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jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:
lest we forget: the US Navy was *formed* to fight for freedom of navigation, and now Herr Trump is abandoning it:
“Quasi-War with France (1798–1800) — The First Military Response
The very first time the US used military force specifically to protect its ships’ right to sail freely was the Quasi-War with France. French privateers seized over 300 American merchant vessels in just nine months starting in October 1796, after France objected to the Jay Treaty with Britain. Congress established the Department of the Navy in 1798 and deployed 21 warships, which quickly degraded French privateering in the West Indies. This was an undeclared naval war fought entirely over the right to navigate and trade freely.
First Barbary War (1801–1805) — The Landmark Precedent
The more famous and philosophically significant episode was Jefferson’s war against the Barbary States (Tripoli, Algiers, Tunis, Morocco). When Tripoli demanded increased tribute and declared war in May 1801, Jefferson took the position that the sea belongs to no sovereign — you cannot toll the ocean or charge admission to international waters. He sent the Navy and Marines, scoring the first American military victory on foreign soil at the Battle of Derna in 1805 — immortalized in the line “to the shores of Tripoli” in the Marines’ Hymn.
These wars established free navigation as a founding doctrine of American maritime policy, long before the formal Freedom of Navigation Program was institutionalized by the Carter administration in 1979.”