The US might still have the world’s most powerful navy, but it seems to have realized that this is no longer sufficient to reassert US supremacy over the high seas.
If US President Donald Trump’s pronouncements on shipbuilding, the Panama Canal and Greenland are anything to go by, he wants to increase US sea power on several fronts — just as China is already doing.
Beijing’s expanding influence in the world’s oceans is a challenge to Washington’s efforts to protect its interests. While the US still dominates the seas militarily, it is weaker in other maritime sectors, such as merchant shipping and shipbuilding itself, analysts said.
Illustration: Mountain People
Trump told the US Congress last week that his administration would “resurrect” the country’s nautical construction industry “including commercial shipbuilding and military shipbuilding.”
On China, he has complained that Beijing “controls” the Panama Canal and has refused to rule out military force to wrest control of a vital strategic asset.
The president has been equally blunt about wanting to take over Greenland, a Danish territory whose untapped mineral and oil reserves he covets.
He wants to tax any Chinese vessel that docks in US ports.
Sophie Quintin, a researcher at the University of Portsmouth, said Trump’s approach smacked of a return to “navalism” — a theory stressing the importance of sea power espoused by 19th-century US naval officer Alfred Mahan.
On the other hand, Trump might just be appealing to his populist voter base, the Make America Great Again (MAGA) faithful.
“It’s difficult to know if it’s the fruit of a real strategic reflection,” said Alessio Patalano, a specialist in maritime strategy at King’s College, London. “In the end, it doesn’t matter. Serving the interests of MAGA voters by restarting naval shipyards or taxing Chinese boats leads to a navalist policy.”
In any case, China understands the importance of sea power, said Nick Childs of Britain’s International Institute for Strategic Studies. At a Paris conference last month, Childs pointed to China’s rapid expansion in maritime sectors other than its own navy.
“There are the investments we’ve been hearing about in global ports, global maritime infrastructure and the weaponizing of the fishing fleet,” he said.
Washington is concerned by the expansion of Chinese shipping companies, which it sees as serving the interests of the Beijing government.
“Beijing’s economic control of port operations at strategic chokepoints across the world — many of which are part of the Maritime Silk Road initiative — pose a threat to the United States and its allies,” US think tank the Jamestown Foundation said last month.
It cited in particular two state-owned firms, COSCO and China Merchant Ports. Beijing could also exert “significant influence” on a third, privately-owned Hutchison Port Holdings, which controls two ports on the Panama Canal, it said.
However, Paul Tourret, of France’s Higher Institute of Maritime Economics, cautioned against too “simplistic” a reading of China’s maritime policy.
“COSCO, for example, follows a financial logic. It merely delivers to the United States the goods that Americans consume,” he said.
Nevertheless, pressure from Washington seems to have had some effect. Hutchison announced last week it had agreed to sell its lucrative Panama Canal ports to a US-led consortium, although it insisted this was a “purely commercial” decision.
While the US might have the world’s most powerful navy, its merchant fleet is not in such good shape, Quintin said.
“US shipping companies have significantly declined and what remains of its commercial fleet is aging,” she said.
“That has repercussions for its strategic fleet,” she added, referring to civilian ships used for military transport. “Furthermore, the shipbuilding sector is in crisis.”
“There’s no way the US can build ships quickly,” Tourret said.
“The problem with US shipbuilding is that they don’t have the know-how of the Japanese and Koreans, and they don’t have the scale of the Chinese, who churn ships out like biscuits,” Patalano said.
“When Europe is one year behind on a military program, the US is three or four years late,” said a European industry source on condition of anonymity.
Trump’s avowed desire to seize control of Greenland and Canada could also be viewed as a bid to regain US dominance over the seas.
Global heating is melting arctic ice at an alarming rate, endangering natural ecosystems and contributing to further climate change.
However, that melting could also open up the region to vessels — both commercial and military — and to oil and mineral exploration.
Those prospects have not been lost on China, Russia or the US.
“The arctic space will become increasingly important for power projection, especially for missile-launching submarines,” said Patalano, who sees these as “an essential component of deterrence.”
Here again, “the United States is lagging behind,” Quintin said. “While China is capable of deploying three icebreakers, the US Coast Guard struggles to keep its two aging vessels in service,” she said.
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