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Chapter 8: Grand Strategy of the United States
Grand strategy starts where policy makers end. Let’s assume for a moment that Franklin
Roosevelt had not run for a third term in 1940. Would Japan and Germany have behaved
differently? Could the United States have accepted Japanese domination of the Western
Pacific? Could the United States have accepted the defeat of Britain and its fleet in
German hands? The details might have changed, but it is hard to imagine the United
States not getting into the war and the war not ending in an allied victory. A thousand
details might have changed, but the broadest outlines, the grand strategy would not have
changed.
Could there have been an American strategy during the Cold War other than containment
of the Soviet Union? The United States couldn’t invade Eastern Europe. The Soviet
Army was simply too large and too strong. On the other hand, the United States couldn’t
allow the Soviet Union to seize Western Europe because if it controlled Western
Europe’s industrial plant, it could overwhelm the United States in the long run.
Containment was not a policy; it was the only possible American response to the Soviet
Union.
The grand strategies of World War II and the Cold War were dictated by reality. No
President, no policy maker would, in the end, have acted differently. Strategically, many
things might have changed. Strategically, the United States might have emphasized
defeating Japan before it defeated Hitler. It might not have invaded France or it might
have lost the Battle of Midway and the war in the Pacific might have lasted another two
years. But in the end, it would have fought Japan and Japan, lacking America’s industrial
base, would have lost. The United States would have fought Germany and Germany,
trapped between the United States and the Soviet Union was not going to win the war.
During the Cold War, the United States might not have fought in Vietnam, but invaded
Cuba. It might have negotiated away Berlin, or intervened in Hungary. But in the end,
geography and economic reality dictated how the Cold War ended.
Grand strategy is the realm in which there are no choices, where the fundamental realities
of geography, demography, technology and culture dictate the broad outlines of what
must be done. Leaders are left with the task of succeeding at the task or failing, usually
because while the task must be achieved, the resources for achieving them just aren’t
there. Great leaders are those who accept the tasks laid down by the grand strategic
reality, and squeeze out an extra bit of power or cunning in pursuing them. The Cold War
would have been won without Vietnam. But it was won in spite of Vietnam as well. In
the broadest sense, Lyndon Johnson’s decision to go to war in Vietnam really didn’t
matter.
All nations have grand strategies. That does not mean all nations can achieve their
strategic goals. Lithuania’s goal is to be free of foreign occupation, particularly Russian.
Its economy, demography and geography make it unlikely that Lithuania will ever
achieve its goals more than occasionally and temporarily. Spain’s goals were supported
by its economic position in the 16th century, but undermined by its military position. The
United States, unlike most countries in the world, has achieved four out of five of its
strategic goals, and is working on its fifth. Its economy and society is shaped toward this
effort.
The grand strategy of a country is so deeply embedded in a nation’s reality and appears
so natural and obvious, that politicians and generals are not always aware of it. They are
so constrained by it, their logic is so constrained by it, that it is an almost un-thought of
reality. Yet, when you step back and consider it, both the grand strategy of a country and
logic driving a country’s leaders become obvious.
Grand strategy is not only about war. It is about all of the processes that constitute
national power. But in the case of the United States, perhaps more than with other
countries, grand strategy is about war, and the interaction of war with economic life. The
United States is, historically, a warlike country.
Since its founding, the United States has been at war for about 10 percent of the time.
These are major wars -- War of 1812, Mexican-American War, Civil War, World Wars I
and II, Korean War, Vietnam. It does not include minor conflicts like the Spanish
American War or Desert Storm. During the 20th century, the United States was at war 15
percent of the time. In the second half of the 20th century, the U.S was at war 22 percent
of the time. And since the 21st century began in 2001, the United States has been
constantly at war. War is central to the American experience and its frequency is
constantly increasing. It is built into the American culture and is rooted in American
geopolitics. Its purpose must be clearly understood
America was born in battle and it has continued to fight to this day at an ever increasing
pace. Norway’s grand strategy might be more about economics than warfare, but to
understand American grand strategy, war is at the center. It is where American prosperity
starts.
Strategic Imperatives of the United States
The United States has five geopolitical goals which constitutes its grand strategic goals.
Note that these goals increase in magnitude, ambition and difficulty as you go down the
list:
1. The complete domination of North America by the United States Army
2. The elimination of any threat to the United States by any power in the Western
Hemisphere.
