ShmoopTube

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[ musical flourish ]

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And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by oil-producing nations,

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the slickest fellas on the diplomatic block.

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See what we did there? Oil? Slick? Yeah.

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All right. How did the problem shown in the image impact

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American foreign policy?

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And here are your potential answers.

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All right, ugh. It was a horrible time. I was a kid... Grew up in that.

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All right, here we go.

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Well, with its tank perilously close to empty,

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the U.S. government had to search

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far and wide for a surefire solution to its 1973 gas problem.

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Was the oil crisis an issue for American diplomats because

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A - it led to tension between countries competing for oil?

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Well, the tension wasn't between countries competing for oil;

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it was between importers like the U.S. and exporters in OPEC,

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who no longer wanted to prime the pump.

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Could the oil crisis have impacted American foreign policy because

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B - it caused the U.S. to increase containment?

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Well, with the need for fuel often superceding the desire to

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contain communism, the American government actually shifted

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away from containment during the crisis.

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Like containing communism just got to be too expensive.

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So no on B.

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Did the oil crisis affect American foreign policy because

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D - it shifted the country into a period of detente?

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Well, actually, the Yom Kippur War was one of the catalysts for the embargo,

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and that conflict found America and the Soviet Union

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on opposite sides of a heated international tussle.

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Which means the oil crisis impacted American foreign policy because

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C - it led to new alliances with oil-producing nations.

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With other exporters blocking the flow of fuel,

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the U.S. had to create new alliances with

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oil-producing nations in order to guarantee future supplies.

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So C is the right answer.

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With tensions rising over oil dependency,

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these new alliances got off to a heated start,

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only adding fuel to the diplomatic fire at hand.

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