New Normalcy: Sea Power and Contingency Operations in the Twenty-First Century.

摘要

In September 1994, the Caribbean nation of Haiti burst into political unrest that drove twenty-six thousand migrants out to sea on board overcrowded and unseaworthy craft in an unprecedented mass migration to the United States. Several months later, over thirty thousand Cubans followed suit, attempting to reach the mainland on literally anything that could float. On 31 August 2005, a weapon of mass destruction in the form of a category-five hurricane exploded in the Gulf coast city of New Orleans, killing over 1,300 citizens and forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands. Finally, on 20 April 2010, the Deepwater Horizon exploratory oil rig exploded, heralding an unprecedented environmental disaster whose final impact has yet to be determined. What these events shared, with their catastrophic nature and international impact, was a link to the sea. Although vastly different in cause, circumstances, and scoperanging as they did from a man-made political event to recovery from the wrath of naturethese crises all saw a significant application of sea power in reaction and recovery operations. Given the inherent flexibility of sea power and the vast naval capability of the United States, this would seem appropriate. There is little doubt that seapower is a tremendous asset in dealing with crises, in terms both of the ability to respond rapidly and of the capacity for long-term sustainability in recovery operations on-scene. The arrival of a fleet in a contingency essentially brings a floating, self-contained city into the areaa mobile source of supply, command and control, and multidimensional capability. The rapidity with which modern seapower can be deployed and its long-term sustainability make it seem tailor-made for dealing with a large-scale crisis.