NORFOLK, VA — House Armed Services Committee (HASC) Vice Chair Elaine Luria proposed a framework for a new maritime strategy in an article for the Center for International Maritime Security (CIMSEC).
“The US has a unique role in history. It is this exceptional power – and responsibility – that requires exceptional thinking by the political and military leaders of our nation,” Vice Chair Luria wrote. “This global maritime strategy can work, but the Navy will have to overcome substantial barriers to change in the Joint Staff, Combatant Commands, amongst the Services, and within the National Security Council and Congress. However, one cannot argue with a good plan. All we need is the plan and a few champions on Capitol Hill.”
Last week, Vice Chair Luria’s Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal asked, “Does the Pentagon Take China Seriously?” In June, her piece in War On The Rocks argued that the U.S. must “Look to the 1980s to Inform the Fleet of Today.”
You can read today’s article here.
Paul Plante says
As I read this, with respect to a new “maritime strategy” to restore our place in history, two things come to mind as to what congresswoman Luria is thinking of here, as she and Joe Biden try to make America great again – gunboat diplomacy and the Great White Fleet, and my goodness, people, who among us can forget either!
And it is not at all surprising that a sea dog as salty and crusty as Elaine Luria, who spent her 20 years in the Navy out at sea before the mast on real warships, not as some pogue back on shore sitting on their *** pecking at keys on a typewriter, would want to restore the glory of the United States by bringing back both.
Think about it, people – a brand new Great White Fleet!
That would show them COMMIES over there in China a thing or two, would it not!
For those of you too young to remember, and those without salt water in their veins like congresswoman Luria who do not follow nautical history, the Great White Fleet, consisting of 14,000 sailors on 16 battleships and accompanying vessels, was sent around the world for fourteen months by President Roosevelt, with the fleet’s journey starting on December 16, 1907, and concluding on February 22, 1909.
Called the Great White Fleet because the ships were painted white instead of modern gray, the fleet covered 43,000 miles and made twenty port calls on six different continents.
The fleet first deployed from Hampton Roads, Virginia, and sailed to Trinidad, British West Indies, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Mexico, and made port back in the United States at San Francisco.
The fleet’s journey stopped briefly when they made port call at San Francisco on May 6, 1908, because some ships left the fleet for other duties while others joined the fleet for the next leg of its journey.
The command also changed from Rear Admiral Robley D. Evans to Rear Admiral Charles S. Sperry.
The Great White Fleet sailed again on July 7, 1908, and traveled to Hawaii, New Zealand, three ports in Australia, the Philippines, Japan, Ceylon, and Egypt.
They stopped in Egypt on January 3, 1909.
Learning that an earthquake had struck Sicily, the Great White Fleet sailed to help with the wreckage and recovery work.
After their assistance, they traveled on to Naples, Italy, and from there to Gibraltar and on to Hampton Roads, Virginia, where the fleet’s journey concluded.
Of great importance to this thread, and the American people, and maybe even to the future of the world itself, besides making America great again (MAGA) on Joe Biden’s watch, which is what this is all about, the Great White Fleet was an important show of America’s naval power to the rest of the world, and by God, people, it should be restored so it can be that again, and the world will be able to see that under Joe Biden, America is back!
And just as the Great White Fleet was an important event in the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, with the Great White Fleet’s successful return and completion of its mission adding luster to Roosevelt’s presidential career, so too, a new Great White Fleet as proposed by congresswoman Luria would add some much needed luster to the presidential career of Joe Biden, who needs all the help he can get when it comes to adding any luster to his presidential career so far.
And hey, people, nothing would say America is back like the restoration of gunboat diplomacy, especially with respect to those COMMIES down there in Cuba who need Joe Biden to give them some good “what-for” as he takes them out behind the barn so to speak to put some serious “whup-ass” on them to show them who’s the boss and who is not.
Talk about making America great again (MAGA), the restoration of gunboat diplomacy is the only way to go!
For those of you unfamiliar with this chapter of our American history that congresswoman Luria wants to take us back to to restore us to our rightful place in the grand scheme of things as the nation with the most powerful navy on the face of the planet, in international politics, which is what congresswoman Luria is talking about, the term gunboat diplomacy refers to the pursuit of foreign policy objectives with the aid of conspicuous displays of naval power, implying or constituting a direct threat of warfare should terms not be agreeable to the superior force.
That would make America great again, alright, as well as showing the candid world that Joe Biden is not somebody you **** with, if you care about your tomarrows.
The term “gunboat diplomacy” comes to us today from the nineteenth-century period of imperialism, when Western powers – the United States, back when it was great before it wasn’t great, anymore – would intimidate other, less powerful states into granting concessions through a demonstration of their superior military capabilities, usually depicted by their naval assets, so that a country negotiating with the United States would notice that a warship or fleet of ships had appeared off its coast, and the mere sight of such power almost always had a considerable effect, and it was rarely necessary for such boats to use other measures, such as demonstrations of firepower.
According to Wikipedia, the effectiveness of such simple demonstrations of a nation’s projection of force capabilities meant that nations with naval power and command of the sea could establish military bases (for example, Diego Garcia) and arrange economically advantageous relationships around the world, and aside from military conquest, gunboat diplomacy was the dominant way to establish new trade partners, colonial outposts, and expansion of empire.
Those lacking the resources and technological advancements of Western empires found that their own peaceable relationships were readily dismantled in the face of such pressures, and they therefore came to depend on the imperialist nations for access to raw materials and overseas markets.
Diplomat and naval thinker James Cable spelled out the nature of gunboat diplomacy in a series of works published between 1971 and 1993.
In these, he defined the phenomenon as “the use or threat of limited naval force, otherwise than as an act of war, in order to secure advantage or to avert loss, either in the furtherance of an international dispute or else against foreign nationals within the territory or the jurisdiction of their own state.”
He further broke down the concept into four key areas:
Definitive Force: the use of gunboat diplomacy to create or remove a fait accompli.
Purposeful Force: application of naval force to change the policy or character of the target government or group.
Catalytic Force: a mechanism designed to buy a breathing space or present policy makers with an increased range of options.
Expressive Force: use of navies to send a political message.
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So no wonder congresswoman Luria is seeking to restore America’s lost glory by restoring the Great White Fleet and gunboat diplomacy as the way for her to make America great again (MAGA), and since we all want America to be great again, we as a people should give her our firm support and firm backing, because afterall, she is not only doing this for Joe Biden, she is doing it for all of us!