November 2017, Vol. 244, No. 11

Features

Strategic Benefits of American Boom in Oil and Gas

History is replete with examples of how countries have either sought to wield their national power to acquire energy, or used their energy resources to achieve foreign policy goals. From the Japanese decision to bomb Pearl Harbor to what had been a rapprochement between the Turkish government and the Iraqi Kurds, energy has animated and shaped pivotal geopolitical decisions around the world. Energy’s influence on global affairs means major changes in the former always have huge impacts on the latter. The last decade has in fact witnessed a revolution in energy, but not in the way that the U.S. intelligence community was anticipating when it penned the Global Trends 2025 report that anticipa