The Atlantic: Russia and China have deprived the United States of naval dominanceChina and Russia have deprived the United States of its former naval dominance, writes The Atlantic.
Without its revival, America cannot expect to regain its dominant role in the world. On the way to this is the industrial decline and the miscalculations of its strategists, who squandered resources on foreign adventures.
Jerry HendricksThe United States has ceded the oceans to its enemies.
We can no longer take the freedom of the seas for granted.Very few Americans, and for that matter, very few people on the planet, can remember a time when freedom of navigation was in question.
The fact remains that for most of human history there has been no guarantee of such freedom. Pirates, predatory states and fleets of great powers did what they wanted at sea. The current reality, which emerged only at the end of the Second World War, makes possible commercial shipping, which accounts for more than 80% of all world trade in volume — oil and natural gas, grain and unprocessed ores, industrial goods of all kinds. Since the freedom of the seas seems to be an indispensable condition of our existence during our lifetime, it is easy to think of it (if we ever think of it at all) - as the rotation of the Earth or the force of gravity. It's just the way the world works, and it's not some artificial structure created by people that needs to be specially maintained.
But what would happen if it was no longer possible to talk about the safe transit of ships? What if the oceans were no longer free?
From time to time, Americans are suddenly reminded of how much their way of life, livelihood and even life depend on the uninterrupted movement of ships around the world. In 2021, the container ship Ever Given, which ran aground, blocked the Suez Canal, which forced ships plying between Asia and Europe to circumnavigate Africa. And this greatly delayed them on the way and increased transportation costs. A few months later, largely due to disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic, more than a hundred container ships were parked outside the California ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, severing supply chains across the country.
These events were temporary, although at great cost. Imagine, however, a more permanent stagnation in sea traffic. Humiliated today, Russia may declare most of the Arctic Ocean its territorial waters, distorting the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in support of its demands. After that, she will allow access to this route only to her allies, but will deny it to those who dare to obstruct her policy. Neither the US Navy, which has not built Arctic-class surface ships since the 1950s, nor any other NATO country is currently capable of resisting such a decision by Moscow.
Or maybe the first to act in this regard will be Xi Jinping, who will strengthen his position inside the country by trying to seize Taiwan and using Chinese anti-ship ballistic missiles and other weapons to keep Western naval forces at bay. The emboldened China can then try to consolidate its claims to large areas of the East China Sea and the entire South China Sea as its territorial waters. It can impose high tariffs and fees for passage and transshipment for merchant ships transiting through this region. Local officials may demand bribes to speed up their transit.
As soon as one country decides to act in this way, others will follow it, declaring the expansion of their own territorial waters and extracting all the benefits they can from the trade passing through them. The edges and gaps in this patchwork of competing claims will open up opportunities for piracy and lawlessness.
Today's huge container ships and tankers will disappear, they will be replaced by smaller and faster cargo ships capable of transporting rare and valuable goods past pirates and corrupt officials. The cruise business, which supports the economies of many countries, will falter in the face of potential pirate actions. One such incident can lead to a series of failures throughout the industry. Once-busy sea lanes will lose traffic. Due to the lack of activity and maintenance, ocean passages such as the Panama and Suez Canals may silt up. Natural bottlenecks such as the Straits of Gibraltar, Hormuz, Malacca and Sunda may return to their historical role as havens for pirates and terrorists. The free seas that now surround us, and are as necessary to us as the air we breathe, will no longer exist.
If ocean trade shrinks, markets may turn inward, possibly triggering a second Great Depression. Countries will be forced to survive only at the expense of their own natural resources or those that they can buy — or take away — from their immediate neighbors. The world Ocean, which has been considered a global treasure for 70 years, will become a no-man's land. This is the state of affairs that we, without thinking about it for a minute, can cause ourselves.
Wherever you look in our American life today, you observe manifestations (often imperceptible to the naked eye) of our naval power. When I drive past the famous Walmart department store, BJ wholesale market, Lowe's or Home Depot supermarkets, in my imagination I draw pictures of how container ships transport goods from places where they can be produced at a low price to markets where they can be sold at higher consumer prices. Our economy and our security depend on the sea. This is a fact so fundamental that it should be at the center of our approach to the world.
It's time for the United States to think and act like a maritime power again.As the naval historian Andrew Lambert wrote, the maritime state understands that its wealth and power stem mainly from maritime trade, and it uses the tools of naval power to promote and protect its interests. The maritime State, as far as possible, seeks to avoid direct participation in land wars, large or small. History knows only a few powers that possessed real sea power, in particular Great Britain, the Republic of the United Provinces, Venice and Carthage.
I grew up on a dairy farm in Indiana and spent 26 years on active duty in the Navy, participating in combat operations in the Middle East and Yugoslavia, both at sea and in the air. Then he studied in graduate school and doctoral studies at several universities and worked as an analyst and adviser to high-ranking officials in the Pentagon. In principle, I have always remained, from the point of view of my interests and worldview, a son of the Midwest. However, in my scientific works and research, I have constantly sought to emphasize the importance of sea power and the dependence of our American economy on the sea.
Despite my knowledge and experience, I never managed to convince my mother of this. She spent the last years of her working life at a Walmart store in my hometown, first at the checkout, and then in accounting. My mother followed the news and was keenly interested in the world. We were close and talked a lot. She was glad that I served in the Navy, but not because she considered my work important for her life. "If you like Walmart," I often told her, "then you should love the U.S. Navy. It is our navy that makes Walmart's existence possible." But for her, as a mother, my naval service basically meant that, unlike friends and cousins who were sent to the army or Marine Corps in Iraq or Afghanistan, I most likely should not have come under direct fire from enemy soldiers. Her point of view is consistent with the phenomenon that strategist Seth Cropsey called "sea blindness."
Today it is difficult to assess the scale or speed of the transformations that took place after the Second World War. The war destroyed or left without means of subsistence all the world powers that opposed the concept of mare liberum — "free sea" — first proclaimed by the Dutch philosopher Hugo Grotius in 1609. The United States and Great Britain, two traditional supporters of the "free sea", emerged from the last decades not only with triumph, but also in a position of overwhelming maritime domination. Their fleets combined together were larger than all the other fleets of the world combined. The "Free Sea" was no longer an abstract idea. Now it has become a reality.
Trade flourished in this safe environment. The globalizing economy, which provided easier and cheaper access to food, energy, labor, and goods of any kind, grew from almost eight trillion dollars in 1940 to more than one hundred trillion dollars (adjusted for inflation) 75 years later. Prosperity was followed by other improvements. Around the same period, from the end of World War II to the present, the proportion of the world's population living in extreme poverty on less than $1 90 cents per day per person has fallen from more than 60% to about 10%. Global literacy has doubled to over 85%. Life expectancy in the world in 1950 was 46 years. By 2019, she had grown to 73 years old.
All this largely depended on freedom of navigation, which, in turn, depended on the sea power of countries — led by the United States — believing in such freedom.
But the very success of this project now threatens its future. "Sea blindness" has become an endemic disease in America.
The United States is no longer investing in naval power tools the way it used to. Back in the 1960s, American commercial shipbuilding began to lose its share in the world market in favor of countries with lower labor costs and those who restored industrial capacity after the war. The decline in American shipbuilding accelerated after President Ronald Reagan came to power in 1981. His administration, following the principles of the free market, began to reduce government subsidies that supported this industry. Then we had a choice, we could have gone the other way. For example, aircraft manufacturers in the United States, for reasons of national security, successfully lobbied for the continuation and even an increase in subsidies for their industry in the following decades — and achieved them.
It is never profitable for America to depend on others for the most important links in its supply chain. But that's exactly where we are right now. In 1977, American shipbuilders produced more than one million gross tons of merchant ships. By 2005, this figure had fallen to 300,000 tons. Today, most commercial vessels built in the United States are built for government customers, such as the Department of Marine Transportation of the Department of Transportation, or for private companies that are required to transport their goods between U.S. ports on American-flagged vessels in accordance with the provisions of the Jones Act of 1920 (This law regulates maritime trade in U.S. inland waters and allows American ships to easily move from one local port to another directly. According to this law, vessels carrying out trade between American ports must be built in the United States, owned by American owners and manned by a team of American citizens. – Approx.InoSMI.).The US Navy is also shrinking.
