Can U.S Really Cut Off China’s Oil? (Naval War College Review)
A Seductive Strategy With a Hidden Cost
In the ongoing conversation about how the United States might respond to a military conflict with China, few ideas have attracted more attention than the maritime oil blockade. The logic is straightforward on the surface: China depends heavily on seaborne oil imports & the U.S. Navy has the capability to choke off those supply lines at key choke points like the Strait of Malacca. Gabriel Collins, writing in the Naval War College Review does not dismiss this logic outright. Instead, he subjects it to the kind of rigorous, data driven scrutiny it rarely receives & what he finds is that a strategy appealing in theory carries consequences that are deeply problematic in practice.
The Military Case: Real Capability & Real Limits
Collins acknowledges that the U.S military almost certainly has the tactical capability to execute a blockade against China’s seaborne oil routes. China’s imported oil passes overwhelmingly through a handful of strategic passages like the Strait of Malacca chief among them & that the U.S Navy could feasibly seal. There is also a workable navicert system, modelled on British practice in both World Wars that could allow oil to continue flowing to regional U.S allies while restricting Chinese access. On paper, the military mechanics are sound.
But Collins is quick to establish that tactical feasibility & strategic wisdom are not the same thing. Taking a tool that is fundamentally about slowly grinding an adversary down & trying to convert it into a substitute for head on military conflict would be a risky strategy. It was one that could mislead both allies & domestic audiences about what a conflict with China would actually require. This sort of strategy already had a catastrophic result in WW2 which finally led Japan to attack Pearl Harbor.
China’s Resilience: More Room to Breathe Than Expected
One of the paper’s most valuable contributions is its detailed modelling of how China would respond to a blockade which is not militarily but economically. Collins walks through several overlapping strategies that Beijing could deploy to extend its endurance far beyond what blockade advocates typically account for.
China’s initial nonmilitary responses would likely emphasize minimizing domestic oil demand to extend the life of commercial & strategic crude oil stocks & maximizing non maritime liquid fuel supplies by working to augment overland imports from Russia & Kazakhstan, as well as blending domestically produced fuel extenders such as coal derived methanol into gasoline & diesel pools. Crucially, China already holds crude oil inventories equivalent to roughly one hundred days of seaborne imports. Combined with aggressive rationing, overland pipeline supplies from Russia & Kazakhstan plus methanol blending from domestic coal reserves, Collins calculates that China could sustain itself for anywhere from ten months to (in the most optimistic response scenarios) several years. That is a timeline that would far outpace the political will of any blockading coalition to hold together.
The Global Economy: An Uncontrollable Variable
What would be the collateral economic damage a blockade would unleash on the wider world? China accounts for more than 25% of global manufacturing value added, within a much larger & more deeply interconnected global economy. Cutting it off from maritime oil supplies would not be a surgical strike on an isolated target but it would be, as Collins bluntly puts its equal to a nuclear strike on the global economy.
Sealing off China’s maritime inbound oil routes by itself would rapidly eliminate approximately 10% of global oil demand, cratering prices & setting the stage for multiple negative secondary effects in the Persian Gulf region & others dependent on oil export revenues. The cascading consequences are as commodity price collapse, political instability in oil dependent states, disruption to U.S alliances which would generate enormous international pressure to end the conflict quickly, likely before the blockade had time to achieve its intended effects.
Strategic Credibility: The Signal Washington Would Send
Collins raises a dimension that purely military analyses tend to overlook. And what a blockade first strategy communicates to allies, adversaries & the domestic audience? Relying on a distant blockade as a primary means of prosecuting a conflict with China would risk signaling that the U.S commitment to maintaining the Asian security architecture is, in fact limited. Regional partners might conclude that Washington lacks the will for direct engagement, while Beijing could read the strategy as an invitation to hold out until American resolve weakens. A blockade is, by its nature a slow instrument & in a contest of political endurance, China holds significant structural advantages on its home ground.
There is also the risk of domestic commercial interference. Civilian elected officials may be unwilling to allow the U.S Navy broad tactical latitude to sink or disable vessels attempting to defy a blockade, particularly if their willingness to go all in was attenuated by their desire to protect the commercial interests of their private patrons. History bears this out as Britain’s blockade of Germany in World War I took nearly 2 years to become effective, undermined throughout by powerful financial & commercial interests at home.
Conclusion: A Tool, Not a Strategy
Collins is careful not to argue that a maritime oil blockade has no place in U.S strategic planning. His argument is more precise & more useful than that of energy & resource blockades would be a critical complement to a comprehensive, long term war effort but taking such a tool & converting it into a substitute for direct military conflict would be a risky strategy. As a standalone policy, a blockade flatters U.S capabilities while understating Chinese resilience, overstating international tolerance for economic disruption & signalling strategic hesitation to exactly the parties that need to believe otherwise.
Policymakers & strategists thinking seriously about U.S – China contingencies would do well to read it & not as a counsel of passivity but as a discipline against the temptation of simple solutions to deeply complex problems. Geopolitics is always similar to a grand chess board & every move has its hidden cost.
Original Paper: A Maritime Oil Blockade Against China — Tactically Tempting but Strategically Flawed (Gabriel Collins | Naval War College Review, Spring 2018)
