April 19, 2018
How to Make the U.S. Navy Great Again
ALONE AMONG the services, the Navy is always deployed. In wartime, all of the services deploy. In peacetime, the Army and Air Force train and exercise but do not deploy persistently. However, the Navy, and its accompanying Marine Corps, deploy operationally twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year—year in, year out, in peace and in war. This is because the very presence of naval forces demonstrates American interests without having to intrude on another nation’s sovereignty. Naval forces convey the relative importance of American interests through ratcheting up or down the number of ships in a given theater. The Navy’s unique “scalability,” along with its ability to arrive and stay, or to make its presence known and then quietly move on, gives our commander in chief military and diplomatic options.
America cannot retreat from the seas. Its maritime interests are enduring and growing. Great wealth in the form of food stocks, minerals and energy resources lies beneath the waves that find their way to our shores. Additionally, access to lines of communication via the swiftest and most efficient routes across international waters, as well as maritime linkages to forty-nine transoceanic treaty partners, are of critical interest to the United States.
Read the full article in The National Interest
More from CNAS
-
Video
Defense / Middle East Security
CNN: 1,000 Army Paratroopers Deploy to Middle East in DaysBecca Wasser, adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security joins CNN to discuss the deployment of troops to Iran and the status of negotiations.Watch the fu...
By Becca Wasser
-
Commentary
Defense / Middle East Security
What It Would Take to Reopen the Strait of HormuzThe strait is about 140 miles (225 kilometers) long and only 25 miles wide at its narrowest point, meaning ships have little room to maneuver and are easy targets for attacks ...
By Becca Wasser
-
Video
Defense / Middle East Security
Will Trump Win Iran War With a "Gucci" Strategy?As the Iran war stretches into its fourth week, U.S. President Donald Trump's approach to a war without physical ground entanglements may prove to be impossible. Bloomberg Eco...
By Becca Wasser
-
The U.S. Wants War Without Entanglement. It May Not Exist.
Commentary
This approach to warfare appears to rest on three pillars: speed, unilateral action and limited violence imposed from a distance....
By Becca Wasser
