The Baghdad Triangle

Abstract

Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt offers a provocative and critical analysis of U.S.-Iraqi relations from the military coup against the Hashemite monarchy in 1958 to the nationalization of the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) in 1972. The book’s notable strength is its integrated analysis of three protagonists—the U.S. government, the Iraqi government, and the multi-national IPC—as they struggled over Iraq’s petroleum industry. Wolfe-Hunnicutt insightfully analyzes this triangular relationship as each entity pursued its best interests vis-à-vis the other two, even as it grappled with intramural policy conflicts. This valuable contribution, however, is limited by interpretive, organizational, and stylistic blemishes. Paranoid Style focuses centrally on the struggle between the IPC and the post-monarchical government in Baghdad for control of Iraq’s oil wealth. Riding the wave of anti-colonial nationalism cresting in the Middle East, revolutionary Iraq demanded major revisions of the financial terms of the original IPC concession. Enriched by its imperial privileges, the IPC resisted.