Feeding Mars Logistics in Western Warfare from the Middle Ages to the Present or Crude Awakenings

Feeding Mars: Logistics in Western Warfare from the Middle Ages to the Present

Author: John A Lynn

Mars must be fed. His tools of war demand huge quantities of fodder, fuel, ammunition, and food. All these must be produced, transported, and distributed to contending forces in the field. No one can doubt the importance of feeding Mars in warfare, and it takes no great effort to recognize that logistics has always been a major aspect of large-scale armed struggle. Yet, despite its undeniable importance, surprisingly little has been written about logistics. The literature on warfare is full of the triumphs and tragedies of common soldiers and the brilliance and blundering of generals. But logistics lacks the drama of combat. It can be expressed on balance sheets no more exciting than shopping lists; movement is not measured by the dashing gallop of charging cavalry but by the steady plod of draft horses.Feeding Mars is an important contribution to the study of this essential aspect of warfare as practiced by Western powers from the Middle Ages to the Vietnam War. It deals with logistics across a broader time span than that covered in any other work on the subject and emphasizes the various ways in which the essential materials of war have been produced, acquired, and transported to fighting forces in the field.Feeding Mars makes a major contribution to military history and sheds new light on an important, but too often overlooked, aspect of warfare.

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Crude Awakenings: Global Oil Security and American Foreign Policy

Author: Steve A Yetiv

"The real story of global oil over the past twentyfive years is not about the spillover effects of Palestinians fighting Israelis, or terrorist attacks on U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, or Iraq's stormy relationship with Kuwait. It is not even about periodic small and largescale U.S. attacks on Iraq. Rather, the real story is about longerterm developments that have changed the international relations of the Middle East, politics at the global level, and world oil markets. These developments have increased oil stability."from the Introduction

Thirty years after OAPEC shattered world markets for oil, the Western world remains profoundly dependent on foreign, particularly Middle Eastern, sources of petroleum. U.S. political rhetoric is suffused with claims about the vulnerability caused by this dependence. Hence, many political analysts assume that a search for stability of petroleum supplies is an important element of contemporary American foreign policy.

Steve A. Yetiv argues that common assumptions about oil markets are wrong. Although prices remain volatile, Yetiv's account portrays a world market in petroleum products far more benign and predictable than the one to which we are accustomed. In Crude Awakenings, he identifies and analyzes real and potential threats to the global energy supply, including wars, revolutions, coups, dangerous alliances, oil embargoes, Islamic radicalism, and transnational terrorism. However, he also shows how some of these threats have been mitigated and how global oil security has been reinforced.

Author Bio: Steve A. Yetiv is Professor of Political Science at Old Dominion University. He is the author of Explaining Foreign Policy: U.S. Decision Making and the Persian Gulf War; America and the Persian Gulf; and The Persian Gulf Crisis.

Table of Contents:

1	Introduction	1
2	Threats to Saudi stability	20
3	Power shifts	41
4	The chief guarantor of oil stability	59
5	The United States in the Middle East before and after September 11	77
6	The Cold War and global interdependence	97
7	The China factor	121
8	The oil weapon	139
9	Multiple cushions for oil shocks	151
10	Oil market dynamics and OPEC	178
11	Global oil, high technology, and the environment	193
12	Twenty-first-century threats to global oil stability	207
App	The Middle East and global energy : a chronology, 1973-2003	230