“Telling the person in the seat next to you that you are interested in philosophy,” writes Leif Wenar, “will often result in an uninterrupted flight.” It is a lesson that Wenar – the chair of philosophy and law at King’s College London and an expert on international property rights – seems to have learned better than most members of his profession. He must like to talk on aeroplanes, because in Blood Oil, he brings a wonderfully light touch to his subject and steers clear of hard philosophy. It’s just as well, because his subject is the theft, plunder and murder that accompany resource extraction in the developing world: not exactly easy reading to start with.
Resource control is an issue that we have perhaps grown a little tired of hearing about in recent years, one that nags us from some far-off corner of our conscience but that we don’t feel we can do very much about. We know that venal tyrants in benighted klepto-dictatorships control the world’s supply of oil, gas, diamonds, coltan, phosphates, and so on. We know the money that they make from these blood minerals only makes them more unaccountable, more corrupt and more entrenched in power, fuelling a cycle of lobbying, bribery, import dependency, civil war and even global terrorism. It has been so for years, and nobody has come up with a solution that doesn’t involve ripping up the rules of international relations. Wenar, however, urges us to do better: to think harder, to look closer and to realise that we already have at our disposal most of the tools to put a stop to the madness.
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