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Power at Sea #3
Power at Sea, Volume 3: A Violent Peace, 1946-2006
Bringing to a close his epic recounting of naval power in the twentieth century, Lisle Rose describes the virtual disappearance after 1945 of all but one great navy, whose existence and operations over the next sixty years guaranteed a freedom of the seas so complete as to be at once universally acknowledged and ignored.
In the first twenty years after World War II, the U.S. Navy continued the revolutionary transformation of sea power begun in the 1930s with the integration of sea, air, and amphibious capabilities. Between 1946 and 1961, the United States placed on, above, and beneath the world’s oceans the mightiest concentration of military power in history. Supercarriers filled with aircraft capable of long-range nuclear strikes were joined by strategic ballistic missile submarines, even one of whose sixteen nuclear-tipped missiles could devastate most of an enemy’s major urban centers together with its industrial and military infrastructure.
Such a fleet was incredibly costly. No ally or adversary in a world recovering slowly from global war could afford to build and maintain such an awesome entity. Its needs constantly had to be balanced against competing requirements of a broader national defense establishment. But the U.S. Navy ensured an unchallenged Pax Americana, and its warships steamed where they wished throughout the globe in support of a policy to contain the influence and threat represented by the Soviet Union and China.
The 1962 Cuban missile crisis, however, galvanized the Soviet leadership to construct a powerful blue-water fleet that within less than a decade began to challenge the United States for global maritime supremacy, even as its own ballistic missile boats posed a massive threat to U.S. national security. While the Soviets enjoyed the luxury of building exclusively against the U.S. Navy and challenging it at almost every point, America’s sailors were increasingly burdened by a broad array of specific fighting two regional wars in Asia, intervening in Lebanon, protecting Taiwan, aiding in the preservation of Israel, and maintaining close surveillance of Cuba, chief among them. Confronting ever-growing Soviet sea power stretched U.S. capabilities to the limit even as the fleet itself underwent revolutionary changes in its social composition.
The abrupt decline and fall of the Soviet Union after 1989 led to another reappraisal of the importance, even necessity, of navies. But the turbulent Middle East and the struggle against international terrorism after 2001 have demanded a projection of sea-air-amphibious power onto coasts and adjacent areas similar to that which America’s fleets had already undertaken in Korea, Vietnam, and Lebanon.
The U.S. Navy now sails on the front line of defense against terrorism—a threat that confronts strategists with the greatest challenge yet to the ongoing relevance of maritime power. This third volume of Rose’s majestic work offers readers an up-close look at the emergence of America’s naval might and establishes Power at Sea as essential in tracing the emergence of U.S. dominance and understanding the continuing importance of ships and sailors in international power plays.
In the first twenty years after World War II, the U.S. Navy continued the revolutionary transformation of sea power begun in the 1930s with the integration of sea, air, and amphibious capabilities. Between 1946 and 1961, the United States placed on, above, and beneath the world’s oceans the mightiest concentration of military power in history. Supercarriers filled with aircraft capable of long-range nuclear strikes were joined by strategic ballistic missile submarines, even one of whose sixteen nuclear-tipped missiles could devastate most of an enemy’s major urban centers together with its industrial and military infrastructure.
Such a fleet was incredibly costly. No ally or adversary in a world recovering slowly from global war could afford to build and maintain such an awesome entity. Its needs constantly had to be balanced against competing requirements of a broader national defense establishment. But the U.S. Navy ensured an unchallenged Pax Americana, and its warships steamed where they wished throughout the globe in support of a policy to contain the influence and threat represented by the Soviet Union and China.
The 1962 Cuban missile crisis, however, galvanized the Soviet leadership to construct a powerful blue-water fleet that within less than a decade began to challenge the United States for global maritime supremacy, even as its own ballistic missile boats posed a massive threat to U.S. national security. While the Soviets enjoyed the luxury of building exclusively against the U.S. Navy and challenging it at almost every point, America’s sailors were increasingly burdened by a broad array of specific fighting two regional wars in Asia, intervening in Lebanon, protecting Taiwan, aiding in the preservation of Israel, and maintaining close surveillance of Cuba, chief among them. Confronting ever-growing Soviet sea power stretched U.S. capabilities to the limit even as the fleet itself underwent revolutionary changes in its social composition.
The abrupt decline and fall of the Soviet Union after 1989 led to another reappraisal of the importance, even necessity, of navies. But the turbulent Middle East and the struggle against international terrorism after 2001 have demanded a projection of sea-air-amphibious power onto coasts and adjacent areas similar to that which America’s fleets had already undertaken in Korea, Vietnam, and Lebanon.
The U.S. Navy now sails on the front line of defense against terrorism—a threat that confronts strategists with the greatest challenge yet to the ongoing relevance of maritime power. This third volume of Rose’s majestic work offers readers an up-close look at the emergence of America’s naval might and establishes Power at Sea as essential in tracing the emergence of U.S. dominance and understanding the continuing importance of ships and sailors in international power plays.
