My objective is to analyze the military dimensions of United States oil policies since the end of the Cold War. America’s increasing economic dependency on imported oil, a vital input in the health of western economies, has been widely documented, but how does the military understand the role of oil, particularly in war times? I question long-standing assumptions about oil and international politics, particularly regarding “access” to the resource. In the end, I hope to produce a report that will shed light on aspects of the military’s oil strategy that either contradicts or is not captured by the existing scholarship.