ABOUT THE BOOK

In The Petroleum Triangle, Steve A. Yetiv tells the interconnected story of oil, globalization, and terrorism. Yetiv asks how Al-Qaeda, a small band of terrorists, became such a real and perceived threat to American and global security, a threat viewed as profound enough to motivate the strongest power in world history to undertake extraordinary actions, including two very costly wars.

Yetiv argues that Middle East oil and globalization have combined to augment the real and perceived threat of transnational terrorism. Globalization has allowed terrorists to do things that otherwise would be more difficult and costly: exploit technology, generate fear beyond their capabilities, target vulnerable economic and political nodes, and capitalize on socio-economic dislocation.

ABOUT Author

Steve A. Yetiv is University Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Old Dominion University. He is the author of several books, including Crude Awakenings: Global Oil Security and American Foreign Policy, and The Absence of Grand Strategy: U.S. Foreign Policy Toward the Persian Gulf (1972-2005). Yetiv has been a consultant to the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. General Accounting Office, and CNN International.