Introduction

In the run-up to the American invasion of Afghanistan, much was made of a previously obscure infrastructure proposal: a gas pipeline to connect the Caspian Sea with Pakistan and the open ocean beyond.  This led to breathless articles claiming, “it’s about oil” and statements about a new American War for Oil from the Green Party USA and others.  This theory never bore out, despite two full decades of American occupation – most likely because the actual export routes from Azerbaijan were shorter, more direct to European markets and did not have to pass over the forbidding landscapes of Afghanistan and eastern Turkmenistan.  Even though this information was clearly available in 2001, it seemed that some among the American Left had difficulty envisioning an imperial war without a petroleum motivation. This, of course, does not mean that there has been no thoughtful criticism of other forms of imperialism, but only that our commentaries and organizations have too often ignored nuance and complexity for simple understandings of international affairs.

With the advent of the Russian invasion of the Ukraine in early 2022, this blind spot has reemerged with some factions of the Left, especially among sectarian groups, having difficulty even recognizing the existence of any imperialism but oil-based adventurism by hegemonic Western states. However, the Ukrainian War in fact points us towards an alternative form of imperialism, a war not for oil in the sense that American interventions in Iraq or Libya could be understood, but instead by oil. As climate activist Bill McKibben wrote:

This is not a “war for oil and gas” in the sense that too many of America’s Middle East misadventures might plausibly be described. But it is a war underwritten by oil and gas, a war whose most crucial weapon may be oil and gas, a war we can’t fully engage because we remain dependent on oil and gas. If you want to stand with the brave people of Ukraine, you need to find a way to stand against oil and gas.

The Russian 2022 invasion of the Ukraine is only the latest in a series of imperialist wars and aggressive foreign interventions launched in recent years by autocrats funded by oil or natural gas revenues.  They include: the 2020 Artsakh War, the Saudi-Iranian proxy war in Yemen, the Syrian and Libyan Civil Wars, the 2021 Northern Chad Offensive, the various conflicts in Sudan, the 2008 Russian-Georgian War, the 2014 Ukrainian-Russian War, Russian involvement in the civil war in the Central African Republic, Chad’s numerous interventions in its neighbors, the 2011 Saudi intervention in Bahrain, the 2017-2021 Qatar Diplomatic Crisis and the 2022 Russian intervention in Kazakhstan, amongst others.

This paper is an examination of the unique forms of imperialism expressed through Wars by Oil and the petro-autocracies that launch them. It examines the dynamics that have led to an increasing number of these conflicts, the various forms that they take, and the nature of resistance to them – both on the front lines and through international solidarity.

The existence of Wars by Oil does not negate or minimize the existence of Wars for Oil, nor does the rising prominence of the former preclude future examples of the latter. Nor does the prominence of petro-autocracies negate or preclude the existence of other autocratic governments, with China and Turkey being excellent examples of non-petroleum autocratic states. This analysis should also not blind us to the current role of Western liberal states in creating this phenomenon, both as purchasers of hydro-carbons and also as sellers of advanced weaponry and policing/surveillance technology.

Petro-autocratic imperialism presents a non-revolutionary threat to the hegemonic post-Cold War Neoliberal order, as well as what remains of the post-World War II liberal order.  By this, I mean that it seeks to reorganize the list of core nations, rather than fundamentally upending the systems of global domination and exploitation.  For instance, rising semi-peripheral states may create alternative forms of financial domination of the Global South – such as China’s much-touted Belt and Road Initiative - but without altering the on-the-ground reality of financial imperialism in the Global South and how it serves to reinforce the domination of the Core. Because of its non-revolutionary character, this form of imperialism may at times overlap with the short-term strategic goals of existing Core states; the often-uncomfortable alliance between the United States and Saudi Arabia is a good example of this.

This non-revolutionary challenge is still a challenge, one which the existing Core nations have responded to with hostility. Within this imperial struggle, the petro-autocracies are particularly prominent. They present one strategy for semi-peripheral (and even peripheral) states to attempt to renegotiate their marginality in the world economic system through the (re)construction of imperial systems. There are numerous debatable examples - the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Sudan, Libya under Gaddafi, Iran and Qatar all have at least some of these characteristics. However, for illustrative purposes this essay focuses on four examples: Chad under the Déby Dynasty, Saudi Arabia - particularly under Mohammed bin Salman, Azerbaijan and contemporary Russia. 

This essay is exploratory in nature and does not endeavor to present comparative analysis of all petro-autocracies or all imperial engagements.  It aims instead to isolate and identify a phenomenon – the petro-autocrats’ War by Oil – which has been largely overlooked by Leftist analysis and to facilitate the generation of testable hypothesis and more careful sampling.  The four case studies here endeavor to show a range of forms that this phenomenon can take in order to assist in the creation of future analyses that capture the diversity of its manifestations.

Defining Terms

A common terminology is a precondition for any analysis and the lack of clear definitions for terms like ‘imperialism’ obscures considerable differences in belief. By clarifying terms, we can be more precise and ideologically critical of events as they emerge.

