Decline And Fall Of The Royal Navy

The New York Post takes a look at the impending reductions in the strength of the already weakened Royal Navy. It is a pretty grim assessment. If the cuts are carried out, Britain will no longer have a blue water navy but will be on a military par with nations like Indonesia. Ouch.

January 14, 2007 — A 400-YEAR epoch of world history is about to draw to a close. If Britain's current Labor government has its way, Britain's Royal Navy will mothball at least 13, and perhaps as many as 19, of its remaining 44 ships, or nearly half its effective fleet.

With one bureaucratic stroke, the Ministry of Defense will end a naval tradition reaching back to Sir Francis Drake - reducing the Royal Navy, which 40 years ago was still the second-largest fleet in the world, to the size of navies of countries like Indonesia and Turkey.

This decision, of course, has to be set against the background of Britain's decades-long decline as a world power. But it also reflects a struggle for the soul of Great Britain that has been going since World War II: Is Britain part of an English-speaking, Atlantic-based strategic alliance that includes the United States and Canada? Or is it part of Europe as envisioned by technocrats in Paris, Brussels and Berlin?

Senior navy officers are warning the government just how disastrous this course of action could be. Contrary to the charges of critics who blame the cuts on the Iraq war, this has been brewing up for decades:

Since the mid '80s, British defense spending has shrunk by more than 30 percent, to less than 2.5 percent of GDP. Today it is at its lowest level since 1930. Even welfare states such as France and Germany spend more on their military. (Meanwhile, Blair is busy hacking back the British commitment in Iraq from 7,000 to 4,500 troops - less than 4 percent of the coalition total.

The truth is that for two centuries Britain and the Royal Navy played the role of globocop, policing the world's sea trade lanes which keep the global economy going. (Even today, 95 percent of the weight of all intercontinental trade travels by sea.)

AFTER World War II, the U.S. Navy gradually took over that thankless but essential task; the British felt free to relax. From a postwar peak of 388 ships and submarines in 1950, the Royal Navy had dwindled to 112 vessels in 1980. By 2004. it was down to just 46.

The West as a whole has been able to avoid a lot of defense spending because the United States was there to ensure security. It has been easy to shelter behind the US while carping about it at the same time.

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  By Quilly Mammoth, Sunday, 14 January , 2007 @ 3:53 pm

  How many days after those ships are mothballed will Argentina get after the Falklands? I give it a week.

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  By Gaius, Sunday, 14 January , 2007 @ 5:18 pm

  Optimist

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1. 186k Per Second - » Iraq and The Lefts Phony WWII Comparison — Sunday, 14 January , 2007 @ 1:54 pm

2. 186k Per Second - » Iraq and The Lefts Phony WWII Comparison — Sunday, 14 January , 2007 @ 1:54 pm