Which of the world's nations could best survive on without outside trade?

Imagine that an omnipotent and mischievous entity – Mr. Mxyzptlk, Q, Aladdin’s Genie, whoever – decided to end all international war on Earth by quarantining all of the world’s nations? With a snap of its fingers, the entity first returns all foreign armies to their places of origin, and then throws up impenetrable force shields at every nation’s borders, making travel between any two states impossible. Only two exceptions to this edict are allowed. One, coastal nations may can still send ships out to their current territorial limit; and two, wormholes connecting, say, Anchorage and Seattle, or Nuuk and Copenhagen, are established, so places like Alaska and Greenland aren’t cut off from the mainland of their countries. But it’s no longer possible to travel from the US to Iraq, or even from Britain to France.

Which nations could best adjust to such restrictions–neither imports nor exports? Which would be most immediately and horribly screwed?* How well or badly would your place of residence be affected?

*For purposes of this discussion, consider that quasi-states like Vatican City to be part of the nation that surrounds them.

If it was a permanent situation, the countries which would do best would be those that
A) can feed themselves and
B) have abundant natural resources.

A) - Being able to feed yourself is the first consideration, and there are a lot of countries out there that can’t do this effectively and rely on trade for it. Unless they can somehow ramp up their agriculture industry, or in some cases change the focus of their agriculture they will be in trouble. [duh - obviously]
B) - A lot of countries rely on imports for manufactured goods, and in fact have let their own manufacturing base atrophy because they can get it cheaper from China/Korea, et al.

While losing this easy access would cause considerable short term pain for a lot of of the 1st world, those countries who have natural resources at hand could rebuild their manufacturing base in time, and that would then allow them to tick along as normal, or with “minimal” disruption. The type of natural resources they have also hav an impact though.

My short list of the top of my head

Countries that will do OK
Australia
United States
France
Britian

Countries that are in trouble
Japan
China
Saudia Arabia (big time)
Poorer African nations

Why is China in trouble? They have agriculture and the like. The only thing I could think of would be them unable to support their growth. They would likely run out of gas much faster than the US, but I’m sure the US would suffer on a technology level too, as I’m not sure there are major sources of silicon in the US. (could be wrong, just heard from somewhere I can’t remember that the U.S imports most its Silicon)

I’m certain we couldn’t last long with our gas supplies alone.

I suspect those countries would do best which are now closest to a subsistance level which means some of the poorer countries of Africa or Asia would be most likely to survive, countries that can make it as long as they have a few sheep, goats, and cattle.

The U.S. would do superb in food production. Miscellaneous production of crap including clothing would go out the window fast. We could do it at one time. It is just gone now and would take a very long time to get back. Most women have a 20+ year supply of essential clothing anyway and men don’t really care. It is the energy crunch that would hurt badly. We have lots of domestic oil but increasing production in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska might take some time.

Compare that to Canada:

The Alberta Tar Sands Represent basically infinite energy for Canada if they were the only ones using it. They have much of the things as the U.S. just on a 1/10th scale just like the population. The problem there is that their climate sucks for most food growing purposes. However, Canada has an incredible amount of land especially given their population combined with unfathomable energy resources and an educated, healthy, mostly homogeneous population.

World Title:
Canada

The reason I put China in the not so well category is that they import large quantities of grain every year. I couldn’t find a net import figure for China, but they imported 1.8 million tons from Australia alone last year.

That’s a large hole to fill in anyone’s language. Yes it’s true that China has lots of land, and a large agricultural sector, but it is still not enough to feed everyone in the country. Maybe if they were able to modernise their agricultural sector they might make out OK.

China imports grain for the same reason it exports consumer goods - it makes economic sense to sell the goods you make cheaper and buy the goods other countries can make cheaper. Australia, Canada, and the United States can produce grain and sell it to China cheaper than it would use cost the Chinese to grow it themselves. But China would be capable of producing enough grain to feed its population if it had to.

Think coal.

uh, not really. China has big problems in the food production realm. Only 13 percent of China’s land is arable and that is shrinking rapidly due to environmental degradation, urban sprawl and drought. China would probably survive ok, but only after a severe population crash.

cite for arable land issues

I’m going with Canada as well. We’re a net exporter of both energy and food. We have natural resources in abundance. Anything we import we could manufacture for ourselves.

The worst part of this for Canada would be that large segments of our economy are dependent on exports. The Canadian market is also small enough that in certain sectors, we’d have a lot less choice in goods. The car market would probably be one of these – prior to a free trade agreement with the US, Canada’s automobiles were almost exclusively produced domestically, but cars were more expensive and fewer models were available here.

The OP’s scenario implies that with no travel between countries, no one could return to their country of origin, either. That would not only settle the immigration issue for the U.S. (presumably, all Mexicans will become naturalized citizens and pay taxes, and a wall would no longer make any difference), but strand millions of tourists and students where they are now, and millions of guest workers would be stuck in the Persian Gulf states and elsewhere.

Dubai would transform overnight from a jet-setter’s and venture capitalists’ paradise to a soon-to-be-starving ghetto in which the disenfranchised guest workers (from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Egypt, etc.) would considerably outnumber the native, wealthy Gulf Arabs. That could make for some interesting turmoil and draconian violence, to say the least. At least Saudi Arabia has invested in some very costly agricultural projects, reliant upon water produced by desalinization. I dunno if they produce anywhere near enough to feed their own population, let alone the guest workers, but it’s a start. OTOH, I doubt if a civilized veneer in Dubai could hold out for as long as it would take for the imported liquor to run out.