Imperialism

Marxist understandings of imperialism are many and varied.  Early theories focused on the ways that concentrations of capital in the hands of monopolistic enterprises lead to the construction of new, captive markets in the form of imperial conquest or focused on the ways that capitalism penetrated and dominated non-capitalist societies.  Much of this work was summarized and synthesized in Lenin’s classic Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917).

This article, however, draws upon World Systems theory which originated in the work of Immanuel Wallerstein (1930-2019).  This school understands that with origins in the 16th century and coming to maturity in the wake of European conquests and near-complete domination of the globe in the 19th century, a global system was created that linked together different classes of territories and which systematically impoverished some and enriched others. 

At the heart of this system are the “core” nations that are the imperial centers with diversified, strong economies and highly specialized technical capabilities, and that have strong militaries capable of power projection beyond their borders, and that have well-established, well-funded state apparatuses. In the 21st century, clear core nations include the United States, Germany, the UK, Japan, and France.

At the other pole are the “peripheral” nations that have narrow, specialized economies which typically provide only a handful of commodities to the global market, usually raw materials. Their governmental institutions and technical capabilities tend to be weak and they are less to project military power.  They tend to have large working and peasant classes and are bound within various systems of economic and political domination to the core nations. Clear peripheral nations in the 21st century include Bolivia, Nigeria and Cambodia.

Between these two is the “semi-periphery,” a complex concept of particular importance to this essay as many petro-autocracies fall within this category. They sit somewhere between the ends of the spectrum, often serving some “core-like” functions for a small number of neighboring peripheral states but still exporting primarily raw materials to the world system.  Many semi-peripheral states aspire to become core states and a few have historically achieved this, including the United States in the 19th century and South Korea in the 20th century.  Frequently mentioned candidates include Brazil, Russia, China, South Africa and Mexico.

Historically, one of the most common paths for transfer from the semi-periphery to core class has been the subjugation of a dependent periphery of nations and regions that provide raw materials, cheap labor and captive markets to fuel the diversification and strengthening of the new core nation.  The importation of migrant labor for hyper-exploitation, so characteristic of the organization of labor in the Gulf State petro-autocracies, is a form of imperial power worth noting, as it creates relationships of exploitation, dependency and influence between semi-peripheries and peripheral states. In this article, all of these acts of subjugation constitute the definition of “imperialism.” 

Imperialism can include a range of activities including outright conquest followed by annexation or colonization. It may also extend to intervention in the political and economic systems of other regions to make them economically, politically or militarily dependent upon the core (or aspiring core) nation. This could include supporting coups, rebel groups, or propping up dictators, subversion of political processes like elections, economic pressure to shift policies or sign unfair treaties, or the threat of military conquest. Imperialism is a multi-directional phenomenon which is primarily directed from the core to the periphery but can, in practice be directed between rival core nations or between the semi-periphery and core. The general outcome, however, is the maintenance and expansion of the exploitative World System.

Petro-Autocracy

At the heart of this analysis is the assumption that there is a particular category of state whose imperial ambitions have been largely overlooked (as a category) by Leftist discourse: the petro-autocracy.  In its basic form, the characteristics of these states are not only a large petroleum/gas energy sector but also a reliance on petro-revenues to fund the state’s core activities, a relatively small population (or small state expenditures per capita) compared to petro-revenues, lack of state accountability, massive expenditure on police state and military apparatus, and a willingness and ability to engage in imperial aggression.

Comparative analysis has shown that there is a correlation between a large petroleum sector and authoritarianism, especially in certain post-colonial contexts. Petroleum commodities are unique for their ubiquitous demand, their high profit margins, their connection to corruption and violence, and their disastrous impacts upon the global climate. At a basic level, petroleum incomes help existing authoritarian regimes survive popular revolt and/or rival elite cooption. Their petroleum revenues not only allow for the massive expansion of the state military, they also insulate the state from exterior economic pressure in the form of sanctions and from internal pressures through elaborate police states and/or systems of clientelist payoffs and bloated civil service.

This is not an essay on the nature of autocracy as a general phenomenon, but a few points are worth mentioning here. First is that it does not follow the teleological “transitionology” fallacy and pretend that there are two categories - autocracy and "democracy" – that a nation is either one or the other, and that autocracies inevitably transition into ‘democracies.’ Instead, autocracy is defined as a constellation of practices and tendencies which any government may adopt more or less of, including but not limited to: limitations on rights to speech, publication and protest; limitations to academic rights; widespread incarceration especially for political affiliation; outlawing of significant political tendencies; systemic use of violence to repress political speech; lack of mechanisms of governmental transparency and accountability; lack of elections or a lack of a reasonable chance for opposition parties to win elections.  In general, it involves a state heavily reliant upon the use of coercive power to maintain control as compared to the hegemonic consensus power successfully wielded by the ruling classes of most “integral” (to use Gramsci’s term) core states.

