of fortune and not by sweat, anguish, hard work. In this sense, oil is a fairy tale, and like every fairy tale, a bit of a lie. So Tom, Tom Holland, that was Ryszard Kapuscinski, the great Polish travel writer, in his brilliant book, Shah of Shars, about Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last shah of Iran.

He had a pretty catastrophic encounter with oil because it was the oil boom of the 1970s that basically brought him down. And the fascinating thing about this is that the story of oil and energy is this kind of occult history that runs in parallel with the traditional kind of political histories yeah but but they do intersect and occasionally in the traditional books oil kind of pops up but actually we don't you know we take it for granted we don't really dig into it as much as we as much as we should do the question of energy and energy dependence do we yeah you're absolutely and um a couple of months think, before Christmas, we did an episode on the old crisis of 73, 74. And one of the things that actually wasn't just the political context that made me want to do that. It was reading in manuscript a book that, well, actually, do you know, Dominic, very modestly, I'm going to read what I said about it because it's appeared on the back of the book. Regular listeners will know that Tom reading his

own words is a familiar feature of this podcast. I know, shameless. But I said, to read this on the history of the past centuries, to see it in a sudden sharp definition, it is akin to looking through glass after the window cleaner has been. And that window cleaner, Dominic, was the great Helen Thompson. I'm sure she'd be delighted by that metaphor. Professor of political economy at Cambridge. She was presenter of a fabulous podcast called Talking Politics, which was actually not just the first podcast I ever listened to, but the first podcast on which I appeared.

So we have Helen with us now. So I feel I'm very much returning the favor. And Helen, your book just out this week, Disorder, Hard Times in the 21st Century. I won't say you've been lucky with the timing, because obviously no one would want to see what we're seeing at the moment. But it's a book in which you cast the current crisis in Ukraine as being part of a continuum that reaches back at least a century. And essentially, your argument is, and I don't want to overly paraphrase you, but that if you want to understand geopolitics of the past century, you've got to look at oil. Absolutely. And I think that when you do, and as you've kind of suggested by comparing me to a window cleaner, when you do that, the history of the 20th century looks somewhat different. And I think it looks quite disturbing in some ways for those of us who would like to have perhaps a some what should we say a more liberal take on that history because it involves looking at some of the things that

that happened in terms of the way in which the European powers who did have access to oil via their empires behaved and what the consequences of that were for other countries including what the consequences of that were most importantly for Germany. So let's go back to the very beginning of the story Helen. So oil becomes a factor in world affairs. Dominic, when you say go back to the beginning oh no come on were you were you thinking that we could get away with not mentioning the very first historian to mention oil? That's exactly what I was thinking. Do you know who that was?

I'm going to guess it was Herodotus, Tom. It was. It was. Because Herodotus, in his great history, describes the fate of a city that was targeted by the expedition that was sent by Darius, the king of Persia, to destroy Athens, which got defeated at Marathon. But before the defeat at Marathon, they destroyed a city called Eretria. And the Eretrians got taken to a region of Iran, where Herodotus says there is a kind of black liquid, and he calls it radinarchy. It's black and it gives off a revolting stench. So the ancients were definitely aware of oil and of gas. And in fact, right at the moment,

I'm reading Pliny the Elder, who made this fantastic encyclopedia, absolutely panoramic. And he describes oil and the things that he says oil is good for cement and like herodotus he cites uh the walls of babylon used oil in the cement for for the great walls of babylon keeping away snakes toothache curing leprosy curing epilepsy gout and coughs so even then even in the age of pliny they knew that it was a valuable substance um and and that may be why i just actually was researching this this morning uh by going into the bodleian and i found did you did you two know that there is an oil well in new mexico called pliny the elder so i did not i did not know that either i i just throw that in because i know this

