The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power

by Daniel Yergin

state. This was the real significance of the “oil factor,” the way that oil would be translated into money and power: political, economic—and military. Saddam Hussein knew what it would mean to acquire an additional 10 percent of world oil reserves, especially as not much in the way of population came with them. If he kept the grip on Kuwait, Iraq would be the planet’s dominant oil power, and the other petroleum producers would bend to his diktats, just as they had begun to do in the summer of 1990, before the invasion. He would gain a decisive say over the world economy, and he would be courted by economic and political leaders. His aggressive arms procurement effort would be much enhanced, and suppliers of every kind of technology, eager to tap into the biggest market for weaponry and related technology, would in due course be at his door offering him the very latest. It would not take Saddam Hussein, equipped with nuclear and chemical weapons know-how, long to turn Iraq into a regional power and perhaps, as Hussein extended his reach, into a global superpower. At a certain point, it would become too costly and too dangerous to try to check him. And the post-Cold War order would turn out to be different and much less benign than was generally imagined—and hoped—at the beginning of 1990. In short, oil was fundamental to the crisis, not “cheap oil,” but rather oil as a critical element in the global balance of power, as it had been ever since the First World War. Such is o...