This paper prefers "autocracy" over "dictatorship" as the latter term focuses attention on the head of state while the former focuses on the systemic, institutional nature of the government. It is often falsely assumed that taking down the "dictator" automatically changes the government. Autocracies may be totalitarian, meaning they may have an all-encompassing political ideology, but in practice few are.

While the popular depiction of autocratic government is a place of seething social tensions and anger directed towards the state and barely contained by a police-state apparatus, it is worth noting that autocracies are not necessarily unpopular among large sectors of their populace. It is not unheard of for a wealthy autocracy - and here numerous petro-autocracies fit this description - to have relatively generous social spending programs and to enjoy some legitimacy at home. The Gulf monarchies are good examples of this phenomenon. However, this popularity – where it exists - must be continually renewed and is costly to maintain.

There are two structural weaknesses particular to petro-states that contribute to a likelihood for petro-autocracies to pursue imperial activities. The first is an economic phenomenon known as the "Dutch Disease." The second is a tendency towards kleptocracy and particularly grotesque forms of corruption.

The "Dutch Disease" is a macro-economic concept that describes the outcomes of an economy heavily dependent upon the export of a single commodity - in particular the export of oil or natural gas. As these exports increase, there is an increased demand for the exporter's currency, driving up its relative value in international currency markets. The unintended impact of this process is that other exports, in particular manufactured goods, become relatively more expensive as the currency’s value increases, making them less able to compete on the global markets. Another impact is that as state coffers grow, there is a tendency to increase the size of the bureaucracy in order to make up the lost employment from manufacturing. This means that petro-autocracies often become trapped in a cycle of declining manufacturing exports, dependency upon technology imports from abroad, and growing civil service that becomes expensive to maintain, especially during periodic downturns in the price of the state's petro-commodity exports. This pattern is often exploited by core states through the creation of trade agreements and other financial mechanisms that prevent the petro-state from implementing measures to protect local manufacturing from competition from the core.

Because of the way that it decreases the competitivity of any non-petro exports, the Dutch Disease undermines attempts to diversify the nation's economy and any attempts to move the nation from semi-periphery to core. There are mechanisms to alleviate this, like joining a larger currency union or passing oil revenues through an outside investment mechanism like Norway’s Government Pension Fund or the careful fiscal management by the Botswana government of its diamond revenues. These tend not to be attractive to petro-autocrats because of the need to use revenues to meet the conflicting demands of corrupt elites and social spending for legitimacy (discussed below).

The second structural weakness is a tendency for oil dependent states to become corrupt, often becoming out-and-out kleptocracies. This correlation between a dependency on oil/gas revenues and corruption has been well established in social science literature and is largely connected to the remarkable quantities of wealth and its concentration in very few hands before dispersal.

That autocracies are often dependent upon systems of patronage for social control to begin with means that many petro-autocracies do not resist this tendency towards corruption and instead embrace it, openly enriching a handful of oligarchs, princelings or similar individuals.

What emerges, however, is a fundamental tension between the use of petro-revenues to bolster popular support through social spending, patron-client networks or bloated civil service spending on the one hand and its diversion into the hands of kleptocrats on the other. Regime elites are faced with the often-difficult task of reigning in their own greed to maintain their political system.

Petro-autocracies are, at times, tempted to resolve this problem by what is referred to in socialist theory as "social imperialism": imperialist actions aimed at dispersing social tensions and bolstering the regime's domestic legitimacy. This can be as simple as the Sudanese regime rewarding loyal Janjaweed militias with the right to plunder and slaves from peripheral communities to as complex as the nationalist propaganda machine of Azerbaijan.

Four Examples

Petro-autocracies are not identical in their methods or goals when it comes to imperialism and our four examples present variations on the theme for the purpose of assisting in the development of sampling mechanisms that capture the entirely of the phenomenon.  The first, Chad, demonstrates an example of a peripheral state seeking to raise its global profile by serving as a military ally and willing proxy to various core nations. The eventual goal, though clearly distant, would be to serve as a semi-peripheral broker for the region in the world system. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, is clearly a potent semi-peripheral actor already and its imperial ambitions are centered around the realm of grand military geo-strategy vis-à-vis its rival, Iran. The third example, Azerbaijan, has utilized imperial actions against its Armenian neighbors as a tool for bolstering regime authenticity at home and also for bolstering its relationship with its regional patron, Turkey.  Finally, the Russian Federation’s imperial aggression reflects its status as the most powerful petro-autocracy: its ambitions include the annexation of territory, the creation of dependent satrap states and its reassertion as a member of the core states. None of these projects have existed without resistance and none have been as successful as their imperial architects would have desired, but all point to varying dynamics that we may expect to see in future examples of Petro-State imperial Wars by Oil.

