Berletic: US Plans for China Blockade Continue Taking Shape

“What was once a theoretical discussion in U.S. military journals about blockading China’s oil supply is now steadily turning into a tangible, multi-layered strategy aimed at containing Beijing and preserving American global dominance.”

A multi-decade US plan to blockade and contain China is still in place and evolving. This is now part of a global war against multi-polarism. Berletic works from a 2018 document, the Naval War College Review - A Maritime Oil Blockade Against China—Tactically Tempting but Strategically Flawed (https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi... that identifies the obstacles to such a policy, explains how to overcome these obstacles, a process that has been incrementally ongoing since. This is Cold War continuity of agenda, an agenda that goes back to World War Two, an agenda to maintain US global hegemony over the entire globe.

Recall this quote from US adviser George Kennan in 1948:

Berletic cites a NYT article from 1992 about this policy as further crafted by none other than Dick Cheney:

“The classified document makes the case for a world dominated by one superpower whose position can be perpetuated by constructive behavior and sufficient military might to deter any nation or group of nations from challenging American primacy. Rejecting Collective Approach

To perpetuate this role, the United States “must sufficiently account for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order,” the document states.”

Obstacles identified in the Naval Review in 2018 are reviewed again in recent papers (dated November 2025) cited by Berletic that show that far from retreating to the Western Hemisphere US policy makers are talking about escalating their pressure on China by measures to encircle and contain China and wage proxy wars that will bring this about. US policies in Ukraine, Taiwan, the Philippines and Venezuela are all examples of the US war on the globe.

The intent is to prevent all those nations that are currently beyond US control from joining the multipolar project, exercising US power through its “alliance network” (i.e. client regimes) who are often suckered into working to achieve US foreign policy objectives at their own expense. Ukraine is an example, embracing its own destruction with a view to helping the US “extend” (i.e. destabilize) Russia.

US analysts acknowledge the superior weapons-producing capability of Russia and China but take comfort from the fact of their relative inability to project power beyond their borders. US power projection capability by contrast is almost limitless as a result of its power to mire a target nation in one location using US logistic networks for the purposes of applying force to multiple pressure points. Russian capability of defending the Assad dynasty in Syria for example was weakened by US ability to apply pressure on Russia via Ukraine.

The US is similarly able to apply pressure on nations that are allies or potential allies of Russia and China, for example by dominating global information space through the imposition of US-based social media platforms whose algorithms, ultimately controlled by the US State Department and Department of War, that determine what information is available to entire populations and what isn’t with a long term view to political capture through regime change. This is what is happening along China’s periphery.

US vassal nations can take action that impedes Russian and Chinese energy and trade as in recent examples of French seizure of vessels said to belong to Russia’s “shadow fleet” (i.e. ships who do not recognize illegal US sanctions and do not seek to insure themselves in London).

Such measures (maritime blockades) were discussed in the 2018 Naval Review paper. The strategies are incremental so as to reduce the shock effect on the economy of the US itself or of its client states. Setting the stage for a blockade of China has already begun with a view to enabling or positioning the US or its client states to control or cut off the flow of oil to China via the Straits of Malacca past Singapore through the China Sea south of the Philippines, past US-controlled Okinawa. The US Marine Force has been used to set up missile launch points with a view to choking off the supply of oil and other goods to China beyond the reach of Chinese military force. So the blockade is imposed far from Chinese coasts (which is precisely why China is militarizing the South China Sea).

The 2018 Naval Review paper also discussed ways at hitting China’s Belt and Road network including, for example, hitting at a pipeline across Myanmar to China by carpet bombing facilities (in the event of overt conflict) either there or anywhere else that do not cooperate in preventing the transit of oil, and similar strategies in times of “peace” for striking at Belt and Road infrastructure facilities by promoting terrorist and militant movements and similar proxies to do the US work for it, using US control of local sources of information to instigate anti-Chinese sentiment.

Everywhere that Belt and Road infrastructure goes the US has a plan to stop its development or destroying it. Berletic cites assassinations or assassination attempts to kill Chinese diplomats and Chinese workers in places like Pakistan or Balochistan or Thailand (where a US-backed billionaire worked to discourage adoption of a Chinese high speed train network in favor a very inferior alternative). When the US “captured” the government of the Philippines, there was an immediate backing down on Belt and Road initiatives. US support, under the direction of the CIA, over the past few years to Ukraine in attacks on Russian energy facilities are intended not only to help Ukraine wage its war on Russia, to hurt Russia economically, but to undermine Russia as an energy supplier to China.

In effect the US has sought to develop an Asian version of NATO as a proxy war by which the US to contain and weaken China, not dissimilar to the role of NATO in Ukraine.