Скачать или смотреть Why Revolutionary Oil States Start Wars: The Psychology of Fear and Pride

Explains why revolutionary petrostates are 3.5 times more likely to initiate international conflicts.
Core Argument: The combination of financial means and psychological motive drives aggression.
Financial Logic (The Means):
The Rentier State: Government funded by oil revenue, not domestic taxes.
Fiscal Autonomy: No need for domestic accountability, breaking the social contract.
Allocation State: Oil wealth is used for patronage, preempting dissent.
Result: The political handbrake on costly foreign policy is removed.
Psychological Logic (The Motive):
Revolutionary National Identity: Inherently revisionist and oppositional.
Emotional Drivers:
Fear (Solidarity): Inflates threat perception, creates urgency, and triggers preemptive conflict.
Pride (Status): Inflates relative power perception (hubris) and values defiance for its own sake.
Conclusion: Unconstrained oil money fuels a volatile cocktail of fear (overestimating threats) and pride (overestimating capability), leading to high-risk, aggressive foreign policy, as exemplified by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Summarizes research on why revolutionary petrostates are statistically more likely to initiate international conflicts. The main claim is that the combination of fiscal autonomy derived from oil wealth and the psychological volatility of a revolutionary national identity drives these states to engage in global aggression at a rate three and a half times higher than other governments. The logic is structured around two interlocking factors: the financial means and the psychological motive. The financial logic centers on the concept of the rentier state, which relies on external rents (oil revenue) rather than domestic taxation. This fiscal structure grants the government fiscal autonomy, eliminating the need for domestic accountability and shattering the social contract. The government becomes an allocation state, using oil wealth for clientelism and social welfare to preempt domestic discontent, thus removing the political handbrake on costly foreign policy gambles. The psychological logic focuses on the National Identity Conception (NIC) of revolutionary leaders, which is fundamentally revisionist and oppositional to the existing world order. This identity is driven by two emotional dimensions: solidarity (fear) and status (pride). Fear leads to inflated threat perceptions, lower cognitive complexity, urgency to act, and initiating conflict to alleviate discomfort. Pride leads to higher relative power perceptions, an illusion of control (hubris), and valuing autonomy as utility (defiance for its own sake, even if materially detrimental). The combination of fear (overestimating the threat and rushing to act) and pride (overestimating capability) backed by unconstrained oil money creates a volatile cocktail that results in high-risk, aggressive foreign policy. The case of Saddam Hussein's Iraq is used to illustrate how fiscal autonomy and the psychological drivers of fear and pride led to catastrophic gambles like the Iran-Iraq War and the Gulf War.