David M. Wight’s Oil Money argues that the high oil prices of the 1970s helped to alter the course of international history by reconfiguring the relationship between the United States and one of the world’s most important oil producing regions, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Wight frames the United States as constituting an empire insofar as it maintained “disproportionate power” (4) over many nations and regions, which it integrated into the networks of trade, investment, and security that drove US-led globalization. His main concern is to show how the “petrodollar boom of the long 1970s” (280)—meaning the precipitous rise in oil profits in MENA nations—ultimately reshaped and benefitted the US empire. The United States, in this account, proved remarkably adaptable to the disruptions and challenges wrought by high oil prices by creating and maintaining new imperial relationships, though it did not wean itself from oil and the interdependencies inherent in its use. The resulting international order was in large part built on relationships infused with petrodollars.

The book’s argument unfolds over ten chapters, an introduction, and a conclusion. Wight sets the stage for his drama by reviewing the history of Western oil interests in the MENA and the two key events of the early 1970s that threatened the US empire in the region: the Gulf nations’ decision to raise their oil prices by 70 percent and the subsequent oil embargo against the United States intended to undermine its support for Israel in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Wight’s petrodollar analysis gets going in the third chapter on US government efforts to, in the words of Henry Kissinger, “soak up [Saudi] dough” by pursuing “petrodollar interdependence” (84) between the two nations. Subsequent chapters cover the role of petrodollars in US relations with the MENA, including Egypt, the Iranian Revolution and its aftermath, the advent of the Carter Doctrine, and efforts by various MENA nations to either resist or integrate themselves into the US-led petrodollar order, all with varying degrees of success.

Oil Money is a well-researched study that contributes significantly to our understanding of the role that the financial dynamics of oil played in shaping the projection of US power abroad. The economic structures and incentives of petrodollars informed and shifted how the United States and MENA nations related to each other. But, as the use of arms sales agreements to absorb petrodollars demonstrates, those new relations also intensified regional violence, inequality, and unaccountable state power. Although Wight admirably attempts to integrate “cultural narratives” (7) into his account, particularly from Arab and Iranian sources, the book’s analyses of popular films and other sources do not always add significantly to its larger argument. Nevertheless, Wight ultimately succeeds in demonstrating the important role that the energy crisis and subsequent petrodollar flows played in remaking the international order. He shows how the United States emerged a winner—with new allies, lower oil prices, and the further expansion of capitalism—but at the cost of new enemies and conflicts that continue to shape the world today.