Strategic Dependence and Oil in Mexican-American Relations

Abstract

The concept of ‘strategic dependence’ is proposed here as vital for analysis, description and, to some extent, explanation of Mexican-American relations, between the years 1979 and 2000. The main thesis of the paper is that we are not facing an energy crisis, but rather a crisis of the entire post-war order, based on the dynamics of what contemporary social science has called monopoly capitalism. Thus, within this crisis, the obvious dependence of the United States in relation to raw materials, and specifically Third World oil, serves as a catalytic agent in the restructuring of the global economic and diplo-military alliance system.