EMBARGO

the detention of merchant vessels or other property to prevent their movement to a foreign territory. To achieve its objective, an embargo should also prohibit shipment by air and, if necessary, by land. Embargo should be distinguished from arrt de prince, a temporary detention of ships or aircraft; from angary, an emergency requisition of the use of foreign merchant vessels; and from boycott, an interruption of commercial and financial relations not confined to exports. An embargo is not imposed against enemy ships or other property, because the status of an enemy subjects such property to other action. Embargo may be civil or hostile. A civil embargo is the detention of national vessels in home ports either to protect them from foreign depredation or to prevent goods from reaching a particular state. A hostile embargo is the detention of the transport or property of a foreign state. An embargo may be employed either as a reprisal or for political purposes. As an act of reprisal an embargo may be imposed against a state that is felt to be violating its international legal duties. Of such nature was the U.S. embargo of 1807 against France and Great Britain. An embargo may also be employed for the political purpose of prohibiting exports of arms and other war materials to belligerent states or to states in rebellion, either in an attempt, usually collective, to force a cessation of hostilities or in an individual state's effort to preserve its neutrality. An example of the political embargo was the U.S. embargo of 1937, intended to promote U.S. neutrality during the Spanish Civil War. Embargoes have been imposed by belligerents on neutral ships and by neutrals on belligerent ships. For example, during World War I, British, French, and even neutral embargoes were imposed in preparation for the exercise of the right of angary. In 1918 both Argentina and Chile, which had adopted a neutral policy, detained German ships. In 1940 Norway's prohibition against the carriage of oil to Italy led to an Italian embargo against Norway. In 1941, before it became officially a belligerent, the United States seized German, Italian, Danish, and French ships lying idle in U.S. waters and also froze Axis assets. When employed as a collective measure of enforcement or prevention by an international organization, the effectiveness of an embargo depends upon cooperation both by members of the organization and, to prevent transshipment to the state subjected to such coercion, by nonmembers. In 1951, during the Korean War, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a U.S. recommendation that members of the UN prohibit shipments of arms and strategic materials to territories controlled by the Chinese and North Korean Communists. Thirty-three members and five nonmembers soon declared their intention to give effect to the resolution, and later the 14 states principally involved formed an international coordinating committee to implement their decision. This embargo, a means of supplementing UN military action in Korea, continued in effect after the 1953 Panmunjom armistice. In 1974 the Arab oil-producing states embargoed petroleum shipments to the West's industrialized powers in an unsuccessful attempt to force policy changes toward Israel.