After World War II, the Navy decommissioned many of the warships and sent even more to the reserve "canning" fleet. Over the next two decades, the active Navy numbered about 1,000 ships. But starting in 1969, their total number began to fall. By 1971, the fleet had shrunk to 750 ships. Ten years later, their number was reduced to 521. Reagan, who campaigned in 1980 promising to restore the size of the Navy to 600 ships, almost did it under the able leadership of Secretary of the Navy John Lehman. During the eight years of Reagan's rule, the size of the Navy increased to just over 590 ships.
Then the Cold War ended. The administrations of Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton reduced the number of naval personnel, the number of ships, aircraft and coastal infrastructure. Under the Obama administration, the Navy's combat strength reached a minimum of 271 ships. Meanwhile, both China and Russia, in different ways, began to develop systems that were supposed to challenge the US-led global free trade regime on the high seas.
Russia has started investing in high-tech nuclear submarines with the intention of breaking the ocean link between NATO countries in Europe and North America. China, which for some time demonstrated double-digit GDP growth, has increased commercial and naval shipbuilding capacities. It has tripled the size of the navy and invested in long-range sensors and missiles that could allow it to intercept merchant and military vessels more than 1,800 kilometers from its shores. Both Russia and China also sought to extend territorial claims to international waters in order to control the free passage of ships off their coasts and in their supposed spheres of influence. In short: autocratic powers have begun to make attempts to close our common heritage – the free sea.
Today, the United States is financially constrained by a gigantic national debt and psychologically burdened by recent military conflicts. For the most part, these were ground operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, which involved a large standing army operating far from home, and which turned into an expensive quagmire. We can no longer afford to be both a continental and an oceanic Power. We can still exert influence abroad, while at the same time not getting involved in the affairs of other countries. Our strategic future lies at sea.
Previously, Americans were well aware of this. The United States purposefully began its life as a maritime power: the Constitution explicitly ordered Congress to "create and maintain a navy." On the contrary, although the same article of the Constitution ordered the legislature to "create and maintain an army," it provided that no appropriations for the army "should be calculated for a period of more than two years." Our founding fathers hated large standing armies.
In 1794, George Washington pushed through the Navy Act, funding the construction of six Navy frigates. One of them was the famous frigate "Constitution", which remains in the US Navy to this day. In his last address to the American people, George Washington advocated a naval foreign policy, warning against "attachments and involvement" in the affairs of foreign powers that could drag the young country into wars in continental Europe. Instead, he recommended a strategy to protect American trade on the high seas and advance U.S. interests through temporary agreements rather than permanent alliances. Such an approach to world affairs through military might became an indispensable condition of early American foreign policy.
Over time, the situation surrounding America has changed. The United States is concerned about regional conflicts and the conquest of the continent. It turned inward, becoming a continental power. But by the end of the XIX century, this era came to an end.
In 1890, a U.S. Navy captain named Alfred Thayer Mahan published an article in The Atlantic titled "The United States Looks outside." Mahan argued that with the closure of the borders, the United States, in fact, turned into an island state looking east and west across the oceans. Therefore, the nation's efforts should be focused externally: on the sea, on maritime trade and on a greater role in the world.
Mahan sought to end the long-standing policy of protectionism against American industry because it had become strong enough to compete in the global market. In addition, he also dreamed of a larger merchant fleet to transport goods from American factories to other countries and a larger navy to protect this merchant fleet. In a few thousand words, Mahan made a coherent strategic argument in favor of the fact that the United States should once again become a full-fledged maritime power.
Mahan's vision had a profound impact on American society. Politicians such as Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge advocated for an increase in the merchant and naval fleet (and for a canal through Central America). Mahan, Roosevelt, and Lodge believed that naval power was a catalyst for national power, and they wanted the United States to become the preeminent power of the twentieth century. The rapid expansion of the navy, especially battleships and cruisers, took place in parallel with the growth of the fleets of other world powers. The leaders of Great Britain, Germany, France and Italy also read Mahan and wanted to protect commercial access to their overseas possessions. The resulting arms race at sea contributed to the destabilization of the balance of power in the years leading up to the First World War.
