1973 Oil Crisis - Effects On International Relations

Effects On International Relations

The Cold War policies of the Nixon administration also suffered a major blow in the aftermath of the oil embargo. They had focused on China and the Soviet Union, but the latent challenge to U.S. hegemony coming from the Third World became evident. U.S. power was under attack even in Latin America.

The oil embargo was announced roughly one month after a right-wing military coup in Chile led by General Augusto Pinochet toppled socialist president Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973. The United States' subsequent assistance to this government did little to curb the activities of socialist guerrillas in the region. The response of the Nixon administration was to propose doubling of the amount of military arms sold by the United States. As a consequence, a Latin American bloc was organized and financed in part by Venezuela and its oil revenues, which quadrupled between 1970 and 1975.

In addition, Western Europe and Japan began switching from pro-Israel to more pro-Arab policies. This change further strained the Western alliance system, for the United States, which imported only 12% of its oil from the Middle East (compared with 80% for the Europeans and over 90% for Japan), remained staunchly committed to backing Israel. The percentage of U.S. oil which comes from the nations bordering the Persian Gulf has remained steady over the years, with a figure of a little more than 10% in 2008.

Although historically having no connections to the Middle East, Japan was the most heavily dependent on its oil from this region, making up 71% of its imported oil from the Middle East in 1970. However, on November 7, 1973, the Saudi and Kuwaiti governments declared Japan a "nonfriendly" country directed towards changing its policy of noninvolvement in the Arab-Israeli conflict, placing a 5% production cut in December to Japan. The December production cut to the Japanese government caused somewhat of a panic, where on November 22 Japan issued a statement "asserting that Israel should withdraw from all of the 1967 territories, advocating Palestinian self-determination, and threatening to reconsider its policy toward Israel if Israel refused to accept these preconditions" By December 25, Japan was considered a friendly state.

With the oil embargo in place, the industrial governments of the world in some way altered their foreign policy regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict and after the use of the Arab oil weapon. These included European countries such as the UK who decided to refuse to allow the United States to use British bases in the UK and in Cyprus to airlift resupplies to Israel along with the rest of the members of the European Community. It also included the Japanese restatement on November 22, to "reconsider" their relations with Israel if Israel did not acknowledge their avocations to return to their pre-1967 territorial state, although this was never acted upon. Canada shifted towards a more pro-Arab position after displeasure was expressed by many Arab governments towards Canada's Middle Eastern position as one of being mostly neutral. "On the other hand, after the embargo the Canadian government moved quickly indeed toward the Arab position, despite its low dependence on Middle Eastern oil".

A year after the start of the 1973 oil embargo, the nonaligned bloc in the United Nations passed a resolution demanding the creation of a "New International Economic Order" in which resources, trade, and markets would be distributed more equitably, with the local populations of nations within the global South receiving a greater share of benefits derived from the exploitation of southern resources, and greater respect for the right to self-directed development in the South be afforded by the North.

In the post-Cold War era, Israel continues to serve the United States as a strategically important non‑NATO ally in the Middle East. According to the American military journalist and commentator William M. Arkin in his book Code Names, the U.S. has prepositioned munitions, vehicles, and military equipment, and even a 500-bed hospital for use by U.S. Marines, Special Forces, and Air Force fighter and bomber aircraft in a wartime contingency at least six sites in Israel. Late Republican Senator Jesse Helms used to call Israel "America's aircraft carrier in the Middle East", when explaining why the United States viewed Israel as such a strategic ally, saying that the military foothold in the region offered by the Jewish State alone justified the military aid that the United States grants Israel every year. Israel is not the only country in the Middle East to host U.S. military bases, though. There are American military facilities in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia (U.S. forces withdrawn from in 2003), Oman, and the Persian Gulf states of Kuwait, Bahrain (headquarters of the United States Fifth Fleet), and Qatar.