The United States “will not allow foreign or regional powers to jeopardize freedom of navigation in the Middle East waterways, including the Strait of Hormuz,” John Kirby, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said when he announced the increased U.S. Navy patrols earlier this month. For a variety of reasons we should reconsider this commitment to protect the oil tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz. China is quite proud of recently having helped negotiate a diplomatic rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran without appreciating geopolitical analyst Peter Ziehan’s argument that The U.S. Navy makes the seas safe for global trade and that China is the chief beneficiary. If they believe their effort was successful then let them take Iran’s Ministry of foreign affairs at its word; “The Islamic Republic of Iran considers the continued presence of foreign military forces in the waters of the Persian Gulf as a threat to the security of navigation in this strategic waterway and believes that the countries of the region have the ability to protect the peace and security of navigation in it without the presence of foreigners” as security enough for the free oil trade from the Middle East benefiting them.
Secondly, consider the possibility of using The Navy as a belligerent force against China in the defense of Taiwan by taking a variant of the tactic used by President John F Kennedy’s 1962 blockade around Cuba, that is a corralling of China bound oil tankers in the Indian Ocean. Naturally we would provide humanitarian support to crew members as they float sequestered at idle for months. Large well identified and cooperative vessels wishing to offload at some eastern ports other than Chinese on a quota market basis or just turn back to Europe and other western ports. But small vessels that turn off their transponders like those currently transporting Russian oil would remain sequestered until the crisis is over. China’s Navy hasn’t the range to interfere leaving them with diplomatic outrage as their only recourse. This corralling would be in addition to economic sanctions the U.S. would unilaterally impose on China.
Best to prepare for the defense of Taiwan to be an extra legal unilateral one by the U.S. because at President Richard Nixon’s 1972 China opening visit the United States formally recognized the mainland as China and the island of Formosa as a part of it. War games that critique military preparedness and the effectiveness of sanctions fail to address how a defense of Taiwan is initiated when it is recognized as a region of the mainland. If China were to err like Japan did by striking at Pearl Harbor to awaken a sleeping giant then a formal declaration of war by the Congress as our Constitution requires could be made. But without one our military has no authority to shoot without first being shot upon and even then restraint would be practiced to avoid a forced march toward nuclear conflagration. The war games don’t address what to do if China blockades and then later invades Taiwan without ever engaging with our Navy nor how to convince the Group of 7; Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom and the U. S. to sanction a country policing a renegade province.
We should make public that The Navy may act in this extra legal manner by beefing up the naval base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean with carriers and destroyers and requiring the Central Intelligence Agency to track the world wide position of every oil tanker in real time. Chairman Xi should consider the risk to the Chinese Communist Party from the starvation that a resource poor China will suffer as it tries to prosecute a prolonged resource intensive invasion of Taiwan. One where the threat of the U.S. turning down the oil spigot dramatically could be an existential one. However he should decide the threat is a more effective use of our superior Navy versus adding more naval assets within the vicinity of the South China Seas where an accident could trigger a shooting war that escalates into a nuclear exchange.
