1973 US uses the Food Weapon

[NapoleonXIV]

The US has been called the "Persian Gulf of Food" the great midwest farms supplying, as I understand it, a substantial portion of the food for the entire world.

Certainly a lot for the Middle East if that is the case. WI in response to the 1973 Oil Embargo the US had counter-embargoed on food. No food of any kind would be allowed to be sold to any nation not delivering on oil contracts already in force.

What would have happened?

[Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy]

The world economy is not something you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes.

[HueyLong]

The embargo will die fairly quickly, although there will be humanitarian repercussions. The US was the foremost supplier of food to the world, as even India's Green Revolution and the beginning of European agriculture policies were largely for domestic consumption. The idea of cutting off food is definitely a step back in humanitarian terms though.

It won't completely starve out the oil countries (there are other suppliers), but it will cause them to tighten their belts, face huge price increases (said suppliers won't have the economy of scale, and will have less of a supply to counter in pricing), and possibly start rationing food. It may cause a rebellion or two.

[Earling]

Huge numbers of mid-western farmers go bankrupt?

[HueyLong]

That is assuming that the Middle East doesn't simply quit with their oil embargo. Which, they will. Food is more important than oil. And once one of them folds, the rest have to do so too.

[mycroft holmes]

Not that I have any special love for the Al Sauds and other weathly Middle East rulers, but the '73 Oil Embrago began because the US was pressuring the Mid East to sell us oil at a massively undervalued, standardized price. The Oil Crisis just brought up oil prices to more rational, market driven price levels. What really exacerbated the crisis into today is that US oil use continued to grow at 5% or more a year for decades. Tit for tat protectionism works well on paper, less well in the real economy.

If we had done this embargo, we would have made an eternal enemy of every OPEC nation. They would believe that the US was an imperialistic power, using Israel and other methods in attempts to control oil. You could add that to the already boiling religious problems. Think on how well our current struggles with a minority of fanatics in those territories are going :rolleyes:. What if an Al Qaeda style movement, except this time with very broad support, had kicked off 25 years early?

And this is an awful idea for other reasons. Without the US as a financial partner and trading partner, middle eastern nations have only one other place else to look - the Soviet Union. The Sovs could have used this to move in and ally with the whole region. Can you imagine how scary a Soviet Union in control of the Mid East oil, and thus of the energy reserves of the US and Europe, would be?

Plus, guess who bought most of the food we exported in the 70s? The Soviet Union. If we ever did this you could kiss any detente or freindly relations between our countries goodbye, they'd never believe we wouldn't do the same to them at any time.

Not to mention how the 73 embrago started a trend in environmentalism, conservation of energy, etc.

[robertp6165]

Not that I have any special love for the Al Sauds and other weathly Middle East rulers, but the '73 Oil Embrago began because the US was pressuring the Mid East to sell us oil at a massively undervalued, standardized price.

Um, no. It began because the U.S. and other Western countries were supplying Israel during the Yom Kippur War.

[ljofa]

Didn't the US embargo grain shipments to the USSR in 1979 because of Afghanistan but the effects were nullified as the EEC stepped in? I also hear that the big multinational US grain companies quietly defied the embargo as they didn't want to lose one of their biggest customers.

[Grimm Reaper]

In fact the grain embargo was a serious blow to the Soviet finances as they were still able to get the grain but only at substantially higher prices.

When I first saw this I had the image of the US threatening to make other nations eat spam and American fast food. Simply ghastly.:eek:

[MerryPrankster]

Considering the Soviet Union was already dependent on the US for food imports at this point, I don't think the Gulf Arab states would be able to turn to the USSR to buy food.

[Dave Howery]

I remember the news magazines talking about this at the time. The general verdict: wouldn't work. Mainly, because the OPEC nations at that time weren't all that populous, and they could turn to other sources of food if need be... a food embargo would have hurt us more than them...

[PMN1]

I remember the news magazines talking about this at the time. The general verdict: wouldn't work. Mainly, because the OPEC nations at that time weren't all that populous, and they could turn to other sources of food if need be... a food embargo would have hurt us more than them...

Very different to the situation these days, populations have tripled and show no sign of steadying any time soon.

[NapoleonXIV]

Um, no. It began because the U.S. and other Western countries were supplying Israel during the Yom Kippur War.

That was the ostensible reason, yes, but Mycroft is right that we were pressuring them to sell us oil cheap. The embargo was sort of a power play on their part, and it worked beyond their wildest dreams.

[NapoleonXIV]

In fact the grain embargo was a serious blow to the Soviet finances as they were still able to get the grain but only at substantially higher prices.

When I first saw this I had the image of the US threatening to make other nations eat spam and American fast food. Simply ghastly.:eek:

In other news, units of the 101st Airborne are still held up in the bloody struggle at the Cordon Bleu in Paris. Members of the Julia Child Memorial Militia are thought to be in charge here, though Alain Ducasse and Paul Bocusse are known to be the actual rebel leaders.