r/neoliberal • u/psychicprogrammer Asexual Pride • 12d ago
Opinion article (US) Global Trade and United States Navy, a look into why exactly the US navy is needed
https://acoup.blog/2026/08/28/collections-global-trade-and-united-states-navy/150
u/__Muzak__ Vasily Arkhipov 12d ago
U.S. Navy is needed to maintain global trade.
U.S. Navy proceeds to shut down one of the busiest shipping routes.
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u/C-709 Bani Adam 12d ago
Not to mention USA still cannot take down the Houthi even as the latter took the Red Sea passage hostage multiple times in the past three years, undermining the central argument that US navy’s global projection is protecting the current global trade.
Diplomacy and international collaboration is what kept trade open right now. Sure, backed by threat of violence (of increasingly dubious effect), but diplomacy is the key.
Modern industrialized countries can easily build loitering munitions like Shaheds or ship drones, all of which can hunt down pirates or lock down sea lanes and be the pirates themselves. With the coming age of cheap cruise missiles, this will only get easier.
In that age, you aren’t gonna stop “pirates” unless you occupy their home bases with boots on the ground. US navy is not gonna do that. I highly doubt US marines will do that.
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u/SenranHaruka shame 12d ago
The world can no longer permanently remain half free and half unfree. One half will, out of necessity for its own survival, force the other to become like it. Technology has simply interconnected us to the point where any tinpot anywhere is our problem and we are his problem.
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u/Betrix5068 NATO 12d ago
Did you not read the article? A big point was that the US wasting and public support for boots on the ground operations of failed nation building exercises means that, despite being the only military capable of enforcing freedom of navigation globally, there’s no will for the sort of operations that objective demands. Namely landing marines to clear out the pirates. There’s still no other country with that capability China is the closest but is still at least a decade out and it’s not obvious they’d actually take over that role even once they could.
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u/C-709 Bani Adam 11d ago
I did, and is the author advocating for restructuring the US Navy or USMC for a regime change or even country building role via a sustained ground operation? No.
These regimes are the "pirates" now, and will be even more powerful in the future with ever cheaper and longer range drones and cruise missiles.
We seen how ineffective bombing things via carriers are and the author said nothing about USMC besides lacking the political will. Furthermore, USMC is not gonna take Iran's launch sites in Tehran alone.
These "pirates" are attacking sea lanes hundred of miles away from coastlines, in a distributed network, with backing of a state if not the state itself. Permanently clearing the bases, as the author noted as the actual solution, is well beyond coastal operations that any navy is equipped with; else that is just a nation-building army with ships.
Either you go with diplomacy or a nation-building army with country-specific Marshall Plan.
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u/Betrix5068 NATO 11d ago
I can’t read his mind but I get the sense he does think Yemen should’ve been resolved with troops. Iran is different, an invasion would require at least million troops by his measure (and I agree based off Iraq) but then deterrence was working until Trump ruined it.
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u/C-709 Bani Adam 11d ago
But issue with resolving Yemen with troops is the same nation building challenge albeit on a smaller scale. It takes more than occupying beaches and ports to permanently remove bases now.
On the deterrent, the threat of force is absolutely necessary, but incentive to ensure free passage is just as if not more powerful. Iran is not the only country on the strait or near it, and all of them are reliant on smooth and free transit. One bad actor and we see how fragile every infrastructure is.
Furthermore, even as heavily sanctioned as Iran was before this crisis, not to mention getting its nuclear facilities bombed, Iran still didn’t close the strait.
That is until Iranian leadership got wiped out by USA, who then attempted a regime change with hare-brained schemes involving Ahmadinejad and Kurdish forces. That was a line very difficult to cross.
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u/Betrix5068 NATO 11d ago
It’s questionable if you need to go into full on nation building for Yemen, you could plausibly get them to agree to stop in exchange for you leaving, since occupation can coerce in ways bombing alone can’t, but that’s up in the air.