3. Complete control of the maritime approaches to the United States by the Navy in
order to preclude any possibility of invasion
4. Complete domination of the world’s oceans to further secure U.S. physical safety,
and guarantee control over the international trading system.
5. Preventing any other nation from even threatening to challenge U.S. global naval
power
U.S. strategic goals, and U.S. grand strategy, originates in fear. That’s the same for all
nations. They do not set out to conquer the world. The United States would have been
quite content at first not to be attacked and defeated by the British, as it was in the War of
1812. Each fear, once alleviated, creates new vulnerabilities and new fears. Nations are
driven by fear of losing what they have. Each solution generates a new fear. These fears
draw a nation outward until their fear is losing control of the oceans and the solution is
the conquest of the world. It isn’t madness that creates empire. It is insecurity. And given
what happens to nations who fail to overcome their vulnerabilities, nations are not acting
irrationally.
Regardless of ideology, no one wants to be invaded. Regardless of what Marxists might
haves said, securing the Soviet Union against invasion took priority over everything else.
Washington might not have wanted entangling alliances but what he wanted and what the
country ultimately needed diverged, and need trumped ideology.
Policy makers have much less room for maneuver than they would like to think, or would
have others think. Leaders choose from a limited menu. Frequently, there is only one
item on the menu. Like the invisible hand discussed in economics political leaders are
forced, sometimes without being fully conscious of it, to pursue certain ends in certain
ways.
It is an interesting game to play in idle hours to imagine if Woodrow Wilson knew that
his plan for a Post-World War I world guaranteed that there would be a second war, from
which the United States would emerge as the major winner and a global power. If he
knew it, he was one of the cleverest politicians who ever lived. If he didn’t know it, he
was one of the most interesting, because the path he chose was both consistent with U.S.
Grand Strategy, and ruthlessly efficient in breaking European power and enhancing
American. What Wilson thought he was doing might have been completely different
from what he actually achieved. Which is why paying attention to the intentions of
politicians—especially the most sincere ones—confuses more than helps.
The pursuit of U.S. grand strategy, therefore, is not about policy pronouncements. It
moves with its on logic, trapping policy makers in its own rules and constraints. What is
unique about the United States is not that its leaders are constrained. It is that they have
achieved far more than the leaders of other countries. But that has far less to do with their
own genius than with the tools they had to work with and the way the tools worked them.
It doesn’t make American power eternal. It does allow it to endure and it helps explain
the origins of that power.
The First Imperative: The complete domination of North America by the United States
Army
From the beginning, Europe consisted of multiple competing states. North America could
have wound up that way, but it didn’t. It wound up with a single, very powerful country
dominating other, weaker powers. It didn’t have to wind up this way. North American
could have had a dozen smaller countries, behaving as European countries did. Or it
could have wound up with another country, Mexico, dominating the continent. Or, it
could have wound up reoccupied by one or more European powers. There were a lot of
ways North American could have gone. It was imperative for the United States, the
federation created from the thirteen colonies with its ultimate capitol in Washington, that
it dominate North America.
The reason was defensive, not aggressive. The United States initially occupied the
Atlantic coastal plain of North America. Its eastern boundary was the Atlantic coast. Its
western boundary was roughly the Appalachian-Allegheny mountain chain that runs from
the Canadian border to southern Georgia. The distance between the ocean and these
mountains was rarely more than two hundred miles. The mountain chain was not
particularly high, but they were quite rugged, making passage fairly difficult. Moving an
army across it was a significant challenge. That protected the coastal plain from the
French, but also made westward movement a challenge.
There was another geographical feature. Apart from the Hudson and Delaware rivers,
most major navigable rivers did not run north-south. That meant that south of Maryland
the navigable rivers ran east-west. Given this, transportation between the colonies was
poor. The United States tended to regionalize, with individual states isolated from each
other. Commercial traffic was oriented toward Europe more than the other states, and
what interstate commerce there was tended to move along the coast.
The United States resembled Chile. It as very long and thin, without mountains on once
side, the ocean on the other side, and very poor transportation running north-south. This
was a prescription for disaster. The interests of the various states, regions and sub-regions
were very different and frequently antagonistic. Federalism, the existence of sovereign
states was not a matter of political philosophy. It was an empirical reality. That’s the way
things were.
The U.S. had a strategic problem. It had just won independence from England, but the
English dominated the North Atlantic. The United States didn’t have a significant Navy.
