The Sun Sets on Everything

Before the First World War, “the sun never set on the British Empire.” The sun didn’t appear to set on the Empire between the wars, but that was something of a false dawn. The British loss of confidence and manpower on the Somme had done fatal damage, revealed during and after the Second World War by the loss of Singapore to the Japanese and by the loss of India to Gandhi.

It wasn’t long before British grand strategy, which not long before had spanned the globe, no longer covered anything east of Suez. Hong Kong was the lone exception, protected less by British power than it was by Beijing’s unwillingness to kill that particular golden goose. Even Britain’s Suez position wash’t to be long-lived. The Suez Crisis destroyed the Empire’s position in Africa, and decolonization — for good but also for ill — followed rapidly. Gibraltar is Britain’s only real outpost left of note, and Tony Blair once tried to give that back to Spain. Why? Spain wasn’t pushing and Gibraltar’s British subjects weren’t pulling, so the only conclusion to draw is that Britain’s anti-colonalism has become so ingrained after decades of retreat that it has become reflexive.

Sorry — I seem to have gotten off the subject. What I’d meant to say right after the bit about Singapore, is that the British position is Asia had been sealed for all time by the loss of the battleship HMS Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser HMS Repulse to Japanese forces in 1941. From that point on, Britain became largely dependent on American and Commonwealth forces to protect their interests in the Far East. So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that the British position there become untenable even after the Allied victory in 1945.

Britain’s collapse in the Far East led to their collapse in the Mid East which marked the effective end of the Empire. The sun set remarkably quickly on an empire centuries in the making.

Anyway, that minor history lesson is what came to mind after reading a Navy Times report on the US Navy’s deployment and budget woes:

At the center of the dilemma is the aircraft carrier George Washington, which will be retired early unless lawmakers lift heavy sequestration spending cuts set to take effect in 2016. With no sign they will and uncertainties about when the first of the new supercarrier class will be ready to deploy, experts say nine-to-10-month deployments could be common for fleet sailors.

That’s a worst-case scenario for Navy leaders.

“We need 11 aircraft carriers, and we’re very cognizant of that fact,” Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said in a March hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee. “We need those 11 carriers for the operations tempo and for the stress that is put on the other carriers should we lose one.”

At issue is about $6 billion, the cost to refuel the 22-year-old GW, allowing it to sail out the remaining 28 years it was built to serve.

Britain suffered devastating losses in two winning efforts fighting global wars before it lost its position in the world. We’ll lose our position because we’d rather expand our welfare state than maintain our storied Navy.

The world was lucky when Britain retreated from its global duties, because America was there to take its place. Whatever fills the void we leave will be far worse.