Usually when referring to the so-called oil weapon, analysts are talking about the decades old policy of major oil producing nations withholding production to tighten supplies and drive prices up, often driven by geopolitical motivations. The most nefarious example of this came in 1973 when middle eastern producers, led by Saudi Arabia, cut oil imports to the U.S. and a number of Western countries. Two other embargoes took place in both 1956 and 1967 with less than stellar results. Their objective, especially in 1967 and 1973, was to force countries that supported Israel to change their foreign policies and to also put pressure on Israel to withdraw from the territories it occupied during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, often called the Six Day War. What appears to have faded from public memory is that the U.S. has used the oil weapon more than OPEC producers, including oil embargoes on Japan […]