{"id":1496608,"date":"2022-05-30T05:14:52","date_gmt":"2022-05-30T09:14:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1496608"},"modified":"2022-05-30T05:15:01","modified_gmt":"2022-05-30T09:15:01","slug":"how-we-achieved-naval-supremacy-and-how-we-could-lose-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/how-we-achieved-naval-supremacy-and-how-we-could-lose-it\/","title":{"rendered":"How We Achieved Naval Supremacy\u2014And How We Could Lose It"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fhow-we-achieved-naval-supremacy-and-how-we-could-lose-it%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1496608&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div>\n\t\t\t<span class=\"article-category\"><a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/culture\/\">Culture<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"article-excerpt\">REVIEW: Paul Kennedy\u2019s \u2018Victory at Sea\u2019<\/p>\n<figure class=\"post-thumbnail-container relative lg:mr-24 w-full my-4 mb-8\"><figcaption class=\"absolute text-white p-4 w-full text-right text-xs bottom-0 bg-black opacity-75\">\n\t\t\t\tU.S. sailors aboard the USS Missouri, the site of Japan&#8217;s unconditional surrender to the United States. (U.S. Navy photo)\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\t\t\t<span class=\"text-gray text-xs md:text-lg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/author\/mike-watson\/\" title=\"Posts by Mike Watson\" class=\"author url fn text-red-700\" rel=\"author\">Mike Watson<\/a> \u2022 May 30, 2022 5:00 am<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<div>\n<p><span>Polymathic economist Tyler Cowen recently <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/marginalrevolution.com\/marginalrevolution\/2022\/04\/blood-and-ruins.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span>observed<\/span><\/a><span>, &#8220;as a general rule you can never read enough good books about World War II, even after you feel you have read enough good books about World War II.&#8221; In <\/span><i><span>Victory at Sea<\/span><\/i><span>, Paul Kennedy and Ian Marshall created an engaging and interesting work about the most consequential event of the 20th century.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Marshall\u2019s art is one of this book\u2019s many delights. Kennedy originally planned to write the foreword and accompanying text for his friend\u2019s collection of naval paintings, but Marshall\u2019s passing made Kennedy set aside other projects to return to World War II. The two pair nicely: Marshall\u2019s meticulously detailed paintings illustrate Kennedy\u2019s point that, although the production statistics tell part of the war\u2019s story, &#8220;the deficit in all deterministic explanations\u2014the substructure alters, therefore the superstructure is changed\u2014is that they lack human agency.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The war forced a remarkable change in world politics: After centuries of global domination, the European colonial empires collapsed under Germany\u2019s and Japan\u2019s combined blows, leaving the United States as the leading global power. As Kennedy argues, this change became manifest in 1943 and was &#8220;the natural culmination, though delayed by almost half a century, of the huge shifts in the world\u2019s balances once the American continent industrialized.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Japan is the major power American readers will benefit most from studying. Primarily due to interwar arms control treaties, which restricted fleet tonnage and ship size, Britain had the most well-rounded navy, albeit with a weak aircraft carrier wing, while the United States chose not to build up to its treaty limits. Much like the United States today, Japan\u2019s navy was less numerous than its Pacific rivals\u2019 but it had exquisitely trained naval aviators who flew from grouped aircraft carriers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Even before the United States entered the war, it was clear that the Americans would be a naval juggernaut. The day the news of France\u2019s surrender reached Washington, Congress doubled the Navy\u2019s budget request, effectively building from scratch a navy as large as Japan\u2019s. In Berlin and Tokyo, timetables shifted accordingly: If they could not lock in their gains quickly, the odds would turn against them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>In the meantime, Britain struggled against the Germans and Italians. Germany\u2019s few but powerful surface combatants threatened to break out into the Atlantic until British bombers demonstrated the folly of venturing into the open sea without air cover. In the Mediterranean, the tables were turned: The Royal Navy made forays from Gibraltar and Alexandria to support Greece and resupply Malta, but at immense cost. At one point, the Admiralty counted on only one quarter of the Malta convoys\u2019 supplies making it through. Britain pulled off a first when its torpedo bombers ambushed the Italian fleet in port at Taranto, which Japan\u2019s strategists studied carefully as they prepared to attack Pearl Harbor.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>By mid-1943, the naval war near Europe was effectively over. Germany\u2019s U-boats might have starved Britain into submission in 1942 if Hitler had agreed to build more of them, but allied technological advances in cryptography and radar and better convoy tactics blunted the U-boat threat. Landings in North Africa, Sicily, and southern Italy knocked Italy out of the war and allowed the allies relatively free access across the Mediterranean. After the Normandy landings, Britain was able to send a carrier group to the Pacific.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The Pacific\u2019s naval battles were the largest and most dramatic of the war. Starting in December 1941, Japan executed one of the most extraordinary campaigns in military history. Simultaneously attacking American and British garrisons from Hong Kong to Hawaii, then sinking British naval reinforcements and conquering Southeast Asia, all while continuing the war in China, Japan in six months rivaled or surpassed every other conqueror. And then, it stopped.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Kennedy argues that the turning point of the Pacific war was not the Battle of Midway\u2014soon after, the U.S. Navy was reduced to only one aircraft carrier\u2014but rather when the fruits of that massive shipbuilding program ventured out of Hawaii in late 1943. In that intervening year, Japan failed to capitalize on American weakness. This is partly because the Americans killed the formidable Admiral Yamamoto, but also because Japan could not replace its lost carriers and air crews fast enough. To compensate, in 1944 Japanese admirals tried to bait the Americans into elaborate traps in the Philippine Sea and Leyte Gulf, but they were mauled by superior American numbers and tactics. By the end of the war, America\u2019s formidable new battleships had little to do other than shoot down kamikazes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>World War II is a natural source of triumphalism, but there is a hidden warning within <\/span><i><span>Victory at Sea<\/span><\/i><span>. China\u2019s navy already possesses <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/sgp.fas.org\/crs\/row\/RL33153.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span>more ships<\/span><\/a><span> than ours does, and the Navy\u2019s proposed budget will <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/news.usni.org\/2022\/03\/28\/fy-23-budget-navy-wants-to-shed-24-ships-for-3-6b-in-savings-over-next-five-years\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span>shrink<\/span><\/a><span> the fleet even further. The current plan is to compensate for China\u2019s greater numbers and production with technology and \u00e9lan. The Japanese tried that too. They lost.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span>Victory at Sea: Naval Power and the Transformation of the Global Order in World War II<\/span><\/i><span><br \/><\/span><span>by Paul Kennedy with paintings by Ian Marshall<\/span><span><br \/><\/span><span>Yale University Press, 544 pp., $37.50<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span>Mike Watson is the associate director of Hudson Institute\u2019s Center for the Future of Liberal Society.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Culture REVIEW: Paul Kennedy\u2019s \u2018Victory at Sea\u2019  U.S. sailors aboard the USS Missouri, the site of Japan&#8217;s unconditional surrender to the United States. (U.S. Navy photo)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":235,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1496608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1496608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/235"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1496608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1496608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1496608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1496608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1496608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}