US-Azerbaijan relations go back more than a century. In the 1920s, Rockefeller’s Standard Oil acquired a significant part of the oil fields in Baku from the Nobel brothers. This was followed by American companies Exxon and Chevron in the 1990s when Azerbaijan became independent from the Soviet Union. The two sides have not only been engaging in good trade and investment relations but also cooperate in a variety of areas, including the promotion of European energy security, the fight against terrorism, and military cooperation in the context of NATO (i.e., the International Security Assistance Force and Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan). American and Azerbaijani interests generally converge in the face of neighbouring Russia and Iran, with Azerbaijan also having deep defence and intelligence ties with Israel.