Chad

When one thinks about the great autocratic military powers of the 21st century, the Republic of Chad does not feature on many lists. Chad is a landlocked nation in northern Africa named for Lake Chad, whose basin makes up much of the southern third of the country.  The northern sections are covered by the Sahara and the nation is considered part of the Sahel – the scrubby frontier between the desert and wetter lands.  An expansive nation, its populace of around 17 million is largely made up of a small-holding peasantry that grows cotton as well as subsistence crops in the south. A former French colony, the nation is physically isolated from the global flows of goods and capital and much of its population is desperately poor.

The region had been part of the French Empire since the polities, like the Kanem-Bornu Empire, were conquered piecemeal by the Europeans in the late 19th century.  As the French direct control over their African conquests waned in the mid-20th century, Chad eventually gained its independence in 1960, though the country was quickly drawn into a civil war between the French-aligned administration and Leftist rebels eventually backed by Libya.  This war lasted until 1990, with periodic imperialist interventions by the French, Libyan and Sudanese states backing various groups in the shifting political landscape of the conflict. Much of this conflict took on a religious and ethnic character, with fault lines often being drawn between lighter-skinned, predominantly Muslim groups from the North who often had alliances with Libya and Sudan and darker-skinned, predominantly Catholic groups from the Southwest who were often allied to the French.

The eventual victor of the civil war was the Patriotic Salvation Front (PSF), led by Idriss Déby, a Muslim northerner of the Zaghawa people who was trained in Libya’s World Revolutionary Center –though by the time he came to power he had fought both against and alongside the Libyan/Sudanese.  The PSF was backed by Libya’s petro-autocracy, though especially since the fall of Gadhafi, it has aligned itself with French interests. These regular interventions of these two neighbors into Chadian affairs is an example of early petro-autocracy imperialism in the region and Déby and the PSF learned the lessons of the influence that petro-revenues could bring to a state.  Throughout the 1990s, the Déby government often struggled to control the vast country against various rebel groups.

Everything shifted in the mid-2000s, when oil was discovered in the Doba region of southeastern Chad. The revenues from exporting through a pipeline to the coast to Cameroon have fundamentally shifted the balance of power: instead of being a battleground pulled back and forth between Libyan and French imperial ambitions, it became a ‘rock in a sea of instability.’ 

The Doba fields first began pumping petroleum in 2003, but it was originally under a financial regime instituted by the World Bank – itself an instrument of US imperial dominance - that kept control of the funds outside of Chad and diverted them to only infrastructure and development schemes. The Déby government began systematically challenging these anti-corruption limitations and diverting the money to the military – to the point where the World Bank officially pulled out of the scheme in 2008, an unsuccessful attempt to reassert control over the regime.

By 2014, Transparency International described a regime “characterised by insecurity, endemic corruption, human rights abuses, and a deeply entrenched patronage system that permeates all sectors of society.” According to revelations in the Panama Papers, by 2016, the Déby family had absconded with $10.76 billion.

But in addition to the Déby family, the largest beneficiaries of this massive influx of cash was the military. In 2010, the Christian Science Monitor reported that in the previous decade, Chad’s military budget had the largest percentage increase of any nation on Earth: 663%.  The Monitor in particular called out oil and gas producing nations for increases, also including Azerbaijan (471% increase) and Kazakhstan (360% increase) in its list.

The Chadian government has used this military might repeatedly in the years since.  Closely aligned with France (which still has a base in Chad) has become deeply involved in conflicts in Libya, Sudan, Mali, Niger as well as at home against rebel groups. They have been particularly central to the civil war between the military autocracy in Mali and Islamist groups, where they have increased their troops on the ground fighting for the military. The alliance with France has protected the regime from the repercussions of its corruption and even assured French support for a military coup after Idriss Déby was killed in battle in 2021 and his son, Mahamat Déby, replaced him.

Chad presents an example of the weakest of the petro-autocrats: a peripheral state which uses imperialist acts in order to transform its political and military relationships to the core – in particular to France. The Déby dynasty has sought to turn Chad from a battleground without a central state into a regional military power able to deliver imperial objectives to its French allies and patrons. Despite some success in this area, Chad itself continues to be racked by violence, with the most recent revolt led by a group called Front pour l’alternance et la concorde au Tchad (FACT), which was allied with the Qatar-backed Governtment of National Accord (GNA) in western Libya.  While FACT was defeated, it was not before killing Idriss Déby and threatening the government’s control over the country.

Saudi Arabia

Unlike in the case of Russia, American Leftists have been unequivocal of their condemnation of the Saudi state’s interventions, invasions and manipulations of its neighbors. However, these acts are often framed as proxies for the true imperial actor: the United States.  While undoubtedly the Saudis do at times act on behalf of their American allies, this petro-autocracy has demonstrated a clear imperial strategy of its own, especially since the ascension Mohammed bin Salman (“MBS”) to the position of first of Minister of Defense in 2015 and then to Crown Prince and de-facto head of state in 2017. While Saudi Arabia has been a petro-state almost since the unification of the Kingdoms of Hejaz and Nejd in 1932 (the state oil company Aramco was founded in 1944), it was under MBS that the state began to seriously, systematically, engage in imperial interventions in its neighborhood.