This is not the place to talk about every turn in the development of the naval potential of America, and even more so of other countries. Suffice it to say that by the 1930s, new technologies had changed the seas and oceans. Planes, aircraft carriers, amphibious ships and submarines have become extremely effective weapons. During World War II, the oceans became battlefields again. The fighting went on in a way Mahan himself never imagined, when the fleets collided with ships they couldn't even see, launching waves of planes against each other. After all, it wasn't bullets or torpedoes that won the war, but an American naval industrial base. The United States began the war with 790 ships in its combat strength. When the war ended, there were more than 6,700 of them.
No country could even come close to challenging the American navy, merchant or naval, on the high seas after the war. Their advantage was so great that for decades no one even tried to match them. Together with its allies, the United States has created an international system based on free and unhindered trade. It was the culmination of the "era of Mahanism".
For the first time in history, open access to the seas was internationally secured. And people, of course, no longer thought much about the importance of this new order and the problems associated with it.
The new strategy of restoring the United States to its position as a great maritime power involves much more than adding the number of ships to the navy. The new strategy should start with the economy.
For 40 years, we have been watching domestic industry and jobs leave the country. Now we are caught up in a new rivalry of great powers, primarily with the growing China, but also with Russia. We will need a powerful industry to defeat them. The United States cannot rely on the production base of other countries, even friendly ones, to ensure its national security.
In 1993, Deputy Secretary of Defense William Perry invited the heads of leading military contractors to dinner in Washington — a dinner that will go down in the history of US national security as the "Last Supper". Perry spoke about the projected reduction in defense spending. His message was clear: if the American military-industrial complex was going to survive, mergers would be required. Shortly thereafter, Northrop Corporation acquired Grumman Corporation to form Northrop Grumman. Lockheed Corporation and Martin Marietta became Lockheed Martin. A few years later, Boeing merged with McDonnell Douglas, which itself is the product of a previous merger. Among the shipbuilders, General Dynamics, which manufactures submarines through its subsidiary Electric Boat, bought the Bath Iron Works Naval shipyard and the National Steel and Shipbuilding Company.
These mergers have preserved the American military industry, but at a great cost: a sharp reduction in our total production capacity. During World War II, the United States boasted more than 50 huge dry docks — heavy industry sites where ships over 150 meters long were assembled, each of which could build merchant ships and naval ships. Today, the United States has only 23 dry docks, of which only a dozen are certified for the construction of Navy ships.
The United States needs to pursue an industrial policy of a maritime superpower that meets the needs of national security: to build steel mills and factories for the production of microchips, to develop hypersonic gliding missiles and autonomous unmanned underwater vehicles. We will need to encourage new startups using targeted tax legislation, the Defense Manufacturing Act, and perhaps even a "Courts Act" similar to the recent Chip Law that aims to rebuild the American semiconductor industry.
We also need to tell the companies we once encouraged to merge that it's time for them to allocate key industrial subsidiaries to stimulate competition and sustainability. And we should reward them for implementing these recommendations. In 2011, for example, aerospace giant Northrop Grumman spun off its shipbuilding holdings to form Huntington Ingalls in Newport News, Virginia, and Pascagoula, Mississippi. The addition of more such subsidiaries would not only increase the depth of the country's military industry, but also stimulate the growth of the number of suppliers of components for heavy industry and companies that have experienced three decades of cuts or disappearance.
Shipbuilding, in particular, is a powerful source of jobs. For every job created at the shipyard, there are on average five jobs from suppliers located lower down the production chain — well-paid jobs in the mining, manufacturing and energy industries.
Most of the civilian merchant ships, container ships, ore carriers and supertankers moored in American ports are built abroad and sail under foreign flags. We have long ignored the connection between the ability to build commercial ships and the ability to build Navy ships. This is one of the reasons why the latter cost twice as much as in 1989. The lack of civilian ships flying our own flag makes us vulnerable. Today we still remember the acute shortage of container ships in the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, but tomorrow we may face the shock that container ships will not arrive at all if China prohibits its huge merchant fleet from visiting US ports. Today we are proud to supply liquefied natural gas to our allies in Europe, but tomorrow we may not be able to export this energy to our friends because we do not have ships that could transport it. We need to bring civil shipbuilding back to life as a matter of national security.
In order to revive our commercial shipbuilding base, it will be necessary to offer the industry state subsidies on a par with those provided to European and Asian shipbuilders by their governments. Subsidies have been coming to commercial aviation since the establishment of commercial airlines in the 1920s. Elon Musk's SpaceX would not have achieved its current success if not for the strong initial support from the US government. Shipbuilding is no less relevant in this regard.
