An essay titled The Central Role of Energy in the Geopolitics of Late Capitalism argues that energy is both the material basis of economic growth and an instrument of geopolitical control. It says fossil fuels powered expansion and dominance, while markets, the petrodollar, sanctions and warfare turned energy into a means of maintaining power.
France appears in that account through the 1956 Suez crisis. After Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, Britain and France, in secret collusion with Israel, invaded Egypt. US President Eisenhower refused emergency oil supplies to Britain and France. The Times of London later observed that Prime Minister Anthony Eden was the last prime minister to believe Britain was a great power and the first to confront a crisis which proved she was not. The essay says the crisis also encouraged the super tanker, which was less exposed to political risk than the canal and pipelines.
The same history traces later struggles over oil. In 1973 Arab producers cut output by 5 percent a month and embargoed oil to the United States and the Netherlands, and prices quadrupled. Panic buying after Iran's 1978 revolution drove prices from $13 to $34 a barrel, and the Iran-Iraq war removed 4 million barrels a day from the market. In 1990 Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait; a US-led coalition acting under UN authorization drove Iraqi forces out.
The essay says a fossil-fuel-rich Russia's ability to cut off gas was later used in its conflicts with Ukraine. After the 2022 war, Europe tried to reduce dependence on Russian pipeline gas, accelerated LNG import terminals and turned to seaborne gas from the United States and the Middle East. In January 2026 the EU banned imports of refined petroleum products made in third countries from Russian crude, aimed at oil processed in India, Turkey and Georgia. In August 2026 the US Senate passed, by 86 votes to 11, a bill sanctioning Russia and Iran. It would let the president impose tariffs of up to 100 percent on goods from the five largest importers of Russian oil and natural gas, currently including China and India, with exemptions for European allies and Japan that are moving away from Russian gas.
It also describes a 2026 attack by the United States and Israel on Iran, followed by an Iranian blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which it says carries about one-fifth of the world's seaborne oil. Brent crude, it says, nearly doubled in weeks, from $65–70 a barrel to $120.
On the shift away from fossil fuels, the essay argues that competition for lithium, cobalt and rare earths is creating new extraction in the Global South, while China holds 70–80 percent of the global market in photovoltaics and batteries. It says about 1.1 billion people lack electricity, 84 percent of them in rural areas of the Global South, and that the Global North, 16 percent of the world's population, has released 69 percent of cumulative greenhouse gas emissions since the Industrial Revolution. It contends that changing global energy governance and power relations, rather than technology alone, is required.