The Tragedy of American Science Traps Modern Life in Oil and War

We must make hope possible, not despair credible—only then can we walk the road to peace.

— Raymond Williams

Shortly after the raid on Venezuela, on 28 February 2026, US forces struck a primary school in Iran, killing at least 175 people, most of them children. On 13 July, 136 days into the war, Trump formally announced before Congress the launch of a second round of military strikes on Iran.

The ‘collateral damage’ of missile strikes on children drew widespread attention, but this tragedy is not the first of its kind in US military operations. More importantly: how long will this war last, and where will the next one strike?

◉28 February 2026, Minab, Hormozgan Province, Iran. A girls’ school was struck during a US and Israeli military operation. Photo: IC Photo

People are always eager to treat war as a talking point, debating ‘geopolitics’ and ‘international relations’, or how oil prices and futures fluctuate in response to the conflict. Yet these ‘strategists’ rarely look squarely at the relationship between war and modern life’s dependence on oil. Because once one confronts this connection, war ceases to be a brief episode of violence; it becomes a demand to reflect on the exploitative consumption habits that underpin what appears to be peaceful everyday life, and to make long-term, practical changes.

I begin with the work of American science historian Clifford D. Conner, *The Tragedy of American Science: From the Cold War to the Forever War*, and then, drawing on the perspectives and arguments of a wider range of scholars, trace the history of how the United States became progressively trapped in oil.

Some may assume that the functioning of modern society depends inherently on oil, and that altering our patterns of oil consumption is next to impossible. Yet this history has led me to recognise that humans could in fact have used oil within entirely different technological systems. This scientific tragedy, which has seeped into the smallest details of modern life—food, clothing, housing, and transport—is not beyond reversal. And we, in our peaceful lives, are driven to think more carefully about this question only through war, again and again.

Two Tragedies of American Science

On 11 March, sources disclosed the preliminary findings of the US military’s investigation into the 28 February airstrike on a primary school in Minab, Iran: US Central Command had used outdated data when establishing target coordinates for the Tomahawk cruise missiles, incorrectly classifying the primary school as a military base. One view holds that the US military had become overly reliant on AI for automated target identification and strike decisions, at the expense of the rigour of manual verification.

This is not the first time US missiles have struck children in Iran. In the chapter of *The Tragedy of American Science* devoted to the research, development, and production of US military weapons, Conner gives particular attention to civilian casualties caused by high-tech modern weapons such as missiles and drones.

Image: Book cover of ‘The Tragedy of American Science: From the Cold War to the Forever War’

Despite repeated failures, the mania for weapons automation has only intensified since the Second World War. In the Vietnam War, drones were still merely tools for dropping leaflets, but they have since evolved into the instruments of ‘video-game warfare’—all the operator needs to do is aim at a human-shaped icon on a computer screen, and a life can be taken. In other words, no matter how inhumane a weapon may be, there always seems to be an inexhaustible supply of funding, talent, and knowledge to bring it into being—Conner notes that from the end of the Vietnam War to 2017, total US government expenditure on scientific research approached three trillion dollars, and defence-related R&D spending accounted for more than half of all US government R&D expenditure.

Borrowing Conner’s concept, I would argue that American science harbours another tragedy—one that does not occur in the realm of war but in the realm of everyday life in peacetime: the modern lifestyle’s excessive dependence on oil.

American Energy Imperialism

From the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and the 2003 Iraq War, to the 2014 airstrikes on Syria, to the 2026 invasion of Venezuela and the US–Iran war, these regions either possess abundant oil reserves—Venezuela, Iran, and Iraq all rank among the top five in the world for crude oil reserves—or are strategic positions for controlling the flow of oil.

Resource crises ultimately evolve into questions of war and peace, for those living in the twenty-first century, this is all too apparent. A critical turning point came in 1998, the year US oil consumption first relied primarily on imports and the same year that concerns about peak oil first emerged. As the French scholar Philippe Cibois-Lopez reveals in *Geopolitics of Oil*, the first priority after George W. Bush took office in 2001 was not counter-terrorism but securing America’s oil supply. Although in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, US military operations were ostensibly always motivated by counter-terrorism and opposition to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, most carried the ‘energy imperialism’ motive of using military means, directly or indirectly, to control global oil supply.

Although the United States has boosted its domestic crude output in recent years through the shale revolution, what is being extracted is predominantly light, low-sulphur ‘light oil’. America’s early refineries and processing equipment were designed to handle heavy crude from Latin America and cannot accommodate light oil, which is why the country still imports crude from other nations.

To fully explain the relationship between war and energy imperialism would, it seems, require an entirely new book. The reason I nonetheless feel that *The Tragedy of American Science* overlooks the oil question is that the author, in an effort to emphasise the tragic impact of war on American science, adopts an interpretive framework that exaggerates war’s autonomy. This framework is called the ‘permanent war economy’—the idea that America’s economic system is inseparable from war, and that only sustained, large-scale wartime spending and military investment can drive economic growth.

However, critics have long pointed out that the siphoning off of capital and resources by the military-industrial complex, along with the privileged profit margins it enjoys, simultaneously squeezes the space available for civilian manufacturing to develop, leading to economic contraction. In other words, there is no purely positive correlation between war and economic prosperity.

This interpretation of the permanent war economy tends to portray war and the military-industrial complex behind it as a completely independent force, unrelated to the daily lives of ordinary people, and indeed to politics in general. But from the perspective of oil, the over-reliance on oil in both wartime and peacetime lifestyles is so conspicuous. And yet, on this front, there is plainly so much more that could be done.

In a world where war and peace are so tightly coupled, if we are to refuse war, what we must refuse is far more than war itself.

The History of America’s Oil Addiction

Although many countries are using new energy technologies to transition their energy systems, global oil consumption rose from 90 million barrels per day to 100 million barrels per day between 2014 and 2024. In 2024, the United States consumed an average of 19 million barrels per day, accounting for 18.7 per cent of global consumption, while its population represents only 4.2 per cent of the world total. This works out to a per capita annual consumption of 20.4 barrels. In 1930, by contrast, each American consumed only 8.4 barrels of oil per year on average*. What happened in between?

*Editor’s note: The per capita oil consumption figures are calculated by the author based on US Energy Information Administration data on energy consumption over the past 250 years, US population data, and thermal unit conversions.

◉Global oil consumption by country, 2024. Source: Energy Institute, *World Energy Statistical Yearbook* 2025

Humans do not consume oil directly; this black liquid has no inherent use value. It is the mastery of scientific knowledge in physics, chemistry and other disciplines that allows humans to derive petroleum by-products such as petrol, diesel, fertilisers (especially nitrogen-based) and plastics through fractional distillation, cracking and subsequent specialised processing at refineries. These products are in turn used directly or indirectly in the production and processing of other goods: generating the thermal energy to drive cars, cruise ships and agricultural tractors; powering cold-chain systems and the extremely energy-intensive ultra-processed food industry; and boosting yields in industrialised agriculture and the manufacture of everyday plastic goods … Together they form a modern world built on oil.

◉The Sun Oil Refinery in California, United States, 1940s. The author argues that refineries are vast industrial spaces that consume large quantities of land, energy and water while carrying risks of oil spills, fires and explosions. Source: *Lifeblood: Oil, Freedom, and the Making of Modern America*

Behind this complex chain of petroleum commodities lies a transformation in the overall way of life. In *Lifeblood: Oil, Freedom, and the Making of Modern America*, the American scholar Matthew T. Huber describes in detail the historical process by which oil became embedded in the American economy and culture: From the 1930s onwards, the United States gradually established a scheme for mitigating the crises of capitalism — one that sought to construct, across the principal domains of social reproduction such as food, clothing, housing and transport, a way of life for the population characterised by mobility, convenience, freedom and privacy.

◉Cover of *Lifeblood: Oil, Freedom, and the Making of Modern America*

Huber argues that the American lifestyle may appear highly individualised, but behind that individualisation stands a vast supporting technological system, with oil as the most crucial material from which it is constructed. For this reason, rather than simply castigating Americans for their oil addiction, it is more important to understand how they have become trapped within the petroleum system.

Take petrol, which accounts for 43.21% of total US oil consumption, for example. Could an American easily break free from oil? During the 1970s oil crisis, he recounts a complaint from a housewife living in the suburbs of Long Island about the petrol shortage: ‘We can’t walk to the grocery store, the bank, or the doctor’s office — forget about any pleasant cycling! If a round trip to the nearest supermarket is nine kilometres… how am I supposed to feed my family?’ Clearly, the arrangement of an entire set of suburbanised spaces — workplaces, detached houses, highways, supermarkets, private cars — had already predetermined their dependence on petrol.

