That was our bribe to the rest of the "first world" to stand with us as cannon fodder against the USSR (the second world) during the Cold War. Now that it is over, the US public has slowly but persistently pushed back on continuing that arrangement.
We don't really need trade anywhere near as much as our trading partners overseas so. So we've scaled our fleet down.
:I strongly suspect I'm about to learn I'm wrong about part of the above:
Because US protecting global shipping is overexaggeration.
US protects US flagged shipping - non US flagged vessels got hit without US intervention during tanker wars for years without US lifting finger. MENA oil exporters had to reflag under US flag (pay US taxes/protection fees) to be eligible for defense. US didn't step up to end tanker wars until bunch of US sailers killed with USS Stark was hit.
Prosperity Guardian is happening right now because Maersk and other civilian shippers that DoD depends on sealift was threatening not to transit through area. Including the ones being paid and contracted by DoD, carrying military hardware. Likely for Israel. Including DoD Maersk ships, who basically "threatened" DoD that no Maersk ships would transit Red Sea unless US protects all Maersk shipping. US is pressured to protect shipping right now because they've offloaded so much sealift to multinational civilian sector, that is now undermining US DoD logistics to leverage US to protect all shipping, not just US flagged shipping.
PLANavy has assets in region, busy gathering USN antiship interception data. Entire reason they have Djibouti base for antipiracy deployment is because they know US can't be relied on for protecting shipping. There was UN taskforce for antipiracy in Africa not because US couldn't protect against a few Somali fishing boats but because USN doesn't do global shipping protection by default. Regardless PRC has little incentive to engage, Houthi has been largely discriminary, leaving PRC shipping alone. Unless it spills into broad regional war, PRC gets to quadruple dip. They get data on US antishipping performance. Lost cargo = more purhcases fron PRC factories. Lost ships = more work for PRC ship yards. More redirected maritime traffic around Africa = more work for PRC ship yards since you need more ships for same demand. Meanwhile, PRC shippers gets to go through red sea, on shorter/faster route, and charge premium. All by just not doing anything, because it's profitable, and they get to do nothing and profit because they're not mired in MENA shit show unlike US.
Not true. FON protects non-US flagged ships; most ships aren’t U.S. flagged.
> non US flagged vessels got hit without US intervention during tanker wars for years
America doesn’t protect all ships all the time. Sure. We’re selective about which FON issues we exert influence over. But when we get there, we protect everyone.
> because Maersk and other civilian shippers that DoD depends on sealift was threatening not to transit through area
Source? Bab el-Mandeb is a strait America has invested a lot into for geostrategic reasons.
> reason they have Djibouti base for antipiracy deployment is because they know US can't be relied on for protecting shipping
As they should. This is geopolitics. America shouldn’t be doing this for free. That said, and as you acknowledge, China is doing jack shit other than collecting intelligence on U.S. assets.
> Houthi has been largely discriminary, leaving PRC shipping alone
“Largely” does heavy lifting. It isn’t simple to discriminate shipping, as the Houthis’ non-Israeli targets have shown. In addition, China gets badly hurt if the conflict escalates and both Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb are closed.
Broadly agree that China is winning by America continuing to protect her for free.
Historically true. Entire US protects global shipping narrative, that got popular post Zeihan, ignore the fact that US explicitly did not protect non US flagged vessels during tanker wars for years - the last large scale SLOC disruption. And when US "got there" they didn't protect everyone, Kuwaiti vessels had to reflag as US to get protection. US protected everyone in the sense that Stark getting hit triggered Operation Earnest Will that eventually led to cease fire with Iran to end tanker wars. But US was fine with years of SLOC disruption until US lost sailors.
>Source
Sal Mercogliano of What's Going on in Shipping covered it around early/mid december. Source is his sources. But martime twitter in general, folks tracking Maersk DoD ships with apparent USN escorts were wondering why they weren't transitting red sea / hovering Gulf of Oman. They had explicit protection outside of prosperity guardian but didn't move until after. Sal sources said Maersk was trying to leverage US to protect all Maersk shipping, not just US flagged/part of DoD program.
>America shouldn’t be doing this for free...
This presuppose US is some benevolent provider of global security, or PRC is free riding. When reality is they both have postures calibrated for their own interest. There's every reason PRC should do African anti piracy that effects her since US can't be depended on. And every reason not to do anything in Red Sea when it doesn't effect her as much as it undermines US. They would be stupid to help US/west when they could be just collecting intel which for PRC interest is doing plenty. If US really wants PRC to do more, they should encourage PRC to open more naval bases abroad and burden share. But that's stupid. US benefits from adversaries not having global basing and optics of being global martime security provider even from countries that would rather not be "protected" by US.
>"Largely" does heavy lifting
Not really, PRC shipping hasn't had pause unlike Maersk or western shippers. COSCO announced they planned to detour but continued Red Sea operations like normal. So far no indication PRC shipping has been disrupted. Hangzhou (Singapore flagged) was previously docked in Israel's Mediterranean port. Whatever Houthi/Iran targetting is discriminating enough for PRC to ride things out. But yes regional war would flip script. Even India/Pak navy war cooperating after recent tanker hit off India. In the mean time, current instability is not explicitly "good" for PRC, but it's much worse for US/west. Until something changes, there's no reason to cooperate. Hangzhou still got hit despite a carrier group there to settle things down, Maersk is halting red sea transit again despite explicit US protection. It's early days, but right now PRC is position to sit back, gather data, and watch US bleed expensive interceptors (which is an easy to replace economic problem), and wear down hulls and crew on extended deployment (which is a harder to replace political problem).
