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This is the third paper in a series of four essays that deal with recent developments affecting the political economy of armaments. It begins by identifying the 'military bias paradox' of divergent behaviour, whereby the large armament corporations experienced an almost uninterrupted growth since the peak of the Vietnam War while domestic military spending exhibited a decade-long decline. The resolution of this apparent paradox could be found in the merging institution of arms exports, which supplemented domestic military budgets. The expansion of world markets for weapons coincided with the oil crisis of the 1970s. The Middle East became the focus of these developments. The interaction during the 1970s of rising military exports to this area and growing oil exports from the region provided a bsais for cooperation between major armament and energy corporations in an 'Armadollar-Petrodollar Coalition'. The consolidation of this coalition removed a major conflict between 'civilian' and 'military' producers in the United States and affected the course of U.S. domestic and foreign military policies.

FROM THE ARTICLE: 'During the late 1980s, we printed a series of working papers, offering a new approach to the political economy of Israel and wars in the Middle East. Our approach in these papers rested on three new concepts. It started by identifying the Weapondollar-Petrodollar Coalition – an alliance of armament firms, oil companies and financial institutions based mostly in the United States – whose interests, we posited, converged in the Middle East. It continued by arguing that the interests of this coalition were best measured by its differential accumulation – i.e., by its performance relative to other large firms. And it concluded by showing that variations in differential accumulation predicted subsequent Middle East energy conflicts (our term). At the time, the papers seemed unpublishable. They were politically unaligned (neither neoclassical nor Marxist). They were non-disciplinary (belonging to neither economics nor politics – or any other social science, for that matter). And they were written in non-academic language (i.e., simply, clearly and to the point). But they made a scientific prediction: the Middle East, they argued, was ripe for another round of military hostilities and oil crisis. And when the 1990-91 Gulf War broke out, their theoretical frame-work suddenly sounded very relevant'.

This essay interweaves two stories—one theoretical and empirical, the other autobiographical. The first story embeds the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the broader political economy of the Middle East and the global accumulation of "capital as power." The second story narrates the authors' personal journey to uncover, theorize, and research this enfoldment. The essay explores and contextualizes the misleading duality of politics and economics; the link between military spending, finance, and stagflation; the concepts of "dominant capital" and "differential accumulation" and their evolution through "breadth" and "depth"; the manner in which these concepts and processes inform the political economy of Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; and the ways in which they help identify the key role of the Weapondollar-Petrodollar Coalition and predict the periodic eruption of Middle East "energy conflicts." In their explorations, the authors have encountered numerous gatekeepers who tried to derail their research as well as a few open-minded editors who sought to promote it, and it is probably fair to say that, dialectically, they have benefited from both. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2018.1534436

FROM THE REVIEW: What if oil prices are not received, but made? What if cartels raise prices by constricting supply, and use war, legal chicanery, and international property deeds to do so? Such questions led Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler, two political economists, to examine the production, distribution, and political structure of the oil business. They derived from these patterns a theory of prices and power distinct from orthodox and heterodox worldviews alike. They see prices as the result of social processes, "a symbolic quantification of power." One of them is sabotage, or the strategic disruption of production. Power, then, is the ability to create and order the world to ensure just the right mix of sabotage and supply in order to ensure profit rates beat out those of your competitors. It is this novel, fascinating, brash, and contested theory of capitalism which they lay out in a new book, The Scientist and the Church.

The unravelling of the Middle-East peace process continues to baffle the pundits. The early optimism of the Oslo peace accord has now turned into despair. Prime minister Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist. The Palestinians have embarked on a new Intifada. And Israel has re-occupied much of the West Bank. What brought this reversal? How deep are the fractures? Can they be healed?.

It is popular these days to talk about the "discontent" of neoliberal globalization. This "discontent" is no longer the prerogative of intellectuals. Increasingly, it comes from below, with opposition from the grassroots. But there may be another type of discontent lurking behind the scenes. This other discontent comes from above. It is the discontent of the ruling class. In our opinion, the world may have reached a historical junction in which a significant part of the global ruling class has become discontented with neoliberalism. The purpose of this presentation is threefold: (1) to explain why the world's dominant capital groups have become discontented with neoliberal globalization; (2) to speculate on what may replace neoliberal globalization; and (3) to link this transition in the nature of accumulation to the new wars.

This is the second in a series of two articles looking into the interaction between differential capital accumulation and Middle East "energy conflicts." Examining the historical record since the late 1960s, we find US policies to have been increasingly consistent with the coinciding differential interests of a Weapondollar-Petrodollar coalition of large defence contractors and oil companies. Contrary to aggregate views which emphasize the "national interest" or the broad imperatives of capital accumulation – but in line with the differential interests of these companies – US policies in the region seem to have contributed toward greater instability, imposed limits on the free flow of oil and led to higher unstable prices. Most significantly, every "energy conflict" since the late 1960s was preceded by adverse drops in the differential rate of the large oil companies, which then promptly removed in the wake of the ensuing crisis. While the US government was officially seeking regional conciliation, it passively or actively endorsed each one of these conflicts. The current peace drive between Israel and its Arab neighbours is overshadowed by negative differential profits for the oil companies and depressed weapon sales for the arms contractors. Left unresolved, these predicaments could eventually culminate in a new "energy conflict."