392 pages, Paperback
First published December 28, 2006
41 people want to read
About the author
Lisle A. Rose
17 books3 followersLisle A. Rose grew up in Champaign, Illinois where his father was on the faculty of the University of Illinois. Rose enlisted in the U.S. Navy in July 1954 and served on three ships making cruises to the Far East, Latin America, and the polar regions. Aboard the icebreaker Staten Island he participated in Operation Deepfreeze II to Antarctica between November 1956 and April 1957. He was honorably discharged from the service in September of that year and obtained a BA in history from Illinois in 1961 and a PHd in American History from the University of California-Berkeley in 1966. Following teaching at various universities between 1966-72, Rose joined the U.S. Department of State's Historical Office from 1972-78 where he was one of a team of professional historians editing the ongoing official series Foreign Relations of the United States. Transferring to the Bureau of Oceans and International Environment and Scientific Affairs, Rose was Polar Affairs Officer from 1978 to 1982 where he prepared an Arctic policy statement, negotiated the annual U.S. scientific program in Greenland with the Government of Denmark, and helped form an Interagency Arctic Policy Group to formulate official U.S. policy on that region. In 1980, he was a member of the United States Delegation to the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea. In 1982 Rose transferred to the Office of Advanced Technology Affairs where he specialized in the international aspects of the U.S. Landsat earth remote sensing satellite program and was part of a two person negotiating team that with representatives from the Soviet Union, France, and Canada completed the COSPAS-SARSAT intenational search and rescue sattelite system. Rose retired from the Department of State in 1989 in order to resume an active writing career in Cold War, naval, and polar history.
Rose currently resides in Edmonds, Washington with his wife, historian Harriet Dashiell Schwar, and is Library Coordinator and member of the Board of Governors of the Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society. Rose's professional memberships include the American Polar Society, North American Society of Oceanic Historians, U.S. Naval Institute, other organizations.
Rose currently resides in Edmonds, Washington with his wife, historian Harriet Dashiell Schwar, and is Library Coordinator and member of the Board of Governors of the Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society. Rose's professional memberships include the American Polar Society, North American Society of Oceanic Historians, U.S. Naval Institute, other organizations.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 10, 2007
The third part of the Power at Sea trilogy, A Violent Peace is a real disappointment, given the quality of the first two books.
The author ignores some of the more interesting small wars of the era. For example, he just dismisses the Grenada operation as a mess...fine, but why exactly? Grenada was a good example of the post-70s development of joint operations concepts. Looking at this and the lessons learned by the US military would be useful for understanding the process by which the modern US military developed.
The analysis of Korea and Vietnam are good, but rather disjointed, with the author flipping from one to the other, in a manner not always logical. The analysis of the Cuban Missile Crisis is a bit cursory, but that might be because I've done a lot of reading about Cuba lately.
The real problems crop up in the last third of the book, where the author analyzes the post-Cold War Navy and the early years of the 21st century. Rather than keep the rationale, academic tone of the rest of the series, the author indulges in gratuitous attacks on the Bush Administration, dismissal of concerns about other rising naval competitors (apparently, China is just bluffing when it threatens Taiwan and buys billions of dollars in modern naval hardware), and also seems to think that the threat from the Islamists is overblown.
All of these are worth debating. They may be accurate, they may not be. The problem is, when writing a history, it is a bad idea to try and write about ongoing events. The best place to end the trilogy would have been either with the fall of the USSR or 9/11. If the author wants to write an analysis of current events, that's fine; it is just glaringly out of place in this work.
The best histories, in my opinion, have some distance from the people or events being analyzed. If one is too close to the events, passions of the moment will cloud one's objectivity, something that I think is critical for a good historian to have.
The entire trilogy is still highly recommended; however, this book is definitely that weakest volume, in large part because it ceases to be an analysis of naval history and becomes more a political polemic.
The author ignores some of the more interesting small wars of the era. For example, he just dismisses the Grenada operation as a mess...fine, but why exactly? Grenada was a good example of the post-70s development of joint operations concepts. Looking at this and the lessons learned by the US military would be useful for understanding the process by which the modern US military developed.
The analysis of Korea and Vietnam are good, but rather disjointed, with the author flipping from one to the other, in a manner not always logical. The analysis of the Cuban Missile Crisis is a bit cursory, but that might be because I've done a lot of reading about Cuba lately.
The real problems crop up in the last third of the book, where the author analyzes the post-Cold War Navy and the early years of the 21st century. Rather than keep the rationale, academic tone of the rest of the series, the author indulges in gratuitous attacks on the Bush Administration, dismissal of concerns about other rising naval competitors (apparently, China is just bluffing when it threatens Taiwan and buys billions of dollars in modern naval hardware), and also seems to think that the threat from the Islamists is overblown.
All of these are worth debating. They may be accurate, they may not be. The problem is, when writing a history, it is a bad idea to try and write about ongoing events. The best place to end the trilogy would have been either with the fall of the USSR or 9/11. If the author wants to write an analysis of current events, that's fine; it is just glaringly out of place in this work.
The best histories, in my opinion, have some distance from the people or events being analyzed. If one is too close to the events, passions of the moment will cloud one's objectivity, something that I think is critical for a good historian to have.
The entire trilogy is still highly recommended; however, this book is definitely that weakest volume, in large part because it ceases to be an analysis of naval history and becomes more a political polemic.
August 13, 2016
A basic overview of the US Navy since WWII, with brief excursions to such things as the Red Navy and the Falklands War.
Solid, but uninspired history written by a patriotic old salt who it just seems has a hankering for how things were back in his day. (There are many comments and digs about how soft sailors are in the modern navy, and indeed in society as a whole)
Rated G. 2/5
Solid, but uninspired history written by a patriotic old salt who it just seems has a hankering for how things were back in his day. (There are many comments and digs about how soft sailors are in the modern navy, and indeed in society as a whole)
Rated G. 2/5
Want to read
November 1, 2009Military - General
September 6, 2018
Absolutely fabulous series that dispelled my notions that naval history was relatively mundane. Rose's series is, in my opinion, an absolute must read and the most authoritative work on this period. Thank you for sparking my interest in this topic.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews