![]() He arrived in office certain who the enemy was-Germany-but also with clear direction from civilian leadership to tighten his belt and accept declining naval budgets. John “Jackie” Fisher was appointed first sea lord of the Royal Navy. All historical sea powers recognized this-until they didn’t. Throughout history, large naval and merchant fleets represented not just a power multiplier but an exponential growth factor in terms of national influence. Finally, Ronald Reagan’s 600-ship Navy, as much a public relations campaign as it was a shipbuilding plan, helped convince the Soviet Union that it would not win the Cold War. ![]() ![]() fleet through two world wars-finishing the later conflict with more than 6,000 vessels, by far the largest navy ever afloat-set the country on its superpower path. battleships-Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet-as the birth of what would come to be known as the American Century. Most historians view the 14-month world cruise of new U.S. Navy battle force under President Theodore Roosevelt that catapulted the United States to global power and prominence. In this way, they were able to transform their small- and medium-sized nations into great powers.Ī country’s ability to ship goods in bulk has long represented an expression of national power.įollowing the Napoleonic wars in the early 19th century, a large Royal Navy effectively knitted together the British Empire upon which “the sun never set.” By the latter half of that century, the British maintained a “two-power standard,” whereby the size of the Royal Navy had to meet or exceed the next two navies combined. Carthage in the third century B.C., Venice in the 13th and 14th centuries, and the Dutch republic in the 16th and 17th centuries also fielded merchant and naval fleets to pursue and protect their interests. Athens had a robust navy as well as a large merchant fleet. The ability to ship goods in bulk from places where they are produced to places where they are scarce has long represented an expression of national power. Taken together, these views add up to strategic confusion and an obliviousness to history.Ĭenturies of global rivalry show how a country’s power-and its decline-is directly related to the size and capability of its naval and maritime forces. Michael Gilday, the chief of naval operations, has argued that the Navy needs to accelerate the decommissioning of its older cruisers and littoral combat ships to free up money for vessels and weapons that will be critical in the future. Indo-Pacific Command until he retired this spring, observed in March that China could invade Taiwan in the next six years-presumably setting the stage for a major military showdown with the United States-while Adm. Leading voices simultaneously recognize the rising China threat while also arguing that the United States must shrink its present fleet in order to modernize. Now, with defense budgets flat or declining, leading Defense Department officials are pushing a “divest to invest” strategy-whereby the Navy must decommission a large number of older ships to free up funds to buy fewer, more sophisticated, and presumably more lethal platforms.Ĭhina, meanwhile, is aggressively expanding its naval footprint and is estimated to have the largest fleet in the world. Navy to create a shortsighted peace dividend. With the end of the Cold War, policymakers went a step further, slashing funding to the U.S. government at the time cut subsidies for the nation’s commercial shipbuilding industry, eventually hobbling the shipyards it would need to build a bigger fleet. The 1980s and 1990s marked the beginning of this downward trend. ship numbers have seen a dramatic overall decline. Still, on the high seas, quantity has a quality all its own. Other factors, of course, play a role: The types of ships it has-submarines, aircraft carriers, destroyers-the manner in which they are deployed, the sophistication of their sensors, and the range and lethality of their weapons all make a difference. The number of ships a country possesses has never been the sole measure of its power at sea.
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