The context of this transformation has been an increased military rivalry with the Islamic Republic of Iran across the Persian Gulf. The Iranians as well began aggressively expanding their influence in this period: first into Iraq after the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein, then with the surprising success of Hezbollah in its 2006 war with Israel, and with the victory of Iranian-ally Hamas in the Gaza Strip in 2007> The massive Iranian intervention in the Syrian Civil War from 2011 to present also expanded its influence. The threat to autocracies presented by the Arab Spring (2010-2012) also shook the Saudi establishment.

The Saudi’s first major contemporary intervention was their 2011 invasion, with the backing of the Gulf Cooperation Council, of the neighboring monarchy of Bahrain, where the Shi’ite majority was rising up to overthrow their own petro-autocrats. Along with a smaller number of troops from the UAE, the Saudis broke the back of the popular protests and established what has become a seemingly permanent Saudi military presence on the small island state.

Beginning in 2013, the Saudis began funding armed groups in Syria to oppose the Iranian- (and Russian-) backed Assad government but also to box out Qatar, which also sought to intervene and create rebel proxy groups. The process involved the Saudis buying Cold War-era munitions from Croatia to Jordan and Saudi Arabia to arm Islamist groups in Syria. In addition to arms, reportedly the Saudis released over a thousand death-row prisoners to fight in Syria.

Funds and arms flowed until late 2020 when it became clear that the Assad Government would eventually win the war. The Saudis began a rapprochement with Damascus after this became apparent. This suggests that the goal in Syria may not have been to win, but perhaps to tie up Iranian troops and resources instead.

By this time, however, Saudi-Iranian confrontation had found a new bloodbath: Yemen. A civil war between Shi’ite rebel group from northern Yemen and the Sunni establishment under military strongman President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi came to a head in 2014 when the Houthis seized the capital in Sana’a and threatened to completely oust the government.  Saudi Arabia, led by then-Minister of Defense MBS, began an aerial bombing campaign in 2015 to prop up the remnants of Hadi’s forces in the south.  This accelerated in 2017 when MBS became Crown Prince to include the urban carpet bombing of Sana’a and a brutal naval blockade that has put Yemen on the brink of famine and racked with outbreaks of infectious disease. To support this campaign the Saudi regime has also engaged in the US imperial strategy of building overseas bases including in Djibouti across the Red Sea and in the eastern areas of Yemen. There is evidence that Saudi Arabia has engaged in a de-facto annexation of the strategic eastern province of Mahrah.

The Saudi’s imperial ambitions go beyond the containment and opposition to Iran and aim to subjugate the entire Persian Gulf region within their sphere of influence.  This goal set up a confrontation with another ambitious regional petro-autocracy: Qatar.  The Qataris were increasingly at odds with Saudi ambitions in this period and in 2017, the Saudis under MBS orchestrated an attempt at checking Qatari autonomy called the Qatar Diplomatic Crisis.  Along with the UAE, Egypt, the Maldives, and Saudi-supported proxy states in Bahrain, Libya and Yemen, the Saudis cut ties with Qatar and sought to blockade it from air, land and sea trade.  The Saudis and their allies gave Qatar an ultimatum of thirteen points, which primarily involved a cessation of any imperial activities by Qatar that threatened Saudi hegemony in the region. This began a diplomatic and economic crisis for Qatar which the emirate survived largely through further alignment with Iran and Turkey.

But the conflict between Qatar and Saudi Arabia had a bloodier side as well: the Second Libyan Civil War. Along with the UAE and Egypt, the Saudis have funded and armed the Tobruk-based government associated with warlord Khalifa Haftar and the House of Representatives. The goal of this action is to overthrow the Muslim Brotherhood-aligned Islamist government based in western Libya and stymie the efforts of Turkey and Qatar to support that government. This opposition to the Brotherhood first emerged in 2014 when the Saudis backed the Egyptian coup that overthrew Brotherhood-backed President Morsi and then banned the Brotherhood in the Kingdom itself.

Many Leftist observers might argue that these acts are better understood as examples of American imperialism by proxy, with the Saudis acting as willing, even semi-autonomous, agents of American empire. However, it is important to recognize that none of the described acts was done contrary to fundamental Saudi imperial interests.  While some of them, most notably the containment of Iran, directly align with American priorities, others – in particular the Qatari and Libyan interventions – are not.  Libya saw American allies pitted against one another in direct conflict and undermined the results of the 2011 American imperial intervention in the country.

Instead, we should understand Saudi Arabia as a powerful semi-periphery country whose regime uses imperial intervention to protect itself from both external and internal threats, starting with the popular revolutions of the Arab Spring but continuing with Muslim Brotherhood-aligned groups and the threat of Iranian-backed Shi’ite governments. It seeks to consolidate control over neighboring proxy states to create a buffer around the core regime.

