The pipe dream of energy independence

Picture this world: the United States has completely withdrawn into its shell, which means that the United States Navy no longer patrols the seas, and piracy runs rampant, making international trade very difficult. The total volume of global trade comes crashing down. Pakistan can import and export very little.

What would happen to the country then?

Needless to say, this would be an enormous disruption and would cause a collapse in economic activity. But one thing would not happen: The country would not starve.

Yes, in the absence of fuel imports, we would need to conserve what little fuel existed for the food trucks and the tube wells, so more people would need to move back to their villages to work on the farms since we would probably not have enough for tractors. The country would be vastly poorer than it is today. But the farms and land would produce enough of the basic food we need to ensure that the country would not starve.

This may seem like a baseline thing to say, but the fact remains that most countries in the world cannot say that. The vast majority of humanity – including rising and wealthy nations like China – do not grow enough of their own food and do not have a large enough domestic capacity to do so. If free movement in the world’s shipping lanes – made possible by the United States Navy – were to stop, most of the world would face massive food shortages.

Pakistan would not.