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The United States’ position at the apex of a world order incorporates freedom of the seas as a defining feature. But our place in the world and on the high seas is neither permanent nor universally welcomed. It persists because of its general acceptance and, frankly, a lack of alternatives.
Approximately 80% of global trade [ [link removed] ] by volume is transported by ship, and open navigation on the world’s seas makes this possible. There is every expectation that goods loaded onto a vessel in one port will be unloaded without incident at its destination port anywhere on the globe. This is as true for countries that are friendly to the United States as for those that aren’t.
This system exists neither through benevolence nor ideology. The U.S. economy depends on free trade and an unhindered transit of ships without regard to flag: 90% of American import-export trade by volume is by ship, higher than many other nations. Wars, undesirable national policies or illegal activity may draw sanctions or other burdens on shipping. However, by and large, the open-ocean aspect of the world order enhances prosperity for all (or most), which is in keeping with U.S. interests.
Up to now, who gets sanctioned and why has generally been at the pleasure of American presidents thanks to the overwhelming superiority enjoyed by the U.S. Navy. This is why countries and their proxies hostile to America have many reasons to resent this system and to try to undermine it.
Emanations and Penumbras
Freedom of the seas emanates from power; it is a penumbra of that power rather than an expressly pursued goal. If it has been codified in international law [ [link removed] ] that is due to the actions and preferences of a great power—in this case, the United States. International agreements mean nothing in the face of deployed naval power. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) does not feel constrained by treaties when it asserts its sovereignty over what’s known as the “nine dash line” [ [link removed] ] in the South China Sea, where it routinely harasses foreign vessels [ [link removed] ]. If the United States pushes back against the PRC’s claims by conducting freedom of navigation operations [ [link removed] ] with its warships, it does so gingerly.
However, great power ambitions are not the only threat to the world order as it currently exists. Technology has allowed minor powers and even non-state actors to disrupt the orderly progress of global commerce. The ongoing attacks in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden by Houthi forces in Yemen equipped with Iranian missiles and drones have had an outsized impact on global trade, cutting Suez Canal transits by 50% [ [link removed] ] and imposing higher insurance and operational costs and lengthier sailing times as shipowners seek alternate routes [ [link removed] ].
U.S. and allied efforts to protect shipping and deter attacks have thus far been unable to calm the troubled waters. In fact, the arguably anemic response by the U.S. Navy to Houthi attacks and the lackluster participation by allied navies have uncovered real flaws in the maintenance of the world order as it currently exists. The Houthis are also writing a potential playbook for other would-be challengers to that system.
“The so-called rules-based international order is collapsing,” says Alexander Velez-Green, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation. “It could only succeed so long as those opposed to it weren't powerful enough to challenge it. That is no longer the case. If the United States and its allies are to continue enjoying the benefits of an open trading system and access to the global commons, we must find new ways to work together to deter or defeat attempts by China and other adversaries to distort or destroy those features of the international system.”
Like many political upheavals, the dissolution of the U.S.-led international system—if indeed it does occur—is likely to happen gradually and then all at once.
Bad Examples for Bad Actors
The Houthi situation is an indicator of what the world may expect going forward. When Somali pirates began taking vessels in waters off the Horn of Africa in the early 2000s, they were doing so opportunistically in the chaos of that country’s civil strife to extort ransoms rather than for political purposes. Men in motorboats with small arms boarded unarmed merchant ships and yachts with relative ease. An international naval response that notably included China essentially ended the problem by just showing up and maintaining a persistent presence in the area.
The Houthis—or perhaps more properly, their Iranian sponsors—are showing that nautical choke points such as the Red Sea are easily manipulated with very limited means. While the guided ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and even nautical drones seen in the current conflict are relatively novel for a group like the Houthis, they are the types that are inexpensive to manufacture and operate [ [link removed] ]. A nation with a modest industrial base such as Iran can mass-produce them and train proxy militias like the Houthis to use them effectively. This formula could be followed in any number of choke points, from the Strait of Malacca to the Panama Canal.
An important aspect of the Houthi attacks is that they have a political objective. The Houthi leadership says they are striking selectively at shipping to put pressure on Israel in its war against Hamas in Gaza. An interesting point is that ships under Chinese flags are spared attacks, although one was recently hit in an apparent case of mistaken identity [ [link removed] ]. In any event, the Iranians through the Houthis are attacking Western oceangoing trade to force policy changes. It is a manifestation of the emerging Tehran-Moscow-Beijing axis and its intension to overturn the existing world order.
