Brightnshiney please tell us exactly which countries would threaten shipping and where, if the US was to stop its protection.
Piracy is already dealt with by an international combined task force with the US only a contributor.
Countries have threatened international shipping many times in the past. For example, during the Iran-Iraq war, ships were frequently attacked by either country in the Persian Gulf. Or sometimes countries become unstable, and international shipping gets threatened as a result (this is basically what happened in Somalia). It’s happened so often in the past, there’s no reason to think it won’t happen again in the future.
It is difficult to deploy military operations overseas, and you need a logistical train (that is a bunch of people and assets) behind you to do it. Aside from the US, only a handful of countries have any sort of logistical train to deploy long-distance. The British have this, and the French have it, but because the US has so many assets everywhere, they frequently rely on the US to help with their logistical train (the French less so). China and India both have plans to develop this, but they’re at least 10-20 years away from having that capability. The Soviets used to have this capability, and if the Russian economy were better, the Russians could have it again, but they simply don’t have the money to spend on that the way the Soviets used to. So, that leaves the US, because the US pretty much has military infrastructure all around the globe.
Now, as for the task force you are talking about (CTF-151), that only covers the area around Somalia. Piracy happens in other parts of the world too. Furthermore, out of the countries involved, only the US and Britain have logistical train capability, and as I pointed out earlier, the British frequently rely on the US’s capability when they deploy, particularly in joint missions. So, contrary to what you think, the US is not “only a contributor.” It operates as the backbone of that mission.
Are you saying the world needs the US in ordewr to defend shipping from a bunch of Somali pirates?
I presume not. So what are you saying?
If the world “needs” international shipping, then the US is currently the primary guarantor for keeping shipping lanes open and free from threats, such as Somali pirates.
I’ve been very clear in what I’m saying. You don’t seem to like the fact that the US currently does the heavy lifting to keep international shipping functioning smoothly. But whether you like it or not, that’s the way it currently is.
Right. “primary guarantor” “heavy lifting”, yada yada.
I think we’ll stick with maintainig the status quo it created, self-serving and ‘overseer’.
Right. So you have no idea how international shipping works, or how the US military operates. Instead, you’ve decided to flail about and try to impute some moral judgments to me which I didn’t make. I never stated whether I think it’s a good thing or a bad thing that the US does all this. I just pointed out that the US is currently doing this, and nobody else has the capability to do it right now.
There’s a mind numbingly dull talk on Ted right now about world shipping. The statistic quoted - and I believe it because the presenter is so unimaginatively dull - is that 90% or world goods are transported by ship. Additionally, some 500+ merchant sailors and 20-30 ships are now being held for ransom by pirates (mostly Somali).
Imagine how much worse it would be and what it would mean to world trade if not for a major military naval presence. If the US is willing to do the policing of world trade, I’m hard pressed to criticize them for it.
From whom?
No country really needs American military protection any more, not even SK or Taiwan.
Great trade routes have historically been protected by empires who stood the most to gain by having reliable and unimpeded flow of trade goods.
Today’s maritime trade routes are no different. The largest economy in the world has much to gain by ensuring a safe and reliable flow of goods around the globe.
Not at all? The fact that such impoverished and poorly equipped people as Somali pirates can engage in piracy anyway demonstrates that we aren’t really protecting much of anything.
By that logic, we should do away with every police force. I mean why bother having cops if they can’t be everywhere at once, or exactly at the right place at the right time every time something bad is about to happen.
No; this is analogous to a situation where the criminals are operating openly and the police are doing nothing most of the time. Or rather, there are no police; the US military is not the equivalent of a police force and can’t do the job if it tries.
What stops piracy is the willingness and ability of a country to suppress pirates; not the US. It’s a job for their equivalent of the Coast Guard; someone with police-style training and lots of small ships for maximum coverage, not someone with aircraft carriers and the like. Our military just isn’t structured to do the job very well, because that isn’t its job.
Yeah, but what threatens that flow? Somali pirates? Every power with a navy now has the same interest in keeping the sea lanes open.
Exactly how much anti-piracy action does the U.S. Navy engage in?
Thank goodness for the US 5th Fleet:
http://horseedmedia.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/pirates1.jpg
I’ll grant you that no SINGLE country has the capability to do this right now. But that doesn’t mean that it couldn’t or wouldn’t be done. What would eventually happen is that lots of individual countries would expand their areas of coastal patrols. In the meantime you might see an increase in piracy.
What WOULD NOT happen is that countries would start attacking each others merchant shipping. No country has any reason to do that in our modern trade dependent world.
One big change I do see, is that several countries that are currently under the US nuclear umbrella would feel compelled to develop their own Nuclear weapons. Japan and South Korea I already mentioned. Probably Saudi Arabia would develop them as well, and possibly Germany depending on if they still had a NATO arrangement with France and the UK or not. Iran would certainly try to, but with no US to hold them back, Israel would do their best to prevent this with air strikes to take out nuclear facilities in Iran.
Also potentially with the loss of US aid and influence, Pakistan would freely sell Nuclear technology to all takers, including completed missiles and warheads. North Korea would also start shopping around it’s nuclear tech, however I’m yet to be convinced they actually have a weapon that can fit on a warhead or even managed a real explosion as opposed to a nuclear fizzle.
So yeah I do see some pretty big changes if the US went isolationist, but loss of protection of shipping isn’t up there with them.
You can’t be serious…can you? Off the top of my head I’d say that China would be the number one threat to Japan’s trade, considering that even WITH the US the Chinese are pushing the Japanese. North Korea of course would be more of a problem in the region. India might be an issue as well in a future without the US to patrol the waves and make sure everyone plays nice wrt trade. Then there are all those nations in the Middle East…you do know that Japan imports that oil stuff, right? And then there is Africa…
Japan, like just about every other nation, conducts trade on a global level…and, like our European buddies has no real way to protect it’s trade outside of it’s immediate sphere of influence, which in Japan’s case is the environment in and around their home islands. Heck, even THERE they are butting heads with the Chinese today about some of the islands that they feel are rightfully theirs while China disagrees.
These threads always crack me up. People really believe that the world has changed and that trade would just go on exactly the same if the US was out of the picture…and everyone would be much happier and more peaceful. Where they get this idea is always a mystery to me, considering how many countries push limits even WITH us out there in overwhelming force, when everyone knows that if they go off the reservation too much the US Navy is there to show them the errors of their ways. Without that, it’s beyond me what people think would keep the various powers in the various regions from attempting to assert their power at least locally.
Of course, it’s not going to happen, since the OP is total fantasy…we’d be cutting our own throat by trying to do anything that nutty, and probably we’d take the rest of the world down with us, so it’s not even remotely possible, but it’s funny to see the various responses.
China isn’t the #1 threat to Japan’s trade. They’re the #1 participant in Japan’s trade. Why on earth would China want to impede Japan’s trade?
China is making a great deal of money trading with Japan and it makes vastly more trading with the United States and Western Europe. Why would they possibly risk the end of this trade by preventing shipping to Japan? Countries act in their own best interests, and I simply don’t see any country which would be better off if a large chunk of the world cuts off international trade with it.