Chapter 8: Grand Strategy of the United States

At the same time the U.S. was taking Hawaii, the U.S. was also taking Cuba in the Spanish American War. Getting the Spaniards out of Cuba was part of the solution, but the real threat was the British. Apart from having the strongest Navy in the Atlantic until after World War I, the British also had a ring of basis around the United States, including bases in Newfoundland, Bermuda and in the Bahamas. From those three bases, the British Navy could potentially interdict U.S. movements along its coast, and certainly interfere with U.S. use of the Atlantic Ocean. But this was not something the U.S. could deal with until later.

It is easy to forget the level of tension that there was between the United States and Britain early in the twentieth century. As late as 1863, about 40 years before, the British seemed likely to intervene in the Civil War. As late as 1920, the United States military, which had developed a series of post-war scenarios, maintained one called War Plan Red, in which the British would use its navy to blockade the United States.

When Britain ran into trouble during World War II, the United States grabbed the opportunity. When Germany overran France and most of the rest of Europe in 1940 the German navy began a submarine campaign against British shipping, threatening to strangle Britain’s economy, which was dependent on shipping from the Empire and the United States.

The British badly needed support and it was in the American interest to support them. The solution was Lend-Lease. There were two parts to Lend-Lease. The lend part loaned the British destroyers and other material they needed. Everyone forgets the lease part. The United States was permitted by the British 99 year leases to British bases in Newfoundland, Bermuda, Jamaica, St. Lucia, Trinidad, British Guiana, Antigua and the Bahamas. Only Halifax remained outside of American control. It was given to Canada.

By 1900, the United States had achieved a defensive arc in the Pacific stretching from Alaska to Hawaii to Panama. In 1941, it achieved a similar defensive arc in the Atlantic. It took advantage of British desperation to expel the British Navy from any future threatening positions in and near the Western Hemisphere, while keeping the British in the war to continue to block German advances into the Atlantic. Roosevelt had every intention of getting into the war at the right time, but his goals were very different than the British. He wanted to secure the approaches to the United States. The British wanted to secure their Empire. The U.S. took full advantage of its opportunity. In fact, Roosevelt went far beyond merely securing a defensive position. He used World War II to transform the world.

The Fourth Imperative: Complete domination of the world’s oceans to further secure U.S. physical safety, and guarantee control over the international trading system.

Controlling the approaches to the United States has obvious value. It follows that the United States, or any country for that matter, should want to control the world’s oceans. Whoever controls the world’s oceans is not only secure from invasion, but gets to define the structure of international trade. Most global trade goes by ship. Control of the sea means control of trade. The fact that a country could stop someone from trading—even if it doesn’t plan to—has a tremendous psychological effect. And when that trade is actually cut off, it can wreck another countries economy. Finally, whoever controls the sea can invade other people but can’t be invaded in turn. That makes a huge difference.

The fact that the United States emerged from World War II with not only the world’s largest navy, but with naval bases scattered around the world, changed the way things worked. Whether it was a junk in the South China Sea, a dhow in the Persian Gulf, an oil tanker in the Atlantic or a container ship from Asia—the United States Navy could place it under surveillance and if it chose stop it or sink it. This put the United States in a position that no other nation in human history had ever achieved before. From the end of World War II onward, the combined weight of all of the world’s existing fleets was insignificant compared to American naval power.

Atlantic Europe, together, had controlled the world’s oceans until the twentieth century. But there was intense competition. As we’ve seen, Europe self-destructed in the wars of the twentieth century. By the end of World War II it had lost real military power and was in the process of losing its global empire. The United States and Soviet Union inherited what Europe had, and the United States inherited Atlantic Europe’s naval hegemony. It not only destroyed Japan’s naval power and helped crush Germany’s Atlantic campaign, but its naval construction dwarfed the navies of its allies. The U.S. didn’t destroy Britain’s navy. It simply overwhelmed it in size.

World War II had many aspects. One of them was Japan’s attempt to become the dominant power in the Western Pacific. Its goal was to secure the resources of Southeast Asia. To do that, it had to be able to reach Indochina and the Netherlands East Indies. Since the Philippines were in the way, the Japanese needed to capture them. That meant war with the United States. If Japan had any chance of winning that war, it needed to defeat the U.S. Navy before the war began. That meant attacking it at its base—the base the U.S. had capture in 1898: Pearl Harbor. The gamble failed. The U.S. Navy swept the Japanese Navy from the Pacific, and using the islands as bases for bombing Japan, smashed it into submission. The United States went from controlling the eastern Pacific to controlling the entire Pacific.

Another aspect, the defeat of Germany, meant that the United States had to maintain the line of supply to Great Britain in order to keep it in the war and to build up U.S. forces to do that, the Atlantic had to be secure against German attack, Early in the war, the Germans had sent surface ships into the Atlantic to attack convoys. These were destroyed. The more difficult task was defeating German submarines that were sinking shipping and a disastrous rate for the allies.

