Description:

From the Athenian attack on Melos to the My Lai Massacre, from the wars in the Balkans through the first war in Iraq, Michael Walzer examines the moral issues surrounding military theory, war crimes, and the spoils of war. He studies a variety of conflicts over the course of history, as well as the testimony of those who have been most directly involved—participants, decision makers, and victims. In his introduction to this new edition, Walzer specifically addresses the moral issues surrounding the war in and occupation of Iraq, reminding us once again that "the argument about war and justice is still a political and moral necessity."

Review

Daniel Yergin's The Prize is one of the great works of narrative history — a sweeping, encyclopedic chronicle of how petroleum reshaped the modern world from the mid-nineteenth century through the first Gulf War and beyond. At nearly half a million words, it is sprawling in scope yet remarkably coherent in argument: that the quest for oil has been inseparable from the quest for mastery — over markets, over nations, over the direction of civilization itself.

The book opens with Winston Churchill's 1911 decision to convert the Royal Navy from coal to oil, a single strategic choice that encapsulates Yergin's central insight: oil is never merely a commodity. It is a source of power in every sense — economic, military, political, and cultural. From that framing, Yergin works backward to Colonel Drake's 1859 well in Titusville, Pennsylvania, and then forward through the rise of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, the scramble for Middle Eastern concessions, two world wars in which petroleum proved decisive, the creation of OPEC, the oil shocks of the 1970s, the price collapse of the 1980s, and Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait.

What makes the book exceptional is Yergin's ability to weave together three distinct registers of history. The first is the story of capitalism and corporate strategy: from Rockefeller's ruthless consolidation through rebates and drawbacks, to the Seven Sisters' cartel-like management of global supply, to the hostile takeovers and restructurings of the 1980s when T. Boone Pickens prowled the stock exchanges looking for undervalued reserves. The second is geopolitical: the Red Line Agreement, the fifty-fifty deals with Middle Eastern kingdoms, the Suez Crisis, the Arab oil embargo, the Iranian Revolution, and the Gulf War — each demonstrating how oil has functioned as the decisive variable in the global balance of power. The third is cultural and environmental: the creation of "Hydrocarbon Man," the suburbanization of America, the automobile's colonization of daily life, and the emergence of the environmental movement as a fundamental challenge to petroleum civilization.

Yergin peoples this history with a remarkable cast. The portraits are vivid — Rockefeller counseling himself in "intimate conversations," Ibn Saud carrying his national treasury in camel saddlebags, the eccentric Jack Philby playing multiple sides in the Arabian concession negotiations while trying to scrape together Cambridge fees for his son Kim (the future Soviet spy), George H.W. Bush shaving in gas station restrooms during his wildcatting days in Midland, Texas. These character studies never feel like decorative digressions; they illuminate how individual ambition, stubbornness, and chance have shaped an industry often portrayed as driven by impersonal forces.

The book's treatment of OPEC's rise and the oil shocks of 1973 and 1979 is masterful. Yergin traces how the organization evolved from a defensive grouping of producing nations into the most powerful cartel in economic history, then shows how the very success of high prices sowed the seeds of OPEC's crisis — by stimulating conservation, alternative energy sources, and non-OPEC production from Alaska, the North Sea, and Mexico. The chapters on the 1986 price collapse, when Saudi Arabia abandoned its swing-producer role and oil crashed from $31 to $10, are as gripping as any account of financial panic. The emergence of oil futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange — an institution that began as the Butter and Cheese Exchange — is told with Yergin's characteristic eye for the ironic detail that illuminates a structural transformation.

The corporate restructuring chapters are equally compelling. Pickens's assault on Gulf Oil, the Texaco-Pennzoil-Getty triangle, the $2 billion Mukluk dry hole off Alaska, the collapse of Continental Illinois bank — Yergin shows how the busting of the oil boom devastated not just the industry but the financial system undergirding it. The Mexican debt crisis of 1982, triggered by collapsing oil revenues and narrated through Finance Minister Silva Herzog's secret weekend flights to Washington, is a set piece that could stand alone as a financial thriller.

The epilogue, added for later editions, extends the narrative through 9/11, the Iraq War, the rise of Chinese demand, and the price spike of 2004-2008 that carried oil to $147 a barrel. It introduces themes — climate change, peak oil, the dominance of national oil companies — that Yergin would develop more fully in his sequel, The Quest. But even without the epilogue, The Prize stands as the definitive history of the age of oil: a work of prodigious research, narrative skill, and analytical clarity that demonstrates why petroleum has been, as Yergin puts it, "the greatest of the great industries" and why the story of its mastery is inseparable from the story of the modern world.

If the book has a limitation, it is one of perspective. Yergin writes largely from the vantage point of Western companies, Western governments, and Western consumers. The peoples who lived atop the oil — Iranians, Iraqis, Nigerians, Venezuelans — appear primarily as factors in supply equations or as obstacles to orderly extraction. The environmental critique, while acknowledged, is treated as one more variable in the energy equation rather than as a fundamental challenge to the book's own frame. These are limitations of emphasis rather than of honesty; Yergin is transparent about the costs and corruptions of oil power, even as his sympathies lie with the engineers, entrepreneurs, and statesmen who built the hydrocarbon world.

Reviewed 2026-04-10

Notable Quotes

For as long as men and women have talked about war, they have talked about it in terms of right and wrong. And for almost as long, some among them have derided such talk, called it a charade, insisted that war lies beyond (or beneath) moral judgment.

Opening of Chapter 1, 'Against Realism,' setting up the book's central project of defending moral discourse about war against realist dismissal. — moral realism, war ethics, philosophical foundations

The moral posture of mankind is not well represented by that popular proverb about love and war. We would do better to mark a contrast rather than a similarity: before Venus, censorious; before Mars, timid.

Chapter 1, noting our hesitancy to make moral judgments about war even though we make them constantly about love and personal conduct. — moral judgment, moral courage, war ethics

Here are soldiers lining up the inhabitants of a peasant village, men, women, and children, and shooting them down: we call this a massacre. It is only when their substantive content is fairly clear that moral and strategic terms can be used imperatively, and the wisdom they embody expressed in the form of rules.

Chapter 1, arguing that moral concepts about war are descriptive terms grounded in reality, not merely normative impositions. — moral language, massacre, war convention

The clearest evidence for the stability of our values over time is the unchanging character of the lies soldiers and statesmen tell. They lie in order to justify themselves, and so they describe for us the lineaments of justice. Wherever we find hypocrisy, we also find moral knowledge.

Chapter 1, on how wartime hypocrisy paradoxically confirms the existence and force of moral standards about war. — hypocrisy, moral knowledge, justification, political lying

War is always judged twice, first with reference to the reasons states have for fighting, secondly with reference to the means they adopt. The first kind of judgment is adjectival in character: we say that a particular war is just or unjust. The second is adverbial: we say that the war is being fought justly or unjustly.

Opening of Chapter 2, 'The Crime of War,' introducing the fundamental distinction between jus ad bellum and jus in bello. — jus ad bellum, jus in bello, dual judgment, war convention

War is hell whenever men are forced to fight, whenever the limit of consent is breached. That means, of course, that it is hell most of the time.

Chapter 2, on why war is tyrannical: the coercion of citizens into battle by the state removes the moral character that voluntary combat might possess. — consent, coercion, tyranny of war

Armed, he is an enemy; but he isn't my enemy in any specific sense; the war itself isn't a relation between persons but between political entities and their human instruments. These human instruments are not comrades-in-arms in the old style, members of the fellowship of warriors; they are 'poor sods, just like me,' trapped in a war they didn't make. I find in them my moral equals.

Chapter 3, on the moral equality of soldiers, the recognition that enemy combatants are not criminals but fellow victims of war's coerciveness. — moral equality of soldiers, combatant rights, shared servitude

We draw a line between the war itself, for which soldiers are not responsible, and the conduct of the war, for which they are responsible, at least within their own sphere of activity.

Chapter 3, defending the independence of jus ad bellum and jus in bello through the case of Rommel, who fought Hitler's unjust war while observing the rules of war. — responsibility, jus ad bellum, jus in bello, soldier's duty

Aggression is the name we give to the crime of war. We know the crime because of our knowledge of the peace it interrupts -- not the mere absence of fighting, but peace-with-rights, a condition of liberty and security that can exist only in the absence of aggression itself.

Chapter 4, defining aggression as the fundamental crime in the theory of war, distinguished from mere conflict by its violation of rights. — aggression, peace with rights, crime of war

The rights of states rest on the consent of their members. But this is consent of a special sort. 'Contract' is a metaphor for a process of association and mutuality, the ongoing character of which the state claims to protect against external encroachment.

Chapter 4, grounding the rights of political communities in social contract theory while acknowledging that the 'contract' is an ongoing process, not a single founding act. — social contract, state rights, political community, consent

States may use military force in the face of threats of war, whenever the failure to do so would seriously risk their territorial integrity or political independence. Under such circumstances it can fairly be said that they have been forced to fight and that they are the victims of aggression.

Chapter 5, on the Six Day War, articulating the doctrine of pre-emptive self-defense as a revision of the legalist paradigm. — pre-emption, self-defense, Six Day War, anticipatory action

Self-determination and political freedom are not equivalent terms. The first is the more inclusive idea; it describes not only a particular institutional arrangement but also the process by which a community arrives at that arrangement -- or does not.

Chapter 6, following Mill's argument that foreign intervention cannot produce genuine political freedom, which must be won through a community's own struggle. — self-determination, intervention, Mill, political freedom

The inhabitants of a city, though they have freely chosen to live within its walls, have not chosen to live under siege. The siege itself is an act of coercion, a violation of the status quo, and I cannot see how the commander of the besieging army can escape responsibility for its effects.

Chapter 10, arguing against the conventional legal view that besieging armies bear no responsibility for civilian starvation, insisting that civilians must be offered free exit. — siege warfare, noncombatant immunity, civilian rights, responsibility

Soldiers cannot enhance their own security at the expense of innocent men and women.

Chapter 19, on the absolute obligation of soldiers to accept personal risk rather than violate the rights of noncombatants. — soldier's duty, noncombatant immunity, risk-taking, moral obligation

Even in hell, it is possible to be more or less humane, to fight with or without restraint.

Chapter 2, responding to Sherman's claim that war's cruelty 'cannot be refined' by insisting that moral distinctions are possible even in warfare's worst conditions. — Sherman, restraint in war, moral distinctions, war is hell

Nuclear weapons explode the theory of just war. They are the first of mankind's technological innovations that are simply not encompassable within the familiar moral world.

Chapter 17, on how nuclear deterrence forces us beyond the limits of justice -- threatening immoral acts for the sake of preventing war. — nuclear weapons, deterrence, moral limits, technology of war

Whatever is wrong to do is wrong to threaten, if the latter means 'mean to do.' If counter-population warfare is murder, then counter-population deterrent threats are murderous.

Chapter 17, quoting Paul Ramsey's formulation of the core moral problem of nuclear deterrence. — nuclear deterrence, moral threats, Ramsey, counter-population warfare

We threaten evil in order not to do it, and the doing of it would be so terrible that the threat seems in comparison to be morally defensible.

Chapter 17, summarizing the paradox of nuclear deterrence: its immorality is justified only by the greater immorality it prevents. — nuclear deterrence, supreme emergency, moral paradox

Given the view of Nazism that I am assuming, the issue takes this form: should I wager this determinate crime (the killing of innocent people) against that immeasurable evil (a Nazi triumph)?

Chapter 16, framing the supreme emergency doctrine as a moral wager in which the decision-maker must accept the burden of criminality. — supreme emergency, Nazism, moral wager, terror bombing

These, then, are the limits of the realm of necessity. Utilitarian calculation can force us to violate the rules of war only when we are face-to-face not merely with defeat but with a defeat likely to bring disaster to a political community. But these calculations have no similar effects when what is at stake is only the speed or the scope of victory.

Chapter 16, setting the outer boundary of the supreme emergency doctrine after arguing that Hiroshima exceeded it. — necessity, supreme emergency, Hiroshima, limits of calculation

I am going to assume throughout that we really do act within a moral world; that particular decisions really are difficult, problematic, agonizing, and that this has to do with the structure of that world; that language reflects the moral world and gives us access to it.

End of Chapter 1, stating the foundational assumption of the entire book -- that moral discourse about war is real, not illusory. — moral realism, moral world, philosophical foundations

If people have a right not to be forced to fight, they also have a right not to be forced to continue fighting beyond the point when the war might justly be concluded. Beyond that point, there can be no supreme emergencies, no arguments about military necessity, no cost-accounting in human lives.

Chapter 16, on Hiroshima, arguing that pressing war beyond the point where just settlement is possible constitutes a new act of aggression. — Hiroshima, just settlement, war's end, aggression

It was not some unusual Athenian who 'repented' of the decision to kill the men of Mytilene, but the citizens generally. They repented, and they were able to understand one another's repentance, because they shared a sense of what cruelty meant. It is by the assignment of such meanings that we make war what it is.