That meant that the United States was wide open to having its coastal shipping interfered
with and its trade with Europe strangled. Moreover, given the length of the coast, an
enemy could invade at any point and other states couldn’t come to their existence. That’s
exactly what happened in the War of 1812. The British captured U.S. ships, then invaded
the United States and burned Washington.
Had the United States remained a nation of discreet states existing between the coast and
the mountains, it is extremely unlikely that it would have survived. The geographical
isolation of its parts and its vulnerability to British or French naval action meant that they
were an accident waiting to happen. The United States had to expand beyond the
Appalachians in order to have any strategic depth and survive.
The United States had, in fact, received a large amount of territory from the British as
part of the settlement of the Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War. Called the
Northwest Territory, it consisted of a huge area stretching from the Appalachians as far
west as eastern Minnesota. It had some of the richest farm land in the world. But it was
on the other side of the Appalachians. It was almost another planet, certainly another
country.
The Ohio territory didn’t give strategic depth. It was unpopulated and it was unconnected
to the rest of the country. Constructing roads across the mountains appeared as difficult
as going to the moon does now. But The Ohio Territory did have a tremendous
highway—the Ohio River, that was navigable and could be used to transport goods.
The problem with the Ohio River is that it connected to the Mississippi. And the probably
of the Mississippi was that it belonged first to the Spanish and then to the French. That
meant that even if the U.S. could occupy the Northwest Territory, it couldn’t transport
agricultural products from it and couldn’t defend it against the French. In addition, the
French could, even without passing through the Northwest Territories, threaten the
southern United States directly.
The United States required more depth. They also need depth with a good river transport
system. That river had to run to the ocean to ship to the east coast of the United States.
And that meant controlling the Mississippi River and its key port, the city of New
Orleans.
If the Louisiana Territory was added to the Northwest Territory the United States would,
effectively, occupy all of North America between the Appalachians and the Rockies. And
with that, the U.S. would acquire the most valuable farmland in the world, made valuable
not only by the soil and climate, but by the most extraordinary river complex in the
world. Consisting of the Ohio, Missouri and Arkansas rivers, all pouring into the
Mississippi river—along with the numerous tributaries—the river system was entirely
navigable. That meant that the agricultural land, if settled, could ship its produce around
the world. And that meant that the United States had a powerful economic foundation.
The United States would also acquire to key to the American heartland—the city of New
Orleans. It was the farthest point ocean going vessels could go and the farthest point
where barges carrying grain from the Midwest could go. It was the natural point for a
port where barges and ocean going vessels could meet.
Everything had to go through New Orleans and whoever controlled New Orleans
controlled the center of North America. It didn’t matter how much land you owned and
how much produce you generated. The Midwest was all agricultural if it were settled. If
produced agricultural products. It didn’t consume them. The United States had to get
New Orleans if it were to survive. Without it, the United States would remain a chain of
isolated states stretched along a narrow, vulnerable coast. Geopolitics demanded strategic
depth that could enhance American economic life.
The Louisiana Purchase solved the problem. The purchase laid the foundation for an
unprecedented economic revolution. Settlers west of the Appalachians were able, under
the Northwest Territories Act, to acquire 160 acres of land if they settled and worked the
land. Since the land was fertile, once it was cleared, it was able to more than sustain the
farmers. This is where the river complex became so important. The rivers provided cheap
and efficient transport to New Orleans. There the agricultural products could be reloaded
on ocean going freighters heading to the Atlantic Coast or to Europe. It fed the
increasingly urban populations on both continents. It created a class of farmer that
produced more than it could consume, and could sell the surplus on the world market.
These were both revolutionary events.
Thomas Jefferson Purchase Louisiana but it was Andrew Jackson who save it and
guaranteed that it would be useful. During the War of 1812, the British went after the real
heart of the country: New Orleans. The British understood that if they took New Orleans,
the United States would crumble. They could control the Mississippi and therefore dictate
what happened in the center of the United States. If they did that, the development of the
region would happen under British terms. The British would dominate the central region
and the U.S. would remain a coastal enclave. They therefore went to the heart of the
problem. They attacked New Orleans.
The commander in New Orleans was one of the new Americans, part of the second wave
of immigration to the United States: Andrew Jackson. He was Scotch-Irish, not English,
and although he grew up in South Carolina, he moved west of Appalachians in
Tennessee. It was Jackson who defeated the British at New Orleans, saving the United
States. He went on the become President and took the second step to protect New Orleans
and expand American power.
