No, I cannot locate the USofA on a map.
The USA is everywhere in the world. If we bomb someone, we bomb ourselves. If we blockade someone, we blockade ourselves. The USA is everywhere in the world, and the world is here in the USA as well. Perhaps that's not so obvious in Podunk, but you certainly can't miss it in Los Angeles.
Crooks, criminals and warloards love blockades. It increases the price they can demand for the goods they control the flow of, and it increases their control over the innocents within their sphere - in fact, the only people hurt by blocades and "economic sanctions" are those sainted innocents.
Notice how quickly our blockade removed Castro from power in our own back yard, and how much it benefitted the innocent people of Cuba. The only reason that moronic blockade stands is to please a strong block of votes in a state upon which presidential elections sometimes hinge.
Sure we are allies with most of the developed world. We have also been at war with most of them at one time or another. Their cooperation with our blocades has been on a par with our cooperation with their blockades - approaching Zero as a limit - often as the upper limit rather than the lower.
Freezing assets works even better than blockades. As often as not we find the assets we are freezing are our own assets as well. And if we get too liberal with freezing assets within our reach, everyone will become accustomed to keeping assets out of our reach, which will not work at all to our advantage.
You cannot (we hope, anyway) legally arrest people on speculation, nor just because they associate with people of whom you do not approve, or because you disagree with their political opinions. We tried that once or twice and it's called McCarthyism and witch hunting. People can't even be arrested because they come from a hostile country - most of us have at one time or another, and when this has been done it is soon revaled as needless persecution of innocents and allies.
Yes, killing innocents is unjust - but justice is a conceit of human society, it does not exist in nature. Unfortunately it is the nature of innocents to be killed - that, in fact, defines innocents. If they hadn't been killed they'd probably be found to be just a guilty as the rest of us.
Life exist by killing life. Even if you are a vegetable, you strive to block out the sun and suck up the moisture, to your neighbor's detriment. Forest trees strive for harder wood so their limbs can saw down their neighbors in the wind - while that neighbor grows soft wood to accelerate growth so as to shade the hardwood to death. Sometimes one wins, sometimes the other depending on circumstances. If you are not a vegetable you live by killing life and eating it.
As humans we strive for a "higher" ideal, which is of our own design and craft, and has nothing to do with nature - but we still must live as creatures of nature, "red of tooth and claw". Sometimes we have to make the hard choices in violation of our self made ideals. Sometimes we have to kill innocents - before they get a chance to kill us. In life, nobody is a non combatant.*
Please pardon me for jumping into the middle of a thread I haven't read all of, but it looked too tedious for my very limited attention span.
* See Ambrose Beirce: Non Combatant, n. A dead Quaker.
