In 1973 oil, producing Arab countries met and announced the increase of oil prices and reduction of oil by some by some percentage. In the year, a meeting was called, and in the meeting, they threatened the united states with an idea of an oil weapon if they did not change their policy regarding the Israel-Arab conflict. The meeting, which increased the prices, turned political lather economical. Their main aim as it out was to force or persuade the United State to abandon what they called ‘blind and unlimited support for Israel’. They threatened that the United States would lose everything if it did not change the policy relating Arab- Israel conflict.
At the meeting, they went further to detail on how detailed how they were going to sell oil to friendly and moderate countries. In one resolution, they grouped countries into four groups—the first group being the favoured countries that were to receive full oil requirements. At the same time, the second group was called the preferred group who were to receive oil equivalent of their average imports of Arab oil. The other group was called the neutral group of countries; they were to receive oil at the general cutback rate. At the same time, the fourth group, which they called embargoed countries, which included the USA, South Africa, Rhodesia and Netherlands, were to receive nothing.
Immediately there were diplomatic pressures relating to this form of oil weapon and in November, the same year met and showed flexibility in their demands. This weakened the blunt oil weapon, and it proved that it was not an effective instrument because the countries, which were embargoed, including the United States, had military power and used allies like Iraq to reduce the pressure through diplomatic means.
The USA realized that to weaken this oil weapon is to ensure that the oil Arab producing countries were not speaking with the same tone. To succeed, they supported the Iraq Iran war, the war that lasted eight years. Immediately after the Iraq-Iran war, Iraq turned an enemy of the USA and invaded Kuwait (From political history, Kuwait was a province of Iraq). If Sadam Hussein was to achieve his aim of reverting Kuwait from a country to a province, then Iraq could control huge reserves of oil, which he was likely to use as a weapon.
This called for USA military intervention. The USA being aware of these facts they intervened on the grounds of freedom, justice, human rights and international law, democracy and self-determination of the Kuwait people. However, the facts behind the intervention were to save the world from the blunt oil weapon. The USA succeeded in driving out Iraq from Kuwait. The aim of the USA was to drive Iraq out of Kuwait and ensure the status quo remained.
The problem of controlling oil weapon threat was further complicated when Iran, an enemy of the USA, became on its own and Iraq, formally an ally of the USA, became an enemy. The USA tried to use the Kurdish people in waging internal conflict, but they did not succeed. Therefore, in the year 2003 USA engaged in a war with Iraq on the pretext of weapons of mass destruction.
The world was made to believe that Iraq was a threat to the neighbours as they had weapons of mass destruction. In the real sense, the USA and UK feared that Iraq had enough oil reserves to help them to pursue the region’s ambitions of complete annihilation of Israel state, and if Iraq and Iran were to be stable friendly, the oil weapon would be used again. This called for the military intervention from the USA and UK to weaken Iraq and once again to reduce the threat of oil weapons.
References
Everest L.; (2005); History of US and UK Intervention in Iraq; information clearing house. Web.