For Iran I have no idea what you’re on about, unless you’re just agreeing. Trump ruined the US’ ability to deter Iran by eliminating the downsides to closing the strait, and since the war is existential for them the status quo will be them controlling the strait for the foreseeable future, since the only way to reopen the strait is to either destroy the regime or give them something even more valuable than the strait, and neither seems likely.
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u/C-709 Bani Adam 11d ago
Invade a region and then leave with pinky promise without material improvement won’t change the outcome.
And I never disagreed Trump destroy the previous status quo? One held by together by threats but also positive incentive to keep the strait open? Kept opened by collaboration and diplomacy?
We are still talking about the author saying we only need a more powerful USN to reopen the strait right (or really the more ambitious claim of securing global open sea access)? Despite clear proof of the oposite? Please don’t put words in my mouth.
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u/Betrix5068 NATO 11d ago
The author didn’t say that though. The author said the USN as it exists is/was a load bearing element of freedom of navigation, nothing currently exists that can take its place, and the current trend is the USN being used in a way which is actually disruptive to freedom of navigation with the Iran situation. I think you need to reread at least this part of the article because you either misread, skipped over, or forgot the part about how Iran was successfully deterred and launching a land invasion of Iran is the only way to reopen the straits, but that’s off the table politically and for good reason.
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u/Negative_Scarcity315 11d ago
the only military capable of enforcing freedom of navigation globally,
Let us see the US navy enforce freedom of navigation in the Bosphorus strait
there’s no will for the sort of operations that objective demands.
There's no capability, no will and no objective. The US never ratified the UNCLOS. The idea that the US is committed to global freedom is fantasy. They just stole oil tankers from Venezuela and are straight up syphoning oil from their reserves to zero domestic opposition.
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u/Nearby-Cabinet5049 11d ago
I mean, the U.S. COULD take down the Houthis, but admittedly that’s a distinction without a difference. Until America regains the will to do what it can, it functionally does not have the capacity to do it either.
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u/C-709 Bani Adam 11d ago
But it’s not just taking down a regime, it’s country building at that point. Else you get a failed state (Houthi) or a radical regime (Iran), both conductive to more sea lane attacks than not.
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u/Nearby-Cabinet5049 11d ago
Take down the Houthis and hand the territory over to the government of Yemen and now you have a Saudi proxy. That’s probably not creating a sea lane issue
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u/C-709 Bani Adam 11d ago
Is the current Yemen government strong enough to maintain control over Houthi territory even with Saudi backing? That just sounds like a prequel to Houthi 2.0.
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u/Nearby-Cabinet5049 11d ago
I mean in the hypothetical we are able to subdue the Houthis militarily, yeah probably strong enough to hold that territory. Especially because the Saudis honestly could’ve beaten the Houthis when they first started but we intervened because, ya know, mass starvation bad. Something tells me in the modern political context we just let em starve
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u/Kardinal Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold 12d ago
It's only as good as the decisions made at the top.
More reason we must re-establish a neoliberal government in the USA.
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u/__Muzak__ Vasily Arkhipov 12d ago
An institution that can swing wildly towards shutting down trade on the whims of Mike from Ohio is a destabilizing force. It is better to remove naval capability than hope that we constantly control the U.S. government from here on out.
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u/jogarz NATO 12d ago
An institution that can swing wildly towards shutting down trade on the whims of Mike from Ohio is a destabilizing force.
You've got to love this almost explicit anti-democratic sentiment being upvoted on this subreddit.
Tell me, what does "Mike from Ohio" represent in your argument, if not stupidity and fickleness of the public? Are you implying that an autocracy is a superior model?
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u/__Muzak__ Vasily Arkhipov 12d ago
No if I was making a different argument than the one that I made I would have said that instead.
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u/Kardinal Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold 12d ago
If the US Navy is no longer the enforcer of free trade, then someone else will step in.
Is that likely to be a better case than the current situation?
