12. Mikhail Gorbachev, “Soviet Lessons from Afghanistan,” International Herald Tribune, February 4, 2010.

13. Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (New York: Yale University Press, 2000), ch. 3 (Islamic Emirate).

14. Christian Science Monitor, February 9, 2007 (“alien”); interviews; Washington Post, October 5, 1998 (“implement”).

15. Coll, Ghost Wars, pp. 309–13 (“no policy,” “authorized”); interview with John Imle; “Political and Economic Assessment of Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, and Turkemnistan/Russia,” Unocal Report, September 3, 1996 (“involvement”).

16. Unocal Report (“scenario”); Coll, Ghost Wars, pp. 331, 342 (“spiritual leaders”).

17. Rosita Forbes, Conflict: Angora to Afghanistan (London: Cassell, 1931), p. xvi (“anathema”); interviews with John Imle and Marty Miller.

1. Kenichi Ohmae, The Borderless World: Power and Strategy in the Interlinked Economy (New York: HarperCollins, 1991).

2. The New York Times, December 1, 1997 (“reasonable”); Petroleum Intelligence Weekly, December 8, 1997 (“economic stars”).

3. Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 18, 157 (“darling”); Timothy J. Colton, Yeltsin: A Life (New York: Basic Books, 2008), p. 411–15 (93 percent); interview with Stanley Fischer, Commanding Heights; interview with Robert Rubin, Commanding Heights.

4. New York Times, December 26, 1998 (“understatement”), January 10, 1999 (cafeteria).

5. Interview with Robert Maguire (“roster”); Petroleum Intelligence Weekly, August 31, 1998 (“Were he alive today”); Douglas Terreson, “The Era of the Super-Major,” Morgan Stanley, February 1998.

6. Ronald Chernow, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller Sr. (New York: Random House, 1998), pp. 554–55; Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (New York: Free Press, 2009), chs. 2, 5.

7. Interview with Lucio Noto (“could survive”).

8. Interview with Laurance Fuller; interview with John Browne; interview with Samuel Gillespie; John Browne, Beyond Business (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2010), pp. 67–71; Joseph Pratt, Prelude to Merger: A History of Amoco Corporation, 1973–1998 (Houston: Hart Publications: 2000), pp. 85–86; U. S. Federal Trade Commission, “BP/Amoco Agree to Divest Gas Stations and Terminals to Satisfy FTC Antitrust Concerns,” press release, December 30, 1998 (“competition”); Amoco Corp., Proxy Statement/Prospectus, October 30, 1998.

9. Browne, Beyond Business, p. 72 (“lap of BP”).

10. Interviews with Lee Raymond, Samuel Gillespie, and Lucio Noto; Exxon Corp., Form S-4 Registration Statement Under the Securities Act of 1933, April 5, 1999; New York Times, December 1, 1998.

11. William J. Baer, testimony, U. S. House of Representatives Committee on Commerce, Subcommittee on Energy and Power, March10, 1999.

12. Wall Street Journal, December 1, 1999.

13. Robert Pitofsky, testimony, U. S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Subcommittee on Consumer Affairs, April 25, 2001 (“prices high”); Jeremy Bulow and Carl Shapiro, “The BP Amoco-ARCO Merger: Alaskan Crude Oil (2000),” in The Antitrust Revolution, ed. John Kwoka Jr. and Lawrence White (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 141 (half a cent), p. 149 (“protect competition”); Browne, Beyond Business, pp. 73–74.

14. Interviews with Thierry Desmarest and Vera de Ladoucette.

15. Interviews with David O’Reilly and William Wicker, New York Times, October 17, 2000 (Bijur).

16. Washington Post, November 19, 2001; interview with Archie Dunham.

17. Interview with Mark Moody-Stuart; Keetie Sluyterman, Keeping Competitive in Turbulent Markets 19 History of Royal Dutch Shell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 381–95.

18. Interview withDavid O’Reilly.

1. Moises Naim, Paper Tigers and Minotaurs: The Politics of Venezuela’s Economic Reform (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment, 1993), p. 19; Herbert Adams Gibbons, The New Map of South America (London: Jonathan Cape, 1929), pp. 249, 252–53.

2. Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), p. 507 (“the devil”).

3. Terry L. Karl, The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petro-States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Michael L. Ross, “The Political Economy of the Resource Curse,” World Politics 51 (1999): 297–322 (“ rent-seeking behavior”); Christina Marcano and Alberto Barrera Tyszka, Hugo Chavez, trans. Kristina Cordero (New York: Random House, 2007), p. 15 (Venezuelan academics).

4. Naim, Paper Tigers and Minotaurs, p. 24 (“reversed Midas touch”); interview with Ngazi Okonjo-Iweala.

5. Karl, The Paradox of Plenty, p. 71, 123 (“change the world!” “couldn’t lose”); Marcano and Tyszka, Hugo Chavez, p. 5 (“magical liquid”); Gustavo Coronel, The Nationalization of the Venezuelan Oil Industry: From Technocratic Success to Political Failure (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1983).

6. Karl, The Paradox of Plenty, p. 72 (“trap”); Naim, Paper Tigers and Minotaurs, pp. 34–35.

7. Marcano and Tyszka, Hugo Chavez, p. 59; Naim, Paper Tigers and Minotaurs, pp. 100–4.

8. Marcano and Tyszka, Hugo Chavez, pp. 4, 29, 43.

9. Marcano and Tyszka, Hugo Chavez, ch. 17.

10. Interview with Luis Giusti.

11. Interview with Luis Giusti.

12. Middle East Economic Survey, December 8, 1997 (Jakarta).

13. The New York Times, December 6, 1998 (“reeling”).

14. Interview with Luis Giusti (fire Giusti); Nicholas Kozloff, Hugo Chavez: Oil, Politics, and the Challenge to the U. S. (New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2006), p. 13; BusinessWeek (International Edition), October 26, 1998; Marcano and Tyszka, Hugo Chavez, p. 107 (Caldera).

15. Chavez quotes in New York Times, April 10, 1999, May 2, 1999, July 27, 2000; Richard Gott, Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution (London: Verso, 2005), p. 13 (“same sea”).

16. Brian A. Nelson, The Silence and the Scorpion: The Coup Against Chavez and the Making of Modern Venezuela (New York: Nation Books, 2009), pp. 125–26 (chief of security); New York Times, July 28, 2000 (“annihilate,” “devils”).

17. Bernard Mommer, Changing Venezuelan Oil Policy, Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, April 1999; Middle East Economic Survey, July 8, 2002.

18. Gott, Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution, p. 170.

19. Petroleum Intelligence Weekly, September 18, 2000 (“soaring oil prices”), September 25, 2000 (“brewing energy crisis”).

1. Adam Smith, Paper Money (New York: Summit Books, 1981), p. 229.

2. Petroleum Intelligence Weekly, November 11, 2002.

3. Cristina Marcano and Alberto Barrera Tyszka, Hugo Chavez: The Definitive Biography of Venezuela’s Controversial President (New York: Random House, 2007), p. 145 (“a great human network”); Brian A. Nelson, The Silence and the Scorpion: The Coup Against Chavez and the Making of Modern Venezuela (Nation Books: New York, 2009), pp. 14, 74.

4. Marcano and Tyszka, Hugo Chavez, pp. 173, 175, 180.

5. Nelson, The Silence and the Scorpion, pp. 246–47.

6. Interview with Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.