Dear readers, This paper, which I wrote in 2008-09, analyzed the evolution of interests underlying the US-Iran crisis till then, interests which persist in the 2026 US-Iran war.
That is, Trump’s “USA Energy Dominance” strategy does not seek to fundamentally alter the structure or logic of the post-1973 global, market-centered, USA-led-and-protected oil order. However, to preserve it, the USA now feels the necessity of removing the Iranian mullahs as custodians of Iran’s oil for persistently insisting on projecting power and seeking hegemony in the energy-critical Gulf Region.
What is new from 2008, is the bipartisan urgency felt in Washington to renovate the existing oil market-and-security order, reconsolidating the USA as primary arbiter of energy flows via Hormuz to both China and US allied and friendly states of the Indo-Pacific region. In addition, to be capable of significantly blocking Russian oil exports and thereby its petrostate-fueled aggression elsewhere.
In particular, it mush achieve these aims, vis-a-vis Russia and China, without causing global oil shocks. (continued in full-column below …)
The focus on China is driven by the widespread belief in Washington that Xi Jinping is actively making preparations for taking Taiwan, and may have ordered the PLA to be prepared by 2027 for this – the so-called “Donaldson window.”
What seems to be underappreciated in European capitals, is how seriously this threat has been taken in Washington during multiple recent US administrations. The dramatic flourish of tariffs by the Trump administration, aimed especially against China, is further indication of the degree of USA alarm over China’s capacities and intentions.
I my view, the USA under Trump is now actively involved in several major forceful global energy-sector initiatives to preemptively “shape” the global energy landscape in preparations for any Pacific armed skirmishes or full-on war with China.
However, in particular, as retaliation for China’s current use of critical minerals as a geo-economic lever — in response to Trump’s tariffs — the Trump administration realizes that if it were to control oil flows via Hormuz, which include 5.4 million barrels per day to China, half its total needs, then it has a far greater geo-economic lever with which to retaliate
As followers of GlobalBarrel.com know, I believe the harsh measures vs. Russian oil exports (now frozen or somewhat suspended for the duration of the Iran conflict),measures vs Venezuela’s Chavista regime, and now vs. the Iranian regime, are all parts of US global-energy-sector shaping operations in anticipation of a clash China threatens to initiate in coming years.
If one understands thoroughly the system for oil security established post-1973 by the USA, one will grasp clearly, in my view, why the USA absolutely will not stop the present campaign to permanently secure Hormuz and insure the incapacity of the Iranian regime to interfere in Gulf oil and LNG flows.
This is a battle both to prevent Iran from being capable, in the near future, from asserting its regional hegemony, and, more urgently, to avoid having to accomplish the task of securing Hormuz and suppressing an Islamic Republic that might close the Straight in solidarity with China in the midst of some future Pacific clash, which would be extremely difficult to handle simultaneously.
I wrote this paper in 2008-09, partially during two-years research in Caracas (2007-08). I had coined (as far as I could then determine) the term “Global Barrel” to stand for the “US-led, post-1973, global-centered, collective oil-security order,” … which needed a shorter description. (This blog, of the same name, was started in in 2011.) This system, still fully intact in 2026, had two key foundational aspects:
i. It was proposed by Henry Kissinger in 1973, during the Arab-OPEC embargo crisis. This established the OECD states’ IEA and its Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR) treaty system.
ii. Fortified by the Carter Doctrine in 1980, with Zbigniew Brzeziński as national security advisor, during the Soviet Afghan war and alarm in Washington that the USSR aimed to move through Afghanistan to control Iran and Gulf states’ oil,
In the “noughties” (2000-09), there were epic geopolitical clashes involving the Gulf, with the USA in the center. With 9/11 and the War on Terror, the US-UK Iraq invasion, and the US-Iranian nuclear confrontations, deep ideological-political clashes arose over what interests the USA was defending in Afghanistan and Iraq, with Iran, and in its complex alliance with Saudi Arabia (AKA, “central bank of oil”).
There were many outdated, conspiratorial, intellectualist (especially post-modern) theories. My approach was not to much spend time on the internal contradictions of these theories, of for that matter the often deceptive slogans and justifications offered by governments, but to look at the actual energy-sector material and economic relations, their evolution over decades, and the parallel co-evolution of conflicts and wars consistent with states’ political-economic interests.
The paper linked here was one of two long works I wrote at the time (this one was still on the ETH Zurich archive). Your critiques and debates on this history and my analysis are most welcomed – and solicited.
Best, Tom O’D. in Berlin.
The Global Barrel 