is going to be a very 20th century discussion but i just wanted to you know shout out for herodotus and uh and that's fair i'm sorry dominic i cut you that's all right don't worry don't worry but to be a very 20th century discussion, but I just wanted to shout out for Herodotus. That's fair enough. I'm sorry, Dominic, I cut you off. That's all right. Don't worry. But Helen, the story starts in the 19th century, doesn't it? So what are we, 1850s, 1860s, kerosene, the first oil well. So even at that point, are people conscious that this is going to mark, do you think of a geopolitical change i think at a certain point in the last third of the 19th century that in europe uh in britain and germany um and to some extent in france i think it's less well understood in in france um a terrible fear takes hold that the United States has this thing, oil, commercial drilling for oil,

and the ability to sell this oil around the world, certainly in Europe and Asia anyway, and that this is going to have momentous consequences. I don't think that they can see the whole future of the 20th century by any stretch of the imagination. But I do think the conjunction of the united states becoming a continental state having reached the pacific plus having this new energy source that in some sense seems like miraculous particularly in its first uses in relation to to kerosene for for lighting yeah and i think in some sense it puts a fear of god into them. And I think that it's difficult in a way to understand the obsession with Africa and colonising Africa in the latter part of the 19th century by the European powers

without seeing that they think that this is their potential, this is their opportunity to try to catch up with the United States, to compete with the United States, that this might be the resource-rich hinterland for Europe in the way in which the continent of the United States with this oil is proof for the United States. Yeah, because you've got, what, Standard Oil in the 1870s, John D. Rockefeller's company, and using kerosene in sort of lighting and stuff. So that's precisely the point, isn't it, where the United States is coming out of the American Civil War, sort of industrially, economically, it's catching up and then overhauling Britain.

So the sort of the scramble for Africa and all that sort of colonial anxiety that you get at the end of the 19th century, do you think there's a sort of sense of technological and economic change underpinning a lot of that then? At least I think it's a sense of technological economic fear and I think that in some sense it simply is perhaps even actually more understood on the straightforward resource question rather than necessarily a technology question at that point. I think when it becomes a technology question is really when the United States goes down the road thanks to Henry Ford of mass car production. And Helen, does mass car production happen because America has the oil? I mean, is it as kind of basic as that? It's a more complicated question because actually Henry Ford's model T cars,

they don't necessarily have to run on oil. It's a choice. He creates them in ways, he constructs them in ways where that where where where they could um they basically could run on alcohol alcohol fuel so in a sense it's a kind of darwinian test for for it in which oil proves itself oil proves itself and and and what we see with the the production of the mass production of the car is that really, I think, changes the whole nature of industrial production in the United States and those huge Ford factories that are created in Michigan. So what starts off, I think, as a resource fear in Europe

becomes a sense of fear that actually the United States has made this huge technological breakthrough and it's just going to leave everybody behind unless they do something to change their relationship to this energy source. Right. And so that means that European powers need, you know, they've looked to Africa, but of course the place, as people have known since at least the time of Herodotus, where oil is literally bubbling up out of the ground is the Middle East. And in the build up to the First World War, you have this very, very intense competition between Britain and Germany for kind of control of this region, or at least to influence this region. And I guess that you could say that that as much as anything is a portent of what is going to happen for the century and more that's going to follow uh very much so i mean they first start looking for uh oil in persia in i think it's 19 1901 and the first is that the british yeah first significant discovery is in in 1908 and

obviously britain is in a much stronger position in persia than than than germany um is and there's a considerable hope by this point there's going to be oil in Mesopotamia too, because of it being in Persia. And I think that what you can then see through the immediate years leading up to the First World War is that the British and the Germans competing to see who can have the foothold that is going to control those resources, the foothold in the Middle East to control those resources in the future. Britain's obviously in a stronger position, but the Kaiser goes a long way in developing a relationship with the Ottoman Empire that goes back really to the 1890s.