The British had very limited shipyard capacity. The United States created massive capacity and created a fleet of destroyers whose job was to escort convoys and destroy submarines. The British, with limited resources, focused their Navy on more limited missions around Britain and in the Mediterranean. The United States focused on the Atlantic and ultimately destroyed the German fleet.

In the process, the United States took control of the North Atlantic. Remember that the North Atlantic was the center of gravity of the international system to that point. The Germans were playing for the same prize as the Portuguese, Spaniards, French and British. They gambled and lost. In blocking their gamble, the United States took over what had been the key to the international system, the North Atlantic. Between that and its control of the Pacific, the United States was on the brink of global maritime domination.

In the wake of World War II, the United States created NATO. One of the things NATO did was create an allied naval command, in which the remnants of Europe’s declining navies combined with the massive U.S. Navy and were, effectively, placed under U.S. command. The United States, as part of NATO, sent its own fleet into the Mediterranean, until Rome’s Mare Nostrum joined the Atlantic and Pacific as an American lake. The Europeans, crippled by the war, could not afford to maintain their own naval power. They allowed that power to melt away relieved to have the United States pay for defending the sea lanes. They gave their own ocean away. In the end, the British turned over the defense of the Suez Canal to the United States, effectively abandoning their empire at the moment—1956.

The final step in U.S. naval domination was the Indian Ocean. That was driven by declining U.S. oil production and increasing dependence on oil from the Persian Gulf region. Beginning in the 1970s and intensifying in the 1980s, the United States steadily increased its naval presence in the Persian Gulf, fighting Iraq there in 1991-92.

The United States stationed a fleet permanently in the Persian Gulf. That meant that it had to guard the two entry points into the Indian Ocean. One was the Straits of Malacca near Singapore. The other was the Suez Canal in Egypt, an American ally since the 1970s. With that, all the oceans belonged to the United States.

Global power isn’t achieved simply by domination. It is achieved by using domination in such a way that it benefits a coalition of supporters. Belonging to Rome could be very rewarding. Having achieved the incredible feat of dominating all of the world’s oceans, the United States obviously wanted to maintain it. The simplest way to do this would be to prevent other nations from building navies. The way to do that is to make certain that no one is motivated to build navies or had the resources to do so. One way, the carrot, is to make sure that everyone has access to the sea without needing to build a navy. The other way, the stick, is to tie down potential enemies in land-based confrontations, so that they are forced to spend their warfighting dollars on troops and tanks, with little left over for navies.

The collapse of the European imperial system did not mean that Europe no longer needed access to its former colonies or to other countries. The United States provided maritime security throughout the world. It benefited from this in three ways. First, the United States benefited directly from the growth of international trade, which had virtually collapsed during World War II. Second, it benefited because its allies, generally maritime nations, prospered under the American maritime regime, creating good reasons for allying with the United States and increasing the relative economic gap between the Soviet and American blocs. Finally, it gave them the benefit of a Navy without having to pay for it. But it left the United States with a club in its hand.

The United States pursued a different strategy for the Soviet Union. The United States sought to contain the Soviets, which meant surrounding it with American allies backed by American forces. The Soviets were powerful on the ground, but the one threat the Soviets could not survive is what we might call a “full peripheral war.” In 1975, for example, when the United States was effectively allied with China, a simultaneous assault from NATO in the West, Turkey and Iran in the south, and China in the east would have broken the Soviet Union.

The burden of protecting the Soviet borders and preparing for a potential invasion of Germany drained the Soviet economy. It could not build a significant navy, certainly not one that cold challenge the United States. This was particularly a military problem from the Soviet Union for two reasons. First, it meant that the Soviet Union could not project its forces globally like the United States could. The Soviets could support regimes with weapons and advisors, but mounting a multi-divisional invasion was impossible.

This meant that while the Soviets might choose to commit suicide in a nuclear war, they never had the ability to even conceivably invade North America. Indeed, during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviets discovered that they couldn’t even challenge the U.S. naval blockade, and they had to capitulate. U.S. sea lane control meant that the United States could intervene in Vietnam, lose the war, yet not have the Vietnamese even conceivably pursue the war in the United States. The United States could intervene where it wished, successful or not. The Soviets could only intervene indirectly, through proxies of varying reliability. They could never bring their main force to bear on its adversary. The United States could.

The core of the American policy toward the Soviets was not so much containment as the maintenance of the balance of power. The United States maintained an alliance system that shifted the primary burden of dealing with the Soviets to countries bordering the Soviet Union. The United States guaranteed to reinforce these countries if the Soviets were to attack, but more importantly, included them in the American international trading system, providing favorable access to American markets as well as a variety of international financial institutions. Countries like Germany and Japan prospered at the same time as they were at risk. By shifting the risk, the Soviets were tied down and never were able to launch a navy.

The British had been the masters of maintaining the European balance of power. They made certain that everyone on the continent had more things to worry about than challenging the British at sea. The United States took the British model and globalized it. The British worried primarily about Europe. The United States focused on the Eurasian landmass as a whole. American strategy was the maintenance of a Eurasian balance of power. What the United States wanted was a constant state of tension within Eurasia, completely absorbing Eurasian attention.

