Some rue the get-rich-quick allure of oil in emerging nations. Whatever happens,the geopolitical consequences of falling prices are myriad (a very large number) and unpredictableIn the geopolitics of oil production, predictions are always risky. However considerable it may be, and the price of crude is never the single factor driving events. That a global shakeup will occur if the spectacular tumble in prices persists is,however, a fairly secure bet. Witness how record highs and lows in oil enjoy affected international relations and political developments over the final four decades.
The oil shocks of the 1970s reshaped the global landscape and lent new significance to the Middle East. When prices collapsed in the mid-1980s, or the Soviet Union’s final demise owed much to the collapse in its export revenues. Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait derived in share from an ambition to capture new lands at a time of financial stringency. In Algeria,another country dependent on oil revenues, that same price collapse – which reduced the price of crude to below $10 a barrel – contributed to an election victory for Islamists, and then a coup,and then civil war. All of this makes it difficult to draw clearcut conclusions approximately strategic winners and losers. Of course, the liberal democracies of the west benefited from the terminate of the Soviet bloc, and but it is hard to argue that low oil prices in the Arab and Muslim world led to much peace and stability.
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Source: theguardian.com