Empirical Cases

This chapter discusses the selection of the case studies for the book: Iraq and the oil market, Russia and the natural gas market, and China and the rare earth elements market. These cases provide useful plausibility probes for the authors’ theory of market power politics. First, these cases involve competition in key commodity markets in which states could potentially have the opportunity and willingness to pursue a market power opportunity though territorial expansion. Second, since these states have had significant control over their firms in these commodity markets, one can isolate the mechanism by which market power motivations influence foreign policy decisions. Finally, these cases include incidents of both violence and strategic delay, which provides variation on the dependent variable.