![]() ![]() ![]() The US Navy played a vital role in preserving American access to Eurasian markets, from policing the Barbary Coast to securing Anglo-American trade routes alongside the Royal Navy in the Indo-Pacific. But until 1898, America’s wars were land wars, either of continental expansion or civil pacification.ĭuring the American Civil War, the Federal and Confederate Armies engaged in land battles that resembled European warfare in scale. Nearly 200,000 men fought at Fredericksburg and Gettysburg, making each engagement similar in size to Waterloo or Austerlitz.īut there was no great sea fight, no fleet action akin to Horatio Nelson’s victories at the Nile or Trafalgar. Rather, the naval war was attritional and logistical, with Confederate commerce raiders and blockade runners pressing the Federal Navy’s blockade, while Union ships supported amphibious assaults along the Confederate coastline. ![]() The nation’s founders understood this, and thereby authorized within the constitution the maintenance of a navy without restriction, as opposed to the stringent limitations placed on peacetime ground forces. However, strategic conditions did not bring naval power to the fore until the early 20th century. The roots of American naval atrophy run deep, far deeper than even the Cold War’s conclusion. American political culture ironically militates against naval power. In the context of Eurasia, the US is a maritime nation. ![]() The year 2022 was an underreported but brutal one for the US Navy. The service is in crisis. Retention issues, an aging fleet, the revelation of several command failures, and a blunt inability to articulate its strategic mission in an increasingly hostile bureaucratic environment bode ill for the navy’s ability to meet American strategic needs.Īs the US faces a potential Indo-Pacific war that could spiral into a Eurasian conflagration, revitalizing the navy’s command culture and strategic thought is vital to American interests. ![]()
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