This paper offers an alternative approach to the repeated occurrence of Middle East "energy conflicts." Our analysis centres around the process of differential capital accumulation, emphasizing the quest to exceed the "normal rate of return" and to expands one's share in the overall flow of profit. With the evolution of modern capitalism, the dictates of differential accumulation become an ever stronger unifying force, drawing both state managers and corporate executives into increasingly inextricable power driven alliances. The Middle East drama of oil and arms since the 1970s has been greatly affected by this process. On the one hand, rising nationalism and intensified industry competition during the 1950s and 1960s forced the major oil companies toward a greater cooperation with the OPEC countries. The success of this alliance was contingent on the new atmosphere of "scarcity" and oil crisis, which was in turn dependent on the progressive militarization of the Middle East. On the other side of the oil arms equation stood the large U.S. and European based military contractors which, faced with heightened global competition in civilian markets and limited defense contracts at home, increased their reliance on arms exports to oil rich countries. Over the past quarter century, the progressive politicization of the oil business, together with the growing commercialization of arms transfers helped shape an uneasy Weapondollar Petrodollar Coalition between the principal military contractors and petroleum companies. As their environment became intertwined with the broader political realignment of OPEC and the industrial countries, the differential profits of these companies grew evermore dependent on the precarious interaction between rising oil prices and expanding arms exports emanating from successive Middle East "energy conflicts." At the same time, these companies were not passive bystanders. This is suggested firstly by the very close correlation existing between their arms deliveries to the Middle East and the region's oil revenues and, secondly, by the fact that every single "energy conflict" since the 1967 Arab Israeli War could have been predicted solely by adverse setbacks to the differential profit performance of the large oil companies!

The conflict in Israel – Palestine will not be settled in the streets of Nablus and the shacks of the Jenin Refugee Camp. The real war lays elsewhere, in the boardrooms of the multinationals where the vanguard of the arms and oil industries are leading a resurgence against the forces of the new global capital.

מגב כריכת ההוצאה הראשונה, 1961 הספר סוקר את התפתחות יחסי ישראל-ערב בשנים 1961-1948 כפי שהשתקפו בעיתונות הישראלית ומעל במת הכנסת. דעות כל החוגים בישראל -- מ"חרות" עד מק"י – מובאות בהרחבה מפי דובריהם המוסמכים ביותר. רבים ימצאו כאן לראשונה תאור מפורט של עובדות נשכחות. המעטים היודעים את העובדות יופתעו להיווכח באיזו מידה מסוגל מנגנון תעמולה ממלכתי לעצב לא רק את השקפתו של האזרח אלא גם את זכרונו מההקדמה להוצאה השניה, 1999 למהדורה זו צורפו נספחים הכוללים מידע שהיה חסוי בשעתו ונחשף רק עשרות שנים לאחר שכתבנו את הספר. שיערנו שניתוחינו יקבלו לימים אישור נוסף. ואכן, העובדות שנחשפו מאז, שאחדות מהן הפתיעו גם אותנו, מאשרות את ניתוחנו. אין פירוש הדבר שכל המידע החסוי מאותה תקופה כבר נחשף

«Seit der Staatsgründung Israels hat sich das Land von einer landwirtschaftlichen Kolonie in einen Wohlfahrtsstaat verwandelt, der total in den Weltmarkt integriert ist, aber grosse Einkommensunterschiede aufweist. Jonathan Nitzan und Shimshon Bichler lehren politische Ökonomie in Israel und den USA und warten mit provokanten Thesen zum Nahostkonflikt auf: Der Nahostkonflikt werde nicht auf den Strassen von Nablus oder in den Hütten des Flüchtlingslagers Jenin entschieden, sondern in den Führungsetagen der multinationalen Konzerne, in denen die Spitzen der Rüstungs- und der Ölindustrie die Fäden gegen die Kritiker der Globalisierung zögen. Diese These klingt auf den ersten Blick wie eine Verschwörungstheorie, aber das Buch ist viel zu seriös, als dass man es mit diesem Vorwurf diskreditieren könnte.

The article discusses the latest trends in the development of the Middle East energy market, the impact of international events on it. The necessity of a thorough study of the problems of ensuring energy security is substantiated. It analyzes the positions of the world's leading players on the world stage on energy supply issues, as well as economic changes associated with the emergence of the latest technologies for the extraction of raw materials, the growth in energy consumption and the subsequent formation of a new energy landscape in the Middle East. Energy diplomacy as an instrument of foreign policy is considered at the global and regional levels, taking into account the changes in the energy policy of the leading oil-producing countries of the Middle East. The author comes to the conclusion that in order to build a secure energy landscape in the Middle East region, it is necessary to adhere to the main principles - diversification of supplies and intra-regional constructive dialogue.