Naval strategy, naval power: uses & abuses

[carl]

That's an assertion. Prove it.
(Obviously, you can't. That would require parallel universe experiments as evidence, and those don't exist. This, of course, means that the assertion is unfounded.)
I might as well say the UN has kept maritime trade safe. That's about as impossible to prove.

No, that wasn't an assertion. It was a comment upon your opinion.

Well, this kinda ridicules the whole assertion of protecting global maritime trade even for countries such as China, doesn't it?

No, it doesn't. It just means it is a normal thing not intervene on behalf of an enemy when a third party attacks it. I pays not be enemies with us, or it has in the past.

It was no mistake. it was an attempt to murder two Iranian aircrews and went wrong, killing much more and other Iranians instead.

That is your opinion. Mine is that it was an attempt at self defense gone awry for a number of reasons, some of them not very good ones.

That's rather "depending on the degree of DoD and Congress procurement incompetence".

The effect is the same.

Even the RN has never based such a large percentage of its ships in distant waters, nor were said waters ever very distant to English crown territories as is for example the Persian Gulf from CONUS.

I don't know the specifics but things were very different then from now. Technology accounts for a lot of that. Geography accounts for a lot more. I'll have to look it up but I think the RN had squadrons and bases in India, the Pacific and Singapore. Those places are pretty far from the British Isles.

I get it, you surely bought into those talking points / myths.

I always do when they make sense to me.

Your whole thinking here is illogical. There's no reason to assume the USN size as fixed, thus no reason to explain its relative size with the other's small size.

The USN is so large because of
- political inertia
- bureaucratic behaviour

It's much bigger than required for land attack AND bullying AND defeating other navies combined. It's really politics and bureaucratic behaviour that explain its size.

I don't think my thinking is illogical. I think it is perfectly logical. I just think you are wrong.

Oops, I forgot. Cuba crisis. Unilateral naval embargo (after deploying own nukes to Turkey was apparently totally OK).
Maybe some people have an idea why a so terribly self-contradictory and unreliable global maritime shipping protector ain't no global maritime shipping protector, but a threat to global maritime shipping.

We were involved in the cold war at the time. In times of war, we don't permit enemies freedom of the seas. We interfered with Japanese shipping from 1941 to 1945 also. Of course sometimes we don't, the Korean War and the Vietnam conflict being two cases in point.

Besides; that "anti-Americanism" thing is lame in discussions. Sounds a lot like "the terrorists hate our freedom" BS.
I won't call it an ad hominem attack for being contra a country is not in itself bad (although I'd rather say I'm anti-U.S. policies than anti-American).
After all, certain countries in the world deserve the pushback they receive because they torture, kidnap, assassinate, invade other countries in wars of aggression, bomb other countries at will, support evil dictators, threatened the world with nuclear holocaust for decades ... well, you get the point.

Anti-Americanism may be lame but it is real. Go ahead and push. I'll push back. Yes, I get the point. We're evil hypocrites.

I think it useful to look at how some of the countries closest to China view their naval ambitions. They seem a bit suspicious. The Viets haven't purchased submarines because they are afraid of the USN. It is because they are afraid of China's intentions.