And he physically goes there, doesn't he? I mean, he goes on kind of trips around the Ottoman province. There's a whole Berlin-Baghdad railway. Absolutely, yeah. And I mean, because they want the building, the railway in part because they want the Deutsche Bank, the big German bank is an important part of that story. And they have a concession to look for oil

by the side of the railway, essentially. And that is why the Kaiser is keen on also bringing the Ottomans into the First World War. That's a central relationship for the Kaiser's keen on also bringing the Ottomans into the First World War. That's a central relationship for the Kaiser's idea of Germany's future, is that the Ottoman Empire is the route to Germany having an energy resource empire. Just on this question of the build-up to the First World War, I mean, one thing that I hadn't really, well, in the public imagination, certainly in Britain, when we think of oil, we think of America and we think of the Middle East.

But actually, we don't think about the place that was America's great rival as an oil producer before the First World War, which is Russia, which obviously, I mean, Russia and energy could hardly be more timely. So am I right in thinking that at the very beginning of the 20th century, so literally as we enter the 20th century, Russia is actually the world's biggest ore producer because of its ownership of what's now as by john baku yeah this this uh oil in in baku is very important it's going to play a like a crucial role in the in the story um of the first half of the 20th century um and we can actually there was just to go back to the point that tom might um is there was knowledge there was oil in Baku and some uses being made of it back to the 9th century. But serious drilling then taking place in the latter third of the 19th century. from the Ottomans, then they have a way of getting that oil from Baku to out into the Balat Sea and into the Mediterranean. And that is crucial for their ability to sell oil in the Asian market. So what you see is in the early part of the 20th century, the very first few years, is

a really clear competition between the Russian companies and Standard Oil, the big American company, as to who can sell oil most effectively, successfully, both in Europe and in Asia. And for a while, the Russian companies are at an advantage, and partly they're at an advantage, obviously, because of the geographical position of Russia in relation to these markets, compared to the United States. But the political situation in Russia deteriorates very considerably, particularly in the context of Russia's defeat in the war with Japan in 1905 and in this great labor struggle that goes on in Baku, which Stalin was himself involved in as a trade union organizer.

Essentially, a lot of the oil wells in Baku get burned. And so in that period, then Russian, between 1905 and 1914, then Russian oil production falls off somewhat. But already, so beginning of the 20th century, you'd look at geopolitics, and you'd say, you know, the European powers remain what they've been for at least a century, perhaps two centuries, the great controllers of Eurasia. They are the dominant powers in Eurasia. But already you can see the lineaments evolving where actually the European powers are going to be squeezed by America and by Russia. And I hadn't realized until I read your book, just how fundamental the fact that those two powers have oil actually was. And Dominic said that, in a way, it's a kind of a cult history, that once you realize the role that oil is playing, you start to see all kinds of

events and perhaps particularly conflicts in a new manner. So the First World War, could you describe the First World War? I mean, would it be feasible to describe the First World War as a war over oil? Would that be going too far? I wouldn't certainly. I certainly don't think you can give an account of the reasons why the First World War breaks out when it does in the summer of 1914, after the crisis generated by Franz Ferdinand's assassination in Sarajevo, which makes oil fundamental to the motives of the players. I think that is it. I don't really buy that. I think what is important to understand about the First World War is that we in this country, and I certainly, until I really started thinking about oil, in fact, I would say until I actually started writing the first geopolitical chapter of Disorder, kind of, I think, are accustomed in Britain and perhaps in France,

just like I said, maybe in Germany, too, to thinking about the First World War through the Western Front, and not to think about it in terms of the war in the East. And I think that once the war has begun, both in the case of Britain and Germany, there is a strong sense of that the stakes are the future of the Ottoman Empire and the future of the territory that the Ottoman Empire controls. And they both make moves in the very early weeks of the war in that context. And the great irony of the First World War in this respect, in its geopolitics, is on the one hand,

it renders Britain and France as the two victorious European powers, completely financially beholden to the United States and significantly reduces their freedom of manoeuvre. On the other hand, they get something pretty significant out of the First World War, which is a position in the Middle East, particularly in Britain's case, much stronger than it had been its position in the Middle East before the First World War had begun. And the Americans are shut out of it. Because they hadn't declared war on the Ottomans, had they?

