Do Countries Fight Over Oil?

Abstract

Meierding challenges the popular belief that countries fight over oil resources by demonstrating that most militarized incidents in petroleum-endowed territories are merely `oil spats': mild, brief, and non-lethal confrontations. Countries have only launched major military campaigns, targeting oil fields, on three occasions: Iraq's invasion of Kuwait (1990), Japan's invasion of the Dutch East Indies (1941--42), and Germany's attacks against the Russian Caucasus (1941--42). These conflicts were not intensified oil spats. Instead, countries were fighting for survival; leaders believed that, if they failed to gain control over more oil, their regimes would collapse. By examining the wars for survival and oil spats between Greece and Turkey and Venezuela and Guyana, the chapter concludes that interstate oil competition is not a serious threat to international security.