The ‘20s: Culture, Consumption, and Crash 167Gulf, Atlantic Refining, Sinclair, and Standard Oil of Indiana. Given the eco-
nomic size of that group and the support of the American government, the
European companies gave the Americans an equal share in the oil of Iraq. As
the price for getting into the Middle East oil markets, the U.S. agreed to the
“Red Line Agreement” which required that all the members of the oil indus-
try working in the Middle East—the U.S., France, Britain, the Dutch—respect
each other’s holdings and not compete against each other for the oil business
of the old Ottoman Empire. At this point, the oil of the Middle East was still
a more potential than real source of wealth, but the Americans had gotten
their foot in the door, and that area would become as important as any in the
world by the end of the 20th Century.
More Trouble Ahead
Given such economic efforts in Europe, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle
East, it is clear that the U.S. was not “isolationist” in the 1920s, and was in
fact creating conditions that would lead to both global power and global con-
flict in the coming years. Not everyone was a fan of such developments. The
famous historian and social critic Charles Beard’s observed that the 1920s
were marked by a “return to the more aggressive ways... [used] to protect
and advance the claims of American business enterprise.” Even more harshly,
a Marine General who had been active in crushing Latin American rebellions
and protecting American interests, Smedley Butler, became perhaps the best-
known critic of America’s role abroad.. Butler wrote a famous essay attack-
ing America’s economic role in the world in this era, titled War is a Racket.
He bitterly wrote:
I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a
member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I
served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-
General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class
muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short,
I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like
all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my