5 ways the US Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard’s global presence matters right here at home

[Valin]

AEIdeas:

Mackenzie Eaglen

July 28, 2015

 

America’s sailors, Marines and Coast Guardsmen are set to undertake another Fleet Week in Seattle on July 29th. These celebrations and community connections are much more than the awe-inspiring parades of ships, air shows, and conversations with those currently serving on behalf of the rest of us.

 

It is easy to forget many of these people spend as much time away as at home. And what they are doing has an outsized impact on how the rest of us go about our daily lives: free from worry about our safety or whether there will be enough gas to fill up our tanks, free to benefit from uninterrupted financial, banking, water, power and internet and communications systems, and free to enjoy remarkable access to virtually anything we want to buy on a moment’s notice.

 

Indeed, what these US military personnel do in far corners of the globe on a regular basis has a tangible and beneficial impact on virtually every American citizen.

• The US Navy-Marine Corps-Coast Guard team keeps the seas open and free.

The world’s oceans provide shipping lanes for commerce and cargo to move unmolested from their places of origin to the Amazon warehouse or small business or Wal-Mart in your home town. Over 90% of world trade by weight is transported by sea, including almost all commodities necessary for the basic operation of the global economy. The big rig trucks hauling containers across America’s freeways have usually picked those up at some major shipping port of entry in the US—ranging from fruit to sneakers to computer chips—to take these items to their final stop.

 

While the taxpayer investment in America’s global navy is significant at $150 billion last year, the presence of grey-hulled, US-flagged ships underpins $4.6 trillion dollars of waterborne commerce. That is roughly a quarter of our entire GDP, and supports 23 million jobs. Viewed in this way, each dollar spent on the US Navy returns $30 for the economic well-being of the United States.

 

By deterring would-be disrupters of the free and open oceans, the US Navy pays for itself twice over—of the $4.6 trillion in commerce, $321 billion is collected in taxes—more than double the Navy’s budget of $150 billion.

• US Navy presence in the South China Sea helps stabilize the world’s fastest-growing economic regions of South and East Asia, where tensions are growing.

(Snip)

[Draggingtree]

95,471 mi. vs. 1,989 mi.

By Erick Erickson and Chuck Warren | February 15, 2017, 10:10am

 

Trivia time. How long is our border with Mexico verses U.S. borders surrounded by ocean? Times up. The number: 95,471 miles of ocean front property vs. 1,989 miles with Mexico. And that is often left out of our national security and immigration discussion.

 

On April 18, 1775, Paul Revere for his Midnight Ride is said to be given the signal by lantern, “One if by land, and two if by sea.” As seen in the steeple of Boston’s Old North Church relating to Colonial Militia taking up arms against King George’s Red Coats and how they would arrive.

 

Today that “signal” can be related to our coastline’s foaming porous borders, with a world in disarray that an underfunded and undermanned U.S. Coast Guard is mandated to protect.

 

Again and again, people argue a “wall” is the be all, end all, answer to the U.S. border problem; yet, how many of us have stood barefoot in the wet sands of that other border making up the Manifest Destiny of America?

http://theresurgent.com/95471-mi-vs-1989-mi/