The U.S. Navy, which has taken the lead on the West’s military response to the Houthi-fronted attacks, finds itself ill-equipped to handle the challenge. Worse, U.S. political leadership in directing the response has been scattered at best. Steven Wills [ [link removed] ], a retired Navy officer and now a naval analyst at the Center for Maritime Strategy, says the threats posed by rogue state and non-state actors require new doctrines and training that the United States may not be comfortable with. At the moment, the United States is using its top-shelf weaponry to counter bargain-basement attacks—firing $2 million Standard air-defense missiles to hit $20,000 drones.
“The problem is that we've trained our folks to engage at the furthest possible limit, and that's what they'd have to do in a real war against a peer opponent,” Wills said, describing the layered-defense approach that starts with expensive long-range missiles to knock down threats far away. Then there are medium-range missiles, and finally gun systems to engage targets that get through the outer layers at short and point-blank ranges.
“Our destroyers have a 5-inch gun with anti-aircraft rounds that cost about $2,000 per shot,” he continued. “That’s a pretty good exchange for a $20,000 drone. But then you are asking captains to go against their training to use every weapon at their disposal to engage threats. So, you're saying you want them to relearn what they think about defense. We haven’t really thought about the mass numbers of drones out there that we are going to be running into, especially in the littoral regions.”
Like it or not, the problem is upon us. As retired naval officer and blogger CDR Salamander poses the question [ [link removed] ], “So we’re restocking the Standard missiles we’re expending in the Red Sea, right?” His concern is that the U.S. Navy may be firing off missiles faster than they are being manufactured. One immutable rule of modern warfare is that you go through stocks of guided weapons much faster than you have prepared for. The inability of the U.S. industrial base to manufacture and stockpile missiles [ [link removed] ] is well documented. So is the inadequacy of American shipyards to meet the need for submarines and other naval vessels.
The replenishment issue is attended by a seeming reluctance to inflict the sort of damage—and casualties—in reprisals that could eliminate the existing threat and deter future attacks. While there have been Western airstrikes against Houthi targets ashore, including by Tomahawk cruise missiles (another expensive item in limited supply), these have been desultory and with prior warning to avoid killing people. Wills observed that the demonstration strikes will probably be ineffective.
“The strikes we’ve seen on Houthi territory so far have really just been on their weapon systems,” he said. “You are not going to see this stop until you go after the leadership. You have to rattle the leadership to the point that they worry about being found. You need to generate that level of fear in their souls that they decide if they continue with this course of action, somebody’s going to end their lives. And I don’t think they have that fear. All we’ve shown so far is a willingness to hit their missile batteries. The leadership isn’t anywhere near their missile batteries. They don’t care.”
Wills concludes that the Houthi attacks and anemic Western response set a dangerous example that other potential bad actors are likely to follow. He said the fact that these events are occurring along with a proliferation of cruise missile and drone technology means bad actors will have unprecedented capacity to erode U.S. naval dominance.
The Power of Priorities
James W.E. Smith, a strategy consultant and visiting fellow at King’s College in London, recently wrote [ [link removed] ] that American debates about sea power, when they occur at all, often become technocratic or entangled in illusions born of a lavish fiscal luxury that focuses on how many ships we have rather than on why we have them:
Still, the fact remains the world has become dependent on the U.S. Navy as a stabilizing force for good in world affairs and of good maintenance of the high seas—of which not all agree (e.g., Russia and China) … [which] makes the debate and fate of the U.S. Navy of interest to Americans and foreigners alike…. That the global order on the high seas is dependent on the American nation with its natural bias away from the sea … should alarm other powers who have an interest in the sea.
Ship numbers are not a reliable metric for naval power anyway. The U.S. Navy fleet includes both the most powerful naval ships deployed as well as dozens of newly built and soon to be summarily retired littoral combat ships (LCS), which are notably absent from the littoral combat the U.S. Navy is waging in the Red Sea against the Houthis. This is because the LCS is incapable of combat in the littorals.
The LCS is part of a “lost generation” of U.S. Navy combatants that include the stillborn Zumwalt-class destroyers [ [link removed] ] and vaporware cruisers that consumed vast sums of taxpayer money but won’t contribute to the national defense, nor maintenance of U.S. control of the seas. While it is easy to blame the clearly culpable U.S. procurement system [ [link removed] ], the real culprit is the American people, for whom freedom of the seas is the most ethereal of abstractions.
Certain classes of ships, Aegis destroyers in particular, are in high demand throughout the fleet for protecting carrier battle groups, patrolling dangerous waters and shooting down enemy attacks like those on Red Sea shipping. But there are not enough destroyers available, and their crews are being run ragged. Meanwhile, a new frigate able to take on some of the burden has been delayed for years [ [link removed] ].