> ignore the fact that US explicitly did not protect non US flagged vessels during tanker wars for years
Granted. And as I mentioned were lazy deployers. But to a greater tendency than any historic great power, once we intervene, we haven’t tended to discriminate.
> Sal Mercogliano of What's Going on in Shipping
Thank you! Will watch.
> presuppose US is some benevolent provider of global security
No. It hypothesises that we are entering into a trade that is no longer at advantageous terms.
> Houthi/Iran targetting is discriminating enough for PRC to ride things out
True. I wager they’ve been lucky, but that’s neither here nor there. Maybe I should retract and propose the greatest beneficiary is the KSA, not PRC.
> Don't we protect in exchange for them trading in USD?
No. Freedom of navigation evolved separately from Bretton Woods and dollarisation. We’ve never tied the two. And from the start, we’ve defended even our adversaries’ rights.
Initially, that was the Bretton Woods agreement. The US at the end of WWII had 2/3 of the world's gold reserves, and it was part of the system set up to help the World's economy recover.
As a result of choices made by Eisenhower, and subsequent administrations, the US began to spend more than it should have, slowly making a fiction of the price of gold being fixed at $35/ounce.
Eventually, after shenanigans by de Gaulle of France, Nixon was forced to close the "gold window" at which nations could convert dollars back to gold reserves. This resulted in the Nixon Shock, and eventually the prime interest rate reached 20% in April of 1980.
Then Nixon made a deal Nixon made with the Saudis, the creation of the Petrodollar. The Saudis would only sell their oil for dollars, then spend those dollars in the US for goods and services, recycling them.
Without the Petrodollar, it possible the dollar would have crashed to zero.
Ignore people like dash2 who say that the US would be "much, much poorer without it"; they're like the Canadians and their American sympathizers who, when the Trump administration in 2017 threatened to impose tariffs, came up with all sorts of clever schemes to stop this by threatening/lobbying Congressmen from the US states most dependent on trade across the 49th parallel. The problem is that the US state most dependent on Canadian trade, Michigan, depends on its as much as the Canadian province that is the next to least dependent on US trade, PEI. <https://np.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/8q9h8i/canadaus_tra...>
> Ignore people like dash2 who say that the US would be "much, much poorer without it"
On what planet is losing a quarter of one’s GDP not “much, much poorer”? That’s the GDP of 33 U.S. states and territories [1], through Indiana. It’s more than the GDP of Germany, the world’s third-largest economy [2].
Did you even bother to look at the figures for the rest of the world? During the Great Depression, even if one got a salary cut, that was far better off than losing the job. If the US is "much, much poorer", every other country (developed or not) has been evicted and moving in with the parents if lucky; homeless and on the streets if not.
>America might be less fucked than everyone else. But it would still get fucked.
Again, if one has a job—albeit with hours cut—and a place to live and everyone else doesn't, who is better off?
>Great analogy. You’re talking about economic catastrophe on par with the Great Depression, which involved a 29% reduction in GDP.
The Depression has a unique place in US history because it hit the US harder and earlier than the rest of the world. Europe did not really see the effects until an important bank collapsed in 1931. The crisis hit Germany hard, contributing to Hitler taking power, but it was more the shock of the abrupt end of the 1920s' sharp recovery after the stabilization of the Rentenmark and thus the postwar economy. The UK was hit, but meaningfully milder than the US, and it did not see the "second depression" that the US did in the late 1930s. France was barely affected.
Without worldwide trade today, while things won't be great in the US, the rest of the world (including Europe) is a half step from Mad Max.
> if one has a job—albeit with hours cut—and a place to live and everyone else doesn't, who is better off?
You’re both fucked. This is like asking if a massive asteroid hit the other side of the Earth, the people on the other side are not “much, much poorer.” That’s plainly idiotic.
> Depression has a unique place in US history because it hit the US harder and earlier than the rest of the world
It was also a massive and unprecedented drawdown. People first and foremost measure their lives relative to their recent past. Not how folks halfway around the world are doing.
It’s unique because we survived it. Most socieities fail amidst a protracted 25%+ drawdown.
>You’re both fucked. This is like asking if a massive asteroid hit the other side of the Earth, the people on the other side are not “much, much poorer.” That’s plainly idiotic.
In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king.
>It was also a massive and unprecedented drawdown. People first and foremost measure their lives relative to their recent past. Not how folks halfway around the world are doing.
I said what I said not because Americans during the Depression saw their economy as worse off than that of other countries; rather, that the Depression holds a place in US history and culture that it does not in most other countries.
More to the point, I was addressing those who in 2017 and today immediately respond to any talk of the US raising tariffs, or reducing its military commitments abroad, with how the US will suffer the most economically (often with invokings of the "petrodollar" nonsense) when this is in no way, shape, or form true. It's a fundamentally incorrect and, often, dishonest response.
> was addressing those who in 2017 and today immediately respond to any talk of the US raising tariffs, or reducing its military commitments abroad, with how the US will suffer the most economically (often with invokings of the "petrodollar" nonsense)
Sure. I agree with you here. But that’s not how your original comment reads. It contests that we’d get poorer in a Smoot-Hawley scenario, not that we’d be relatively richer in a drastically-poorer world.
That's being disingenuous. In my first comment I link to two sources that both show that the US GDP would go down, not up, in a world without international trade. If you can't use context to understand that I was and am saying that the US would be hurt less than all other countries (and thus would be more prosperous *relative to the rest of the world*, as opposed to being poorer relative to the rest of the world), that's your onus, not mine.
We don't really need trade anywhere near as much as our trading partners overseas so. So we've scaled our fleet down.
:I strongly suspect I'm about to learn I'm wrong about part of the above: