Colgan *10 explores oil and war

 

The author: An assistant professor at the School of International Service at American University in Washington, D.C., Colgan studies international security and global energy politics. His article on petro-aggression in the journal International Organization won the Robert O. Keohane Award for the best article published by an untenured scholar. Previously he worked at the World Bank and McKinsey and Company.

 

The book: This study examines the relationship between oil-exporting nations whose revenue from net oil exports are at least 10 percent of their GDP — which he calls “petrostates” — and aggressive foreign policy. Cogan argues that oil income creates some incentives that increase the chance that a nation will be involved in interstate conflict and other incentives that decrease the likelihood of aggression. The key, he says, is the petrostate’s leader and domestic politics. “When a leader comes to power through a tumultuous domestic revolution … he is much more likely to have aggressive, risk-tolerant, ambitious preferences,” wrote Colgan on the blog New Security Beat. “Oil and revolutionary leaders are a deadly combination.” Petrostates, he writes in the book, “are among the most violent states in the world.”