The final blow to Russia in the Pacific came when the Baltic Squadron was destroyed in May 1905 at the Battle of Tsushima, losing 50 of the 53 ships that had sailed from the Baltic beginning in October of the previous year. The Russian lost the war because they were outfought tactically in each engagement, but mainly because failed strategically to concentrate their forces and were defeated piecemeal.
This, by the way, constituted a crucial lesson for the US on the importance of building a Panama Canal — otherwise the US fleet would be essentially separated for months by the necessity to sail around the southern tip of South America to combine forces. An interesting side note was that the age-old principle of warship captains’ “striking their colors” and surrendering their ships was practiced for the last time in the Russo-Japanese War by the Russians. When the commanders came home, they were court-martialed and sentenced to death, ending for all intents and purposes the idea of surrender. Today, in the US Navy and most other naval forces, the philosophy is definitely not one of striking the colors in gracious surrender, but rather “don’t give up the ship” and be willing to fight to the end.
The mark of a great ship handler is never getting into a situation requiring great ship handling.
The Gulf Stream is typically about 60 to 70 miles wide and almost 4,000 feet deep, with a high velocity near the surface, approaching 5 miles per hour in places. Colonial navigators became very aware of it in the 18th century, although mariners argued over the best way to use its speed and pace to best advantage.
Just as the European brought “guns, germs, and steel” to Africa and the Americas across the Atlantic Ocean, the New World sent products back. Tomatoes, potatoes, rubber, vanilla, chocolate, corn, and tobacco came from the New World, while Europe sent onions, citrus, bananas, mangos, wheat, and rice. Livestock sailed largely from Europe to the Americas, fundamentally changing lives there — horses, pigs, donkeys, dogs, cats, bees, and chickens were all introduced as a result of the Atlantic bridge.
By late spring of 1943, the worst had passed. Despite German hopes of a technological breakthrough of some kind (a new acoustical torpedo, for example), it was clear that the Allies would gradually kill enough U-boats to break the campaign and permit the safe transfer of sufficient US troops to Europe to win the war. Despite destroying nearly 3,000 Allied ships and well over 20 million tons of shipping, in the end the U-boat campaign was not enough.
As Churchill said, “The Battle of the Atlantic was the dominating factor all through the war. Never for a moment could we forget that everything happening elsewhere, on land, at sea or in the air depended ultimately on its outcome.”
As the result of not only religious differences within Islam but also geopolitical rivalry, the Gulf is today a “cold war” lake between the Sunni bloc led by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Shia world led by Iran. Over the past decade, Iranian influence and power in the region have increased, and today Tehran either directly controls or has significant influence in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. The Gulf itself has become a place of constant cat and mouse between the naval forces of Iran and those of the Sunni Arab states. In the center of it, of course, is the US and its 5th Fleet, the largest of all the US global fleets.
Both nations competed for influence and control over two perceived “treasure houses,” as Soviet leader Brezhnev called them: the energy and oil of the Gulf and the strategic minerals of sub-Saharan Africa. The breakdown for the US was the collapse of the shah’s regime in Iran and the rise of the Ayatollah’s government, which truly, madly, deeply, hated the US. This effectively closed off one side of the Arabian Gulf (this was the time we switched to calling it “Arabian Gulf” instead of what we has historically called it, the “Persian Gulf”). It was also put a bitter enemy in effective control of the entrance to the Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz.
Fueled by khat, a soporific drug they would chew, Somali ex-fishermen would mount skiffs and set out to take down large container ships by scaling the sides, overpowering the crew, and then sailing the ships into Somali anchorages and demanding ransoms of millions of dollars.
Here we see again the political importance of geography. Venice was particularly well positioned in the northern Adriatic, with easy access to the trade coming from Europe over the Alps and superb, relatively access to the Med itself. The Venetians were crisp geopolitical actors indeed — rather than seeking to hold huge swaths of territory (with all the attendant headaches of administration), they sought a series of trading bases. They acquired Crete and Cyprus, two of the most strategically positioned islands of the Med. They also built smaller forts and trading stations around the periphery of the eastern Med. In a way, their sea power strategy anticipated Rear Admiral Thayer Mahan by some six centuries in systematically pursuing key commercial and trading stations around their world.
All of this was militarily anchored by the great Arsenal of Venice, which was an early technology assembly line construction facility producing great galleys. The Venetians used seagoing technology cleverly and at one time had a fleet of thousands of ships and tens of thousands of seamen — despite having a core population of only around 200,000 souls. Their relationships with other kingdoms and empires were based largely on trade, and they were adept at playing off Christian rulers against one another and manipulating them with the power of the Church and the control offered by the papacy. They seemed destined to dominate the eastern Med, and were growing richer and richer — all due to geopolitical planning, excellent use of geography in the Med, and the application of new technologies in construction, weaponry, and administration.