Chapter 1, using the Mytilene debate to demonstrate that moral judgment about war is a social reality, not an individual eccentricity. — moral community, repentance, cruelty, Mytilene

When soldiers fight freely, choosing one another as enemies and designing their own battles, their war is not a crime; when they fight without freedom, their war is not their crime.

Chapter 3, summarizing the moral reality of war: voluntary combatants bear responsibility for their wars; conscripts and political subjects do not. — moral equality, freedom, responsibility, combat

The war convention is found to stand in the way of victory and, it is usually said, a lasting peace. Must its provisions, must this particular provision be obeyed? When victory means the defeat of aggression, the question is not only important; it is painfully difficult.

Chapter 3, introducing the core dilemma of the book: the tension between winning a just war and fighting it justly. — war convention, victory, moral dilemma, just war tension

Pakistan is divided, disorganized, economically backward, corrupt, violent, unjust, often savagely oppressive towards the poor and women, and home to extremely dangerous forms of extremism and terrorism – 'and yet it moves', and is in many ways surprisingly tough and resilient as a state and a society.

Lieven's thesis statement in the opening chapter, borrowing Galileo's famous phrase to capture Pakistan's paradoxical persistence despite every indicator of failure — state resilience, paradox, national character

This is a hard country. You need family or tribal links to protect you, so that there are people who will stick with you and sacrifice for you whatever happens. That way you will not be abandoned even when out of government.

A Sindhi landowner-politician explaining why kinship networks are essential for survival — the quote that gave the book its title — kinship, survival, patronage, loyalty

If I were to jump on a box and preach revolution, with the best programme in the world, you know what would happen? First, people from all the other provinces would say that we can't follow him, he's a Punjabi. Then most of the Punjabis would say, we can't follow him, he's a Jat. Then the Jats would say, we can't follow him, he's from such-and-such a biradiri.

A young Lahori executive explaining why revolution is structurally impossible in Pakistan — identity fragments into ever-smaller kinship groups that prevent collective action — identity, kinship, revolution, fragmentation

I against my brother, I and my brother against our cousins, and our family against our biradiri and our biradiri against other biradiri.

A common saying across Pakistan and the Greater Middle East, summarizing the concentric loyalties of kinship that structure all political and social life — kinship, loyalty, social structure, tribal

In Pakistan, only one institution works – the army. Nothing else does. Look at the difference between Quetta City and Quetta Cantonment. When people here enter the cantonment, their whole attitude changes. You straighten your tie, do up your shirt, leave your gun at home, become very polite.

Nawabzada Aurangzeb Jogezai, a Pathan tribal chieftain and politician in Balochistan, explaining the army's unique institutional power in Pakistan — military, institutional strength, order, contrast

There is no law! If there were a real law in this country, why would all these people come to me for help?

A Baloch Sardar explaining why hundreds of people come to him monthly for informal justice — the formal legal system is so dysfunctional that traditional arbitration fills the vacuum — justice, state weakness, informal institutions, tribal law

Below the level of the High Courts all is corruption. Neither the facts nor the law in the case have real bearing on the outcome. It all depends on who you know, who has influence and where you put your money.

A description of the state legal system cited as characteristic of the negotiated nature of Pakistani justice — corruption, justice, state weakness, patronage

Whatever the law, civil or military, the poor are always the victims of oppression.

General Musharraf writing in his memoirs — a surprising admission from a military ruler that the distinction between civilian and military government matters little to Pakistan's poor — class, oppression, military rule, poverty

It doesn't do for a judge to be too hard with the lawyers. We all know each other and there is a sort of family feeling in the legal profession. And a judge who makes himself really unpopular with the lawyers will find his promotion blocked by rumours and whispers.

A retired judge explaining why Pakistani courts grant endless adjournments and fail to discipline lawyers — professional solidarity trumps judicial efficiency — justice, corruption, professional culture, patronage

We feared this very deeply and try to keep ourselves separate. Within purely military institutions, things are honest and closely controlled. This is a matter of honour for officers and people keep tabs on each other. Corruption comes wherever there is interaction with civilian bodies.

A senior ISI officer explaining the army's deliberate separation from civilian society — the cantonments as islands of institutional integrity — military, corruption, institutional integrity, separation

If you really want to deal with a powerful miscreant in this country, you have to kill him out of hand.

