When the world's at stake,
go beyond the headlines.

In 2021, Claude Berube wrote “Is America Still Born to Rule the Seas?” for War on the Rocks, in which he argued that China has overtaken the United States in terms of naval balance of power. In response to a recent U.S. Navy report highlighting major delays in production of key ships and submarines, we asked him to look back on the article.Read more below.Photo Credit: U.S. Navy (Photo by Seaman Marvin Gabriel)In your article “Is America Still Born to Rule the Seas?” written in 2021, you argued that the Chinese navy has overtaken the U.S. Navy, which now operates a smaller, older, and more frequently deployed fleet. You argued that China is not a rising naval power but rather one that has already risen. Over the past three years, what has the United States done to compete with the Chinese navy? It seems that the United States has taken one step forward and two steps backward with regard to the Navy since 2021. Shortly before this piece first appeared, the United States had the largest navy in the world; today, the People’s Republic of China holds that title. Simply put, China is outbuilding the United States. Since then, the United States has built five destroyers, China seven. The United States added seven littoral combat ships, but those will have questionable utility in a war with China, and China added seven frigates. The U.S. Navy’s surface combatants are on average twice as old as People’s Liberation Army Navy surface combatants. In the past decade, China has built approximately three times the number of surface combatants as the United States. One-third of the surface combatants the United States has built in the past decade have been littoral combat ships, four of which have already been decommissioned. Certainly there are other types of platforms and