THE BIG PAYBACK

By the 1970s, oil-producing countries had grown tired of being yoked to industrial powers in lopsided trade relations. Academic thinking of the era accentuated the humiliation. The popular “dependency theory” declared that producer countries had “surrendered” their primary resources to the rich North, which had captured most of the value by converting raw inputs into finished goods. Rich countries resold these goods back to the global South at inflated prices. This cycle constituted a “dependency trap,” and the only way out was to seize national resources and industrialize. Few oil producers had the nerve to step up alone and launch