Multiple police officers explaining the logic of extra-judicial executions — the courts are so corrupt and slow that killing suspects is seen as the only effective method — justice, violence, policing, state failure

The Taleban have driven out criminals and bad characters. They have stopped drug-dealing and kidnapping. We can travel in the middle of the night without problems. Before, everyone was home by 10.00 p.m. for fear of dacoits.

A tenant farmer near the Mohmand Agency explaining why ordinary people support the Taleban — they provide the order and security that the state cannot — Taleban, order, justice, state failure, popular support

Human beings can survive for centuries without democracy, and even without much security. They cannot live for more than three days without water.

Lieven's stark summary of Pakistan's true existential threat — not Islamist insurgency but ecological catastrophe driven by climate change and depletion of the Indus — climate change, water, existential threat, priorities

It is precisely the lowly origins of the Taleban and related figures which endear them to the Pathan masses. A strong though mainly unstated element of class feeling has therefore also entered into the struggle.

Lieven analyzing why educated Peshawaris who ask 'Who can respect a former bus conductor as a leader?' fail to understand Taleban appeal — the answer is: another bus conductor — class, Taleban, populism, social revolution

Ninety-nine per cent of people in this village support the Taleban, because the Taleban just want to fight the American occupiers of Afghanistan and bring Islamic Law, and everyone agrees with that.

The malik family's own steward revealing his Taleban sympathies in the Mohmand Agency — while the malik family remains blissfully unaware of the revolutionary sentiments in their household — Taleban, class conflict, elite blindness, revolution

We are brought up from our cradle to be ready to fight India and once we join the army this feeling is multiplied. So we are always happy when we are sent to the LOC or even to freeze on the Siachen. But we are not very happy to be sent here to fight other Pakistanis.

A Pakistani lt-colonel fighting the Taleban in Buner, explaining the moral crisis facing the army — trained to fight India, now ordered to kill fellow Muslims — military morale, India, civil war, identity

I talked to my wife on the phone yesterday. She said that you must be happy to have killed so many miscreants. I said to her, if our dog goes mad we would have to shoot it, but we would not be happy about having to do this.

The same lt-colonel's anguished analogy for fighting the Pakistani Taleban — duty performed without satisfaction, comparing fellow citizens to a beloved but rabid pet — civil war, moral anguish, duty, military

Much Pakistani corruption is the result not of a lack of values but of the positive and ancient value of loyalty to family and clan.

Lieven's reframing of corruption as an expression of kinship loyalty rather than moral failure — a central insight of the book's structural analysis — corruption, kinship, values, social structure

So the ancient Pakistani kinship groups and the modern Pakistani state dance along together down the years, trapped in a marriage that ought to be antagonistic, but has in fact become essential to the nature of each party.

Lieven's metaphor for the symbiotic relationship between traditional social structures and the formal state — each sustains and parasitizes the other simultaneously — kinship, state, symbiosis, political structure

Well, what do you expect? The army wears uniforms and beats up people, and so do the police, so of course the lawyers wear their black jackets and beat up people. It is what you do if you have power in this country.

A Lahori friend's cynical observation after lawyers physically attacked a police officer and then a camera crew — power in Pakistan expresses itself through violence regardless of institutional form — violence, power, institutional culture, cynicism

It is worth stressing this, because one reason why Pakistan is so little known and so badly misinterpreted in the West is that so many analysts and commentators are too afraid to go there, or, if they go, to travel outside Islamabad.

Lieven criticizing the Western analytic establishment for producing commentary about Pakistan based on fear rather than fieldwork — Western ignorance, analysis, methodology

The run-of-the-mill officer feels very proud of the fact that the army is a very efficient organization and is therefore a role model for the rest of the country in terms of order, discipline, getting things done and above all patriotism. He is very proud of Pakistan and very proud of the army.

Lt-General (retired) Tanvir Naqvi describing the self-image of the Pakistani officer corps — the military as the only institution in Pakistan that generates genuine institutional pride — military, patriotism, institutional pride, discipline

The facts are stark. Pakistan is already one of the most water-stressed countries in the world, a situation that is going to degrade into outright water scarcity due to high population growth. There is no feasible intervention which would enable Pakistan to mobilize appreciably more water than it now uses.

World Bank report on Pakistan's water crisis quoted by Lieven as evidence of the country's most fundamental long-term threat — water crisis, climate change, population, development