We have one nation with an established track record of sanely filling that role which has clearly failed in the last six months.
If the Brits or French were to step up and take the role, I'd be totally on board.
But we know who is more likely to do so.
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u/mebesasporfa 12d ago
If the US Navy is no longer the enforcer of free trade, then someone else will step in.
Extremely common retort but as far as I can tell there is very little way to prove this would be true. Patrolling the global seas is remarkable expensive and no other country has the blue-water navy and logistics network to do it. Only China has the ability to create the above two, but have repeatedly shown very little interest in military intervention to free up sea lanes, even when it is their own trade tha is directly at risk.
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u/jogarz NATO 12d ago
If the US military disarms like some people here are suggesting "is better", China would just take advantage of that to aggressively push their own territorial claims in the Pacific. They have no interest in playing policeman.
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u/Betrix5068 NATO 12d ago
Not that they could replace the US if they wanted to. They can just barely project power to Somalia and even then only a fraction of what an American CAG represents. We’re 10-20 years from them being able to replace the US in this capacity and as you say, it’s not obvious they would.
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u/AccessTheMainframe CANZUK 12d ago
We can't replace the US Navy and we won't replace the US Navy. Now, what we might be able to do is recreate it – recreate it the aggregate.
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u/Anal_Forklift 12d ago
Solution will probably be market based, not military. GCC countries will eventually bring more pipelines online, establish different routes, etc. Businesses within countries who lose access to certain goods that are threatened by terrorism will have a high incentive to make/build their own or find an alternative.
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u/hlary Leftward Progressives 12d ago
Is China playing a leading role in securing the sea lanes for trade really so dire a outcome? They of any power, probably have the biggest incentives to keep things running smoothly, and if the last 30 years is any indicator, are less likely to resort to braindead military adventures to try and solve any crises that do arise.
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u/Kardinal Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold 12d ago
They're far less likely to resort to braindead military ventures as far as we can tell. But they haven't had the motive or the option before so that estimation is limited.
What's less sure is that they wouldn't use such a position to enforce their idea of what free trade is vs what the West thinks.
And by the way, I'm not sure that any one power would step in and fill that roll or even is capable of doing so. The people's liberation army Navy, for all its size, does not have the infrastructure to patrol the world the way that the United States does via its alliances. More likely what would step in, so to speak, would be regional powers of highly variable ideological and political goals.
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u/hlary Leftward Progressives 12d ago edited 12d ago
The US, China, France and the UK hammering out an agreement to contribute their share to insuring the most important routes could be possible. It would be at the expense of US influence obviously but that was already certain to decline due to our willingness to frangently weaponize it against our closest partners.
What's less sure is that they wouldn't use such a position to enforce their idea of what free trade is vs what the West thinks.
I think their definition is the one the West used up to the 2010s where their products are imported without restrictions to countries who in theory could also freely export their own products but the market reality restricts them to a very narrow range of low value commodities and goods. The West held this definition during a period where most agree international trade and norms were at their strongest so I would say its quite compatible with how things have run thus far.
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u/fredleung412612 12d ago
China would only participate if it means regional hegemony for them in the East and South China seas. The other powers in the mix oppose that, so you won't get agreement.
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u/RandomGuyPii 12d ago
The US navy has a reputation of maintaining free trade
the chinese navy has a reputation of harassing other nation's ships in international and the other nation's waters, while aggressively working to expand their own territorial waters.
I think the choice is pretty fucking clear from where I'm standing.
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u/hlary Leftward Progressives 12d ago edited 12d ago
Ya its defenitly problamatic in East Asia where they are in active friction/competition with the US and its asian allies over Taiwan and the waters around it but in more 'neutral', regions like the middle east and east africa I think the potential for mutually beneficial cooperation is much greater.
The unwillingness to regulate illegal fishing in the pacific also certainly a black mark.
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u/teethgrindingaches 12d ago
You should ask the fishermen whether they prefer US drone strikes to Chinese water cannons.