By by the early March 1942, it was clear that the position was indefensible and would fall, and President Roosevelt ordered MacArthur to escape; the thought of the most senior general in the US Army falling into the hands of the Japanese, especially after the Japanese success in attacking Pearl Harbor, was inconceivable.
We were treated like royalty, and I sensed the deep interest on the part of senior Vietnamese officials in a relationship with us. Why? Because of the economic, political, and military benefits that would allow Vietnam to maintain an independent posture vis-a-vis China.
The specifics on the construction of these artificial islands are staggering. Thus far — and construction continues — China has created nearly three thousand acres of land out of the ocean. Just consider that the highly touted and massive US aircraft carriers (from which can be launched a wing of more than 70 jets and helicopters) are only about 7 acres of flattop. Are these artificial islands similar to hundreds of unsinkable aircraft carriers in the South China Sea?
The intellectual underpinnings of international legal judgments on the South China Sea are very clear: nations cannot simply declare a “historical claim” and take over what other nations regard as international waters.
But when I went down to the wardroom for dinner, a couple of my junior officers pointed out that Columbus’s voyages had led mostly to enslavement and death for the locals. Good point, I thought. We should remember that History, with a capital H, is always a throw of the cosmic dice. It seems to provide both the good and the bad in endless measure, and only God can sort it out in the end, I suppose. One man’s vaunted explorer is another man’s genocidal conquistador, and how those cosmic dice land on the table is so often a random walk.
My staff told me not to bother with the three Guyanas because “nothing ever happens there.” I arrived and was duly shuttled to see the president, and in his dusty office with the blinds drawn against the tropical sun, I asked him what the greatest challenge he faced was. Poverty? Drugs? Crime?
He shook his head and sighed, “Everyone who can attain a high school degree leaves as soon as they can. Mostly they want to go north to your country, but they will go anywhere to get out of Guyana.”
Colombia would also possess the Panama Canal if the US had not essentially created an independent Panama in 1905 by financing and guaranteeing a revolution and breakaway there in order to build the Panama Canal (“We stole it fair and square”).
In one of those absolutely delicious and yet tragic historical ironies, the Dutch traded the colony of New Amsterdam for Dutch Guinana. When that occurred in the 17th century, they were regarded as roughly equivalent properties. Today, of course, New York City is worth a couple of trillion dollars, while the capital of Suriname is among the most impoverished capitals in the Americas, a city of less than half a million people.
In the 1980s, the dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier was forced from power and a series of elections and coups ensued. When elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forced out by his military in the 1991, the US put pressure on the coup leaders to turn over power peacefully. My destroyer, USS Barry, was dispatched to Haiti as part of an arms embargo (read: show of force) in the mid-1990s.
In that regard, by the way, I would prefer to simply park the moral question of whether people should or should not use drugs. All of our societies are grappling with that issue now, and many serious analysts and political leaders are beginning to advocate legalization. My concern here is quite simply about the money.
The cash that comes out of this huge, multibillion-dollar industry is unregulated, and much of it goes into corruption and violence, undermining fragile democracies and stifling in other sectors. The idea of a “war on drugs” is limiting and simplistic, and has clearly failed — we need a strategy to fight corruption and violence, which are the root problems.
Mexicans have a saying: “Pity poor Mexico, so close to the US, so far from God.”
The Sea is One, meaning that no matter how large or small a given body of water is upon the oceans, in the end it is connected an a part of the single system.
There are between 50,000-60,000 large commercial ships — bulk carriers, cargo ships, tankers, container ships, chemical ships, passenger ships active throughout the world. There are four to six times more ships plying the world’s oceans than there were 30 years ago.
In a sense we have incredible knowledge of the oceans, but little wisdom about them.
Some have called the oceans “the biggest crime scene in the world,” and others have referred to them as “the outlaw sea.” Sadly, both of these statements are in many ways quite true; and worst of all, we do not have real granularity in our knowledge of what transpires on the oceans in two potentially very destructive zones: criminal activity and environment damage.
Insurance companies make 10 times more than pirates make in a year.
Despite well-meaning efforts, most observers believe that nearly 90 percent of all fish stocks are “fully exploited, over-exploited, depleted, or recovering from depletion.” Indeed, the “oceans are cleared at twice the rate of forests” on land, a chilling prospect.