Oil, resources, and the Cold War

1945-1962

DAVID S. PAINTER

Control of strategic raw materials played a key role in the origins and outcome of World War II and continued to be a source of power and policy during the Cold War. Modern warfare generated an unprecedented demand for oil and other resources, and modern industrial society consumed massive amounts of energy and raw materials. The United States and the Soviet Union were continent-spanning countries rich in oil and strategic minerals, and their control of these resources helped underpin their power. Both also sought to gain access to resources outside their borders. The United States possessed the military and economic capability to look all over the world, especially to the Third World, for resources for itself and its allies. Lacking comparable power projection and economic capabilities, the Soviet Union was forced to look to its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe to meet its needs.

British, French, and Dutch colonies in Southeast Asia possessed tin, rubber, tungsten, and oil, and European colonies in Africa contained several strategic minerals, including copper, cobalt, manganese, chrome, uranium, and industrial diamonds. Raw materials were an important source of dollar income for most European colonial powers, and the profits British oil companies made in the Middle East were essential to Britain’s balance of payments and its ability to continue to maintain military forces in the region. Latin America was also rich in strategic raw materials, including petroleum, copper, manganese, nickel, tin, tungsten, and bauxite. Revolutionary nationalism in the Third World threatened Western access to vital raw materials, disrupted plans to draw on Third World resources to rebuild the economies of Western Europe and Japan, and weakened the overall Western position in the Cold War.

Rather than attempt to survey the entire range of strategic raw materials, this chapter will focus on uranium and oil. Access to uranium, the main ingredient in the atomic bomb, was an important strategic issue during the first decade of the Cold War. Oil was central to military power and economic

Life, and control of oil was a key source of power and influence throughout the Cold War.