Yeah, Americans have supplied 80% of the oil that the Allies have used during the course of the war. By 1919, the United States is having to import oil. President Woodrow Wilson is really concerned about oil, the long-term prospects for American oil supply. And there are these two countries, Britain and France, having acquired themselves essentially an empire in the Middle East where there were great prospects for more oil to be found. Bringing us to the Middle East raises a question from one of our listeners,

Alexander Kuzel. And he says, and I think it's a great question, actually, without oil, without oil, would the Middle East be just a curious backwater of Europe and Asia, mostly untouched by the European powers? And obviously, until this point, the Middle East be just a curious backwater of Europe and Asia, mostly untouched by the European powers? And obviously, until this point, the Middle East, well, certainly Arabia, plays very little part, you could argue, in the sort of British colonial imagination. But afterwards, it becomes greater and greater and greater. So oil presumably fundamentally reshapes the attitude that the European powers have to the Middle East. And actually, just to indulge the counterfactual for a moment, would we care about it at all if it weren't for oil? Are the conspiracy theories about oil and Western policy in the Middle East, are they right?

I think that the British did care about the Middle East before oil came along. They cared about the Persian Gulf in particular before those. I mean, before there's any oil found anywhere in the Middle East, so before 1908. Securing links to India. Because of India. And I think that the initial British interest in the Middle East really comes in relation to protecting the roots to India and then the oil interest comes once oil was discovered in Persia in 1908 and the British thinking that this is the way in which that they can compete or at least not lose to the United States and in the geopolitical world that oil is um creating and if you then say we i'm not saying we should straightforwardly skip until after the second world war but just

as an answer to your question um dominate once the british are out of india so after 1947 i think it's reasonable to say that there's not much else going on but an interest in in oil and then later in gas because helen am i right that the sykes-Picot line, which divides up the Near East between Britain and France, that the British kind of adjust this otherwise straight line to ensure that they get Mosul and all the oil fields around it? Yeah, I mean, the thing about that, though, I think it's overdone because at that point is the contest for who's going to control the Ottoman, what has been the Ottoman Empire hasn't at all been resolved.

And actually, the British in the latter part of 1918 have got hopes of getting much more than that, including control of the Dardanelles. And that means that the really crucial juncture in this is the fact that Turkey, once Turkey is created as an independent state, is able to assert itself more significantly than might have been imagined back in 1916, to hold on to some of this for itself. which is quite a surprise I think it may be again in 1918 is is that the Soviet Union which loses control of Baku in the aftermath of the around the time of the revolution anyway actually reestablishes control over Baku so there's a point in which all of the essentially the Ott Ottomans, the Germans and the British

have got hopes of controlling Baku, but actually it's the Soviets that end that period, let's say by 1923, by the time of the agreement with Turkey, which you might say is the final end of fighting over all this. In those years, it's the Soviets that are going to keep it. I was going to say, if we fast forward then to World War II. So i mean world war ii is not a war i would say tom about oil but oil comes to play an enormous part i mean the two so the two things that if you know a little bit about the second world war the two things that people always think about all are one the oil makes the nazis

draws the nazis into this terrible trap of going for Russia and the Caucasus because they're desperate to get the oil. And two, that oil also plays a part in Japan's sort of dash to Southeast Asia and their desperation to knock out the Americans at Pearl Harbor and all of that sort of thing. Are those sort of, and they're not quite urban myths, they're just sort of commonplaces, I suppose. Are those both true, Helen, would you say?

Yeah, I mean, I think that it's hard to underestimate Hitler's obsession with oil. I mean, he's obsessed with it, you know, like back in the 1920s, he's obsessed about what's going on in the Texan oil fields. Apparently, he knew about the names of pretty much all the oil fields in the texan oil fields apparently like he knew about the names of pretty much all the all the oil fields in the um american um west and he has this idea um that unless the the germany takes back who that the war's over and in some sense he's not wrong well yeah i mean you amazing comment that oil weakness was a near sufficient motive for the invasion about but at the same time dominic

says it's a terrible trap because it's necessary and it's entirely destructive because of what it actually means in fighting a war with the soviet union to to do that so it is that story in a way that dominic's telling the beginning of like oil you know it's this it's this huge temptation and if it's successful then in one sense it brings rewards beyond people's imagination. On the other hand, it can bring it brings terrible destruction when the pursuit of it goes wrong. Is it the case that oil amplifies the effectiveness of what is, you know, since the time the Napoleonic Wars has been British strategy, which is to use naval power essentially to throttle continental rivals. Yeah, I mean, this question about the naval security or using navies for energy security purposes is obviously part of the story.