The United States emerged from the Cold War with an ongoing interest and a fixed strategy. The ongoing interest was preventing any Eurasian power from becoming sufficiently secure that it could divert resources to naval challenges. Since there was no longer a single threat of Eurasian hegemony, the United States focused on the emergence of secondary, regional hegemons who might be able to secure regional security sufficient to begin probing out to sea. The United States worked to create a continually shifting series of alliances designed to tie down any potential regional hegemon.

The United States had to be prepared for regular and unpredictable interventions in the Eurasian land mass. These interventions always left the United States at a demographic disadvantage. As dominant as the U.S. was at sea, that is how outnumbered it was as soon as the first boot touched down. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States engaged in a series of interventions designed to maintain the regional balance and block the emergence of a regional power.

The first major intervention was in Yugoslavia, which made sense since that represented the first destabilized region. The goal of that intervention was to block the emergence of Serbian hegemony over the Balkans. The second series of interventions was, logically again, in the Islamic world, designed to block al Qaeda’s (or anyone’s) desire to create a secure Islamic empire. The interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq were part of this.

For all the noise and fuss, these were all minor interventions. In Iraq, the largest, the United States used less than two hundred thousand troops and took less than 4,000 killed. Compared to Vietnam even, this was about 6-8 percent of the casualties. For a country of over a quarter billion people, an occupation forces of just over 100,000 is trivial. The tendency of the United States to overdramatize minor interventions derives from the early stage of its history.

Conclusion

Nevertheless, the model of the future is clear:

1. 
   The United States wishes to control the seas.
   
2. 
   It does not want anyone building fleets or other systems for sea lane interdiction or control.
   
3. 
   The United States wants to maximize fragmentation and instability in Eurasia.
   
4. 
   It uses economic and political means to achieve this.
   
5. 
   When the manipulation appears to be failing and the possibility of a regional power emerging becomes too great, the United States uses minimal force to contain the emerging force and recreate instability.
   

Rhetoric aside, the United States has no overriding interest in peace in Eurasia. Its interest is in ongoing tension and conflict to divert Eurasia from activities that might seriously threaten American interests. The United States has no interest in winning a war. As with Vietnam or Korea, the purpose of war is simply to block a power or destabilize the region, not to impose order. In due course, even outright defeat is acceptable. However, the principle of using minimum force when absolutely necessary to maintain the Eurasian balance of power is and will remain the driving force of U.S. foreign policy throughout the 21^st century.

There will be numerous Kosovos and Iraqs in unanticipated places at unexpected times. The action will appear irrational, and will be if the primary goal was to stabilize the Balkans or the Middle East. But since the primary goal is simply to block or destabilize Serbia or al Qaeda, the interventions will be quite rational. They will happen often, never appear to really yield anything nearing a “solution” and always be done with insufficient force for that end.

This phase will never end. The United States can and has achieved a stable control of the world’s oceans and therefore control of the global economy. However, it can never conquer Eurasia. As with Britain before it, what it can do is guarantee that no one else conquers Eurasia, and that will be quite sufficient. So long as no one dominates Eurasia or a significant region, American control of the oceans is secure and with it, American power.

It therefore follows that it will be in the interest of Eurasian powers, who do not appreciate American manipulation, to try to form coalition that will block the United States in Eurasia. As we saw with Russia, Germany and France prior to the Iraq war, the attempt to balance American power is inevitable. The imbalance of American power compared to the world is the most marked characteristic of the world and must be examined.

For the moment, it is sufficient to look back and see how a nation of divided colonies clinging to the eastern seaboard of North America, emerged as the center of gravity of the world. It is an emergence that reminds us of Rome’s emergence. It appeared far from inevitable at the time, but in due course, it seemed obvious and irresistible. We are at the point where American power appears to be obvious and irresistible, but unlike Rome it is not yet clear how this power will be used or how it will be resisted.

We need also remember that a nation does not exist simply to execute foreign policy, as important as that might be. The United States, like any nation, has a rich internal life and that internal life has a cycle that has been in place since the founding. Since it is the cycle of the center of gravity of the world, that cycle is of more than academic interest. It deeply affects the world. When the United States catches a cold, the world gets pneumonia.

Directory: gifiles -> attach -> 107
attach -> Russia 110204 Basic Political Developments
attach -> Unclassified//for official use only
attach -> Adaptability Sustainment
attach -> Pop-up 1 ("C" Chechnya) Header Text: Emir of the Caucasus Emirate Doku Umarov Image
attach -> Russia and Islam are not Separate
attach -> Chapter 13: The Northern Caucasus
attach -> Russia 100209 Basic Political Developments
attach -> The evolution
attach -> The devolution
107 -> China: Bejing's Plan to Impose Internet Restrictions July 06, 2007

Download 0.76 Mb.

Share with your friends: