It is fitting, then, that oil is the one raw material that has most reliably tempted politicians back into the old logic of empire. When faced with an Arab oil embargo, Henry Kissinger suggested that the United States “may have to take some oil fields.” “I’m not saying we have to take over Saudi Arabia,” the secretary of state continued. “How about Abu Dhabi, or Libya?” It is hard to imagine Kissinger embarking on such unbounded flights of imperialist reverie on behalf of rubber, tin, or any other former colonial commodity.
