Maritime Solutions to Continental Conundrums
Contrary to Mr. Wroble’s widely shared assumption, large merchant marines do not confer security—the United States lost its Merchant Marine long ago, during the Civil War, when more than half permanently shifted to foreign registry to avoid Confederate commerce raiding. (See Spencer C. Tucker’s essay in Commerce Raiding: Historical Case Studies, 1755–2009, Naval War College Press, and Stig Tenold’s essay in Shipping and Globalization in the Post-War Era, Routledge.)
As Francis J. Gavin shows in Gold, Dollars, & Power, U.S. trade deficits are connected to the dollar’s role as the international reserve currency. Because of this, the statement, “a comparison of Chinese trade balances from 1960 to the present will tell you everything you need to know,” is incorrect. Parts of the U.S. economy have indeed hollowed out, leaving an interior Rust Belt and Farm Belt, but the coastlines generate most of the growing U.S. GDP, which fits my maritime explanation.
Mr. Wroble rightly highlights the dangers of overextension. As journalist Walter Lippmann famously warned in 1943 (a truly dangerous year), “Without the controlling principle that the nation must maintain its objectives and its power in equilibrium, its purposes within its means and its means equal to its purposes, its commitments related to its resources and its resources adequate to its commitments, it is impossible to think at all about foreign affairs.” Therefore, the United States must leverage its maritime position of comparative security. Hence my article.
Colonel Bralley is correct that the United States no longer enjoys absolute sanctuary, because, as I noted, we live “in an era of precision nuclear strike.” But the United States retains relative sanctuary compared to continental
powers. As Army officers often emphasize, the domination (as opposed to leveling) of enemy territory requires boots on the ground. An oceanic moat separating the United States from
its enemies makes invasion unlikely. In contrast, continental countries such as Ukraine
face neighboring enemy soldiers who can march right in.
Japan’s defeat in World War II did indeed come by sea, a defeat made possible by Japan dispersing its forces across continental Asia and the Pacific. U.S. veterans who fought would agree that they and their supplies arrived by sea. No maritime delivery, no army on the ground. The U.S. Navy (disproportionately submarines) eliminated Japan’s merchant marine (a huge vulnerability, it turns out) so that Japanese forces starved, making them much easier for U.S. ground forces to defeat. As Colonel Bralley argues, at the operational level of warfare, internal lines of communication confer advantages, and navies alone do not win wars—it takes all services (and, I would add, numerous nonmilitary instruments of national power). But partnered navies together can help maintain the peace, and my article explains why.
For those focused only on the military instrument of national power, if the plan is to fight China kinetically, when China starts losing, it will deploy nukes in a take-you-down-with-me approach, and we will all lose. Face cultures make backing down difficult, as illustrated by Japan in World War II. Let us leverage our maritime geopolitical situation and nonmilitary instruments of national power to avoid this eventuality. Military plans that fail to leverage both will fail us all.
—S. C. M. Paine
