Carriers backward

This piece from Eric Margolis gives some food for thought for those with an interest in military history. The era of aircraft carriers’ dominance in deciding overseas military conflicts is at and end, he says. Guided anti-ship missiles with long ranges, heavy payloads, and high accuracy are making a target as large and expensive as an aircraft carrier obsolete. And for the past half-century and longer, the projection of US power overseas has hinged on an enormous carrier fleet. 

There’s an old maxim (maybe a cliche) that says “Generals always prepare to fight the last war—particularly if they won it.” Such might be the case with US military strategists who still believe in the indispensability of the aircraft carrier. The carrier fleet was instrumental in winning the Pacific War. Surely, say those military leaders raised on the lessons of WWII naval battles, the carrier fleet must be a decisive factor in any future war. 

If another great war is on the horizon (who knows?), that assumption might spell the end of America’s reign as top dog in world affairs. It’s a truism by now that the tacticians of WWI were fighting a 19th-century war with 20th-century technology. Doing so cost them millions of lives and incalculable wealth. It also cost Russia its empire and began unraveling those of Britain and France. America may now be poised to fight a 21st-century war using 20th-century tactics, and the result would likely be a precipitous decline in her international influence.

Not to say that’s a bad thing. American hegemony overseas is unsustainable. There is too much debt, too many spheres of interest, too much overextension. And that’s ignoring the moral considerations. But the naval brass who insist on the rightness of the American Empire and the necessity of maintaining it with a multi-billion-dollar carrier fleet would do well to study more closely the lessons of the past.