For a trade embargo against a particular country to succeed, a high de

I'd go with D. Its because the statement should be a conclusion. The argument is
1. Complete blockage required for trade embargo to succeed.
2. Trying to enforce a complete blockage is likely to create a discorm amongst nations.

The only logical conclusion is that "therefore, a trade embargo against Patria is likely to fail".

Stmts B and E are suggestions for the embargo to succeed, not conclusions.
Stmt A is wrong because the passage doesn't mention that international discord would help Patria.
C is simply a fact. already stated in the arguments, not a conclusion.

In E, unanimous agreement does not necessarily mean a high degree of cooperation.

Therefore, D.

D IMO

just take it this way..

A-->embargo

B-->condn 1(a high degree of both international accord )
and
C-->condn 2(ability to prevent goods from entering or leaving that country)

As per the passage
For A(embargo) to happen we need both B and C

Now which one strongly supports it?
Obviously D.

(A) The balance of opinion is likely to favor Patria in the event of a blockade.
(B) As long as international opinion is unanimously against Patria, a trade embargo is likely to succeed.
(C) A naval blockade of Patria’s ports would ensure that no goods enter or leave Patria.
(D) Any trade embargo against Patria would be likely to fail at some time.
(E) For a blockade of Patria’s ports to be successful, international opinion must be unanimous.

k i think i get this question ..

"For a trade embargo against a particular country to
succeed, a high degree of both international accord
and ability to prevent goods from entering or leaving
that country must be sustained"----------this is the condtion for success

"A total blockade of
Patria’s ports is necessary to an embargo, but such an
action would be likely to cause international discord
over the embargo."---------indicates lack of international accord
what can u conclude?
a) you cannot say this for sure --reject
b)lacks the condition ( ability to prevent goods)--so success may or may not be possible
c)cannot say this for sure that this will happen for all we know someone might smuggle the goods--so rejected
d)consider the tone.." likely " indicates that the tone is modest, ---not easy to see this though so this looks ohke
e) too strict ..

Hi Karisma , i got the question right missed on a few points which you covered very well.Can you also tell what is mean by "International accord ".My line of reasoning was that International accord does not neccesarily mean that all should agree unanimously­

A high degree of international accord means that most countries should agree to the decision. But the argument mentions "A total blockade of
Patria’s ports is necessary to an embargo, but such an
action would be likely to cause international discord
over the embargo."
So whatever is the level of accord that is needed, is likely to be not received.­

First of all, we need to know that it is an infer question. (Yippe! Half way done!)

Premise1: Two actions (international accord + preventing goods from moving in or out of banned country) are NECESSARY for success of embargo.
Premise2: The actions will result in an outcome that will defeat one of the two action which is necessary for the outcome.

Read as: The actions will result in an outcome (total blockade) that (by causing international discord) will defeat one of the two action (international accord) which is necessary for the outcome.

Use 'Prethinking for CR' (a term coined by e-gmat)
Logic says that when the prerequisites for an action is killed by outcome of the action, the action may not survive. So, an Embargo which is defeating its NECESSARY requisites will be eventually fail.

We already know the answer at this stage. Still let us check the options

A. 'Shell game' (a term coined by GMAT CR Bible Book)
This is tempting. Our real world knowledge sways away to think that embargo is bad. So, if an embargo fails, it may be favouring Patria!
Wait! Wait ! Wait! What if embargo caused a regime change in Patria and this event paved way for a meritocratic system of governance influence by theory of Übermensch! And then like Germany, Patria became a powerful nation! In this case, embargo might help Patria!!

Am I introducing my personal judgement that embargo is bad? If yes... that is bad habit for CR. Beware!

B. P2 says that international discord will arise. This option negates my P2. At the most, this option create a P3. But in that case also, the argument is left bare without any conclusion/inference.

C. At the most, the option can serve as definition of embargo and may serve as Premise3. Still no sign of conclusion 'shore' for my 'logic ship'.

D. Logical syllogism says that Embargo will fail. This is exactly what we want!

E. In the light of premise1 and 2, this option is self defeating. P2: If blockade is successful, international discord will arise. So, international opinion can never be unanimous.

I got confused and chose B.
If the embargo were to be made, only as long as the international opinion will be against it will succeed.
So how can I avoid this kind of mistake?­

The 'conclusion' questions are usually pretty mathematical and just need a step by step approach. Here, you know that A and B are necessary for C. But A will imply 'not B'. So you can conclude that C will not happen.