The vast complex of rivers provided transport for American agricultural products. It all
went down the Mississippi to the port of New Orleans. But if New Orleans was to be
useful then the Gulf of Mexico had to be useful and for that, the sea lanes out of the Gulf
had to be usable. Looking at the map, you can see there are only two ways out of the
Mississippi. One was the Strait of Florida between Cuba and the Florida. The other was
the Yucatan Strait between Mexico and Cuba. Cuba was held by Spain and the British
controlled the Bahamas. But if Florida were in American hands, then ships out of New
Orleans could slip through Florida’s coastal waters and get to the high seas.
You can see from this why the U.S. has always been obsessed with Cuba. You can also
see why the United States had to control Florida. Without at least Florida, the Louisiana
Purchase would have been useless. In 1817, Jackson launched a war first to expel the
Spanish from Florida and then to crush the Seminoles. This did not solve the problem,
but it did ameliorate it.
The final piece of the Louisiana Purchase was Texas. The eastern frontier of Texas was
less than 200 miles from New Orleans. A Mexican force on the Sabine River (the border
between Texas and Louisiana) could easily retake New Orleans. Had the Mexicans done
so, they would have been able to choke off U.S.-European trade and control the
American Midwest.
Imagine a Mexico that would incorporate New Orleans and the Mississippi valley. The
entire shape of North America would change. The U.S. would be forced back behind the
Alleghenies—if they could hold there and the American Midwest would be Mexican.
Mexico had its own geopolitical problem with Texas. A desert—treacherous to cross—
runs across northern Mexico. Sending settlers into Texas, let alone an Army, is difficult
and complex. The Mexicans encouraged American settlement under strict conditions.
Andrew Jackson, when he became President, ever mindful of threats to New Orleans,
offered to buy Texas from the Mexicans, an offer that was refused. The refusal led him to
support the American secessionist movement in Texas, encouraging his political ally and
friend, Sam Houston, to take a leadership role in the rebellion.
The secessionist movement won independence at the battle of San Jacinto, near what is
today Houston. The secessionists defeated the Mexicans at the Battle of San Jacinto. Had
they lost and the Mexicans marched to New Orleans, history would have been very
different. But the Mexicans lost at San Jacinto and Texas became formally independent
and informally an American buffer with Mexico. It was at the Battle of San Jacinto—not
Yorktown or New Orleans—that American power was guaranteed. The battle did more
than create Texas. It secured the Mississippi River and New Orleans from future threat
and with it, American agriculture.
The later war with Mexico, merely confirmed the fact that Mexico’s influence did not
extend north of the band of deserts that caused Santa Anna’s army to arrive exhausted
and weakened in Texas. San Jacinto broke Mexico’s will to dominate North America.
Canada was a negligible force posing no challenge to the United States. The United
States effectively dominated North America. It directly controlled the United States and
could exert its will on the rest of the continent. Following the destruction of the
remaining Indian nations in a series of minor wars, the United States dominated the
continent by the end of the 1830s, with its unity confirmed in the Civil War.
Note the extraordinarily important role played by Andrew Jackson. As we will see in the
next chapter, his role in American history can’t be underestimated. But also understand
that even without a Jackson, the United States had to attempt what it did. Louisiana had
to be acquired. New Orleans had to be defended. Florida had to be taken. Texas had to be
absorbed. Geography dictated this. But the outcome was not certain. Mexico could have
been the dominant power in North America and may be in the future. But for now, this is
how the U.S. fulfilled its first imperative. And gives a sense of why the U.S. is obsessed
with Mexican immigration, the role of Cuba, and British bases in the Bahamas. It all
makes sense.
The Second Imperative: The elimination of any threat to the United States by any power
in the Western Hemisphere.
In reality, North and South America are islands, not really connected. Panama and
Central America are impassable by large armies. The major threat in the hemisphere
came from naval bases in the Caribbean. But in a broader sense, the sheer proximity of
South America to North American makes it an area of concerned. United and mobilized,
there is a potential threat to American interests there.
The direct threat from South America is not all that realistic. Why couldn’t Latin
America challenge the centrality of North America by creating a nation that stretched
from the Atlantic to the Pacific? The answer to this rests in the true geography of South
America.
