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| Srl | Item |
| 1 |
ID:
124650
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| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The United States is now in a period of austerity, and after years of huge increases, the defense budget is set to be scaled back. Even those supporting the cuts stress the need to avoid the supposedly awful consequences of past retrenchments. "We have to remember the lessons of history," President Barack Obama said in January 2012. "We can't afford to repeat the mistakes that have been made in the past -- after World War II, after Vietnam -- when our military policy was left ill prepared for the future. As commander in chief, I will not let that happen again." Similarly, then Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told Congress in October 2011, "After every major conflict -- World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the fall of the Soviet Union -- what happened was that we ultimately hollowed out the force. Whatever we do in confronting the challenges we face now on the fiscal side, we must not make that mistake."
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| 2 |
ID:
129852
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2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Failing to bolster the U.S. Navy in the face of 21st-century maritime threats could prove disastrous to the international order.
The year 2014 promises to be exceedingly important for the future of America's Navy. As the Pentagon and Congress face continued budget reductions and the Department of Defense is forced to weigh its priorities, the contours of American sea power and our global commitment to an expeditionary posture are at stake. Indeed, the choices made in just the next several years will lock in major trends in shipbuilding, naval aviation, and important research-and-development (R&D) efforts that will define the Navy of the 2020s and beyond.
American economic prosperity and national security have always been tied to the sea in some form. More than two centuries ago, George Washington wrote of the need, "as certain as that night succeeds the day," for effective sea power to achieve decisive military outcomes. Writing long before theorists like Alfred Thayer Mahan or Julian Corbett were heard from, Washington opined that success on land required superiority at sea. 1 Our nation's first foreign conflicts, the Barbary Wars at the dawn of the 19th century, were undertaken to secure global maritime trade against the scourge of international piracy. The growing U.S. ability to defend the maritime commons and project power abroad increased international respect for our fledgling nation and began America's ascent as a great power. Like Great Britain in an earlier era, the United States has used its maritime supremacy to construct an international order predicated on a commitment to unrestricted access to the global commons and deterrence of regional aggression
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