Blue Age I: ’Global Prosperity’ Ignoring Mahan

Review by Bill Doughty––

“The United States Navy –– A Global Force for Good.”

There was a time –– and it doesn’t seem that long ago –– when that message, a former recruiting slogan, came on TV in commercial breaks during NFL games.

For some, it was controversial. Anyone who misunderstood the meaning of the word “force” could misconstrue the message. Should the United States, through its surface ships, submarines, aircraft carriers, and Navy SEALs, be “forcing” its way? So, another way to look at the former Navy slogan is, “A Global Enforcer for Good.

Gregg Easterbrook makes the case for the Navy’s role as “a force for good” –– enforcing free trade on the world’s oceans and seas –– in “The Blue Age: How the US Navy created Global Prosperity –– and Why We’re in Danger of Losing It” (Public Affairs, Hachette Book Group, 2021). The result of such enforcement is peace, prosperity, and an amazing decline in extreme poverty, especially in China.

“Nearly all the decline of extreme poverty occurred in the trade-focused nations of Asia. Max Roser, an economist at the University of Oxford, has noted that China’s trade-based improvement of living standards in the last two decades works out to about 130,000 people escaping poverty each day. Roser calls this ‘the leading achievement in human history,” greater than the Apollo missions, greater than the European Enlightenment, greater than independence for the United States or India.”

“We are living in the blue age. Many generations of our ancestors, up to our grandparents, could only have dreamt of a time when a guardian navy eliminated nearly all risk involving sea lanes, anyone anywhere can sell to or buy from anyone else, anyone anywhere can sail anywhere.”

Mahan

Someone who did imagine it in our grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ time was Alfred Thayer Mahan. He foresaw a strong U.S. Navy on two oceans, and he greatly influenced President Theodore Roosevelt to build battleships and achieve naval hegemony under Manifest Destiny "moral" justification.

But, according to Easterbrook, Mahan, though still revered in many circles and right about the importance of the oceans, was devastatingly and fundamentally wrong then and now about some key theories.

Among Mahan’s failed theories were that bigger platforms are always better, a big navy could deter war just by being built and kept in port, and “that if sent into action, a navy should concentrate all force into a single, decisive battle.” Mahan’s theories enticed not just T.R. but also Kaiser Wilhelm, Führer Hitler, and Emperor Hirohito. Today, Mahan is read and cited by military leaders in the Communist Chinese Party, according to Easterbrook.

Mahan’s theories led Wilhelm and his navy leader Adm. Alfred von Tirpitz to build a big fleet but leave it in port until a decisive battle and defeat at Scapa Flow. “Unable to make Mahan’s theoretical notions work in the real world, Tirpitz pressured the kaiser to allow unrestricted submarine warfare against American merchantmen. This decision, taken in winter 1917, brought the United States into the Great War. “By drawing in the United States, strongest nation in the world, Mahan’s theories converted German military advantage into utter ruin.”

Imperial Japan made the same mistake less than a generation later when the attack on Pearl Harbor, instead of striking decisive blow, brought America into World War II. Japan built super-sized battleships Yamato and Musashi, and aircraft carrier Shinano, that were quickly sunk by the U.S. Navy.

After the British government appeased Hitler in the late 1930s, the Nazi’s were unleashed. “Hitler conceived a pure Mahan strategy, with he ominous label Plan Z, of building supergiant battleships, aircraft carriers, and long-range cruisers, all of which never would leave port: the ultimate fleet-in-being, to use Mahan’s terminology.”

The world has moved away from military conquest and toward greater international cooperation and trade by sea. But what about China’s plans?

“Today, Alfred Thayer Mahan is admired in China. Officers of the Chinese maritime force –– officially the People’s Liberation Army Navy, the existence of an organization called the Army Navy being delightful –– are required to read ‘The Influence of Sea Power Upon History.’ A documentary about how the upstart Tudor fleet brought great-power status to England in 1588 by defeating the Spanish Armada in decisive battle is shown on state-controlled Chinese television, followed by a talk-show format discussion of the genius of Mahan.”

Easterbrook observes, “Should China make a Mahan-style move, the harm to international trade will send the entire world spiraling backward.” He examines the current situation in Taiwan and the ways in which forces on all sides are monitored so as to create less uncertainty.

Easterbrook says that though Mahan was right about a nation’s coastline being its most valuable natural resource, he was wrong in arguing for the right of America to use its naval force “outward” to seize power over developing nations –– or otherwise Germany would do so.

One of the problems of building bigger and more and more ships, as Mahan advised, is that it gives powerful leaders more hammers, and you know what they say about hammers.

“Peace on the waters is both invisible to most of humanity and tenuous. For decades the US Navy has been so strong that no other nation tried to contest its ensign. Recently, China has engaged in a clipped naval buildup. The saying ‘When you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail’ can apply to military affairs. Soon China will possess maritime hammers, and the world’s oceans may begin to seem like nails.

“The Russian Federation is improving its navy, while India, the United Kingdom, Japan, and other nations are adding warships. Destructive, almost continuous novelist military buildup was a distinguishing feature of the world from about 1500 to the 1950s. The English-German naval arms race that began in 1909 engaged the momentum of World War I. The reprise English-German naval arms race that began in 1936, coupled with Japan’s preparations to sink the American Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, were major factors in the impetus for World War II. Should a new naval arms race commence, the impacts will be global and entirely negative. Americans ignore the prospect at our peril.”

The world cannot ignore what Easterbrook considers the two greatest threats to continued prosperity: a renewed arms race (more hammers) and global climate change.

He explores how the Arctic is creating new challenges but also new opportunities for international cooperation, including new trade routes as long as sea lanes are unrestricted.

Special attention is given to contested areas and expanded sweeping claims by the PRC in the South China Sea.

Yesterday, the United States showed how it “will continue to defend the rights and freedoms of the sea guaranteed to all,” according to a statement on Navy.mil.

Logistics Specialist Joshua Green, from New Orleans, stands lookout watch on the bridgewing as Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Benfold (DDG 65) conducts routine underway operations, Jan. 20, 2022. Benfold is forward-deployed to the U.S. 7th Fleet area of operations in support of a free and open Indo-Pacific. (MC2 Class Arthur Rosen)

From the Navy: “On Jan. 20, USS Benfold (DDG 65) asserted navigational rights and freedoms in the vicinity of the Paracel Islands, consistent with international law. At the conclusion of the operation, USS Benfold exited the excessive claim and continued operations in the South China Sea. This freedom of navigation operation (‘FONOP’) upheld the rights, freedoms, and lawful uses of the sea recognized in international law by challenging restrictions on innocent passage imposed by the People's Republic of China (PRC), Taiwan, and Vietnam and also by challenging the PRC’s claim to straight baselines enclosing the Paracel Islands.”

Easterbrook

The Navy is still “a global force for good” if you believe Easterbrook’s contention that free and open trade between nations helps prevent wars.

“For present generations, a world without war is too distant to represent a practical goal,” Easterbrook writes.

“Disincentives to war are more pragmatic. The strongest disincentive to war on the blue water –– and, thereby, the best protection for trade that benefits nearly everyone on earth –– is the strength, scope, and forward placement of American naval power.”

In Part II of our review of “The Blue Age,” we will dive deeper into Easterbrook’s observations about China as well as the need for enforcing international laws, including especially, as the Navy notes, “international law of the sea as reflected in the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention provides for certain rights and freedoms and other lawful uses of the sea to all nations.”

Top photo: Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Benfold (DDG 65) conducts routine underway operations in the South China Sea, Jan. 20, 2022. (MC2 Arthur Rosen)