In some cases, the State Department's Energy Bureau may enter into agreements directly with other countries. In August, it signed a memorandum of understanding with Grenada to provide technical assistance and encourage private investment in sustainable energy technologies.
Although Harvard's Nye considers the Grenada agreement “trivial,” he sees it as further evidence of America's rising status. Caribbean votes, energy subsidies will allow us to compete in the region. ”
The United States has used its energy resources as a diplomatic tool. In the summer of 1941, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration imposed licensing requirements on oil exports to Japan, “effectively amounting to a total embargo,” said Victor McFarr, an assistant professor of history at the University of Missouri. Rand said in an email. “This is the first time that access to oil has been used as a foreign policy tool on a large scale,” he added. At the time, the United States accounted for nearly two-thirds of the world's oil production, but “rather than deterring Japanese aggression, the embargo actually pushed Japan toward war,” he said. .
Ellen R. Wald, a professor of Middle East history at Jacksonville University, draws parallels between the United States' growing role as an energy supplier and the postwar era, when the United States remained an oil power. Government officials poured oil purchased from abroad to rebuild Europe as part of the Marshall Plan.
During the Suez Crisis of 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration used access to oil to blackmail Britain and France. After Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal Company in July 1956, Britain and France launched a surprise air raid to capture the vital waterway on October 31 (two days earlier). Enraged at being blindsided (Israel had invaded the Sinai peninsula in cooperation with Britain), the Eisenhower administration intensified its pressure tactics, depreciating the British pound, and threatening to limit British and French fuel reserves. At the time, the government threatened to cut off oil supplies. Britain and France quickly relented.
