Lubricant of war

OIL, THE STATE AND WAR: THE FOREIGN POLICIES OF PETROSTATES, by Emma Ashford (Georgetown University Press, hb, ebook US$35)

Petrostates are more likely than other countries to start wars, reckons Emma Ashford, a scholar specialising in international security and US foreign policy. A problem rears its head when trying to define a petrostate.

The US is, of course, both a producer and phenomenal consumer of oil and natural gas. This might seem a far cry from our typical conception of a petrostate as being “a small, corrupt, non-Western developing state” such as Libya, Angola or even Saudi Arabia, or as aggressors in small regional wars like Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Ashford tries to order this