What precisely are the costs of our addiction to foreign oil? Unfortunately, no one has yet offered a satisfactory answer to this vital question. In Over a Barrel, John Duffield argues that the costs are much greater than most people realize. While some costs, like the annual bill for oil imports or the price that motorists pay at the pump, are obvious and quantifiable, others, such as the resulting constraints on U.S. diplomacy, are not so apparent or measurable. It is difficult to put a price tag, for example, on the anti-Americanism fueled by decades of coddling oil-rich authoritarian regimes at the expense of promoting representative government and human rights in the Middle East. This book provides the first comprehensive analysis of the costs - both economic and policy-related - of U.S. foreign oil dependence and how they might be reduced