South America appears to be a single integrated continent. In fact it is deeply divided by
impenetrable terrain. The Pacific coast of Latin America consists of the Andes
Mountains, enormously more rugged and impassable than the Alleghenies that blocked
U.S. westward expansion, leaving hardly any coastal plain. The center of Latin America
consists of the Amazon River Basin, covered by dense and virtually impassable jungle.
Latin America could not coalesce into a single country, because It is as physically
divided as Japan and China. And given the language differences between Brazil and
Argentina, unification there is unlikely. This explains why the United States has no real
challenge from South America. It also explains why North America, and not the entire
western hemisphere, is the center of gravity of the international system.
The greater fear of the United States is that some outside power would use Latin America
as a base of operations against the United States. This fear was expressed in the Monroe
Doctrine of 1823. The Monroe Doctrine was sheer nerve. The United States was in no
position to enforce the doctrine when it was announced, nor was it in a position to stop
Latin American countries from entering into treaties if they chose. But the doctrine
expressed the imperative well. In fact, that is how it should be viewed, less as a doctrine
to be enforced than as a doctrine to be perpetually pursued.
Take the case of Cuba. Cuba is never a problem to the United States on its own. It can
become a major problem when a significant foreign power is allied with Cuba. Cuba
potentially blocks access between the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico. When Cuba
belonged to Spain, this was a sensitive issue and in 1898 the United States went to war
with Spain over Cuba. Before and during World War II, the United States was concerned
about German influence in Cuba and the possibility of a German inspired coup that
would give Germany a base there. During the Cold War, when the Soviet did have a base
in Cuba, the United States almost went to nuclear war over the issue. At other times,
regardless of the type of regime, Cuba is of little importance to the United States.
Cuba is the most extreme for the United States in Latin America. But it defines the
American view of Latin America. The United States does not want a united Latin
America. However, that is not a significant threat given Latin American geography. The
United States generally is indifferent to Latin America, unless a major foreign power
becomes involved in the region. In that case it intervenes overtly or covertly to block
them. There were multiple covert operations in Latin America designed to block potential
pro-Soviet regimes. Once the threat subsided, so did the interest. Therefore, the United
States achieved its strategic goal in Latin America. There was no circumstance under
which Latin America could threaten U.S. domination of North America.
The sole exception of this potentially is Mexico. Mexico not only shares a border with the
United States, but was once a competitor with the United States for domination of North
America. That competition has been suspended because of the relative power of each
country, but the should the power of Washington ever break for any reason, Mexico
remains the country that would be in a position to take advantage of it. As we shall see,
however, the subject isn’t closed.
The Third Imperative: Complete control of the maritime approaches to the United States
by the Navy in order to preclude any possibility of invasion.
In 1812, the British Navy sailed up the Chesapeake and burned Washington. Throughout
the 19th century, the United States was terrified that the British, using their overwhelming
control of the North Atlantic, would shut of U.S. access to the ocean, and strangle the
United States. It was not always a paranoid fear. The British considered it on more than
one occasion. And the fear was not only blockade, but the possibility of invasion. The
U.S. didn’t start building a significant navy until the late 19th century. One way to
measure the success of the U.S. economy during the 19th century was that the U.S. could
afford to build a navy, which was then and still is fiendishly expensive.
The United States had a complicated problem. It had two coasts to protect. Two is
ruinous. In order to save money the United States solved this problem by constructing the
Panama Canal, which should give you an idea of how expensive a fleet is. The Panama
Canal was built to allow U.S warships to move quickly from one ocean to another.
Technology was a factor in how the U.S. approached the problem of defending their
coast. During this period, ships ran on coal, and had to be replenished every few
thousand miles. In the Pacific, the solution was simple. There were only two places in the
Pacific where a coaling station could be built to threaten the U.S. One was the Aleutian
islands of Alaska. The other was Hawaii. Assuming no Latin American country provided
a port to an enemy fleet, there was no other way to reach the United States.
The United States had bought Alaska from Russia during the Civil War. The U.S.
annexed Hawaii in 1898. Hawaii was about 2400 miles away from the U.S. coast, the
extreme limit of warship of that period. By seizing Hawaii, the United States closed of
any chance of a Pacific threat. So long as Pearl Harbor was in American hands, the West
Coast was secure.
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.
Operating in the Persian Gulf meant controlling the Indian Ocean. You could not have
one without the other:
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.
Fifth Imperative: Preventing any other nation from even threatening to challenge U.S.
global naval power.
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 21st 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.