BOOKBUSTER REVIEW – Oil Be Damned: Part Five
Extractive Capitalism
By Laleh Khalili
Published by Profile, 2025, rrp £11.99
REVIEW BY TIM BARTON
Khalili’s new book is unexpectedly timely. Its subtitle is ‘how commodities and cronyism drive the global economy’. It is a short and accessible introduction to ‘the backbone of globalization’, which she sees as ‘low-cost labour and rapacious corporate control’.
Amongst the subjects here are shipping lanes and container ships, assaults on unionisation, assaults on national autonomy, and the major extractive mineral industries. She also covers the construction of China’s belt & roads ‘new silk route’. The ‘cronyism’ chapters take a well-aimed swipe at commodity traders and ‘super-yacht’ owning billionaires, private equity and ‘management consulting’, the offshoring of capital, and the ‘shell game’ of company registration and flags of convenience.
So, ‘extractive’ here is about asset-stripping through financialisation measures, deregulation, and privatisation. And ‘special economic zones’ and freeports are, of course, central to this for us in the UK. Since at least the 1980s ‘Reaganomics’ free market extremism through to Brexit and the current phases of what I call ‘Operation Asset-Strip UK’, our financial and material assets have been subject to a garage sale that will leave us floundering in a financial black hole. The recent Chinese sell-off of $688 billion of US Treasury debt will severely impact the US economy and naturally their pain will be offloaded to US vassal states, of which we are one.
NEW US IMPERIALISM
‘Extractive’ also includes minerals, rare earth metals, sand and oil. I wrote a recent review on the former issues, about the book The War Below. On the latter issues, not many people will be aware of the monstrous size of global sand movements, and the environmental catastrophes developed economies inflict on sand-rich river and beach communities (because of their demand for concrete).
Oil, other minerals, and shipping lanes, though, are the key items that make Khalili’s book even more relevant than when she wrote it. The hard question is ‘where to start’! 2026 is unfolding as an especially concerning inflection point, and we are already careering faster than ever down the wrong track.
At the heart of our current crisis is the new US imperialism. The Monroe Doctrine was first stated in 1823, and posited that anything that occurred in the domestic politics of central American states was the direct business of the USA. It was a formalised sign of things to come – for example, if you dared elect a left-wing government, the USA regarded it as just fine to back a coup and install a puppet-government, no matter how vicious. The two centuries since President Monroe’s imperialist policy has seen the doctrine extended, frankly, to the whole planet. January 2026 has seen it rebadged as the Donroe Doctrine, in response primarily to Trump’s invasion of Venezuela and his threats to annex Greenland. I wrote about the latter five years ago for HIP, in a review of a book on Arctic Security, at which time it was already eight years after Trump first voiced his imperialist policies for the Arctic.
CURSE OF ‘INTERESTING TIMES’
In both cases, oil and other minerals are a core concern, though for Greenland we can add a potential ice-free north-west passage and a climate change-induced freeing up of the Arctic Ocean for competitive resource extraction. This is code for a cold war with Russia and Europe over who can get in there first, with a real risk of hot war attached.
Meanwhile, Trump is also wanting to break BRICS and force Iran, one way or the other, to open up to US markets, and resource extraction. This has been a long game for the USA: having ousted a democratic government in 1953, and installed a murderous regime (remember, ‘he may be a bastard, but he’s OUR bastard’ is US policy), and then being embarrassed on the world stage by the ‘Iran hostage crisis’ as a different regime took over that was not going to play ball with the West, the USA has long planned revenge. Khalili writes here about ‘Operation Prosperity Guardian’, which has included shelling Yemen into the stone age and embargoing Iranian oil, which is the tip of an evil iceberg in undermining the Iranian nation. I don’t know how many fronts Trump wishes to open up at the same time, especially as the China-Taiwan crisis is also hotting up, never mind Ukraine.
None of it seems wise, and I believe the curse of living through ‘interesting times’ may be very much in play.
Extractive Capitalism is available from Bookbuster, 39 Queens Road, Hastings TN34 1RE
We hope you have enjoyed reading this article. The future of our volunteer led, non-profit publication would be far more secure with the aid of a small donation. You can also support local journalism by becoming a friend of HIP. It only takes a minute and we would be very grateful.
Leave a Reply