About this item
Natural resources like oil and minerals are the largest source of unaccountable power in the world. Petrocrats like Putin and the Saudis spend resource money on weapons and oppression; militants in Iraq and in the Congo spend resource money on radicalization and ammunition. Resource-fueled authoritarians and extremists present endless crises to the West-and the source of their resource power is ultimately ordinary consumers, doing their everyday shopping at the gas station and the mall.In this sweeping new book, one of today's leading political philosophers, Leif Wenar, goes behind the headlines in search of the hidden global rule that thwarts democracy and development-and that puts shoppers into business with some of today's most dangerous men. Wenar discovers a rule that once licensed the slave trade and apartheid and genocide, a rule whose abolition has marked some of humanity's greatest triumphs-yet a rule that still enflames tyranny and war and terrorism through today's multi-trillion dollar resource trade.Blood Oil shows how the West can now lead a peaceful revolution by ending its dependence on authoritarian oil, and by getting consumers out of business with the men of blood. The book describes practical strategies for upgrading world trade: for choosing new rules that will make us more secure at home, more trusted abroad, and better able to solve pressing global problems like climate change. Blood Oil shows citizens, consumers and leaders how we can act together today to create a more united human future.
About the Author
Leif Wenar holds the Chair of Philosophy and Law at the School of Law, King's College London. After earning his Bachelor's degree from Stanford he edited an autobiographical volume by the Nobel-winning economist F.A. Hayek and was Karl Popper's research assistant. He went to Harvard to study with John Rawls, and while there took classes with Amartya Sen and led discussions for Michael Sandel's course on Justice. He wrote his Harvard qualifying thesis on Karl Marx's theory of history, and his doctoral dissertation on property rights with Robert Nozick. He is the author of many articles on rights, justice and today's urgent international issues. He has been a Visiting Professor at the Princeton Department of Politics, a Visiting Professor and a Fellow at the Princeton University Center for Human Values, a Visiting Professor at the Stanford University Center on Ethics in Society, a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University School of Philosophy, a Fellow of the Center for Ethics and Public Affairs at The Murphy Institute of Political Economy, and a Fellow of the Program on Justice and the World Economy at The Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs. In Spring 2016 he will be back at the Stanford, this time as William H. Bonsall Visiting Professor in the Department of Philosophy.
