Acclaimed author and investigative journalist Edwin Black will speak at a September 15 event in Washington D.C. on the role of petroleum in U.S. foreign policy towards the Mideast and the roots of decades-long struggle over power and energy supplies. Black’s latest book is British Petroleum and the Redline Agreement--The West's Secret Pact to Get Mideast Oil, which will provide a basis for his presentation. Black is said to be the man who coined the term"petropolitics." Sponsored by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, Black’s lecture will be at the Carleton Ballroom of the St. Regis Hotel in Washington D.C.
British Petroleum and the Redline Agreement has brought him accolades from analysts who watch the Mideast and the current devolution of decades-old dictatorships in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, and the possible rise of Islamist regimes.
In Redline, Black again brings to the table his considerable gifts for research and the excavation of a complex nexus of relationships that sustains America’s and the world’s petroleum addiction. British Petroleum has long been nurtured by the wars in what is now Iraq. The 2010 oil platform disaster in the Gulf of Mexico brought to light for Americans its tangled web of deceit. The book now adds the back story of shady diplomacy, petropoliticized wars, and realpolitik that made British Petroleum and created the modern Middle East.
At JINSA, Black will also draw upon his collection of books relating to petroleum. These include Internal Combustion, The Plan, and Banking on Baghdad. His work provides historical context to the troubles of the so-called Arab Spring that have led to the Fall for Libya’s Muammar Gadhafi and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak.
Critical acclaim for his petropolitical investigations have been voiced former National Counterterrorism director Richard A. Clarke who reviewed the book in the Washington Post Book World, saying “Black's impressive analysis, which included looking at more than 50,000 original documents and hundreds of scholarly books and articles ... explains why the West's record in the region so complicates nation-building there today.” Writing in the Miami Herald, business writer Richard Pachter wrote that the book is “solid and evocative throughout. For those interested in business history, his study of the relationship between commercial and political interests, especially the company that eventually became British Petroleum, is well worth the price of admission.”
Black’s books have been New York Times bestsellers and have appeared in 14 languages in 65 countries including major newspapers and magazines in the U.S., Europe and Israel. He has been interviewed on Oprah, the Today Show, CNN Wolf Blitzer Reports and NBC Dateline in the US as well as on European and Latin American networks. His work has been the subject of documentaries and many of his books have been optioned for movies – with two in active production.
Black lectures at hundreds of locales per year, and has appeared at such prestigious venues as the Library of Congress, the Simon Wiesenthal Institute in Los Angeles, the British War Museum in London, the Institute for War Documentation in Amsterdam and Carl Orff Hall in Munich.
For more information on the Washington D.C. lecture, see: JINSA. For a trailer on British Petroleum and the Redline Agreement click here.
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