The 600-Ship Navy Program
As stated in the preceding Third Place posts, the Socialist Student Economy (SSE) provides each student with ample opportunities to serve the Draft as part of the State’s Three-Year Conscription Policy. Anyone on good terms with the Student Government will see the Student Government returning the favor once the State sends the student their draft card. It is noteworthy that the SSE has Student Cooperatives operating among the State Enterprises of the Military-Industrial Complex. Not all of these Student Cooperatives are involved in the manufacturing of land and aerial-based weapons, munitions, equipment and vehicles. Some can be found working at the Socialist nation’s shipyards on behalf of the naval service of the armed forces. Compared to the army and air force, the navy will find the SSE to be far more helpful due to the ongoing technological developments after 1945.
Prior to 1945, it was once the norm to find nation-states allocating vast amounts of manpower and resources into the production and deployment of Battleships. These warships required massive crews, were resource intensive and their loss to enemy action a serious blow to national morale and prestige on the high seas. Their developments coincided with the inception of the Aircraft Carrier, which competed with Battleships for the role of capital warship, the leading ship in command of a naval fleet. The post-1945 world has witnessed the gradual phasing out of Battleships and a greater overemphasis on Aircraft Carriers, even though the US is the only nation capable of fielding multiple Aircraft Carriers as capital warships.
The Jeffersonians particularly favored the Aircraft Carrier in a manner reminiscent of the Freedom-Security Dialectic. In essence, the post-1945 ideal was to employ the abilities of the Aircraft Carrier to project power throughout the Eurasian landmass in the interests of the Empire of Liberty. This naval strategy has seen the Jeffersonians devoting increasing sums of Kapital and Schuld toward the research, design, development, and deployment of a larger variant of Aircraft Carrier, the “Supercarrier.” Nobody except them can afford the production, let alone the loss, of a few Supercarriers. Such a naval strategy is feasible thanks to the US Dollar achieving its status as the World Reserve Currency as part of the Empire of Liberty. Here, it is self-evident that Kapital and Schuld are both at play in the Supercarrier and also why only the US is capable of fielding them.
With this perspective in mind, a “600-Ship Navy,” the goal that the Democratic-Republican Party established for itself under Ronald Reagan, is worthy of mention here. It should also be noted that the concept did not originate with the Reagan administration or the Monroean Faction (Republicans) and Madisonian Faction (Democrats). The plans originated from US Department of Defense strategies dating back to its military buildup prior to the Vietnam War. Those plans had called for the recommissioning of pre-1945 Iowa-class Battleships, boosting production of the Nimitz-class Supercarriers, preventing planned obsolescence of US warships by installing post-1945 naval technologies and simultaneously heralding a massive naval rearmaments plan.
A reinterpretation of the 600-Ship Navy, courtesy of The Work-Standard, reveals an Implicit Intent that the US Military-Industrial Complex is incapable of fulfilling for the Jeffersonians. In essence, the US Military-Industrial Complex has tried in vain to emulate the successes (and the failures) of STEP (Soviet-Type Economic Planning) and PTEP (Prussian-Type Economic Planning), reapplying them to their long-forgotten experiences in the Vietnam War. Whatever valuable strategic experiences that the US Military-Industrial Complex may have gained was unfortunately lost in the wake of budgetary cuts by the Democratic-Republican Party due to the “Vietnam Syndrome” that has never subsided ever since. The persistence of Vietnam Syndrome ought to be reinterpreted as a lasting testament to the American people’s genuine resentments toward the Empire of Liberty, their loyalties to the Federalist American Union and the Federalist Party.
Even so, the implications of this 600-Ship Navy for the Democratic-Republican Party should be obvious: to defend the Empire of Liberty against the usual players on the Eurasian landmass. One may even be inclined to call it “Wealth Inequality” because the Jeffersonians cannot allow anyone on the Eurasian landmass to possess comparable strike capabilities. Only the Democratic-Republican Party can possess absolute naval supremacy capable over controlling the world’s oceans and seas, forcing Alexander Hamilton’s United States Navy to become the same “British Royal Navy” that it had once fought in the American Revolutionary War. But if the usual players on the Eurasian landmass–like the German Reich, Soviet Union, People’s Republic of China, Imperial Japan, Fascist Italy, Ayatollah’s Iran, Ottoman Sultanate, and DPRK–had comparable strike capabilities, the socioeconomic, financial, military-industrial, geopolitical inequalities created by the Empire of Liberty will finally be addressed. A total shift in the balance of power is inevitable, allowing the world to restore that faint glimmer of an entirely different world order that could have challenged the Empire of Liberty in the early 20th century.
