The Pacific Rim Review of Books
Issue Four 2006
by William Engdahl
Anyone distressed by the troubled policies of the Bush administration is likely to find William Engdahl's 'A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order' illuminating, if not reassuring.
Engdahl shows that, long before 'full spectrum dominance' became the explicit goal of American policy, both British and American governments had long become accomplished in the deceptive exercise of pre-emptive
power of questionable legitimacy. Equally, he exposes both the growing demands made on an American polity that seeks to expand on British imperial achievements and the escalating costs in maintaining an
Anglo-American global order.
First published in 1992 and revised in 2004, Engdahl's work reveals a century of Anglo-American global policy that has been ever resourceful in manoeuvring to disguise and transform its own weaknesses and to
outflank and subjugate emerging rivals. Even the Balfour Declaration emerges with new ambiguity, it being unclear whether the English were aiding or exploiting Zionism, or both. There appears to be little doubt that
the Declaration contributed to British strategy designed to divvy up the Arab world after the fragmentation of the Ottoman Empire and win it a dominant role in exploiting Middle Eastern oil reserves.
Perhaps it is Engdahl's mixed German and American identity that enables him to outline vividly the policies and actions that have allowed English speaking peoples to so command the 20th Century. It becomes clear
that politically correct rhetoric has masked the reality of many critical situations. It is difficult to ignore a sense that the Project for a New American Century seeks to continue a well established tradition
even as it signals both strength and weakness. In this light it is possible to question whether the setbacks encountered by the Bush Administration reflect predominantly ill conceived and badly implemented policy or
the dilemmas of declining American power.
Engdahl's account of 20th Century oil politics reveals British and American political systems that sacrificed strong, broadly based internal economic development for the high stakes rewards of international trade
and finance, leveraged off the control of major oil resources, often in other people's countries. Adventurous and predatory foreign policies have been an integral part of free market economic policies that have
led to serious domestic economic weakness and decline. The ability to control and dictate oil markets and related currency flows, however, enabled Britain in the first half of the century and America in the latter
half to shape the evolution of an international system and the emergence of the 'New World Order'.
The value of 'A Century of War' resides in its uniquely incisive account of some harsh historical realities that remind that the arts of deception are often critical in building and maintaining imperial power.