In retaliation for the Israeli aid proposal, Saudi Arabia had gone beyond the rolling cutbacks; it would now cut off all shipments of oil, every last barrel, to the United States. The other Arab states had done or were doing the same. The oil weapon was now fully in battle—a weapon, in Kissinger’s words, “of political blackmail.” The three-decade-old postwar petroleum order had died its final death. The embargo came as an almost complete surprise.
