link5485 wrote:
Here's a question we should be asking: do we want to continue to be the underwriters for global security? I think people on both side of the aisle have an implicit answer, but this is a conversation that ought to happen in the open. Romney could have brought up those points instead of bringing up ship levels in 1916. That would have been a substantive point not so easily dismissed.
My answer would be "who knows?" I'm also not really sure we're doing what we're doing, naval power projection-wise, solely out of the goodness of our hearts but, rather, to ensure we're the dominant power on the world's oceans, because that maritime dominance assures us of a prime position in so many areas in terms of global commerce and policy that I'm not really sure there's really an area that isn't affected by control of the seas. There once was a
Pax Brittanica, imposed on the world by the sheer might of Great Britain's Royal Navy and, in the main, the Royal Navy's power worked magnificently. Since World War II, the dominant sea power has been the United States, with its US Navy (backed up by the kind of Marine Corps power projection presence that dwarfs the ground combat power that Britain's Royal Marines were once able to project), a naval force that's unparalleled in world history. Rome and Greece had strong navies, no doubt, but were in some cases inept in how they used them, actually, as were the Phoenicians and other naval powers of the day. Not surprising, given the challenges that the sea presented to nations during those times.
Also, as JSA observes: "If not us, then whom?" The world -- including the high seas -- would be a far more tumultuous and even barbaric place if it weren't for US military might and the nation's willingness to, literally, go to war for causes and for people to whom we really owe nothing, except human decency and charity. Consider that US military might helped to save Muslims in Kosovo, when we really had no 'dog in the fight,' so to speak. It freed Kuwait from Saddam Hussein's Iraq. It faced down numerous despots and tinhorn dictators and it backed up its allies with a kind of ferocious power that's put a halt to many a regional strongman's territorial ambitions. Lately, it's been used to enable humanitarian aid after tsunamis and earthquakes and many of the world's people, when threatened by those with bad intent, or who've just went through a staggering natural disaster, stand in front of television cameras and go "Where is the United States? When is it getting here?" In Indonesia, after the tsunami, US Navy and Marine Corps personnel were on scene relatively quickly, and there were plenty of Indonesians that asked the TV crews "Where are the US Marines?"
This is our role in the world, and it's what the world mostly expects of us, though it often also hates us for our power and strength. But I've haven't seen another nation's people so consistently willing to send its men and women in harm's way for the benefit of other nations or for causes the U.S.'s friends and allies ask us to assist in effectuating. Of course, that aid is reciprocated, most especially by Canada, Great Britain and Australia, whose Diggers have sacrificed so much in Afghanistan. New Zealand and much of the Commonwealth is there, too. But that's what democracies do for each other, quite often. But without the United States to lead the charge, FROM THE FRONT, it would mostly be for naught and most other nations understand that that's just the way of things.