Azerbaijan

The Azeri regime under President Ilham Aliyev has emerged in recent years as an archetypal example of an aggressive, kleptocratic petro-autocracy. Azerbaijan has long been recognized as one of the worst human rights violators in Europe and even before the 2020 war engaged in torture, suppression of dissent and journalism and authoritarian control.

This autocracy has long used the specter of Armenian nationalism and the existence of Artsakh, an ethnic-Armenian state on land claimed by Azerbaijan, as a focal point for Azeri identity and a convenient diversion from the regime’s crimes.  It is likely that the Azeri autocrats were threatened by the 2018 Velvet Revolution that overthrew Armenia's pro-Russian kleptocratic Republican Party. No doubt the post-Soviet “Color” Revolutions and Arab Spring uprisings terrified the autocrats in Baku as much as those in Riyadh and Moscow. The Azeris might have calculated that military loss could topple the new Armenian government (and it came very close to doing so). The outcome was a full-scale Azeri invasion of Artsakh in 2020. The Azeri imperialist intervention in Artsakh had apparently two goals: one geostrategic and the other domestic.

The Artsakh region itself had very little to offer economically: the indigenous Armenian population would be displaced by the war into Armenia, the infrastructure was thin to begin with, oriented towards Armenia and damaged in the war, and there were no strategic minerals or resources of note.  Instead, it served as a convenient diversion from the “double blow” of declining energy prices and the Coronavirus pandemic on the Azeri economy which anyway had little to offer beyond the natural gas sector and state-supported activities. The regime scrambled in 2020 – seizing management of private banks to prevent collapses for example – but without great success.

Launching a war against a region considered by international law to be part of Azerbaijan at this point clearly helped to bath the Aliyevs in legitimacy in the eyes of many Azeris.  The invasion’s primary goal may have been domestic legitimacy – so-called “social imperialism.” An Azeri youth anti-war collective released their own analysis of the events:

Our enemy though is not a random Armenian, whom we have never met in our lives and possibly never will. Our enemy are the very people in power, those with specific names, who have been impoverishing and exploiting the ordinary people as well as our country’s resources for their benefit for more than two decades. They have been intolerant of any political dissent, severely oppressing the dissenters through their massive security apparatus.. . .They have been diverting resources from essential sectors, such as education, healthcare, and social welfare, into the military, making profits for our capitalist neighbors with imperialist aspirations – Russia and Turkey. Strangely enough, every single person is aware of this fact, but the sudden wave of amnesia hits everyone as soon as the first bullet gets shot on the contact line between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The geostrategic goal likely involved establishing a land connection between Azerbaijan proper and the exclave of Nakhchivean (the “Meghri Corridor”), which to Armenia’s west and shares a border with Turkey. This would be a major strategic coup for both the Azeris and Turks. Azerbaijan would be able to directly control its autonomous “Dark Island,” cut Armenia off from direct trade with Iran, and, most importantly, create direct trade routes to Turkey. Turkish goods would no doubt flow in, but - probably more importantly - gas pipelines could flow out. This would make Azeri pipelines more secure as they would no longer flow within easy striking distance of Russian troops occupying South Ossetia in Georgia. The 2008 Russian-Georgian War taught Azerbaijan that their economic rival in the natural gas trade with Europe could easily threaten these crucial pipelines. All of this meant that the primary, and most successful, drive of the invasion was in the southern sectors, along the Iranian border and that the ceasefire agreement included language enabling the creation of the Corridor.

While the Azeri imperial ambitions are muted in comparison to the regional geo-political strategies of the Saudis or Russians, they present an example of how imperial aggression can serve internal political aims or targeted strategic territorial gains (also seen with the Saudi pseudo-annexation of al Mahrah Governate or the Russian seizure of Crimea). A full analysis of the subject must examine these more obscure cases as well as the more dramatic and well-known.

Russia

In many ways the Russian Federation is the most powerful and archetypal petro-autocracy. Russian imperial designs on its neighbors are, of course, nothing new. Even during the relatively liberal Yeltsin Presidency (1991-1999), Russia intervened in conflicts in Georgia, Moldova, and Tajikistan and waged war internally against peripheral regions of the Russian Federation in Chechnya, Dagestan, and North Ossetia.

However, the Putin Regime (2000-Present) opened a new, fundamentally aggressive strain of the Russian imperialism. The assault upon the Chechen city of Grozny, an abomination of a siege that involved a month-long bombardment resulting in the city’s annihilation, was among Putin’s very first acts in office and set a new tone for ruthlessness and brutality. After this victory, the autocracy took several years to solidify its control over domestic politics. 

The first major international conflict that Putin’s autocracy engaged in was the 2008 Russian-Georgian War which, while a Russian victory, revealed structural weaknesses in the Russian military. This led to a massive reform of the military which culminated in the first invasion of the Ukraine in 2014, which marks – for our purposes – the point where the Russian Federation had completed its transformation into an imperialist petro-autocracy.  Since 2014, Russia’s imperialist aggressions have had a particular focus on the Ukraine.

