A couple of things have happened in the news lately that relate to aircraft carriers:

• The U.S.S. Enterprise, the world’s first nuclear aircraft carrier, was decommissioned.
• Secretary of the Navy Mabus announced that CVN-80, the next Gerald R. Ford class carrier, will be christened “Enterprise”.
• China landed a fighter plane on an aircraft carrier for the first time.

In unrelated news, China has been flexing its muscles in the South China Sea, picking fights with Vietnam, Japan, South Korea, and the Philipines.  This includes tit-for-tat harassment and protests over islands and maps in Chinese passports that include the South China Sea as Chinese territorial waters.

Let’s posit for the sake of discussion that the situation between China and her neighbors is something we need to be concerned about.*  If China, who by the way owns a huge chunk of our debt and is probably not going to be shy about flexing that muscle in a crisis, is making a new move in its chess game to secure territory and natural resources for its economy, what are we, as poker players, going to do to deter them?  Do we sit on the sidelines and make clucking noises and wave our hands, put a naval, air, and land Task Force Smith in the area to act as a “no touchee” symbol to the Chinese, or do we station a credible force in the area to make the Chinese think twice about not playing nice with the other countries in the area?

If we’re going to play this game, then I suggest the third option. The Pentagon has begun to shift its attention toward Asia, so I hope I’m not alone.  We already have significant infrastructure in Okinawa and South Korea, if not large numbers of troops and airplanes.  I don’t believe that the Philipines would complain much if we offered to re-open Clark Air Force Base and put an aircraft carrier and its supporting ships and personnel in Subic Bay.  And the evil part of me wants to believe that it would be a fitting tweak in the Communist tail if we were to station the new U.S.S. Enterprise at Cam Ranh Bay.  We’d have to accelerate construction to get it out there, but hey, if we’re going to stimulate the economy, why not do it in building a ship that we’re going to use for half a century?

Would that be expensive?  You betcha.  Can we afford it?  Probably not, but can we afford to lose easy access to Japan and Korea within the next 10 to 20 years? 

*I’m of the “What’s in it for us?” crowd when it comes to our foreign and military policy, but I’m willing to concede that keeping sea lanes in that part of the world open is in our national interest.