Team Trump: be wary what you wish for
Loose lips sink ships. But that's not the biggest problem revealed in the Signal scandal
Be careful what you wish for. My mother taught me that.
I wrote a couple of months back that President Donald Trump’s approach to politics, the economy, foreign policy and – well, all things – could best be described as “All tactics, no strategy.”
This week’s bombshell revelation by The Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg further confirms this hasn’t changed. In case you missed it, Trump’s National Security Adviser Michael Walz invited Goldberg (a journalist with no role in the Trump administration) to join a private discussion group on the encrypted social media app Signal along with all the key political players in the administration’s national security inner circle, including Vice President J.D. Vance, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, et al.
I won’t belabour the unprecedented idiocy of discussing war plans in a civilian circle jerk on an insecure social media chatroom. Instead, I want to address some overlooked, off-hand comments made by Vance and Hegseth. They reconfirm Team Trump is all about immediate tactical advantage – and still fails to see longer term strategic impact. The Trump administration is playing a chess match, one move at a time.
Team Trump is correct to note the USN is the only global navy, and so much of the policing of the world’s international shipping lanes falls on its shoulders. I would say “disproportionally,” but it’s not disproportionate. The US gains enormously – more than proportionately – from having the world’s biggest and most powerful navy. For sure, it’s a huge expense, but it provides an unequalled advantage that vastly outweighs its cost.
Before the Second World War, the Royal Navy made a tiny island nation off the coast of Europe the master of global trade and a world superpower. The British Empire and its dominant economic might existed entirely because Britain commanded the world’s seas.
During WW2 , Britain’s economy crumbled and the USA rose to power. British taxpayers were repaying loans from the USA until 2006. The Royal Navy shrank and the US Navy usurped it as the world’s dominant maritime military force. That dominance has secured US economic and military power ever since. It alone can guarantee American shipping access to world markets.
Like the British Royal Navy more than a century before it, the U.S. Navy has a command of the sea that affords the United States unrivaled international influence. For decades, its size and sophistication have enabled leaders in Washington to project American power over much of the world, during times of both war and peace.
– Sea Power: The US Navy and Foreign Policy, The Council on Foreign Relations, 2024.
The Council on Foreign Relations goes on to describe some of the USN’s roles as follows:
Sea control. It exercises control over the sea, at least in certain areas for certain lengths of time. Sea control provides a freedom of action that is required for the pursuit of other objectives, such as shipping protection, military sealift—which includes using cargo ships to deploy military assets—and blockades.
Power projection. It can threaten or direct strikes—from ballistic-missile attacks to amphibious assaults—against targets ashore for sustained periods.
Maritime security. It protects seaborne commerce—some 90 percent of global trade travels by ship—and generally maintains order at sea. Operations include counterpiracy, drug interdiction, environmental protection, and other law enforcement measures.
– Sea Power: The US Navy and Foreign Policy, The Council on Foreign Relations, 2024.
In recent years, China has seen the opportunity for its emergent global ambitions to be secured through sea power and embarked on a mad naval expansion to outbuild the USN. It currently has more military vessels in the water than the US does. However, the quality and character of China’s warships still pale against the global power of the USN. That may change. But, for now, the US still enjoys a massive superiority and uses it daily to its economic, military and foreign policy advantage.
Beseeching other nations to “step up” so the USA doesn’t have to “bail them out” at sea is a cunning short-term political tactic to extract rent from US allies. But it’s a self-defeating strategy in the long run. The last thing the USA should want is for other countries to build navies that begin to rival its own. When that happens, the US will lose the strategic advantage it has at sea, and the world will become far less friendly to the government in Washington and the people of the USA.
Shipping matters. During the COVID-19 pandemic, global shipping was badly crippled and the US (and world) economy took a huge hit. The cost of shipping many goods was seven times higher than pre-COVID. Scarcity ruled in many sectors of the economy and prices skyrocketed. When shipping through the Suez Canal was affected by an accident and offensive action by Yemen’s Houthi terrorists in 2023-24, shipping was again affected and the economy suffered. That’s why the USN is trying to eliminate the Houthi threat to navigation.
Be careful what you wish for
Does Washington really want other countries to invest as much as the USA has in its navy? Then, the US wouldn’t have uncontested dominance at sea. Then, it wouldn’t be able to guarantee its own shipping lanes. Then, Washington would lose one of the key strategic advantages that has made the USA the world’s richest and most powerful nation.
Team Trump is demonizing US allies for “not sharing the load.” It should understand successive generations of US political leaders have intentionally created a world where the US shoulders the lion’s share of the load, and carries the burden of defence, precisely because that dominance is gives the US its economic might. Does the USA really want to cede that power?
Be careful what you wish for.
Is the US right to belittle its allies for “falling behind” in its naval dominance? Do you think US long-term interests will be better served by giving up its naval supremacy?
As Scott Ritter said there are only two types of navy ships built now . Submarines and targets . The American navy is primarily made up of massive steel coffins waiting to be sent to the bottom of the oceans. One or two aircraft carriers sitting on the ocean floor sends the other nine rushing back to safety which isn’t possible due to hyper glide missiles coming in at 7000 miles an hour from 500 miles away. Your navy just hasn’t been tested but when it is , it’s a past tense . Then you realize your coast guard is all you have . You concentrated on aircraft and carriers whereas the Russian worked on making them useless. The Chinese will eat up the US navy before it gets within 1000 miles .