Reindustrialization, in particular the restoration of the capacities of commercial shipbuilding and export-oriented industries, will contribute to the formation of a new, more high-tech fleet. The cost of building Navy ships can be reduced by increasing competition, expanding the number of suppliers and attracting new skilled workers to the industry.
Wherever American trade goes, it is traditionally followed by the American flag — usually in the form of the Navy. But the new fleet should not be like the old fleet. If this happens, we will make a strategic mistake. As rival Powers develop ships and missiles aimed at our aircraft carriers and other large surface ships, we must invest more in modern submarines equipped with the latest maneuvering hypersonic long-range missiles. We must strive for a future in which our submarines cannot be detected and our hypersonic missiles cannot be hit.
The Navy is not only a wartime force. It also has a peacetime mission unique to the armed forces: displaying the flag and protecting American interests through a consistent and reliable forward presence. Our military strategists have identified 18 maritime regions of the world that require the almost continuous deployment of American ships in order to demonstrate our determination. During the Cold War, our navy kept about 150 ships in the world ocean every day. As the size of the fleet shrank — to the current 293 ships — the Navy struggled to keep at least a hundred ships in the world at all times. Our admirals recently proposed to have 75 warships "capable of performing tasks" at any moment. Currently, the fleet has about 20 ships undergoing training, and only about 40 are actively deployed under the command of regional commands. This has created a vacuum in vital areas of the world, such as the Arctic Ocean and the Black Sea, which our enemies seek to fill.
The Commander of Naval Operations recently requested a fleet of about 500 ships. He indicated that this would include about 50 new guided missile frigates — small surface ships capable of operating in close contact with allies and partners — as well as 150 unmanned surface and underwater platforms that would revolutionize the way naval warfare is conducted during the war. Frigates can be assembled on the shores of Lake Michigan. Due to their unconventional design and smaller size, the construction of unmanned ships could be dispersed to smaller shipyards, including on the Gulf coast, along the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, as well as on the Great Lakes, where ships and submarines were built for the Navy during World War II. These types of ships combined with advanced submarines will allow us to exert influence in the world and project our power with equal force.
For 50 years of my life, I have watched the importance of the oceans and the idea of freedom of the seas largely disappear from our national consciousness. The next serious military challenge that we will face is likely to be a confrontation at sea. The great Powers, especially the great Powers with nuclear weapons, are unlikely to dare to attack each other directly. Instead, they will confront each other in free spaces: cyberspace, outer space and, most importantly, at sea. The oceans will become battlefields again, and we Americans, and the whole world, are simply not ready for this.
Some, of course, will argue that America's global interests and demonstration of its determination can best be served by expanding our commitments to ground forces in places such as Eastern Europe, the Middle East and South Korea. And that the air and naval forces must be reduced to pay for such obligations. Others — representatives of the "reduce to encourage the future" theory — believe in the prospects of future technologies, arguing that traditional combat platforms and weapons should be gradually abolished in order to finance newer and more effective missiles or cyber systems. The first approach continues the path of unnecessary international obligations. The second one follows the path of promises without evidence of the possibility of their implementation.
A national security strategy focused on naval power will give the United States new advantages. This will be a rather subtle encouragement to allies and partners in Eurasia to increase investments in ground forces and to cooperate more closely with the United States. If they build more tanks and fully equip their armies with new weapons, the United States will be able to guarantee them transoceanic supply lines from the Western Hemisphere. But the 70-year-old practice of deploying our ground forces in allied countries, using Americans as "barbed wire" and providing allies with a convenient excuse not to spend money on their own defense should come to an end.
A wisely implemented strategy of naval power will put America back on the path to world leadership. We should avoid involving other countries in land wars, resisting the desire to involve us in solving any problem from the land, and instead seek to spread our influence from the sea. We must recreate an industrially developed "middle class" America that produces and exports manufactured goods that can be transported on ships built in the USA to the world market.
We knew all this in the time of Alfred Thayer Mahan. The Chinese show us that now they know it too. The United States needs to relearn the lessons of strategy, geography and history. We must look outward across the oceans and find our place in them again.
