Has the United States Lost Command of the Sea?
Proceedings Magazine - January 2019 Vol.
By Lieutenant Commander Jennifer Riehl, U.S.
Navy
The rise of the Chinese Navy and the return of the Russian Navy have created serious challenges to U.S. command of the sea. (Associated Press)
The ability to move merchants and armies through the sea at will—and to prevent an opponent from moving theirs—typically is referred to as “command of the sea.†The United States’ decades-long command of the sea has enabled both rapid response to threats that arise in any part of the world and secure commerce that has grown the global economy. Even competitor nations have benefited from the relatively peaceful waters guaranteed by U.S. sea power.
In the 27 years since the fall of the Soviet Union, however, the global picture has changed. Rising economic powers developed their navies, defunct regimes transferred complex munitions to nonstate organizations, and near-instantaneous information exchange connected ideological demagogues with their sleeping armies. Nowhere is the global shift more evident than on the sea. The maritime commons increasingly are crowded and dangerous and beg an analysis of whether the United States still commands the sea.
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2019-01/has-united-states-lost-command-sea