And part of what is going to go on in the post-Second World War world is the question of who is going to provide of the western countries who is going to provide that naval security for initially west european oil imports out of the middle east and then what are going to become american oil imports out of the middle east in the in the 1970s and the reason why you know the british empire from this point of view is still necessary uh in the post-war world is precisely because the answer that not only the british want but the americans actually in some sense demand is is that britain is going to be the naval power uh in the in the middle east that is going to that is going to do this and where the americans don't want to use their naval

supremacy for this purpose in the immediate years after the war. In fact, you could argue that they don't really want to use it until the 1990s, once we get to the first Gulf War. I mean, I thought that was really striking. And again, I hadn't properly appreciated the paradoxical quality of the Suez Crisis, which is, of course, famous as an example of America using its financial muscle essentially to kind of cripple British imperial efforts while simultaneously wanting Britain to continue as a kind of guarantor of oil supplies in the Middle East. I think we should take a break at this point and perhaps we could look at this kind of what's obviously an absolutely key

development in postal history after the break. episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Hello, welcome back to The Rest Is History. We are talking oil and we are exploring the question of how important a role has it played in geopolitics over the past century and more. And Helen, we have reached the post-war world, as we were talking before the break. This is a world where America and the Soviet Union, both of them great oil powers, have a preponderant role to play in world politics, but where the role of the old European emp empires and perhaps particularly the british empire is not completely gone um so how important is is the role that oil plays in the retreat from empire both not just for britain but also perhaps for france as well well i think the the first thing to say here is that actually you know britain's empire at the point in which it's falling away elsewhere,

and obviously most consequentially the withdrawal from India and India's independence, it's about in some sense to start to matter even more than it had previously done. It's because now the whole of Western Europe is pretty much dependent on the supply of oil from the Middle East. That is coming in part through a pipeline out into the Mediterranean, but a lot of it is coming up the Suez Canal and out into the Mediterranean that way. And in some sense, the power that's supposed to take responsibility for keeping the Suez Canal open and for dealing with whatever threats to the openness of the canal there may be arising from

instability in various Arab countries and politics is Britain and the United States as I said simply does not want to play that role so on the one hand the Americans right from the start in the in the in the post-second world war world are very keen to present the British as imperialist and nasty imperialists and that America is on the side of you know like national liberation and post-colonial self-determination etc but they very much want the British to be playing the imperial role that it's doing even though at various points leading up to the Suez crisis they make things pretty difficult for Britain in terms of its where for Britain in terms of where its military, in terms of where its military bases are in order to protect the position at Suez.

So are you saying they're massive hypocrites? Is that what you're saying, Helen? Yeah, I think that they are. I'm afraid I do think that they are massive hypocrites about this. I mean, I'm not saying for a moment that it's not a, it's a pretty difficult position that they're all in, because on the one hand is that, well, let's go back one step, is obviously the post-war, second world war politics

of the Middle East has been also hugely complicated by the creation of Israel as an independent state. So the Americans are committed to Israel, but they also want to be seen as sympathetic to Arab nationalism. And it's quite obvious the ways in which they try to navigate between those problems. What's less obvious and goes on below the surface is the way that they deal with the British, which is we need you to do things, we need you to be there, but we don't want you to embarrass us by looking too much like an old archaic imperial power.

