https://amgreatness.com/2024/12/01/the-new-cold-war-is-at-sea/
Since the end of Operation Desert Storm and the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. Department of Defense has failed to maintain one of the principal dictates of great power competition—the necessity of having a well-balanced military force. This deficiency has been most evident in the maritime domain. Tellingly, the size of the U.S. Navy has shrunk from about 600 warships in 1986 to just over 290 ships today. This decline in the size, and capabilities, of the U.S. Navy occurred in large part because the nation’s leader was obsessed with what has been termed as “endless wars”—those fought in the land domains of the Middle East (ME), Southwest Asia (SWA), and now Eastern Europe. Unfortunately, this myopic focus on ground war has occurred just as the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has conducted the largest naval build-up and modernization of any nation since the end of World War II.
The reality of these two diametrically opposed trendlines was brought to a head this past week by a series of announcements from both the PRC and U.S., which signals what can be declared as the end of “endless ground wars” and what should be a return to a balanced national defense strategy—namely one that includes the foundational importance of maritime power—something that has been sorely neglected over the past three decades.
The first announcement was made by the PRC’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi who made the unusual statement that “China is ready to work with other countries to use the three global initiatives as an opportunity to elevate global maritime governance and improve the well-being of all people.” Since coming to power in late 2012, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping has implemented three global governance initiatives: the Global Development Initiative in September 2021, the Global Security Initiative in April 2022, and the Global Civilization Initiative in March 2023.