Ch. 4: Crouching Tiger Serialization

America’s Once and Future Embargo?

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Question: Should China truly fear an oil embargo by the United States and its allies?

1.     No

2.     Yes

The perhaps surprising, and even deeply unsettling, answer to this question is an unequivocal “yes.”  This is an assessment based on any sober analysis of past US embargo history, the current and considerable capabilities of the US Navy, and America’s strategic intentions as expressed by the Pentagon in the event of a “China contingency.” 

From an historical perspective, the first country in modern times to impose an oil embargo was not, as many Americans assume, Saudi Arabia, which led the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973-74 against the United States.  Rather, it was the United States itself in its embargo of Imperial Japan in 1941.  Ironically, at least within the context of our current investigation, this decidedly American embargo was implemented as a means of forcing Japan to withdraw its occupying troops from none other than China itself.

America’s embargo on oil and gasoline and other key raw materials to Japan was a harsh blow to a country dependent on the United States for fully 80% of its petroleum needs.  This embargo, which also included the closure of the Panama Canal to Japanese shipping and a freeze on Japanese assets in the United States, is indeed a cautionary tale as it would lead to one of the most infamous preemptive first strikes in world history – Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor a mere four months after the embargo was imposed. 

America’s embargo on Japan is, however, hardly the only one etched into the collective consciousness of Chinese Communist Party leaders.   After China entered the Korean War on the side of North Korea in 1950, President Harry Truman imposed a complete trade embargo on China that would last for more than 20 years and inflict considerable damage before President Richard Nixon’s “ping pong diplomacy” ended the embargo in 1971.

In more recent times, the United States has also never hesitated to use the related tool of economic sanctions against a whole host of what it regards to be rogue nations.  This list of countries – all of whom count China as a friend or ally – has included Cuba, Iran, Libya, Myanmar, North Korea, Syria, and the Sudan.  Worth noting, too, are the various US sanctions slapped against Russia for its aggression in Crimea and the broader Ukraine.

The broader point here, dear detectives, is that embargoes and sanctions are an integral part of the historical DNA of the United States; and China, which to this day still is embargoed from buying weapons technologies from the United States, is well aware of this history and America’s preferred modus operandi when it comes to exerting coercive pressure.  However, it’s not just what America has done in the past that so worries China.  It is also America’s formidable capabilities when it comes to actually walking any naval embargo talk.

Indeed, since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, no nation on earth has had a blue water navy capable of challenging that of the United States.   In fact, today, the Russian Federation Navy is only about one fourth the size of the Soviet Navy at its peak while the Russian sub fleet has shrunk from almost 400 boats in 1985 to less than 100 today.