So much for Oderint dum metuant.
From the Wall Street Journal, December 19:
A new report expounds on the clear lesson of recent Houthi attacks: America isn’t very scary anymore.
Recently the news broke that the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Carney had fended off several missile and drone attacks in the Red Sea. While Biden administration officials tried to frame the battle, for a battle it surely was, as the Carney’s defending nearby merchant ships, it seems clear that Iranian-supplied Houthis were targeting the Carney directly as well as the commercial ships it was accompanying.
This was only one of several recent assaults on American naval assets in the region. They have happened despite the presence of the Ford carrier strike group in the eastern Mediterranean and the Eisenhower strike group in the Gulf of Aden—a conventional level of naval deterrence that should have reduced aggressive activities by U.S. enemies. Instead, Iran attacked American ships and allies.
These events show that American naval deterrence is failing, and a recent report from the Sagamore Institute concludes that it could soon evaporate.
The report, “Measuring and Modeling Naval Presence,” models the effect of various ships and combinations of ships across a mix of maritime regions. The model pitted an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, the U.S. Navy’s current utility platform of choice, against a People’s Liberation Army Navy Luyang III destroyer in several locations ranging from the high seas to the waters approaching the Taiwan Strait. It suggested that the deterrent value of American Navy ships operating in close proximity to a determined adversary has recently declined.
While the report said the American Navy currently maintains “presence dominance,” the ability to maintain its values and interests upon the high seas, it also indicates that the U.S. margin of naval leadership is shrinking and America could swiftly lose its ability to maintain mare liberum, the free sea. This would have huge negative implications for the global economic system, which depends on open seas to move 80% of the volume of the world’s $100 trillion global domestic product.
The causes of this sudden decline lie not in the physical characteristics of individual American warships. The Burke-class destroyers, which include the USS Carney, remain the best destroyers currently in active service worldwide. But the shrinking American fleet—down from a Reagan administration high of 594 ships in 1987 to 291 ships today—and the rapid expansion of the Chinese navy—composed of 340 warships today and expected to rise to 400 ships by 2025—has placed the value of American presence in question.
Noncorporeal factors keep the U.S. fleet competitive in conventional deterrence—namely the global perception that Americans are willing to defend their interests and that their military is manned, equipped and trained to go to war at a minute’s notice. Peace through strength requires more than numbers. But the Biden administration’s numerous foreign-policy setbacks in Afghanistan, Ukraine and the Middle East have undercut Americans’ will to fight and displayed a weakness of leadership and strategy to the country’s enemies....
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Earlier:
Industrial Disease: "The U.S. Can Afford a Bigger Military. We Just Can’t Build It"
