‘Age of American naval dominance is over’, retired US naval officer warns

Naval power has always played a critical role in the way great powers interact. The decades leading up to the outbreak of the First World War saw an unprecedented competition between the UK and German Empire, with much of the emphasis placed on Dreadnought battleships echoing a similar, albeit smaller, naval arms race continuing to gather steam between the US and China.   

At the beginning of the 20th century, the British Royal Navy was unrivalled in its ability to rule the waves. Maintaining this capability was the “two-power” standard which sought to ensure that the Royal Navy was at least the size of the next two largest competing navies.

This naval might guaranteed the British economy’s access to vital raw resources and helped ensure that the “sun never set on the British Empire”.

In the distance, as France struggled to rebuild itself as a true competitor, the newly formed German Empire emerged as an economic, political, and naval competitor to Britain. Driven by voracious consumer and economic demand, combined with a new sense of national purpose, Bismarck’s Germany rapidly became a European and global powerhouse in the decades following its formation in 1871. 

Recognising the mounting challenge posed by the rising German power, the British Royal Navy launched HMS Dreadnought in 1906, effectively resetting the game and laying down the challenge to Germany and any other nation that sought to challenge the industrial, economic, and naval might of the British Empire.

Fast forward to the beginning of the 21st century and the US, following decades of the Cold War, remained the world’s largest and most powerful naval power. Commanding the seas through a vast fleet of technologically advanced surface vessels and submarines, with the mighty supercarrier serving as the epicentre of America’s global maritime hegemony. 

However, America’s maritime hegemony is now being challenged by a rising power in China that is introducing a suite of maritime capabilities to rival the dominance of the US Navy, as history appears to be repeating itself in the 21st century. 

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While the AUKUS announcement will have a transformational impact on the Royal Australian Navy and its capacity to contribute to the government’s ambitions of “impactful projection” in response to the mounting challenges presented by Beijing across the Indo-Pacific, retired US Navy officer turned academic, Jerry Hendrix, has highlighted the impact the relative decline of US naval power will have on the post-war world: “Very few Americans or, for that matter, very few people on the planet — can remember a time when freedom of the seas was in question. But for most of human history, there was no such guarantee. Pirates, predatory states, and the fleets of great powers did as they pleased.

“The current reality, which dates only to the end of World War II, makes possible the commercial shipping that handles more than 80 per cent of all global trade by volume — oil and natural gas, grain and raw ores, manufactured goods of every kind. Because freedom of the seas, in our lifetime, has seemed like a default condition, it is easy to think of it — if we think of it at all — as akin to Earth’s rotation or the force of gravity: as just the way things are, rather than as a man-made construct that needs to be maintained and enforced,” Hendrix states. 

What if safety of the seas was no longer assured? 

As Hendrix highlights, the post-Second World War order as defined by the unquestioning dominance of the global maritime commons by the United States Navy is coming to an end, this major shift marks the end of an era that much of the developed and developing world have become increasingly dependent upon for their economic stability and prosperity — Australia included. 

Hendrix references an important recent example of when the flow of maritime goods was hindered and the subsequent flow on global economic impact of the grounding of the Ever Given in the Suez Canal which compounded the global supply chain shocks of the COVID-19 pandemic, where he explains: “In 2021, the grounding of the container ship Ever Given blocked the Suez Canal, forcing vessels shuttling between Asia and Europe to divert around Africa, delaying their passage and driving up costs. A few months later, largely because of disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic, more than 100 container ships were stacked up outside the California ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, snarling supply chains throughout the country. 

“These events were temporary, if expensive. Imagine, though, a more permanent breakdown. A humiliated Russia could declare a large portion of the Arctic Ocean to be its own territorial waters, twisting the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea to support its claim. Russia would then allow its allies access to this route while denying it to those who dared to oppose its wishes. Neither the US Navy, which has not built an Arctic-rated surface warship since the 1950s, nor any other NATO nation is currently equipped to resist such a gambit,” Hendrix goes further, raising the important question of the impact of a peer competitor interdicting maritime trade. 

Importantly, for much of the past half century, the United States-led world has enjoyed a quantitative edge of adversaries across the maritime domain, whether it was through the advent of nuclear-powered submarines with the launch of USS Nautilus in 1954, the overwhelming power projection capabilities provided by aircraft carriers, and the increasing proliferation of advanced guided weapons resulting in an almost unprecedented period of assured maritime dominance, that is all beginning to change. 

Where once Australia and its allies enjoyed a qualitative and numerical advantage, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is rapidly gaining ground in terms of both their technological proficiency, capability, and overwhelmingly in terms of the numbers capable of being fielded at any given time — this is being further compounded by the increased modernisation and capabilities of the Russian Navy, despite the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and the rising capabilities of smaller, but no less consequential powers that will increasingly have a say on the flow of goods and resources through the maritime commons. 

Hendrix highlights the economic impact such competition and aggression towards the maritime sea lines of communication would have for trading nations, Australia in particular, where he states, “If oceanic trade declines, markets would turn inward, perhaps setting off a second Great Depression. Nations would be reduced to living off their own natural resources, or those they could buy — or take — from their immediate neighbors. The world’s oceans, for 70 years assumed to be a global commons, would become a no-man’s-land. This is the state of affairs that, without a moment’s thought, we [the United States] have invited.”  

The US has retreated from all ‘instruments of sea power’

Critically for Hendrix, he believes that the United States and by extension, its allies, critically nations like the United Kingdom and Australia, have seemingly abandoned what he defines as the “instruments of sea power”, that is namely, “America’s commercial shipbuilding industry began losing its share of the global market in the 1960s to countries with lower labor costs, and to those that had rebuilt their industrial capacity after the war”.

