Sea Power summary

For many Americans, what happened at Pearl Harbor in the final days of 1941 still stands as a singular event. It was a devastating surprise attack on a US military base, unlike any that has happened before or since, and it made World War II something the United States could no longer ignore.

The United States would go on to spend years fighting Japanese forces in the Pacific, a massive oceanic battlefield that spanned a distance equivalent to that of the English Channel to the Persian Gulf.

Covering 40 million square miles, the Atlantic Ocean is second only to the Pacific in terms of size. The Atlantic accounts for 20 percent of the world’s surface area, and that’s without including its two significant tributary seas, the Caribbean and the Mediterranean.

The Greeks were likely the first to voyage into the unknown open waters of the Atlantic, but as far as recorded history goes, the Vikings were the first Europeans to venture out and catch sight of the new world.

In the 1500s, King Henry VIII pushed for England to become a major player in the seafaring world, and the country never looked back, proving time and again that it was home to the world’s best naval force.

Henry ordered heavily armed warships to be built just in time to challenge Spain for European supremacy.

Since the days of ancient Greece, the Indian Ocean has been a venue to trade spices, textiles, livestock and just about anything else that could fit on a boat. For centuries, Arabs, Persians and Chinese all used these waters to trade peacefully among themselves.

In the late 1400s, the Portuguese became the dominant traders in the Indian Ocean, but they were surpassed in the 1600s by the highly competitive British East India Company and Dutch East India Company.

There are many reasons for the continued tensions in the areas surrounding the Indian Ocean, not the least of which is religion.

While more than 90 percent of the world’s Muslim population resides near this ocean, the countries are divided by being either Sunni or Shi’a Muslims – or in the case of the Iraq, both.

The Mediterranean might seem like a relatively small body of water on your world map, but if you measure it from east to west, it’s as wide as the entire United States.

The Mediterranean starts as you leave the Atlantic and pass through the narrow Strait of Gibraltar, which separates Spain and Morocco. Two of its most prominent features are the boot of Italy, which juts down in the middle of the sea, and the Greek peninsula, which divides its eastern portion.

To the northeast of the Mediterranean is the Black Sea, a place that has proven to be a hotbed of aggressive activity.

After World War II, things were relatively peaceful. But in the 1990s, as Yugoslavia started to splinter and break apart, the Balkan Wars began.

The Caribbean will always be known as the home of sixteenth-century pirates, many of whom started out as Protestant raiders looking to steal from the Catholic Spanish royalty.

Sir Francis Drake is perhaps the most famous of these Caribbean pirates, having died a rich man after stealing his fair share of Spanish treasures.

Global warming is very much a reality, and if you need tangible evidence, the unprecedented melting of the Arctic should be exhibit number one.

For every degree that Earth’s overall temperature increases, the temperature at the North Pole rises by five degrees. And while this situation has its dangers, it also comes with opportunity.

Today, there are between 50,000 to 60,000 commercial ships moving through the oceans, along with around 5,000 military ships.

This is four to six times more ships than just 30 years ago. And while we’ve made many impressive advances, especially in terms of navigation and mapping, we’ve done remarkably little to reduce criminal activity and environmental damage caused by shipping.

One of the determining factors of a nation’s naval power is its geography; you won’t get far as a seafaring nation unless you have a good amount of coastline and easy access to open waters.

If that’s the case, the nation must then make sure its policies and politics are aligned with the many ways the sea can bring prosperity. This means having beneficial trade policies and foreign relations, while also putting enough money aside to build great ships and have well-trained crews.