The Guardian view on the geopolitics of falling oil prices | Editorial
In the geopolitics of oil production, predictions are always risky. However important it may be, the price of crude is never the single factor driving events. That a global shakeup will occur if the spectacular tumble in prices persists is, however, a fairly safe bet. Witness how record highs and lows in oil have affected international relations and political developments over the last four decades.
The oil shocks of the 1970s reshaped the global landscape and lent new significance to the Middle East. When prices collapsed in the mid-1980s, the Soviet Union's final demise owed much to the collapse in its export revenues. Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait derived in part from an ambition to capture new lands at a time of financial stringency. In Algeria, another country dependent on oil revenues, that same price collapse - which reduced the price of crude to below $10 a barrel - contributed to an election victory for Islamists, then a coup, and then civil war. All of this makes it difficult to draw clearcut conclusions about strategic winners and losers. Of course, the liberal democracies of the west benefited from the end of the Soviet bloc, but it is hard to argue that low oil prices in the Arab and Muslim world led to much peace and stability.
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