Blockades Quotes
Half a century later some in the Muslim world were justifying terrorism, violence and intimidation on the grounds of desperation of the unique circumstances Islam as in and the attack Islam was under. However, many scholars use this quotation to illustrate that extra legal means and violence has been a Muslim tactic. It actually goes back to the beginning of Islam. It was ironic that Ali Kahn, after supporting extra-legal and violent means of achieving political objectives was himself the victim when he was assassinated in 1951.
At the outbreak of the Civil War the President maintained that the United States was not at war with another nation but was merely putting down a rebellion. When he then ordered a blockade of Southern ports, he was legally blockading his own country. See Thaddeus Stevens.
Estonia had moved a Russian Soviet era monument to WWII dead Soviet Soldiers from a prime location in the center of their capital to a location outside of town. Russian-speaking Estonians were outraged and fomented violent demonstrations and riots that almost paralyzed the city. At the same time 85,000 Estonian computers were hijacked and used to implement a denial of service attack on some of the major government sites including the main bank, blocking all those webservers from serving normal customers on the Internet. The Prime Minister and other Estonian officials accused the Russians of the cyber-attack and likened it to a blockade which is an act of war under international law. What complicates cyberattacks is that there might have been some Russian nationalists who, with no knowledge of the government could have implemented a denial of service attack where so many accesses to servers are engineered that the servers crash. The perpetrators may have been instigated by the Russian government or not. They could have been any place in the world when they did it.
The problem of fictitious blockades vexed the world until 1856. See {613802}.
The British had closed Boston Harbor until the English merchants who lost their goods at the Boston Tea Party were paid for their damages. A convention was called to discuss a response to the closing of Boston Harbor and New York City convened a public meeting to come up with instructions for their delegates to the conference. One amazing thing was that they advocated a boycott of English goods. What was amazing was that there was no nation and New York and Massachusetts were separate entities and sectionalism was rife, yet New Yorkers were willing to sacrifice to help Bostonians. The New York sacrifice was all the greater because most of the imports from England landed at New York harbor where there was work created for New Yorkers and business for New York companies. New York stood to lose the most with a boycott. Philadelphia which also advocated a boycott, lost little as they were not a harbor for imports. New Yorkers also provided assistance to their competitors, the Bostonians who were out of work. See {589413}.
The Navy and the foreign office had to find the argument to support the action; it was anxious work.
Early in the first world war, the British "extended" the traditional legal concept of a blockade:
The British had closed Boston Harbor until the English merchants who lost their goods at the Boston Tea Party were paid for their damages. Even though Boston being the second port in the colonies after New York were commercial competitors to the New Yorkers. None the less, New York raised money for assistance to the Bostonians who were jobless as a result of the port closure. See {589414} for the other steps that New York was willing to take.
Fox News, the more conservative of the American networks, had raised the specter of the world’s oil supply being cut off by Iran. A blockade, under international law, is an act of war, and having declared war against the United States and other countries, the Iranian military might be able to sustain a blockade for 3 or 4 days before, in addition to the massive damage that would be done to the Iranian infrastructure and the loss of all their aircraft, the Iranian Radar would be rendered inoperable and their missiles would have little effect. The oil sea lanes are within range of Iranian missiles and aircraft. But Iran could not sustain control of the artery, and they and most of the world military and political leaders know it. The few who may not face the reality are the Muslim nations whose military assessment has always been at great variance with reality causing the Islamic nations to make a series of military delusional blundering leading to their losing war after war.
Ransome had a unique access to Post Russian Revolutionary leadership as his fiancée was the secretary to key Russian Communist party committees and through her he had access to Lenin, Trotsky and other leaders. In general Ramsome is best known as a children’s book author.
In international law, a blockade is an act of war by the brocading country against the country that is blockaded—not against 3rd parties that may have to obey the blockade. For example before the War of 1812, France and England were at war and each blockaded the other’s ports. The United States was affected by the blockade in that our ships could not go in or out of blockaded ports with goods. However nether country was at war with us. All neutral nations must respect a blockade or the blockading nation is entitled to use force to enforce the blockade, but that is not an act of war. In 2011, Gaza was at war with Israel, and Israel blockaded Gaza. A Turkish ship tried to bring goods to Gaza and Israel seized the ship by force and brought it into a near natural port (Egypt). Israel was entitled to enforce its Gaza blockade, but they were not at war with Turkey. However if Israel, blockaded a country where there was not an existing war, the blockade itself would be an act of war.
The reaction of the Kennedy team was very negative to the Russian Proposal with the exception of John McCone who agreed with Kennedy. See {634568}. Neither side had great intercontinental ballistic missile capability at the time, and we had placed a large battery of missiles in Turkey very close to the Russian border. This gave the U. S. a major military advantage. We could deliver many more nuclear warheads to Russia than they could to the United States. The Russians with this proposal hoped to even the capability. The military advisers and the security and State Department advisors all thought that the U. S. should not give up its nuclear superiority. However, we had no international legal basis for denying the Cubans the right to locate any weapons on their soil, so to prevent the Communists from having nuclear missiles in Cuba we would have to use force which could easily escalate into a nuclear war. Kennedy and McCone both thought that since we had intercontinental ballistic missiles in production and coming on line and would not need the Turkey Missiles to strike all over Russia. So giving up our missile advantage for a short time would not expose us to any undue risk. The other advisors worried that the production of the ICBMs could be delayed—weapons systems were (and are) notoriously longer in production than estimated or planned. They also thought that the morale of the military and civilian population would suffer when they learned that we had given away our military advantage. There was a macho element in their thinking in that we would be giving in to intimidation and look like we were afraid to fight. Last, the political advisors thought that the right wing hawks would pillory the administration for its cowardice in allowing itself to be intimidated by the Russians. Their doctrine was that when faced with force, the Communists will always back down. In the final deal we agreed to remove our missiles from Turkey in 6 months and this would be done in complete secrecy and the Russians would keep the deal secret. That way, Kennedy got 6 more months of production which turned out to have been enough. The public would never know till years later and the Conservatives would not be able to publicly castigate Kennedy. Meanwhile, the conservatives would continue to believe that the Russians backed down in the face of force—the naval blockade as this was ‘proved’ their doctrine when the Russians had not backed down at all. The strategy and tactics of the Kennedy administration are still analyzed and argued about today with many Americans just realizing that we did not intimidate the Russians with force or the threat of force to remove their Cuban missiles.
In 1915 England had a food blockade against Germany. Germany had begun U-boat attacks on British flag civilian liners:
