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U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has issued orders for a U.S. Navy carrier strike group to support Israel in response to the surprise Hamas terrorist attack on Oct. 7. Some military analysts view this deployment as a “major escalation” by the U, prompting the question: What exactly is the role of the U.S. Navy?
Straight Arrow News contributor Peter Zeihan offers historical insight into the traditional role of the U.S. Navy in global maritime security and explains how that role is evolving.
Excerpted from Peter’s Oct. 9 “Zeihan on Geopolitics” newsletter:
If you’ve read my latest book, The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization, you know that a driving force behind deglobalization is the U.S. Navy stepping away from its role as patroller of the world’s oceans. So why is this happening, and what will it change?
The key thing to note here is that the U.S. never did this for themselves (sure, it came with some perks, but there was a greater purpose). At the end of World War II, the U.S. knew something had to be done to stop the Soviets. So, the U.S. created a global trade network to incentivize enough countries to “stand up” against them.
As the Cold War ended, the U.S. ran a cost-benefit analysis, and something wasn’t checking out. The globalized system that once worked in favor of the U.S. alliance network has started to shift in favor of countries outside of that group.
The U.S. Navy still has a global presence, but it is nowhere near the scale it once was. As this presence continues to taper off, what will the repercussions be? The ultimate result will be the collapse of globalization, but the path there is undecided.
If there were a perfectly ironic ending to the globalized world, it would have to be the Russians causing the total collapse of supply chains and bringing this globalization endeavor full circle.
