Navy 250: Sea Power and Freedom
By Francis P. Sempa
Real Clear Wire
On Sunday, Oct. 5, Real America’s Voice and Steve Bannon’s War Room presented a special program celebrating the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Navy.
The program, titled Navy 250: Sea Power and Freedom, covered live events at and near the Norfolk, Va. Naval Base, including live fire exercises, navy seal demonstrations, carrier warplane launches and landings, and an address by President Trump aboard the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman. The program also included discussions on sea power and geopolitics by Strategic Intelligence editor James Rickards, retired navy captain and co-author of Embracing Communist China: America’s Greatest Strategic Failure James Fanell, Sunday Guardian columnist Cleo Paskal, retired Admiral Edward “Sonny” Masso, and other experts. Bannon, who served as a naval officer in the 7th Fleet and at the Pentagon, hosted the program and contributed his own expertise on naval warfare and history.
The United States is a maritime power due to its geographical position separated from Eurasia by two great oceans. Geopolitically, it is an insular or island power because it dominates the North American continent and is free from continental opposition by other great powers. As such, it relies on sea power in its broadest Mahanian definition for its wealth and security.
Bannon’s discussion with James Rickards delved into the classical geopolitical worldviews of Halford Mackinder and Alfred Thayer Mahan, the importance of overseas bases for the control of strategic chokepoints, and the correlation between economic and naval power throughout history. Rickards reviewed the naval superpowers of the past—the Dutch, the Portuguese, Spain, Great Britain, and the United States. He noted the importance of Mackinder’s concept of the World-Island—the joint Eurasian-African landmass that has the potential of combining insularity with unmatched human and natural resources. And he noted that in the 21st century, China is bidding for dominance on the World-Island but will likely fall short of achieving it due to internal problems.
Cleo Paskal observed that the “pivot” of global politics has shifted from Eurasia to the Pacific, while Captain Fanell expressed concern that our lax shipbuilding capacity relative to China is a dangerous trend that if not reversed could lead to China’s replacing the United States as the world’s greatest sea power. Rickards and Bannon noted the important contributions to U.S. naval power and strategic security of Admiral Hyman Rickover, the father of the nuclear navy, and Andrew Marshall, who for decades oversaw the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment which focused on long-term strategic threats and goals.
Bannon believes that Trump’s “America First” vision for U.S. naval and naval-air power in the 21st century is to reclaim “hemispheric security” and to prevent the PLA Navy from dominating the Pacific. The Pacific Ocean, Bannon believes, is the strategic “heartland” of the 21st century. Mackinder once wrote that whoever controls Eurasia or the World Island commands the world. Bannon and Paskal would revise Mackinder’s dictum, with a Mahanian twist, to: Whoever controls the Pacific commands the destinies of the world. China, they believe, is seeking to control the Pacific Ocean, and breaking through the first and second island chains (which includes Taiwan) is the initial steps toward achieving that goal.
Although the experts on the program briefly mentioned the Ukraine War and the conflict in the Middle East, they believe that Trump is rightly attempting to end those conflicts so that the United States can focus on the twin and complementary objectives of hemispheric security and maintaining control of the Pacific. Unmatched sea power is essential to both objectives. Our freedom and way of life depend on it.
Francis P. Sempa writes on military and foreign policy.