Part 5, Chapter 29 Summary

On October 6, 1973, Egypt and Syria launched a massive coordinated attack on Israel. Since 1967, the U.S. and Soviet Union had poured weaponry into the hands of the combatants, but it was oil that would prove most effective weapon in this Fourth Arab-Israeli War. The tight supply-demand situation this time made embargo a powerful tool.

Richard Nixon entered the Oval Office with oil and energy on the agenda. He established a Cabinet Task Force on Oil Import Control, headed by Labor Secretary George Shultz, to recommend changes to the Mandatory Oil Import Program. Nixon ignored Shutz's recommendation that quotas be scrapped in favor of a tariff and self-allocation. Oil and gas shortages during the winter of 1969-70 preceded a summer of electrical brownouts, and "energy crisis" entered the political vocabulary. Nixon imposed oil price controls in 1971 to fight inflation, but this removed...