The late Nineteenth-century U.S. Navy officer, strategist and eventual president of the U.S. Naval Battle School, Alfred Mahan, would look upon the world as we speak and really feel vindicated. Again in 1890, Mahan revealed the primary quantity of his magnum opus, “The Affect of Sea Energy Upon Historical past.” His core thesis was that all through historical past, management of the seas was the vital think about figuring out which nation could be the dominant financial energy, by way of entry to markets, and army energy, by way of the power to win decisive naval battles and implement blockades.
In simply the previous week, three occasions underscored not solely the continued relevance of naval energy in worldwide politics, however the rising significance of naval energy within the twenty first century.
First and most dramatically, U.S. submarines within the Persian Gulf participated in Operation Midnight Hammer, the sequence of U.S. airstrikes in opposition to three key Iranian nuclear amenities. Whereas the bunker-buster bombs dropped by B-2 bombers on the Fordow enrichment web site obtained the lion’s share of the protection afterward, the 30 tomahawk cruise missiles launched by the subs inflicted vital injury on Iran’s Isfahan processing facility, the place it was believed Iran’s extremely enriched uranium was saved. And whereas the U.S., Israel and Iran shortly reached a ceasefire after the U.S. strikes, a key level of concern in the course of the warfare was that Iran would try to make use of its navy to shut the Strait of Hormuz, a key maritime choke level by which oil leaves the Persian Gulf area.
