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Comment by bparsons | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how well the US would function if it were under economic blockade by the entire hemisphere.

We have so much surplus food that we burn it in our gas tanks. We'll be OK.

And good luck with that blockade. Countries that don't waste decades enforcing known-defective economic systems are hard to defeat with tactics like that. They tend to have the necessary productive capacity to support a strong military.

I think it’s more the size of the USA and the abundance of its natural resources than its political system that makes it futile to blockade it.

Because a country needs lots of different resources and enough people to be self-sufficient at the current level of technology, I would think almost all smaller countries can be blockaded into the mid-twentieth, if not the nineteenth century, no matter what their political system, if the blockade is held up long enough.

I can’t see countries the size and population of Belgium or Peru making modern cars _and_ modern phones _and_ modern clothing _and_ modern farming tech _and_ plastic _and_ (etc) after an effective decades-long blockade, for example.

Economic growth would slow down, but overall the US would function just fine as we are self sufficient in most economic inputs that really matter. We also have the military force to break any conceivable blockade and take what we need, so no one would be stupid enough to even try blockading us in the first place.

It's always been creepy to me that whenever the topic of US foreign policy brought about from the angle of "other nations should impose to the US the same geopolitical policies that it imposes over other nations" some US citizens are quick to talk like bullies threatening to retaliate with their military forces if any of those suggestions were to come to fruition.

However, when that same topic is kicked off with "the people of an enemy state are struggling" they act as if they were nothing but concerned, compassionate humanitarians. The wording of the message changes, but the intent does not. The desired result is still intervention without consequences.

I guess if you're a highly biased nationalist it's still in your interest to talk like you're an impartial rational person when discussing these topics. Of course you can't keep that mask on all the time.

It's simple the world is run by realpolitik not by good feelings and high minded ideals. The best you can hppe for is to ensure the safety of your country and people.

US citizens have no shortage of good feelings and high minded ideals when it comes to criticizing other countries, though. I guess what GP was pointing out is that this double standard is especially creepy when it comes to military matters.

I think a lot of people are just naive and simply don't understand that the good feelings and high minded ideals are kayfabe. The US is the country at the forefront on advertisement and propaganda, so this is not really something that should be surprising.

The kayfabe works very well too, so why would they stop.

Who are we currently blockading? We sanction, which means we don’t allow citizens to do business with certain other nations. But there are no ships in harbor or at sea preventing those nations from trading with their remaining partners.

I think the concept is an embargo on trade with the US like sanctions, not a physical blockade. If countries were refusing to do business with the US, the military couldn’t really help short of invading them or engaging in shipping piracy.

I’d think this is unlikely to ever happen since the US is a lucrative market to export to.

Pretty well because we produce a lot of food, some of which we don’t even bother eating.

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