The oil-foreign policy nexus: a response to Simon Bromley

Does the United States' (US) thirst for oil cause its military expansionism or are US policies towards world oil just a by-product of its broader imperialist strategies? This is Simon Bromley's main question, and on the basis of a carefully balanced analysis, he seems by and large to favour the second hypothesis. Dispelling the most conspiratorial interpretations of US oil interests with a concise historical account, Bromley does a service to the academic Left and its intellectual credibility. At the same time, Bromley's broader interpretation leaves specific causal mechanisms unspecified, as it is based on a somewhat functionalist understanding of global capitalism's requirements of systemic reproduction.