| The assumption that states fight over oil is widely accepted by policymakers, the general public, and International Relations scholars. Perhaps because of its status as taken for granted knowledge, the oil-conflict linkage has attracted limited scholarly attention. This dissertation is the first project to systematically assess when and how the presence of petroleum resources impacts the initiation and trajectory of international territorial disputes. In contrast to existing, Malthusian oil-conflict hypotheses, this project advances an alternative Petroleum Aggression Theory, which argues that the physical characteristics of oil and natural gas resources and the international political economy of petroleum discourage efforts to seize foreign resource pools. After identifying four categories of impediments to territorial petroleum conquest, the theory argues that states only attempt to conquer their way to additional oil reserves under conditions of desperation: when national survival depends on immediately accessing further petroleum resources and alternative acquisition strategies are exhausted.;There are nonetheless certain circumstances in which petroleum resources may encourage more limited forms of territorial aggression. By manipulating the various costs and benefits of conquest, the study derives six additional hypotheses about the conditions in which conflict militarization is most likely. These hypotheses, along with the Desperate State argument, are tested using a new dataset of Interstate Petroleum Disputes, 1912-2001: contests in which leaders' desire to control oil or natural gas resources contributed to territorial aggression. The qualitative analysis finds that petroleum-related aggression is most likely to occur in areas with unsettled international boundaries, when states share a history of bilateral hostility, and when additional issues are at stake. Aggression is usually limited in scope and rarely primarily inspired by states' petroleum concerns. These dynamics are explored further in three case studies of prominent, supposedly petroleum-related conflicts: Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, Axis aggression during World War II, and Nigeria and Cameroon's recently-resolved dispute over the Bakassi Peninsula. |
