Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, Engdahl is the son of F. William Engdahl Sr., and Ruth Aalund (b. Rishoff). Engdahl grew up in Texas and earned a degree in engineering and jurisprudence from Princeton University in 1966 (BA) followed by graduate study in comparative economics at the University of Stockholm from 1969 to 1970. He then worked as an economist and freelance journalist in New York and in Europe.

Career

Engdahl began writing about oil politics with the first oil shock in the early 1970s. He has also been a long-time associate of the LaRouche movement and served as an economics editor for LaRouche's Executive Intelligence Review.

His first book, entitled A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, discusses the alleged roles of Zbigniew Brzezinski and George Ball and of the USA in the 1979 overthrow of the Shah of Iran, which was meant to manipulate oil prices and to stop Soviet expansion. Engdahl claims that Brzezinski and Ball used the Islamic Balkanization model proposed by Bernard Lewis. In 2007, he completed Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation, in which he criticized Monsanto's strategy with GMO seeds, such as Roundup Ready soybeans. He has also written for newsmagazines such as the Asia Times.

Engdahl is a contributor to the Global Research website of the conspiracist Centre for Research on Globalization, the Russian website New Eastern Outlook, the Voltaire Network, and Veterans Today. He has been described by James Kirchick in Time magazine as being a "crank 'historian'."

William Engdahl has been married since 1987 and has been living for more than two decades near Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Beliefs

Abiogenic petroleum

Engdahl stated in 2007 that he had come to believe that petroleum is of geological origin, a view contrary to the scientific understanding that it is of biological origin. He believes oil to be produced from carbon, by forces of heat and pressure deep underground. Engdahl calls himself an "ex peak oil believer", stating that peak oil is actually a political phenomenon known as petrodollar warfare.

Skepticism of global warming

Engdahl argued that the problem of global warming is much exaggerated. He claims that global warming is merely a "scare" and a "thinly veiled attempt to misuse climate to argue for a new Malthusian reduction of living standards for the majority of the world while a tiny elite gains more power."

Greater Middle East Project

On RT (formally known as Russia Today), Engdahl stated in an interview that the 2011 Egyptian Revolution was orchestrated by the Pentagon to facilitate Barack Obama's Middle East foreign policy and that the situation in Egypt has deteriorated since former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was overthrown. According to Engdahl, the ultimate goal of the US is to take the resources of Africa and Middle East under military control to block economic growth in China and Russia. He believes that the Arab Spring was a plan first announced by George W. Bush at a G8 meeting in 2003 and it was called 'The Greater Middle East Project.' 

Bibliography

• Manifest Destiny: Democracy as Cognitive Dissonance. mine.books, 2018
• The Lost Hegemon: Whom the gods would destroy. mine.books, 2016
• Target: China -- How Washington and Wall Street Plan to Cage the Asian Dragon. San Diego: Progressive Press, 2014. German and Chinese editions published 2013.
• Myths, Lies and Oil Wars. Wiesbaden: Edition.Engdahl, 2012. ISBN 978-3981326369
• Gods of Money: Wall Street and the Death of the American Century. edition.engdahl, 2010, ISBN 978-3-9813263-1-4; Progressive Press, 2011, ISBN 1-61577-805-5
• Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order. Boxboro, MA: Third Millennium Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9795608-6-6; Progressive Press, 2011, ISBN 1-61577-654-0
• Seeds of Destruction. The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation. Centre for Research on Globalization Publishing, 2007, ISBN 0-9737147-2-7
• A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order. London: Pluto 2004, rev. ed., 303 p., ill., ISBN 0-7453-2309-X; Progressive Press, 2012, 339 p., ISBN 1-615774-92-0

References

External links

• Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation
• William Engdahl's Official site
• How I came to Realize I was Wrong About Peak Oil by F. William Engdahl
• Video interviews with Engdahl on The Real News