Why the Gulf Wealth Matters to Britain [and the US]
A summary
Anglo-American interest in the enormous hydrocarbon reserves of the Persian Gulf does not derive from a need to fuel Western consumption.
The US has never imported more than a token amount from the Gulf and for much of the postwar period has been a net oil exporter. Anglo-American involvement in the Middle East has always been principally about the strategic advantage gained from controlling Persian Gulf hydrocarbons, not Western oil needs.
What remains a US strategy: the US and Britain would provide Saudi Arabia and other key Gulf monarchies with ‘sufficient military supplies to preserve internal security’.
In a piece for the Atlantic a few months after 9/11, Benjamin Schwarz and Christopher Layne explained that Washington 'assumes responsibility for stabilising the region’ because China, Japan and Europe will be dependent on its resource...