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The Free Sea: The American Fight for Freedom of Navigation
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About The Free Sea: The American Fight For Freedom Of
Product Description The Free Sea offers a unique, single-volume analysis of incidents that challenged U.S. freedom of navigation at sea. The book spans more than two hundred years, from the Quasi-War with France in 1798 to contemporary freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea. Since World War II, the struggle for freedom of navigation has pulled the United States to the brink of war with Vietnam during the Gulf of Tonkin incident, North Korea with the seizure of the USS Pueblo in 1968, and Cambodia with the capture of the SS Mayaguez. In the 1980s, Libya's "line of death" across the Gulf of Sidra and Iran's "tanker war" in the Persian Gulf drew the United States into conflicts. During the Cold War U.S. and Russian navies clashed over navigational rights in the Black Sea--and an incident that led to amicable agreement on the right of innocent passage. Today, China poses perhaps the greatest challenge to freedom of navigation since Germany's unrestricted U-boat campaigns as it seeks to regulate U.S. naval operations in the South China and East China Seas. Freedom of the seas is the foundation of all sea power and a bedrock principle of international law and global order. Separated from the centers of power in Europe and Asia by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the United States has relied on the principles of freedom of navigation for economic prosperity and military security. James Kraska and Raul Pedrozo focus on the struggle to safeguard that freedom. Challenges to U.S. warships and maritime commerce have pushed, and continue to challenge, the United States to vindicate its rights through diplomatic, legal, and military means, underscoring the need for the strategic resolve to ensure freedom in the global maritime commons. Review " The Free Sea depicts a more realistic and accurate image of the United States as an assertive-but-equal, and sometimes vulnerable, maritime player…. The book is a well-researched, well-argued, and well-written book. Kraska and Pedrozo are to be commended for their effort." -- The Strategy Bridge "James Kraska and Raul Pedrozo's book is a timely piece of scholarship to facilitate greater understanding about freedom of navigation from American perspective." -- Maritime Issues "Kraska and Pedrozo have provided not only an invaluable description of the threat China presents to the U.S. Navy, but a guide to legal ripostes to Chinese behavior that can be implemented now. They have written a handbook for action and a historical justification that all officials working on China must read." --Naval War College Review "This is an important read, pertinent and illuminating." The NAVY Magazine "[A] useful, accessible, and nicely documented assemblage and analysis of significant episodes in the American experience not just for policymakers and those who study international law and the law of the sea, but for aviators, diplomats, historians, political scientists, sailors, and others more generally." --The American Journal of International Law "In their superb and elegantly written book, The Free Sea, James Kraska and Raul Pedrozo argue that protecting freedom of navigation is an international good and that failing to do so cracks today's international system. They are right. Freedom of navigation at sea is essential to global commerce, the U.S.'s ability to project power, and communicate with allies around the world. China, Russia, and Iran are challenging the principle today. The Free Sea explains why it must be defended. The book should be read by everyone who wants the U.S. to remain a great power." -- Seth Cropsey, Director, Hudson Institute Center for American Seapower "This sophisticated yet approachable book chronicles the 200-year fight for freedom of navigation by the U.S. Navy. From the Quasi-War with France and Barbary Wars to the 'Tanker War' in the Persian Gulf and China's dangerous gambit in the South China Sea, this story shows how the perilous failure to stand up for
