Example international relations dissertation topic 8:

Inspired by a singular desire for oil: Explaining American foreign policy in the Middle East from 1960-2000.

Senator Ernest Hollings (Democrat: South Carolina) opined, in Senate on the 12th January 1991, that President George H.W. Bush had been prompted to act over Kuwait by the need to protect American oil interests and would not act in other areas of ‘naked aggression’ (such as Lithuania) because ‘Lithuania does not have oil’. This dissertation, in noting that America has become increasingly dependent upon imported oil since the late 1960s, advances the proposal that oil rather than ideology has been, consequentially, the predominant shaper of American foreign policy in the region and so doing it looks not only at Iraq but also America’s changing relationship with Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Suggested initial topic reading:

• Bromley, S. (2005). ‘The United States and the control of world oil’, Government and Opposition, Vol. 40, pp. 225-255.
• Cameron, F. (2005). US foreign policy after the Cold War. London: Routledge.
• Halper, S. and Clarke, J. (2004). America alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the global order. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.