One of the fascinating things about the Suez Crisis, Helen, so we have a question from Alfonso XIV, the pretender. He actually sent in 18 questions. We're not going to ask them all. But he asked a question that might not seem to some people connected to Suez, but I was fascinated by the connections that you draw in the book. So his question was, how did OPEC, how was OPEC allowed to happen? And if I understand it right, in the aftermath of the Suez crisis,

the Western European countries become much more interested in alternative sources of oil. And some of them start looking to the Soviet Union. And you start getting Soviet oil exports in a much bigger way to Western Europe. Then the American producers to compete with that drop their prices. And that outrages the Arab oil producers in Venezuela. And they then set up OPEC. Have I got that right?

Just explain what OPEC is for people who may not know what that is. So OPEC is the cartel, basically the cartel, the association of major oil-producing countries. So, Helen, is that right? Is OPEC basically a consequence of the interaction between Suez and the Cold War, I guess? In the short term, I think, yeah, it very much is so. It's because what will become the OPEC members, those oil producing countries, are so aghast when the big the oil majors cut prices to European markets because they've now got to compete with Soviet oil. That those oil producing countries say, well, we don't like the way that this works we want more

say in in in prices now i think you could argue that energy nationalism was on the rise that energy nationalism in oil producing countries particularly in the middle east because you can see it actually in mexico going back to 1911 and the Mexican Revolution. As the British Empire in the Middle East is becoming more difficult to sustain, I think we would have expected to see a rise of, well, the Arab nationalism would take the form of energy nationalism. On the other hand, if we say, well, how in practice did OPEC come about. There was a very clear line, causal line sequence of events that run from the aftermath of Suez, the Western European turn to Soviet oil exports,

the way in which the American, or the majors, I should say, the big seven, as they were then called, respond to that. And Venezuela's move to create OPEC. Yeah. And America then, because of this, gets drawn more and more to replace Britain. You've talked about how it's a tremendous strain on British foreign policy, that it has to kind of square its desire for both Arab and Israeli support. The other thing for which Britain is notorious in the Middle East,

certainly in Iran, is its readiness to meddle and pull strings and pull the carpet out from under governments. And America starts to, you know, if Britain kind of slowly becomes the little Satan, America steps in to become the great Satan. Do you think that essentially the problems that American foreign policy has faced in the Near East, they've inherited the foreign policy problems that the British had faced. And essentially it is oil that explains the existence of those problems.

Yes, but I put a big interlude in the middle of that, which is that when we get to 1971, when the British withdraw from east of Syria, they've made it clear a few years before that, that this is going to happen. The Americans are absolutely aghast at that. They regard it as a as a terrible um betrayal um and earlier in the decade so in the 60s when when johnson is i think it's about 1964 1965 he manages basically to make sure that

the the labour government gets some more financial help to prop up sterling to try to to avoid the the eventual outcome the decision that how Harold Wilson's government makes to withdraw from east of Suez. But given that this is happening in the late 60s, I think I'm pretty sure it's sometime after the Sterling devaluation. So either late 1967 or early 1968, when Wilson announces the withdrawal from east of Suez, the Americans are deep in Vietnam crisis at this point. So the idea that the united states could replace britain as the military power in the middle east that's supposed to do this work of providing energy security that's an that's an absolute non-starter and so the american um reaction uh by this point when nixon's in power is to, look, the British are gone. We don't want

to be there ourselves. So we're going to have to rely on the Saudis and we're going to have to rely on Iran. Well, that's kind of problematic on any number of levels, even at the beginning, not least because of the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran. And obviously, the Shah thinks he can get all kinds of things for obliging the Americans in this respect. And the 70s, I think, then in this sense where the Middle East is concerned, can just be seen as a mess from the American point of view, because neither the Saudis or Iran, even before we get to the Iranian revolution, can do what they needed to do from the American point of view. And then when the Iranian revolution happens, things go, you know, just total disaster from the American position because now they're not only only left with the Saudis,

