Why America Must Be a Sea Power
By Jerry Hendrix
May 13, 2021 8:28 AM
A naval-centric strategy will protect liberty, keep the global commons free, and shift boots-on-the-ground duties to allies
To retain its leading position within the global system, the United States should make a conscious decision to pivot back to being a sea power. It needs to recognize that it no longer has the means, nor the strategic acumen, to continue in its attempt to be all things to all peoples. Rather, at this point in its history, the nation should take stock of its unique geostrategic location in the northern, resource-rich portion of the Western Hemisphere, separated from the vicissitudes of the Eurasian landmass by two broad oceans.
Recognizing this, the country should commit itself, as its founders originally did, to taking full advantage of its geographic situation and implementing a comprehensive diplomatic, economic, and military strategy that focuses primarily on securing and stabilizing the four great global commons — the seas, air, space, and cyberspace — as a means of preserving the nation’s preeminent position while eschewing all-consuming and all-too-distracting foreign land-war commitments.
At its beginning, the nation understood that its strength lay in commercial free trade and diplomatic and military offshore influencing, but now the United States has wandered far from its origins. The question today is whether it has the capacity to recognize its new strategic reality and muster the strength of will to make the necessary changes in its internal national life to become a sea power once again.
https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2021/06/01/why-america-must-be-a-sea-power/#slide-1
