Sunday, 25 May
 |
| Force Projection |
Good Morning
Jack…
The
boundaries that matter most to the United States are those consisting of
water. America exists much as an island. Our commerce is predominately conveyed across
vast stretches of ocean. This nation has
historically been blessed with self-sufficiency with its vast mineral riches,
oil, forests and abundant agricultural land.
Our level of industry has come to outstrip our supply of some
strategically important materials, titanium among other metals are examples,
but we remain in good fortune for the most part. Despite this continent’s material largesse
the United States has always been a nation heavily invested in trade. We’ve
been the world’s purveyor of tobacco, cotton and even oil at various points in
our history. Early industrialization
enabled us to export manufactured goods.
Today we still provide the world with high technology items such as
aircraft as well as products like software and information systems that don’t meet
the traditional definition of being manufactured.
Thomas
Jefferson, our third president, provided us with an early lesson in international
trade. At the time of his second term
England and France were at war with each other, as was often the case, and they
freely preyed upon American shipping to supply them with men. It wasn’t uncommon during these times for a
powerful navy to forcibly induct citizens of another country to fill their
military ranks. Jefferson’s protests
were ignored. There was little we could
do to protect our merchant marine. The
United States had no navy of any consequence.
Jefferson decided to embargo these European nations, denying them the
sale of our goods. The move left much of
our shipping without business and it threw this young nation’s economy into a
recession. The embargo became
increasingly difficult to enforce and, ultimately, it failed.
Nations with
a heavy reliance on sea lanes for commerce provide their shipping with a
measure of navy protection. They view it
as part of the cost of doing business.
Great Britain during its rule over a colonial empire is maybe the best
example of this. The island nation of Japan
is another. The United States spends an
enormous sum of money each year on its navy to insure our commerce flows
unobstructed around the world. The U.S.
Navy has in its inventory ten Nimitz class aircraft carriers to patrol the
seas. Each carrier in turn has its own
Strike Group – made up of one or more frigates, guided missile cruisers, guided
missile destroyers and one or two attack submarines. Obviously, this is overkill if the Navy’s
only mission is to ensure a container ship loaded with Nike shoes from South
Korea is able to safely dock at San Pedro Harbor near Los Angeles.
A Nimitz
carrier with its typical complement of about 65 aircraft is an extremely expensive
item. No other nation in the world currently
burdens itself with such a cost. The
carrier has a strategic purpose that might best be expressed as force projection. The carrier is a weapon having enormous
destructive potential. It is free to
move to most any ocean of the world.
With water making up seventy-five percent of the globe’s surface that
means the carrier can influence the politics of a good number of countries populating
the Earth. It isn’t wise policy to be
the world’s bully. It isn’t in this
nation’s interest to arrogantly throw our weight around, seeding resentment
with frequent acts of intimidation. We
are but one among a community of nations.
We hold ourselves to a set of principles that value reason, judicial
temperament and something we might call ‘fair play’ as being among the arbiters
that are used to settle disputes. Still,
having such military tools at the ready tends to make Washington first among
equals in the ranks of capitols of the world.
Weapons such as these carry with them enormous responsibility and that
means we are all best served when they remain mostly holstered.
Love,
Dad
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