One night in 1898, a fire broke out on the USS Maine, which was anchored in Havana Harbor, igniting the warship’s ammunition and sinking it with the loss of 266 sailors.
That wasn’t what school children were told for decades, but in 1978, Adm. Hyman Rickover convincingly debunked the official version, long the subject of controversy, that the U.S. Navy ship had been destroyed by a mine. That was the version that had led to the Spanish-American War, launched on the battle cry “Remember the Maine!”
On Sunday, the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, described by the Navy as “the most capable, adaptable and lethal combat platform in the world,” was spotted sailing out into the Mediterranean from the coast of Croatia. The Ford and its carrier strike group of five guided missile destroyers and possibly a submarine have been re-deployed to the Caribbean, which is expected to reach in about a week.
The Maine was sent to Cuba to protect American citizens and businesses during the anti-government riots, which had broken out as Cubans sought independence from Spain, although officially, it was there on a friendly visit. The Ford has been deployed to “dismantle Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs) and counter narco-terrorism in defense of the Homeland,” according to a Pentagon statement.
A lot of parallels may be drawn as events take shape in the Caribbean, but there is a big difference between the Maine and the Ford that U.S. taxpayers should be keenly aware of.
In the naval terminology of its day, the Maine was built as an armored cruiser, then re-classified as a second-class battleship at a total cost of more than $2 million. That would be $80 million today.
At a cost of more than $13 billion, the Ford is the most expensive ship ever to sail the seas. It’s the world’s largest aircraft carrier, packed with the latest in U.S. military technology. The idea that a bunch of Venezuelan dope-runners could do any damage to a behemoth like the Ford is unthinkable. As in the unthinkable idea that a bunch of Islamic terrorists could bring down the World Trade Center and crash a jetliner into the Pentagon.
Obviously, the Ford is being deployed as a show of U.S. strength, not to do the dirty work of blowing up drug smugglers. Nevertheless, the most expensive military asset in the nation’s history is being sent into a highly volatile situation, with no clear indication of what the payoff will be. In many ways, this mimics the growing willingness of major investors to assume the risks of investments in artificial intelligence and the government’s willingness to take on added risks from infectious diseases.
With the enthusiastic encouragement of the later-indicted John Bolton, the U.S. took aggressive steps to “turn the screws” on Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro during Donald Trump’s first administration. This inevitably leads to speculation that the United States may be moving on from shooting up boats to some kind of armed intervention in Venezuela itself. But there are reasons to think that won’t be Trump’s next move.
Armed intervention wouldn’t look good on the president’s Nobel Prize resume. His Latin American policy has just scored a big victory with the success of Argentine President Javier Milei’s party in that country’s midterm elections, proving that promising a $30 billion bailout and then threatening to take it back can be an effective alternative to gunboat diplomacy. Like the trade wars, the Ford’s re-deployment may only be the latest step in a long give-and-take process.
Whether it’s enormous bluster or part of a planned military operation, the Ford makes a formidable but inviting target for any nation or “Transnational Criminal Organization” with a deep animosity toward this country and the sense that it has nothing to lose.
There are, incidentally, 4550 U.S. service personnel aboard the Ford.
