Europe Needs a Navy. Can the U.K. Supply It?
Decades of 'sea-blindness' have largely squandered the British naval legacy.
Two centuries ago, the Royal Navy utterly dominated the world's oceans. Buoyed by the global empire its ships were tasked with expanding and defending, the nautical service maintained a “two-navy standard.” That is, it endeavored to be at least as strong as the next two navies combined.
Today, the British fleet—the navy and the supporting auxiliary—numbers just 73 ships displacing fewer than 1 million tons. That makes it a ninth the size of the U.S. fleet, a third the size of the Chinese and Russian fleets and barely bigger than the Japanese fleet, which doesn’t have a global mission.
But there's a chance for a reversal, however modest, of this 200-year naval decline. The United States’ chaotic autocratic lurch under Pres. Donald Trump—in particular, its abandonment of Europe and Ukraine in favor of closer ties to Russia—has compelled European countries to get a lot more serious about their own defense.
I bet South Korea could.