but they've actually got sanctions on Iran. So they're actually losing Iranian oil off the market. Then the Iran-I, Iraq war starts, which takes Iraqi, significantly reduces Iraqi oil production as well. is going to basically intervene if there's any external threat to American security interests, which mean energy security interests in the Middle East. It's not really very effective until we get to the first Gulf War. So actually, I would say that the story of the 70s and the 80s is when the British have gone, the Americans can't go there themselves, the proxies that they rely on are unreliable, including, it must be said, really using Iraq as a proxy in the 1980s during the course of the Iraq-Iran war. And it's only when the Soviet Union's been taken out of the picture, effectively, by the

dissolution of the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe in 1989, coming before the dissolution of the Soviet Union with the Gulf War, in the middle, that an American president is willing to commit American military power to the problem. Before we get on to the two Iraq wars, because I think they're really important in the story, and listeners will be keen to hear about them, just a quick note on the Soviet Union. So we did a series of podcasts about the dissolution of the Soviet Union

and the rise of Putin in Russia. And quite a lot of listeners were interested because we talked about oil and oil prices as a factor in the story of the Soviet kind of implosion in the 80s. So, Helen, do you think you think well here's another question from alfonso the 14th the pretender he's on fire isn't he yeah well i mean there's 16 more questions to go um so keep us going so he says is the soviet union the greatest victim of the oil resource curse um and i mentioned kapuscinski's you know lines at the beginning of the podcast

so the soviet union basks under bre Brezhnev in this kind of complacency because oil prices are very high in the 70s. And then in the 80s, obviously, oil prices collapse. And their economy that's so dependent upon oil and gas then basically implodes. Gorbachev tries his reform program and it all goes wrong. Do you think that oil is the key factor in the collapse of this sort of Soviet

experiment? I think that this is a quite hard question to answer. I mean, I would fall back again on saying that if we look at the sequence of events as they happen, it's pretty important because it basically wrecks the finances of the Soviet state. And they're very quickly out of Afghanistan after the oil price crash. Because they're struggling financially, they need loans from, essentially, from like Western governments, Western banks, in order to be able to pay for the food import, their food import bill. So it brings a systemic crisis to the fore and basically means that Gorbachev has very few options you could argue that perhaps if he hadn't also been

trying to pursue the economic reforms he had at the same time it would have been easier but still it it it was I think a a massive blow and I think it's also true that if you look at the expansion of Soviet military power in the 70s and the ways in particularly their involvement in some African countries that actually well and I forget to stand for that matter that the conditions in which the Soviets engaged in military overstretch also had an oil underpinning from the oil boom of the 70s and the fact that the Soviet Union at that point was the world's largest oil producer. Indeed, it was still the world's largest oil producer when the oil price crash happened in 1986. So I was certainly prepared to say that I think that the Soviet Union would have lasted longer and that its crisis

wouldn't have been so sudden. I think that's the thing that really distinguishes the way that it happened in practice from the way that it possibly could have happened without the oil price crash. And I think the fact that it did happen in the way in which it did, so suddenly, both in Eastern Europe and then in 1991 with the disillusion of the Soviet Union, that was pretty consequential because it meant that this huge geopolitical change in europe and indeed in asia and central asia in in particular happened you know almost like with scarcely any consequence in in some sense not scarce any consequence for the people who were being liberated from soviet rule but i just mean in terms of the the the fact that it happened without without violence and I think that anything that would have been

a more protracted crisis of the Soviet Union would not have played out in that way. Although, of course, there's an argument that the violence was merely postponed. Well, that's what I'm saying. I think that there is, I mean, when we get onto the future, I think in that sense is the extraordinarily peacefulness of 89 and 91.

In some sense, we're now living with the consequences of history having caught up with that as usual our attempts to sum up an enormously lengthy and complex topic in a single episode has failed so i think what we're going to have to do is we have to come back tomorrow for another episode with helen if that's okay with helen good it is um so uh and in that episode we'll look at more recent history so the gulf wars the north stream, current events in Ukraine, future of energy. I mean, so huge topics. And there is no one better to be discussing these topics with than Helen Thompson.

So hopefully see you tomorrow. Until then, bye-bye. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman.

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