There is a common trope repeated each time the US responds to a terrorist attack or some other threat in the Middle East. People say, “The US only goes to war for oil,” by which they mean that the US seizes the oil of countries it goes to war with.
This claim makes very little sense because the US is not facing a shortage of oil. It has the eleventh-largest oil reserves on the planet, is the world’s second-largest oil exporter, and is a net exporter of oil. The two largest US import partners are Canada, at 52 percent of imports, and Mexico, at 11 percent, and the US has not gone to war with either country in the past century.
An examination of US conflicts since 1950 shows that the United States has repeatedly fought in countries that had no significant oil at all. Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, the Dominican Republic, Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and the Philippines all had negligible oil reserves.
The same applies to Nicaragua, Liberia, Rwanda, Uganda, Zaire, Mali, Niger, and Chad. These conflicts spanned every region of the world and involved many different strategic considerations, none of which were oil theft.
There is also no modern case where the United States invaded a country and took ownership of its oil fields or reserves. Even in the most frequently cited examples, the oil remained under the formal control of the national government. After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the country’s oil sector remained state-owned, and foreign firms operated under technical service contracts with tight margins.
The major bid rounds involved companies from the United States, Europe, China, and Russia, all under Iraqi government oversight. Kuwait’s oil stayed Kuwaiti after the 1991 Gulf War, and the US did not annex fields or receive special access. In Libya, the national oil company and licensing system remained intact after Gaddafi’s fall, and there was no exclusive US claim on production.
Older cases often mentioned also do not show US seizure of oil. The 1953 Iran coup did not result in American ownership of Iranian oil, and Saudi Arabia’s ARAMCO shifted from a private concession to national control through negotiation, not invasion. If the standard is that the US invades a country and takes possession of its oil, there is no example of this in the post-World War II era.
When critics cannot show that the US seized oil, they often shift to the claim that the US fights wars to obtain discounted oil. This is also unsupported. Crude pricing is global and tied to benchmarks such as Brent, WTI, and Dubai/Oman. Any deviation from these benchmarks would be visible in customs filings, refinery records, corporate disclosures, and international trade statistics.
Oil is tracked through overlapping systems, including tanker manifests, AIS transponders, satellite monitoring, and mandatory reporting to insurers and reinsurers. Because multiple independent actors record each transaction, discrepancies are immediately exposed, making secret discounted sales effectively impossible.
Iraq’s post-2003 exports demonstrate this clearly. Iraq sells into the global market, and major buyers include China, India, and European states. Throughout the 2010s, China became one of Iraq’s largest customers. If the United States had arranged a special cut-rate supply, it would conflict with the public data and the reporting by the numerous foreign companies operating in Iraq.
Where oil has mattered is not in theft or price manipulation but in protecting the global flow of energy. The United States has taken military action to prevent oil fields from falling into the hands of terrorist groups and to keep shipping lanes open.
In Syria, US forces positioned near oil fields were there to deny revenue to ISIS, not to export oil. Production from these fields is small and does not enter the US market. Broader US policy in the Gulf, including the Carter Doctrine and long-term security ties with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE, reflects the strategic importance of ensuring that global energy markets remain stable rather than any attempt to seize resources.
In sum, while oil has occasionally been a strategic consideration in US foreign policy, there is no evidence that the United States has invaded a country to steal its oil or to acquire cheap oil. Decades of transparent global pricing, shipping, insurance, and regulatory systems make such claims impossible to substantiate, and the historical record shows that US wars overwhelmingly occurred in countries with no meaningful oil at all.
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