The Saudi-American Bargain

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Some of the most important institutions in this organization of the human species are oil companies. From the old pioneering juggernauts like Standard Oil to the Chevrons and Exxon Mobils of today, they are some of the most important forms of organizing people and human behavior that our species has ever produced. They orchestrate the transfer and consumption of nearly everything we do, eat, read, watch, smell, and cook, and they have permanently, irreparably altered the environment of earth.

And they are intimately, inextricably linked with the policies of nation states and the ways in which they relate in peacetime and their reasons for war. One in particular– the one we are talking about today– is very closely related to not just one but two state projects: Saudi Aramco