Much has been made both in Russia and abroad of Russian security concerns regarding the expansion of NATO and Ukrainian neutrality, and no doubt these factor highly into Russian calculations but cannot explain them entirely. However, NATO already borders Russia in the Baltic and what triggered the first wave of imperialist attack was not a security threat, but a crisis triggered by Ukrainian economic reorientation from Russia to the EU. It was the potential of Ukraine joining the Western economic, not military, bloc, that started the chain of events of 2014. This does not preclude the Russians seeking to strengthen their military position: for instance, early in the war, the Russian navy seized Snake Island in the Black Sea with a particularly famous exchange with the defenders.  The propaganda value of the defenders’ defiance has overshadowed the strategic blow of the island’s loss: Russia now controls access not only to the Ukrainian western port cities but also the mouth of the Danube River.

That said, ultimately, Ukraine is as important to Russian economic imperialism as it is to Russian military power - only that to admit it would require that the Russian Federation recognize its own imperial ambitions. Likewise for the West to state that Ukraine would become an economic adjunct and captive market to Russian manufacturers would invite discussions of how it would fulfill a similar role for German and Central European firms in the EU. Accusing Russia of this activity would potentially open up the West to the same accusations towards its own exploitative relationships with peripheral nations – gone is the time when Western diplomats could recognize that: “It cannot be stressed enough that without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire.”

At the heart of any putative transition from semi-periphery to core is a diversification and expansion of economic activities, including specialized manufacturing for export to the periphery. Russia’s manufacturing sector is large but is almost entirely consumed domestically. Exceptions to this would include dependent satrapies in the former USSR “near abroad” such as Belarus.  Russian exports to Belarus are far more diverse than its exports in general.  Over half of Russia’s global exports are in mineral products, especially oil and natural gas. Other major exports are generally raw materials, such as gold (5.19% of exports), wheat (2.44%), sawn wood (1.3%) and raw aluminum (1.34%).  The Russian manufacturing and automotive sectors are negligible elements of their exports except to dependent nations like Belarus, where automobiles make up a respectable 3.21% of exports.  Kazakhstan, a similarly dependent economy, also imports a significant amount of manufactured goods from Russia and a diverse number of products.  In comparison, other major trading partners like Germany and China overwhelmingly import oil (63.75% of exports to China and 61.3% to Germany).

It makes sense, therefore, if the Russian state seeks to renegotiate its global position from the semi-periphery into the core of global nations, it needs to diversify its economy and strengthen its manufacturing base.  This can be done by increasing domestic consumption or increasing exports. Domestic consumption can be increased through increasing the percentage of locally produced goods consumed by Russians or by increasing the number of Russians.  Import-substitution policies in the face of external sanctions aim to increase domestic consumption but the conquest and annexation of new territories into the Russian Federation is the quickest way to increase the Russian population (tactics to encourage natural population growth have had marginal success in Russia and are expensive for the state).  Increasing global exports – outside of energy and raw materials – has also not been successful, and it is an logical move within an imperialist framework to resolve this through the creation of new dependent territories.

The Ukraine, with its population of over 44 million, is the only significant territory bordering Russia, apart from China, that is not yet integrated into its system or the EU/NATO system and it makes sense that the Russians would seek to expand here.  A successful imperial project that annexes large areas of the Ukraine and creates a dependent state(s) in the remainder could potentially be a long-term economic boon for Russian manufacturing.

It would also give Russia a stranglehold over the wheat export market. In 2021, Russia exported 17.7% of the world’s wheat and Ukraine a further 8%.  In the Middle East-North Africa (MENA) nations, where Russian foreign policy has been deeply involved in the last decade, Russian and Ukrainian wheat make up 85% of the imports for both Turkey and Egypt and perhaps 60% of Tunisian imports.  The entire region is heavily dependent on wheat prices and Russian control over the Ukrainian market would give the Russian Federation strong leverage over its historic rival, Turkey, and countries throughout the region.

In the aftermath of the 2014 invasion of Crimea and the Donbas, Russia faced crippling economic sanctions from the West and the federal government began a process of “Sanctions-proofing” the country, apparently in preparation for the 2022 war.

One key tool was the accumulation of foreign currency and gold reserves.  The Russian state drew heavily upon reserves to prop up its economy after the 2014 sanctions but then, by 2019, had recuperated those expenditures and greatly exceeded them. By the outset of the 2022 war, they had reached unprecedented highs of over $600 billion. Without the income from oil and gas sales, these gold and currency purchases would have been simply impossible. The Russians are not the first petro-autocracy to hoard gold as a check against foreign intervention.  The Libyans under Col. Muammar Gaddafi had approximately $6.5 billion in gold in 2011 that they used to pay mercenaries after being sanctioned out of the banking system.

The Russians also constructed the SPFS, an alternative system of electronic banking payments, in preparation for cut-off form the US-led SWIFT system; they also worked with China to attempt to harmonize SPFS with the Chinese CBIBPS system. This was part of a broader strategy of withdrawing from reliance on foreign capital and banking services and an aggressive import substitution subsidy system.

While Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a break from the norms of post-Cold War international relations, it was hardly an example of Putin’s supposed insanity – instead it was carefully planned-for and consistent with inherent cruelty of Russia’s imperial objectives. Crucially, it was an act that would have been impossible without the phenomenal petro-wealth flowing into Russia or the autocratic system built upon that wealth.

International Solidarity and Next Steps

In the immediate aftermath of Russia’s 2022 invasion of the Ukraine, even those American Left groups that condemned the invasion typically coupled their critiques with a condemnation of NATO’s expansion. For example, on February 26th, the Democratic Socialists of America – the USA’s largest socialist organization – released a statement condemning the Russian attack, but did not use the term “imperialism” to describe it, reserving that term for the USA and NATO.  They opened their last paragraph with the line:

DSA reaffirms our call for the US to withdraw from NATO and to end the imperialist expansionism that set the stage for this conflict.

This fundamentally misunderstands the geopolitical situation. The dismantling of NATO and Western empire, while absolutely necessary to achieve global liberation, is not an immediate tool for the prevention of petro-autocracy imperialism. Even if NATO's threat to Russia in Ukraine were to be removed, the geostrategic economic concerns are like to remain sufficient to continue to fuel the war (as evidenced by the war continuing despite Kiev’s offers of military neutrality) so long as victory remains possible.  If we are to accept a materialist understanding of social relations, we must be conscious of the economics involved in imperial expansion. Socialist and Left movements must expand their definitions of imperialism to include the assaults of petro-autocracies upon their neighbors and name them as such. 

We cannot support a dualistic understanding of geopolitics where “imperialism” is solely the province of Western core states and primarily enacted through Wars for Oil and where any resistance to the West is inherently anti-imperial and liberatory in nature. This should not blunt our critiques of American military hegemony or the many tools used by the USA and other Core states to dominate the peripheral regions of the Global South; instead it can expand and sharpen our analysis and opposition to imperialism in all its forms. This paper aims to begin this process through identifying the general trends and identifying examples that might be used to demarcate the varying forms that petro-autocratic imperialism takes. This requires further work to test hypotheses that emerge out of this preliminary analysis.

In a broader sense, this paper’s theorizing provokes questions of praxis: in situations of non-US-centered imperialism, we must reconsider what international solidarity looks like.  If the American Left cannot help the Ukrainian anti-imperial movement through changing US imperial policy (which has been its ideological go-to since at least the Cuban Revolution), then what can it do? 

In the absence of our presence, what remains of anti-imperial international solidarity is likely to be the often-conservative diaspora politics. It was exactly this type of organizing by the non-Left Armenian diaspora that allowed Armenia to resist Azeri attacks to the extent it did, to the point where frustrated Armenians declared that “we are alone.”  Imagine if, instead of showing up to rallies where they met only other ethnic Armenians, they also found cadres of socialists ready to stand with them and bearing an anti-imperialist critique of the situation.  In the words of the Azerbaijani anti-war youth:

We don’t blame the people though: in the absence of alternative interpretative frameworks to make sense of the war and the conflict between the two nations, the nationalist ideology remains uncontested. 

Future theorization might also focus on the ways that decarbonization might be understood as as anti-imperial solidarity. If petro-autocracy imperialism can be demonstrated to be a significant force internationally, this could be a particularly fruitful area of analysis and action.

In contrast, what will have absolutely no impact on the Ukraine War will be a protest against NATO in New York – if anything, it will have the pro-imperial outcome by ideologically muddling the political discourse and diverting attention from the imperial nature of the Russian assault.  This does not mean that solidarity protests cannot be useful, only that they cannot be our only tool and they must name all of the imperial actors for what they are and condemn them accordingly.  The American Left’s own cultural narcissism that “our” imperialism must be the only target of our criticism is itself a product of an imperial imagination.

The American Left has largely neglected its responsibilities of international solidarity and left its anti-imperial solidarity obligations (ideological and organizational) to the most sectarian of factions.  This can lead to situations where observers can claim that “the Left” supports Assad, Putin, or the Iranian state. Leftists who would be horrified to be associated with Stalinism at times passively defer to contemporary Stalinists for direction on anti-imperialism. A critique of modern imperialism that recognizes all forms of imperial violence is a necessary precondition to stronger international solidarity.

To conclude, we turn to the words of a Ukrainian Socialist, Volodymyr Artiukh, who wrote:

Maybe the US has drawn the outline of this board game, but now other players move the chips and add their own contours with a red marker. US-centric explanations are outdated.. . .  You face a challenge of reacting to a war that is not waged by your countries. Given all the theoretical impasses I alluded to above, there is no simple way to frame an anti-war message.. . . Do not let half-baked political positions substitute an analysis of the situation. The injunction that the main enemy is in your country should not translate into a flawed analysis of the inter-imperialist struggle.