Going further, Hendrix highlights the impact of late-Cold War globalisation, and the detrimental economic, industrial and national security impacts the policies of the late 1980s had and continue to have into the modern day, where he highlights, “The drop in American shipbuilding accelerated after President Ronald Reagan took office, in 1981. The administration, in a nod to free-market principles, began to shrink government subsidies that had supported the industry. That was a choice; it might have gone the other way. Aircraft manufacturers in the United States, citing national-security concerns, successfully lobbied for continued, and even increased, subsidies for their industry in the decades that followed — and got them.

“It is never to a nation’s advantage to depend on others for crucial links in its supply chain. But that is where we are. In 1977, American shipbuilders produced more than 1 million gross tonnes of merchant ships. By 2005, that number had fallen to 300,000. Today, most commercial ships built in the United States are constructed for government customers such as the Maritime Administration or for private entities that are required to ship their goods between US ports in US-flagged vessels, under the provisions of the 1920 Jones Act,” Hendrix highlights.

Shifting to the US Navy’s capacity to field and deploy combat power, Hendrix’s point echoes a similar outlook for the US Navy, where he states, “The US Navy, too, has been shrinking. After the Second World War, the Navy scrapped many of its ships and sent many more into a ready-reserve ‘mothball’ fleet. For the next two decades, the active naval fleet hovered at about 1,000 ships. But beginning in 1969, the total began to fall. By 1971, the fleet had been reduced to 750 ships. Ten years later, it was down to 521. Reagan, who had campaigned in 1980 on a promise to rebuild the Navy to 600 ships, nearly did so under the able leadership of his secretary of the Navy, John Lehman. During Reagan’s eight years in office, the size of the Navy’s fleet climbed to just over 590 ships.

“Then the Cold War ended. The administrations of Presidents George H W Bush and Bill Clinton slashed troops, ships, aircraft, and shore-based infrastructure. During the Obama administration, the Navy’s battle force bottomed out at 271 ships. Meanwhile, both China and Russia, in different ways, began to develop systems that would challenge the US-led regime of global free trade on the high seas,” Hendrix articulates. 

These stark concerns echo the similar concerns of fellow retired US Navy Captain, Sam Tangredi, who recently conducted a series of detailed analysis for the US Naval Institute, where he took a closer look at the growing need to reignite the fires of US and allied shipbuilding to not just increase the aggregated combat power of the US and its critical allies, Australia included, but to enhance the economic resilience and competitiveness of these once great industrial powers. 

Tangredi, however, argues that the biggest challenge is convincing policymakers and legislators of just that fact, stating in the US example: “The United States can fund a significant fleet that matches the growth of the PLA Navy — or not. Whether the fleet is 250 or 500 ships is for elected officials and the Navy to decide, but those leaders must identify, acknowledge, and own that risk. There is risk in all choices. But there is particularly higher risk in making choices based on unproven assumptions.

“Based on historical research, claims such as ‘numbers don’t matter’ and ‘our ships are more capable and therefore we need fewer’ have no basis in evidence. Such claims are assumptions that ignore historical evidence, but as Hemingway wrote in A Sun Also Rises, ‘Isn't it pretty to think so’,” Tangredi adds.  

Concerningly for both the United States and Australia, the limited number of hulls, as set by “peace time” circumstances influencing policymaking and doctrine-setting dramatically impacts the capacity of the allies to fight in the Western Pacific, in range of Beijing’s formidable area-denial capabilities, particularly when the United States, for example, has a global presence to maintain.

For Australia, which will be required to take an increasing leadership role in the Indian Ocean, Southeast Asia, and into the Northwest Pacific, more capable hulls in greater number will be required to operate independently as well as part of larger allied task groups, will need to confront, as US combatant commanders will, a “bet on technological — without numerical — superiority in that fight”, as described by Tangredi. 

It is clear, that growing the number of “cheap” and “plentiful” platforms will provide additional resilience in the event of high-intensity, peer competitor conflict scenarios, freeing up the high-end platforms to conduct strategically important operations, while enabling these cheaper platforms to provide a plug-and-play capability in a range of scenarios, ranging from long-range, maritime merchant marine escort operations, through to integration into larger allied task groups. 

This flexibility provides interesting avenues worth consideration for strengthening Australia’s maritime capabilities, while maximising interoperability with allied partners without compromising key high-end warfighting capabilities outlined in the 2020 Defence Strategic Update.  

Lessons for Australia’s future strategic planning

There is no doubt that Australia’s position and responsibilities in the Indo-Pacific region will depend on the nation’s ability to sustain itself economically, strategically and politically in the face of rising regional and global competition. Despite the nation’s virtually unrivalled wealth of natural resources, agricultural and industrial potential, there is a lack of a cohesive national security strategy integrating the development of individual, yet complementary public policy strategies to support a more robust Australian role in the region. 

While contemporary Australia has been far removed from the harsh realities of conflict, with many generations never enduring the reality of rationing for food, energy, medical supplies or luxury goods, and even fewer within modern Australia understanding the socio-political and economic impact such rationing would have on the now world-leading Australian standard of living.  

Enhancing Australia’s capacity to act as an independent power, incorporating great power-style strategic economic, diplomatic and military capability serves as a powerful symbol of Australia’s sovereignty and evolving responsibilities in supporting and enhancing the security and prosperity of Indo-Pacific Asia, this is particularly well explained by Peter Zeihan, who explains: “A deglobalised world doesn’t simply have a different economic geography, it has thousands of different and separate geographies. Economically speaking, the whole was stronger for the inclusion of all its parts. It is where we have gotten our wealth and pace of improvement and speed. Now the parts will be weaker for their separation.”

As events continue to unfold throughout the region and China continues to throw its economic, political and strategic weight around, can Australia afford to remain a secondary power, or does it need to embrace a larger, more independent role in an era of increasing great power competition?

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