Some of these countries might be able to sustain their populaces in terms of minimum caloric consumption, but not without suffering cataclysmic socio-political disruption, even revolution. China’s underprivileged peasantry of old has been migrating to the cities, for manufacturing jobs, by the hundreds of millions. Take away global trade and those jobs disappear (as well as the food imports) – and the Chinese CP won’t have to order those peasants back to the countryside at gunpoint, but use those guns to retain a threshold of urbanites in the cities.

[And that stat of China’s grain imports from Australia only adds up to about 3 lbs. per person per year – an insignificant amount by itself. Of course, that’s not all they’re buying, so they would admittedly be more affected than that.]

One country that should fare pretty well, provided it can elect a competent government, is Venezuela. They’ve got the oil, the tropical climate, are probably not overpopulated relative to their agricultural capacity and other resources (such as fresh water and marine fisheries). They’ve also got a horse’s ass for a president… thanks to Hugo Chavez’ insistence on price controls, food shortages are increasing in stores. Not because of famine, but because farmers and grocers are reluctant to part with the goods when doing so will cost them money.

I’d be skeptical about the long-term ability of France, Britain, and Japan to maintain their electricity generation without imported uranium, as they’re all very dependent upon their nuclear power plants. They might be able to finesse a smooth transition to wind, hydroelectric, solar, biomass, and tidal power as their fuel rods wind down, but eventually their nuke plants would become worthless.

Sub-Saharan African nations currently beset with high rates of HIV, malaria, etc. would have to ramp up domestic production of lifesaving pharmaceuticals or suffer accordingly. But some of these countries, despite their relative poverty and frequent political instability, are surprisingly well-situated for certain high-tech industries, because of their wealth of precious metals like titanium, platinum, gold, etc. (Not that there’d be a high demand for jet aircraft in a zero-international-trade world, but still. In the very long run, after they’d gotten over the humps posed by the no-trade thing and HIV, they could exploit that capacity.)

And any country with a tenuous grip on caloric self-sufficiency and which also exists in a monoclimate or has a monocrop agriculture would be critically vulnerable to famine. North Korea (droughts), Bangladesh (floods), the Horn of Africa states (drought, locusts)… most of these people would be doomed at the first catastrophe. By contrast, it’d be a very unlucky year that would see persistent crop failure in the USA, from the East coast to the West and all points in between, of our grains, fruits, and vegetables.

Canada is a good choice, but do they have steel making capacity? The US would be fine for energy with coal as Duckster pointed out, plus some Uranium. I can’t really think of anything the US doesn’t have the resources or know how to make, we would certainly be in good shape in terms of food and petrochemicals. Steel might be our downfall too, I’m not sure about our iron reserves. Limited copper production in the Southwest could hurt the US too.

Wouldn’t Brazil do pretty well? They’re self sufficient in ethanol, bikinis and supermodels. It appears that they have decent iron deposits, but I’m not so sure about other essential minerals.

I think it’s the small countries that would go under first. Andorra/Liechenstein/Monaco/San Marino etc.

Very few natural resources and little enough land to grow food

Yes ,but how much capacity I cant really begin to guess at. What we are making , a good portion of it goes to china and the rest gets split up domestically.

Declan
fixed coding

Wonder if Spain would be able to pool its lawyers into convincing the genie that Andorra should be doubly-porous (its princes are the Bishop of Seo d’Urgel in Spain and the French President)… wonder if it would be convenient… uhmmmm…

We’d be scrambling in any case, mind you. It sure would do a lot of interesting things to our politics, but only after a couple bloodsheds or three. I can picture nationalist leaders ranting against the genie for not putting walls around “their” homeland :stuck_out_tongue: The first reaction of most Spanish politicians would be business as usual, i.e., inventing new words to avoid offending anybody’s sensibilities (of course managing to come up with something that offends everybody) and blaming everything on their opposite numbers, rather than worrying about how to feed 40M+ people on what we grow locally and without oil.

Does this mean that The Wall around Gaza and the West Bank finally gets built?

We’ll really be better off, then! (well, if we disregard pesky little issues like the total absence of any energy reserves [i.e., oil]) :stuck_out_tongue:

We could still export software (which is pretty much how we make a living right now, since (presumably) the genie won’t be smart enough to block electromagnetic radiation – we’ll just have the customers download it off a satellite feed :))

yeah, but … what will you get back in return? More software?

Now that I think of it… energy! In the form of MicroWaves bounced off of satellites.

In fact, I think energy could be traded for knowledge under this scheme, in a more general sense. And given enough energy, I think all of the rest (including agriculture) is doable. Humanity 1, Genie 0! :slight_smile:

I have to go with Canada as well. Abundant resources, lots of space, a population that is pretty much the same. We have plenty of Oil/Coal, we have plenty of arable land. Steel is not a problem, as we have our own steel industries already. I can’t think of anything we don’t have that we would need.

What about Russia? They have much of the same advantages as Canada don’t they?

I see big Northern countries being the winners in this scenario.