An Analysis of the Goals of Five Oil Producing Nations

This paper is part of a research project attempting to develop long range forecasting models for foreign policy planning. An attempt will be made to analyze the goals of five nations Iraq, Iran, Algeria, Libya and Saudi Arabia. The relevance of this enterprise to foreign policy planning is that the goals of a state determine what it would be willing to give up in negotiations and what kind of bait can be used to strike bargains with that state. A goal will be understood to mean a desired state of affairs. A nations goals are those of the top decision-making elite in the nation. It is assumed that to some extent the elite is a coherent group and the goal set is uniform for all members. The desired states may be either those which can be attained only with some change or those which are already achieved and only need to be preserved. Goals may be either specific or general quantitative targets or open-ended growth desires. Goals may be either ends in themselves or means to other goals or both.