US Middle East policy in the context of the global oil supply system in the late 1950s – 1960s.

Vadym Danylets, Post Graduate Student, State Organization “The Institute of the World History”, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine

Abstract

The article attempts to analyze the American strategy for maintaining the status quo in the global energy supply system, as well as to reveal the main causes of the destruction of this system.

At this stage, there is a sharp increase in the interdependence of politics and energetics as well as their merger. Therefore, one of the main messages of the article is the thesis that oil and related issues were at the center of the US Middle East foreign policy. It was determined that the main components of the US strategy were maintaining access to oil resources in the Middle East and strengthening their positions in the region, which was stipulated by the factor of intersystem confrontation. The doctrinal foundations of the American oil strategy in the region were determined. The evolution of political processes in the Middle East, which led to the destruction of the foundations of the global energy supply system, was examined.

It is shown how dynamic changes in international politics and the world economy influenced the transformation of American politics in the Middle East with elements of balancing between the countries of the region, for which oil and energetics, in general, have become the main factor in foreign policy. It was the study of political and economic processes in their dynamics that allowed the author to highlight critical moments in international politics and economics.

Important place in the article is devoted to the activities of American oil companies, their economic relations with the governments of the Middle East countries, which became the subject of political confrontation between these countries and the U.S.

Based on the given facts, it was established that the US policy to maintain the status quo in the Middle East had been actually stopped in the early 1970s. Instead, it was not formed the clear long term course of foreign policy, which could provide the interests of the USA and its allies in the field of economics and energetics.

Keywords: USA, Middle East, foreign policy strategy, energetics, oil.

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DOI 10.17721/2521-1706.2018.06.60-72