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I was reading about the 1973 Oil Crisis and i caught this little nugget in Wikipedia

"America's Cold War policies suffered a major blow from the embargo. They had focused on China and the Soviet Union, but the latent challenge to US hegemony coming from the third world became evident.

In 2004, declassified documents revealed that the U.S. was so distraught by the rise in oil prices and being challenged by under-developed countries that they briefly considered military action to forcibly seize Middle Eastern oilfields in late 1973. Although no explicit plan was mentioned, a conversation between U.S. Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger and British Ambassador to the United States Lord Cromer revealed Schlesinger had told him that "it was no longer obvious to him that the U.S. could not use force."British Prime Minister Edward Heath was so worried by this prospect that he ordered a British intelligence estimate of U.S. intentions, which concluded America "might consider it could not tolerate a situation in which the U.S. and its allies were at the mercy of a small group of unreasonable countries," and that they would prefer a rapid operation to seize oilfields in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and possibly Abu Dhabi in military action was decided upon. Although the Soviet response to such an act would likely not involve force, intelligence warned "the American occupation would need to last 10 years as the West developed alternative energy sources, and would result in the ‘total alienation’ of the Arabs and much of the rest of the Third World."

Further:
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-time-america-almost-invaded-opec-15726

What would have happened if the United States invaded some or all of these places in order to alleviate it's economic oil Crisis? Obviously it did not occur OTL, but i could imagine that if those states persisted in their embargo the United States could have been forced to react. Perhaps the Soviet Union would have provided military aid to Saudi Arabia and might it a bloody affair.

It's possible that the Middle Eastern states would relent on the Embargo in the face of an American ultimatum and thread of military force. It may even force them into a negotiated settlement. Perhaps they would do a withdrawal in the face of American invasion ala Saddam Hussein in the 1990 Gulf War and burn their oil wells.

I'm not sure what sort of resources the Soviet Union had in the middle east at the time, but they had a lot of influence with those countries arrayed against Israel.

the after affects of such an invasion on relations between the U.S. and third world powers would probably be drastic.
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