It’s June 2025. Do you know where your fleet is?

The idea of a world without the benefit of preponderant American seapower may sound alarmist and farfetched. Unfortunately, those who follow military cutbacks and world affairs know that it isn’t. Indeed, the following scenario is all too plausible. .  .  .

Seapower

U.S. Department of Defense

In 2020, several major European nations default on their debt. Contagion in the financial markets plunges the world economy into global depression. From 2020 to 2025, the U.S. economy contracts from $20 trillion to $12 trillion. During this time, two successive U.S. presidents seek and obtain deep cuts in the size of the U.S. armed forces. Homeland security becomes the main focus of the Department of Defense, with policy-makers concentrating on port and border security, land-based strategic nuclear forces, antiterrorism, and managing civil unrest.

The global implications of this retrenchment are stark. China’s claims on the South China Sea—previously disputed by virtually all nations in the region and routinely contested by U.S. and partner naval forces—are accepted as a fait accompli, effectively putting the entire expanse under Chinese hegemony. Korea, unified in 2017 after the implosion of the North, signs a mutual defense treaty with China. Japan is increasingly isolated and executes long-rumored plans to create a nuclear weapons capability.

India, recognizing that its previous role as a balancer to China has lost relevance with the pullback of the Americans, agrees to supplement Chinese naval power in the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf to protect the flow of oil to Southeast Asia. China agrees to exercise increased influence over Pakistan.