Of course, the Jeffersonians are aware of the implications of the Socialist world order emerging on the Eurasian landmass. They had resorted to Arms Control measures as a Foreign Policy analogue to their own Gun Control measures in Domestic Policy. It then becomes reasonable for the Democratic-Republican Party to justify a “Arms Control Treaty” against the American people, just as the Democratic-Republican Party can also capable introduce a “Assault Weapons Ban” on the usual players in the Eurasian landmass. After all, the Jeffersonians are the only ones on Earth to declare a National Emergency under Executive Order 12170 because of a Foreign Policy issue that just so happened to have a Domestic Policy issue serving as its pretext. The US Constitutional precedent concerning “Economic Sanctions” declared by the Democratic-Republican Party was made possible by dozens of other National Emergencies introduced after 1979.
As with Economic Sanctions, the Jeffersonians can achieve similar result by declaring “Arms Embargos” against the Military-Industrial Complexes of Socialist nations. A Jeffersonian Congress and President can legally block all exportations of American-made armaments to any Totality and their State. What applies to the Totality and their State will also applies to the Student Government and its SSE. Only in the contexts of the SSE will the correlation between Arms Control and Gun Control becomes apparent. The difference between a “Right to Bear Arms” and a “Right to Control the Size and Composition of the Armed Forces” are in reality nil.
The Student Cooperatives and Student Exchanges
Imagine that, somewhere on the Eurasian landmass, there is a Socialist Nation that the Democratic-Republican Party is doing everything short of an actual invasion to impose Regime Change. The Jeffersonians, along with the Madisonians and Monroeans, strongly resent the Socialist Nation, unleashing their entire arsenal of Economic Sanctions and Arms Embargos on par with the Washington Naval Treaty and Versailles Treaty. The Democratic-Republican Party forbids all US Citizens from establishing any and all economic and financial Enterprises with that the Socialist Nation. If US Citizens are not already forbidden, they are intimidated and dissuaded from traveling to the Socialist Nation as tourists or as teachers. The latter in particular involves a US Citizen teaching American English to the student body of the Socialist Nation’s SSE.
Furthermore, this Socialist Nation is neither the German Reich and Soviet Union, nor People’s Republic of China and Imperial Japan, nor Fascist Italy and Ayatollah’s Iran, nor Ottoman Sultanate, and DPRK. Under normal circumstances, the whole Socialist Nation will never find those ten to be potential allies. The Democratic-Republican Party prefers the Socialist Nation to perceive all ten to be enemies, forcing its Totality and State to suffer the same disastrous fate that befell Prussia in the early 20th century. The Student Government, meanwhile, is far more hopeful of the student body’s futures, advocating for the People’s Party to align the Socialist Nation with them (or, at the very least, the Student Governments of those ten).
Is it possible for the Socialist Nation to forge fragile alignments with these “Pariahs” of the Empire of Liberty? Not only are there historical precedents dating as far back as Diplomatic Revolution of the Seven-Years War (or the “French and Indian War” in US History), Vladimir Lenin himself even saw the strategic value in the form of Cooperatives.
“I now propose to discuss with the reader what can and must at once be done practically on the basis of this ‘cooperative’ principle. By what means can we, and must we, start at once to develop this ‘cooperative’ principle so that its Socialist meaning may be clear to all?”
To recontextualize Lenin’s On Cooperation in a different light, Cooperatives are not just for Domestic Policy. They can also be repurposed to further a Foreign Policy, capable of laying the metaphysical groundwork for a grand alliance united around common interests. I can even imagine these Student Cooperatives operating under the direct command of the Student Government to be retrofitted to facilitate Student Exchanges capable of building diplomatic ties with the Pariahs.
“A social system emerges only if it has the financial backing of a definite class. There is no need to mention the hundreds of millions of Rubles that the birth of ‘free’ capitalism cost. At present we have to realize that the cooperatives system is a social system we must now give more than ordinary assistance, and we must actually give that assistance. But it must be assistance in the real sense of the word, i.e., it will not be enough to interpret it to mean assistance for any kind of cooperative trade; by assistance we must mean aid to cooperative trade in which really large masses of the population actually take part. It is certainly a correct form of assistance to give a bonus to peasants who take part in cooperative trade; but the whole point is to verify the nature of this participation, to verify the awareness behind it, and to verify its quality. Strictly speaking, when a cooperator goes to a village and opens cooperative store, the people take no part in this whenever; but at the same time guided by their own interests they will hasten to try to take part in it.”
In closing, is it possible for the SSE of the Socialist Nation to be conducting clandestine research, design, development, and production of its own 600-Ship Navy to surpass the ambitions of the US Navy’s 600-Ship Navy Program? What would be the strategic role of the Pariahs and their SSEs?
We will find out soon enough in the second half of this Third Place Post.
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