Washington, D.C. –Today, the Consumer Policy Center (CPC) is releasing a report by senior fellow Jay Hakes – U.S. Military Interventions and Oil: A History of Unanticipated Political and Economic Costs. The report shows that a key link between Middle East (and Venezuelan) interventions is oil as both a cause and effect. It identifies a wide range of costs to the U.S. economy and to consumers of the current intervention.
Hakes is a former U.S. Energy Information administrator and director of policy and research for the presidential BP Oil Spill Commission, with decades of senior government experience spanning the Interior Department and Florida’s Governor’s Energy Office. He has testified before Congress more than two dozen times on energy and national security issues, and is the author of three books on the intersections of energy, the economy, and national security — including his most recent, The President and the Planet, winner of the 2025 PROSE Award for best book on environmental science.