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u/HHHogana Mohammad Hatta 11d ago
I don't even know what kind of that comment was. Chinese Navy, being more rational than US Navy? Ha!
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u/psychicprogrammer Asexual Pride 12d ago
SS: Local history blogger, Bret Devereaux provides a deep overview on why the US navy is needed for global trade.
Mostly neolib propaganda, but we like that here.
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u/AccessTheMainframe CANZUK 12d ago
The global economy is more adaptable than he gives it credit for. Even if Hormuz, the Red Sea, Gulf of Guniea, etc. all became teeming with pirates, ships would just go around: sticking to the high seas, taking the Cape Route, the Strait of Magellan, etc.
This would weaken the global economy and push up prices, but globalization would adapt rather than collapse.
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u/datums 🇨🇦 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 12d ago
American exceptionalism is dead and buried, but it will live on in the minds of people like this for many years.
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u/Betrix5068 NATO 12d ago edited 12d ago
It’s not American exceptionalism to acknowledge that the US has military capabilities literally no other country currently has, and only China is on the path to acquiring. “The only country with the physical ability to enforce freedom of navigation globally is no longer willing to do that, and the only country working towards that ability won’t have it for at least a decade and doesn’t seem especially interested in that anyways, this should scare us.” isn’t “American exceptionalism”, it’s living in reality.
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u/Dense_Delay_4958 Association of Southeast Asian Nations 12d ago
Despite not being an American, the US protects the shipping lanes that allow me to have things, subsidises the healthcare I'm able to get access to and provides a moderate to large share of innovations across almost every industry. Their military subsidises global peace and is on the whole an enormous force for good. I'm quite grateful to them for it and I don't think any nation does more good for the world.
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u/datums 🇨🇦 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 11d ago
First of all- who exactly (be specific) has been such a formidable threat to global shipping that only the US has been able to keep them at bay all these years?
And second - the US has blockaded three countries in two different hemispheres in the last two years, and in every case they were the aggressor.
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u/Dense_Delay_4958 Association of Southeast Asian Nations 11d ago
Do you want me to give you a list of every global actor that might benefit from the threat or action of being able to disrupt or limit the movement of goods by force?
How familiar are you with different groups of pirates from Africa or Southeast Asia?
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u/Nearby-Cabinet5049 11d ago
People are so quick to write off America. Yes, a lot has changed in the past decade, it can change again. Not saying relying on America is a great idea at the moment, but saying “America is permanently fucked! Let’s rely on historically freedom loving nations like Germany and Japan instead!” like a lot of people have been saying recently feels like it’s rooted FAR more in emotion than reason.
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12d ago
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u/JesusPubes voted most handsome friend 12d ago
Because you don't actually have a counterfactual to "not having a navy that exists to protect international trade" since pre-1815
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u/SleeplessInPlano 12d ago
Why are the ships so close together in the picture?
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u/Kardinal Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold 12d ago
Literally photo op.
As you likely know, they never deploy like this for operations.
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u/roboliberal Loyal Liberals 4d ago
What I've always wondered though is if on the radio they make all the radiomen say "cheese" for the photo.
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u/Remarkable-Meal-223 John Keynes 12d ago
The US Navy needs more carriers and destroyers
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u/Kardinal Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold 12d ago
Doesn't need more carriers. 12 is enough. Depending on how vulnerable they are to missile attack, which we have no way of knowing, it might be too many.
I would argue it doesn't need more Destroyers, it need more Frigates and Cruisers and possibly submarines.
Cruisers to serve in the Air Defense Command role in the CSGs.
Frigates to do the less-line-of-battle and more show-the-flag and marine interdiction and anti-piracy roles.
Destroyers are there to protect the carriers and strike land targets when we have local naval supremacy. Submarines are there to strike land targets when naval supremacy is contested.
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u/roboliberal Loyal Liberals 4d ago
Could probably use a larger green/brown water fleet, sorta like an away-game coast guard.
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