◉In 1917, a Willys Overland car advertisement read “This is the Life…This is not”. Huber notes that, in the age of the automobile, marketers have consistently pitted crowded and unreliable public transport against the private car to highlight the latter’s superiority. Image source: https://www.atticpaper.com/

It was also from the 1930s that the American public grew increasingly reliant on petro-agriculture – a system built around diesel tractors, fertilisers, and pesticides – to keep food prices low. In 1900, food expenditure accounted for just 44 per cent of total consumer spending; by 1960, that figure had fallen to 27 per cent. This is why some have described petro-agriculture as ‘using land to convert oil into food’. Between 1930 and 1970, inputs of fertiliser and pesticide in US agriculture increased by a full 1,338 per cent.

In fact, not only in agricultural production but also in processing, packaging, transport, storage, and cooking, every stage of the industrial food system is heavily dependent on fossil fuels. According to a report published by the international body the International Panel of Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food), as much as 40 per cent of the world’s petrochemical products now end up in the food and agriculture system.

The proliferation of plastic products is also closely linked to the mobile lifestyle of post-war America and throwaway culture, as numerous studies have demonstrated.

What Comes After the Bicycle?

Humanity ought to treat oil as a scarce resource and use it more judiciously. Yet the examples above make it clear that how oil is used is not simply a moral question. It is particular ways of life and social orders that together determine which oil-based products are encouraged into production, in what volumes, and to meet what desires and demands.

Huber recounts a letter that a writer sent to Nixon during the oil crisis of the 1970s, which may help explain why Americans proved so powerless to escape the grip of oil consumption:

“Among us, tens of thousands have no public transport to get to work and are entirely dependent on our own cars. I cover seventy miles a day between my workplaces, but not a single bus can get me there. I must drive, and soon I shall be unable to afford fuel or the associated costs. It is simply not fair!”

In the end, all that remained for this writer was a pervasive anxiety about making a living. Yet at the same time, a dangerous hostility toward Arab nations was also present in American society. A country singer wrote: “If they will not bring the oil price down, we will cut off their food supply.”

Caption: Huber notes that one of the shocks the 1970s oil crisis delivered to Americans stemmed from the audacity of ‘other’ nations to exercise power over their own oil. One consequence of this sentiment was a flood of cartoons hostile towards Arab oil men. This cartoon was drawn by Pat Oliphant. Image source: https://athena.cut.ac.cy/

The simultaneous presence of these two emotions within a single society is profoundly dangerous. An oil-dependent way of life is perfectly capable of forming a dangerous coupling with energy imperialism.

In my view, the people of modern society have, through science, acquired the power to transform the world. Yet in the development of specific technological products and the design of technical systems, considerations of capital and political calculations have been embedded, whether deliberately or not. When these technical systems in turn colonise people’s lives, reshaping their desires and constraining their actions, the aspiration for a good life has even come to form a reactionary linkage with war. And science is, in turn, deployed to reinforce the destructive power of war. This is precisely where the true tragedy of modern society lies.

This way of life continues to spread to late-developing countries as both a model and an exemplar. If humanity does not wish to wage a war of mutual annihilation over resources destined to run out, then the question that truly needs to be asked may be as concrete as that writer’s complaint: why are there not more buses? Perhaps one might ask other things as well—why cannot food supply chains be shortened to prevent excessive energy consumption and plastic packaging? Why cannot agricultural practices that do not depend on pesticides and chemical fertilisers be encouraged?

Image: ‘World’s Highest Standard of Living: There’s no Way like the American Way’, from Margaret Bourke-White’s photograph Louisville Flood Victims. Image source: Rare Historical Photos

Similar questions have not gone entirely unasked. As early as the 1970s, the North American political economist Dallas Smythe, after visiting China, wrote an essay titled “What Comes After the Bicycle?” in which he hoped that China, after the bicycle, would develop public goods and collective consumption rather than the capitalist individualist consumption epitomised by the automobile.

Yet it has proven not easy to achieve, for it depends on our value judgments about different ways of life: advanced or backward, wealthy or poor, free or repressed, and so on. But now, among these value judgments, we may need to add another pair: war or peace, or survival or destruction. In the face of the US–Iran war and the various war crises to come, we need to recalibrate our value judgments about a good life and give more sustainable ways of life a positive significance in the construction of peace.

Ultimately, perhaps we shall find a more reasonable way to use oil, this precious non-renewable resource.

References

Clifford D. Conner, The Tragedy of American Science: From the Cold War to the Forever War

Raymond Williams, War: Our Last Enemy

Philippe Cibois-Lopez, Geopolitics of Oil

John Bellamy Foster, The Ecological Revolution

Jason Moore, Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital

US Energy Information Administration, energy consumption statistics

Dallas Smythe, “What Comes After the Bicycle? — The Political and Ideological Dimensions of Technology”

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67824#

– This is Foodthink’s 824th original article –