Alfred Thayer Mahan, a 19th-century naval officer and pre-eminent military strategist, believed his young country was destined to be great because of its Navy. Toward the end of his service, Mahan, then a U.S. Navy captain, wrote a landmark book about the age of sailing ships. Read avidly by kings, prime ministers and presidents — including Theodore Roosevelt, Kaiser Wilhelm II and the young Winston Churchill — the book posited the idea of a free world anchored by American sea power.
Mahan believed America needed a large number of ships to fight decisive battles and to keep sea lanes open and international commerce flowing. This vision, which was both humanitarian and self-serving, soon came to pass, starting with the Spanish-American War of 1898, which Mahan avidly supported. After World War II, the U.S. Navy possessed some 7,000 vessels that went on to dominate the oceans for the next half century. The United States, with its blessed geography fronting two oceans, had embarked upon its imperial destiny, with the naval power to back up its values.
But there was a lurking paradox in this sudden explosion of American power. As Mahan wrote, “a peaceful, gain-loving nation” like the United States “is not farsighted, and farsightedness is needed for adequate military preparation.”
More than 130 years after Mahan wrote, the United States, in downsizing military expenditures after conflicts and fighting a series of distracting land wars in the Middle East, has proved his maxim well. The U.S. Navy is in decline relative to its own history and to the growth of the Chinese Navy, and has surrendered the control of the world’s vital choke points that it had at the beginning of the 21st century. The South China Sea, through which up to 40 percent of global maritime trade passes, in addition to oil and natural gas, is now dominated by China. The Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb, the crucial transit point out of the Red Sea, is harassed by the Yemen-based Shiite Houthis.
Now we can add the Strait of Hormuz to the list. Just 21 nautical miles wide at its narrowest, the strait offers oil tankers and other large vessels only a limited path through. Iran’s Islamic revolutionary regime, aided by a coastline of mountains and coves, has managed to effectively shut down the waterway with drones, speedboats and mines. American warships may be able to enforce a blockade, but the Navy still can’t open the Strait. And even then, this concentration of U.S. ships in the region is robbing the Navy of assets it should be using to patrol and project power in the Pacific. Whereas in the past the United States could cover all its bases or choke points, now in an age of gradual decline it has to make choices.
The global elite at watering holes like Davos and Bilderberg could never have prospered without the U.S. Navy, even if members of this elite are unaware of the fact. Though we live in the jet age, as much as 80 percent to 90 percent of global trade by tonnage is transported by water. That means the seas have to be relatively safe, especially around places such as Hormuz. The recent struggles of Dubai, an icon of globalization, demonstrates just how fragile our world is and always has been.
