Richard Stallman, founder of the FSF, robbed in Argentina

[camberiu]

I'd like to see any country try to impose a trade embargo on China. If you have a million man army, you don't need to grow your own food. You either buy it or you take it by force.

Are you saying that any country that is not self sufficient in food or energy must have the means to take it by force if necessary?

If you are planning on invading your neighbors, running WMD programs, or generally upsetting the the powers that be, then its probably a good idea to be self sufficient.

I see. So, if your dictatorial government happens to do that, it is OK and legal for a world power to prevent individual citizens (who had nothing to do with the WMDs) from using their own honest earned money to buy food and medicine abroad?

Let's take two countries... Morocco and Iraq are on the same latitude and have about the same amount of arable land (8-10 million hectares). The difference is that government policy in Morocco resulted in 100% self sufficiency with respect to food, while more than half of Iraq's land sits fallow.

Nope. Since Marocco has no oil, it makes economical sense to apply human resources (people) to farm land, as this is the most profitable activity they can have. In the case of Iraq, when you are sitting on huge oil reserves, it is a waste of resources to put people to farm when they are better used (economically speaking) to work on the oil industry. The opportunity cost for Iraq to be self-sufficient on food would have been enormous. The drop in revenue they would have by diverting people from working on oil fields to farm rise would be impossible to justify.

I am an ardent supporter of free markets, but there are limits. A nation must secure its food and energy supply.

How do you propose a country like Japan should secure its food and energy supply? How about the US? How about Germany? You are very close to defending the concept of "Lebensraum". You might want to check that up.