Extract: In the words of its author, this book ‘seeks to shed light on some lesser known aspects of our history, in an effort to encourage ordinary citizens to reflect on longer-term consequences of what our governments do with our mandate.’ The book suggests that the US agenda in Iraq was about oil, but not about oil in the simple sense many believed. This war (2003) was not an issue of corporate greed but about geopolitical power above all. Engdahl’s book seeks to provide an analysis of power politics centred on the politics of oil. The last century was the American Century which rested on two pillars: the uncontested roles of US military power, and of the dollar as world reserve currency. The power of the dollar and the power of the US military had been uniquely intertwined with one commodity: petroleum. As Henry Kissinger once said: ‘Control energy and you control the nations.’...