Congress spends money in response to public pressure and vested interests, and representatives have come to equate defense programs with jobs. So as long as there are jobs for constituents and donors, it doesn’t seem to matter that much if a ship can serve its required role. Only an energized voting public can put congressional priorities on course, and Americans are not particularly interested right now in the state of the Navy. This is an element of what some observers call “seablindness,” [ [link removed] ] where the people of the world’s indispensable naval power are barely aware of the importance of sea power.
Smith acknowledges that U.S. taxpayers have a right to question why they should bear the enormous cost of maintaining a large Navy in order to keep the seas safe for other nations, some not even allies, who contribute little to the effort. But the fact remains that the world order does depend on the U.S. Navy, and the threats to its primacy are proliferating in size and variety. Do the American people appreciate the need for naval power to maintain the nation’s economic (and by extension, their) prosperity?
Wills agrees that the future of freedom of the seas depends on an America that is often ambivalent about, if not oblivious to, the role of its Navy in maintaining the prosperity it enjoys, or that this role is a global one. However, Americans have recently lived through startling events such as the pandemic that affected global supply chains, and so maybe there is a new awareness of this dynamic.
“There’s an understanding that a lot of what we buy comes from remote sources, and if those sources are disrupted—whether it’s frozen fish or toilet paper—that’s going to impact you either in a delay in getting stuff or you’re going to have to pay more money,” he said.
Add to pandemic-related disruptions in supply chains the subsequent shipping container crisis [ [link removed] ] and labor showdowns [ [link removed] ] at container ship ports. Even the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge closing Baltimore Harbor for who knows how long will have demonstrable effects on global trade [ [link removed] ] and thus affect American consumers. Pundits hope a growing awareness of the importance of maritime trade will translate into greater public and congressional support for the U.S. Navy’s mission to maintain order.
“Chaos costs more money,” Wills said. “Sending a ship around the Cape of Good Hope to avoid the Red Sea is an extra 2,500 nautical miles of time and diesel fuel that gets burned, depleting supplies and putting more pollutants in the air. It affects all of us in the long run.”
Beyond the Line
The unlocking of the world’s oceans during the expansion of European maritime capabilities in the 16th and 17th centuries (what used to be called “The Age of Exploration”) produced two concepts of freedom of the seas that were polar opposites. On the one hand, the idea developed that the oceans are a global commons for all of humanity to benefit from. On the other hand, there existed a state of semi-permanent conflict “beyond the line [ [link removed] ],” approximately the longitude west of the Azores, which marked the edge of what was essentially a global free-fire zone outside of European waters. Ship captains were liable to attack foreign ships and holdings whatever treaties or agreements might exist among the European powers.
Whatever happened beyond the line stayed beyond the line. Except, like antics in Las Vegas, they didn’t really. An opportunistic captain who seized another nation’s ship or raided a foreign-owned port could find himself hunted, rebuked as inconvenient by his sovereign, or even at the end of a rope. However, by and large the only freedom of the seas you could expect beyond the line was limited to the range of your guns and proficiency of your crews. The British, French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese and other naval powers were all players.
It was only with the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, where the U.K.’s Royal Navy smashed the combined fleet of France and its then-ally Spain, that the first breezes of the Pax Britannia were felt on the world’s oceans. The long peace after the Napoleonic Wars found Great Britain as the sole major maritime power with a world-spanning empire woven together by trade and a peerless navy. Freedom of the seas evolved because unfettered oceanic commerce was in the U.K.’s interest and was a byproduct of naval supremacy, as was the elimination of the Atlantic slave trade.
In his 2004 popular history, “To Rule the Waves,” [ [link removed] ] Arthur Herman says the people of Great Britain identified deeply with their nation’s role as guarantors of freedom of the seas. When Imperial Germany announced a battleship program prior to World War I that would challenge the supremacy of the Royal Navy, there was a public outcry to build more battleships in order to stay on top. Two costly world wars eventually saw an exhausted Great Britain pass the baton to the rising United States.
Since then, the Pax Americana has rested on the strength of the U.S. Navy. However, even with COVID and other recent reminders of the fragility of global trade and supply chains, once an emergency passes sea power is not necessarily foremost in American minds. Instead, guaranteeing freedom of the seas still seems like a nebulous concept rather than a fundamental necessity for our way of life.
The late columnist Charles Krauthammer famously said, “Decline is a choice.” [ [link removed] ] If the United States abdicates its role as guarantor of free navigation on the world’s oceans, it will not be for lack of resources to do the job. Americans may not be consciously rejecting the role they have had since the end of World War II, but they still may not realize what’s at stake in allowing the global order to slip into anarchy or the hands of rivals beyond the line. When the container ships stop arriving at American ports, it will be too late.

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