After you practice a few such questions, they will make a lot of sense.

Dear Karishma,

The answer is indeed D. However, your rejection of option E didn't convince me. We have been told what it takes to ensure a successful blockade. However, E talks about 'unanimity' in option against Patria, which is not the same as a high degree of international accord. As you well know, strong words like unanimous are generally a trap.­

Use variables since the terminology might be confusing you.

Argument:
For T (trade embargo) to succeed, you need both A (international accord) and B (Blockade of movement of goods which implies blockade of ports, train lines outside the country etc)
But B (Blockade of ports) is likely to cause international discord (which means A will be destroyed).

Option (E) For a blockade of Patria’s ports to be successful, international opinion must be unanimous.

What your option (E) says is that for B to be successful, A must happen. Point is, the argument tells us nothing about what we need for B. It only tells us the repercussions of B (that A will not happen). We don't know what will make B successful in the first place. The argument says nothing about it. The argument only tells us what you need for T and that A will not happen if B happens. We have no idea about what is needed for B to be successful. So we cannot say that from the argument, option (E) must be true. Hence (E) is not the answer.­

Hi VeritasPrepKarishma / carcass / sayantanc2k / GMATNinja /Experts.

A very basic question - so per my understanding inference/must be true/conclusion questions are all the same. In this question, though I totally understand why choice D is correct, could an answer choice like C be a correct answer for a 'conclusion' question?

In the conclusion questions, are we trying to come up to a conclusion by combining multiple premises (logical deduction of 2 statements)? Can answer to a conclusion question be a paraphrase of one of the premises or does it have to be the author's main point (combination of 2 statements)? Please advise if there are any fundamental differences between 'must be true' and 'conclusion' questions?

I would appreciate your help! thank you very much!

SD

There is not any difference between must be true and conclusion in the stem. Different words to say the same identical thing.

Moreover, conclusion/inference/must be true at the end of the day, what you do need is one thing only and solely to tackle even the most difficult question: the solution is actually a reworded, o paraphrasing or quite similar of something said somewhere in the stimulus. What is stated in there, with different words.
That's it.

Hope this helps.

regards

We don't need to worry about the difference between inference/must be true/conclusion for GMAT. They pretty much mean that which of the following must be true as per the argument.
(C) cannot be the conclusion here.
The argument tells us that for trade embargo, we need "international accord" and "ability to prevent goods from entering or leaving". It also tells us that "total blockade of ports is necessary (presumably to prevent goods from entering or leaving) but could lead to international discord.

(C) A naval blockade of Patria's ports would ensure that no goods enter or leave Patria.

This says that a naval blockade is sufficient to ensure that no good enter or leave Patria. The argument talks about TOTAL blockade being required. A naval blockade does not ensure total blockade anyway.

VeritasKarishma GMATNinja
Hello,
Don't you think that the underlined part has exaggerated the choice D?
My knowledge on ''draw the conclusion'' says that 'An absolute degree of anything requires absolute support, no exception.' There is no shift of ''likely'' (no conversion to always) in choice D. So, why did we use exaggeration (at some time)?

I think this portion is the key to your question: "a high degree of both international accord and ability to prevent goods from entering or leaving that country must be sustained." Because of that last part ("must be sustained"), we know that the 1) international accord and 2) ability to prevent goods from entering/leaving must be kept up in order for the embargo to succeed.

If a total blockade is likely to cause international discord, that means that international accord will likely NOT be sustained. At some point the blockade will likely cause international discord, which would probably cause the embargo to fail.

How long will it take for the blockade to cause enough international discord to disrupt the embargo? We don't know. But based on the information in the passage, the blockade will likely cause the embargo to fail at some point in time.

I don't think "at some time" in choice (D) is an issue -- it simply conveys the idea that the timing of the failure is unknown.

More importantly, we can eliminate the other choices with POE, and (D) is the choice that is most strongly supported.

I hope that helps!

"at some time" does not change the intent of the option at all.
"... is likely to fail" is the same as "... is likely to fail at some time"

It just means that even if it may not fail immediately, it is likely to fail sooner or later.
"... is likely to fail" also means the same thing since it doesn't specify the time frame.