Blood Oil

The concept of the resource curse has rightly achieved fame as an explanation of why resource-rich countries succumb to authoritarianism and corruption. Elites who control the primary (and often the only) source of wealth generation in a resource-rich country are not reliant on broad-based taxation schemes, and hence do not need the support of the public to rule. Their wealth comes from sales of the resource outside of the nation, and that gives them the income they need to buy off the military, the police, and collaborators in the economic sector. Oppressive, corrupt autocracies are the all-too-frequent result, and such regimes have been the source of many-perhaps most-US foreign policy headaches over the last fifty years. Yet despite their pariah-like status, these regimes continue to exist and even prosper. For all of the criticism directed at resource-rich autocracies by Western critics, Western consumers remain reliant on them for the materials that fuel their cars and comprise their computers. In Blood Oil, Leif Wenar begins by explaining how the resource curse retards development and democracy in resource-exporting countries, but he does not stop with a simple analysis of the phenomenon. He also plumbs the ethical and legal complications that ensue when Western consumers buy goods that were gotten illicitly or forcibly. When it comes to international trade, the old rule 'might makes right' still applies, and the West, on both the institutional and individual consumer level, is perpetuating the injustice. However, Wenar sees a positive precedent in once-legal coercive systems, like slavery, which are now reviled. Given the elimination of previous unjust practices, it is possible that we will come to see the trade in conflict minerals and other controversial resources as equally immoral. To address the problem, Wenar develops various democracy-based clean trade policies that will allow us to disentangle ourselves from the dictators and warlords who rely on natural resource sales to perpetuate their rule. The resulting world will be safer both for those under the boot of those warlords and dictators, and for Western countries, which have lost a substantial degree of control over their foreign policy because of their addiction to ill-gotten resources. In every sense a big-idea book, Blood Oil will reshape our understanding of what we can do to create a more a just world and challenge us to wean ourselves from materials extracted and sold to us by unjust regimes.