The shocking video of Israeli commandos boarding a Turkish vessel, being attacked with knives and iron rods, then shooting back and killing nine, prompts one big question: Where was our Sixth Fleet?
Since the end of World War II, America’s Sixth Fleet has been the sheriff of the Mediterranean, a shield for our allies and a bulwark against enemies large (like the Soviet Union during the Cold War) and small. As recently as 2003, during Operation Iraqi Freedom, it consisted of 175 aircraft and 40 ships.
Today, it consists of exactly one: a command and intelligence ship, half of whose crew is civilian.
The problem isn’t a shortage of ships or sailors. Our fleet is still larger than the next 13 navies combined, and any US naval vessels entering the Mediterranean immediately get “chopped” to the Sixth Fleet’s command. It’s an issue of American retreat from the global responsibilities that have justified a navy of that size.
If that retreat continues, we won’t just see our Navy and its ability to conduct missions around the world shrinking away; we’ll also see anarchy spreading and tensions between nations growing — just as happened this week off the coast of Gaza.
The fault is not in our ships, but in ourselves.
There’s been a lot of talk recently about our aircraft carriers as “wasting assets,” even from our secretary of Defense, and about the “provocative” presence of American troops and ships from Afghanistan to Asia. (Just check the fierce pressure in Japan right now to get us to close our base in Okinawa.)
But if the carrier USS Harry S Truman had been on patrol in the Aegean instead of the Atlantic — or if a pair of destroyers had been holding station off the Israeli coast with Sea Knight helicopters and P-3 Orion patrol planes circling overhead — would that Israeli raid have been necessary? Would the flotilla have even dared to set sail on its mission of provocation?
The shrinking away of the Sixth Fleet was done precisely in order to reduce our “provocative” presence in the region and to pass law-and-order duties to our NATO allies, including, of course, Turkey.
Now we see the result.
It is precisely to keep incidents like these from happening or from escalating into major international conflicts that do hit our vital national interests, that we keep those 11 aircraft carriers and 10 large deck amphibious ships ready to launch helicopters and land Marines, when no other navy has three.
Contrary to what the president and his allies may think, the projection of American naval power isn’t the world’s problem; it’s the world’s one working solution.
Our sailors and their officers understand this duty and accept it with pride. But our current crop of politicians see protecting whales from our sonar and stopping smoking on our submarines as our military’s top priorities.
Then there’s the problem of who we’re trying to pass the duty off to. In particular, Turkey’s rapid slide into the jihadist camp raises the frightening prospect of a pro-Iran Turkey controlling one major strategic choke point, the Bosphorus, connecting the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, and facing the littoral approaches to another, the Suez Canal.
The Turkish navy is miniscule compared to ours. But its masters see America’s shrinking influence as a major power shift and a major opportunity. If Turkey’s navy becomes the passive supporter of shipping Iranian arms to Hezbollah and missiles to Hamas — or even ballistic missiles to Syria — we are looking at a Middle East at an entirely new level of danger and tension, while we stand idly by.
A diminished Sixth Fleet can’t do its job. A diminished Navy can’t keep the peace. And a diminished America can’t help old allies or make new ones. In time, it won’t even be able to help itself.
Arthur Herman’s most recent book is “Gandhi and Churchill.”