When people say the Iraq War was “for oil,” the obvious question is: Oil for whom? There are three basic theories.
First, as Jacob Mundy explains, citing US foreign policy critic Andrew Bacevich, a war for oil such as in Iraq ultimately aims “to preserve the American way of life, rooted in a specific understanding of freedom and requiring an abundance of cheap energy.” In other words, by unlocking Iraq’s oil, the United States ensured cheaper oil prices on global markets to the benefit of US consumers and “the American way of life.”
Yet any analyst of the global oil market would understand that if you want cheap oil, the last thing you should do is ignite massive geopolitical conflict in the Middle East (just look at the oil price surge in the wake of the bombardment of Iran). The invasion of Iraq was followed by one of the largest booms in oil prices in the history of the industry (not only because of the war, it must be said, but mostly because of surging demand from China). Cheap oil did return, but not really because of Iraq. It was more because of the surge in US domestic production.
Second, there is a more direct theory that the United States not only wanted cheap oil or lower oil prices in general, but that it specifically wanted to commandeer Iraq’s oil solely for its own domestic consumption. It wanted to, as Trump claimed it should in 2011, “take the oil” for US consumers specifically. The evidence for this claim is even less convincing. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), in 2024, only 6 percent of Iraq’s crude oil exports went to the United States. This is not an outlier — it was only 4 percent in 2021 and only a bit higher at 14 percent in 2014. As with most Middle Eastern oil these days, most of Iraq’s oil is bound eastward — 72 percent of its exports go to Asia.
Third, perhaps the most alluring theory given the Bush administration’s oil ties, is that the invasion was not on behalf of the American consumer at all but on behalf of American oil capital. Many expected the invasion to lead to a full-on neoliberal privatization of Iraq’s nationalized oil sector and a veritable bonanza for US firms.
But this did not happen either. In fact, the regime installed by the United States went out of its way to privatize just about everything except oil. As a helpful explainer from 2016 puts it:
There was no appetite among Iraqi politicians or people for privatisation. The occupation was also in no position to push through any reform that could unite nearly all the country’s political forces in opposition. In the end, the US-led administration announced in September 2003 that foreign investment was acceptable for the rest of the economy but not for the oil sector.