Page 35: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (May 16, 1985)

West Coast resources to wither, gov- ernment policy will surely lead the

United States into economic, mili- tary and political decline by abdi- cating its position of supremacy at sea and leaving the world's sealanes open to whatever nations have the ability to command or interdict them. Lack of sealift capability spells weakness to our opponents just as surely as does lack of domes- tic sources of basic commodities and strategic materials. Admiral Ike

Kidd said it concisely: "If the (mer- chant ship)-owning nations chose to deny sealift to us, the result could be economic blackmail to which we could not respond in peacetime, much less in war."

This concern was dramatized by the following fictional scenario by

Harlan Ullman in the May issue of Naval Institute Proceedings which, if present downward trends continue for the merchant marine and shipbuilding industries, could be tomorrow's reality.

Thus, scenario number four: • "It is winter 1990. The war in the Persian Gulf between Iran and

Iraq, after ten years of bloodshed, has finally spilled over. As a result of a series of bone-chilling winters and other economic factors, West- ern dependence on Gulf oil signifi- cantly grew in the latter part of the 1980s. A Western naval task force, largely composed of U.S. forces, was ordered into the Gulf to protect both the shipping routes and the oil- producing facilities on the Arabian

Peninsula. Conflict resulted, and large numbers of Western forces were brought to bear. Unfortunate- ly, because of the spread of ad- vanced weapons to the belligerent states and terrorist groups acting in their behalf, Western naval losses, including warships and merchant- men, have been heavy. But worse, after several months of a grinding campaign of attrition, the United

States has found itself increasingly hamstrung by lack of a merchant fleet. It has only limited ability to provide the "wherewithal" for

Western forces engaged in the re- gion and the cargo capacity to com- pensate for the economic embargo imposed by non-aligned states against all belligerents. Further, erosion of the U.S. shipbuilding base has made repair work on dam- aged ships a very lengthy process."

Surely, this scenario suggests that now is the time to return to reality and a good start would be to observe the law of the land. In 1956, Con- gress recognized the importance of maintaining a geographically-dis- persed shipbuilding mobilization base to enable us to build ships when and where they're needed, on all three coasts, and enacted statute 10.7302. I quote: "Construction on the Pacific

Coast. The Department of the

Navy shall have constructed on the

Pacific Coast of the United States such vessels as the President deter- mines necessary to maintain ship- yard facilities there adequate to meet the requirements of national defense. Aug. 10, 1956, c. 1041, 70A

Stat. 451"

Second, in regard to shipbuilding and repair, the government should not be involved in any activity that the private sector can do better and at less cost—and that applies to all our coasts.

Third, we must face up to the real cost of not maintaining total sea- power resources. The difficulties we face in making such an analysis have been the lack of an overall maritime strategy, the mistaken belief that

U.S. maritime industries must sur- vive under "free market" condi- tions, and the misconception that the Navy can fulfill its peacetime or military missions effectively with its own sealift resources and a greatly diminshed shipbuilding industrial base.

Without a clear national policy to maintain adequate seapower re- sources it is difficult to accurately define how much of each resource (naval, merchant and industrial) is needed and how we can pay for it.

This subject needs urgent consider- ation at the highest policy levels. I believe the Center for Strategic &

International Studies has stated the issue succinctly in its recent report "Forecasts for U.S. Maritime Indus- tries in 1989: Balancing National (continued on page 36)

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