In 1980 President Jimmy Carter announced what has become known as the Carter Doctrine following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan stating the the Persian Gulf was a US strategic interest and any attempt to disrupt it would be met by US military force. The Reagan Corollary to the Carter Doctrine stated that the US would defend Saudi Arabia from any threats within the Persian Gulf. The purpose of both was to ensure that 32 million barrels of oil which flow out of the Persian Gulf each day, representing 40% of the world's oil supply, did not suffer interruption. No such interruption, in peace or war, has occurred within the 40 yrs since. That is due in principal fact to the existence and efforts of the United States Navy.
That's roughly $2 billion dollars a day in oil which flows through the Strait of Hormuz each and every day, keeping the lights on so to speak from the Orient to Europe. Remember that number, we'll be coming back to it.
The Suez Canal, through which a fair amount of that oil travels, has now been closed for a few days. The estimated losses to the world economy approach $10 billion dollars a day, and may well be higher, the full effects of which will not be felt for yet some time.
The USS Gerald R Ford will cost upwards of $16 billion to build before it's complete and ready for sea duty. It's estimated cost was $12 billion and, presumably, the two subsequent carriers following it will be closer to that number. The Ford will be, as each of our 11 carriers which serve in rotation of 4 operational, the centerpiece of a carrier battle group. It has been either the presence or the threat of the presence of the US Navy carrier battlegroup which has kept the oil flowing out of the Persian Gulf.
There exists some not small confusion upon the purpose of the US Navy. It does not primarily exist to fight wars within the Middle East, nor with China should that become necessary. It exists to keep the sea lanes of the world open, and open for purposes of the trade which fuels the world economy, without which every nation would be impoverished, including our own. It does exist for those more direct examples of national defense of US strategic interests, but the primary US strategic interest is freedom of navigation.
The US world interest is mistakenly held to be the exporting of democracy; that's but a possible side benefit. The overarching interest of the US in the world is economic freedom, of which freedom of the seas is not just an integral part, it's the core integral part. That we export western liberalism, the core virtues of which are humility, tolerance, and forbearance, is an important side benefit for without them freedom, via the mechanism of trade, is always constrained. Again, the world runs on trade.
The world is currently losing, collectively, nearly the cost of a US aircraft carrier every day the Suez Canal remains closed. (If its closed for long, shipping companies will start to reaccrue some of those losses by sailing around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa, adding at least a week to their voyages.) Closing the Strait of Hormuz would be the equivalent cost of a US carrier each week. We send, by the way, about $1.4 billion in foreign aid to Egypt each year. We can think of it as cheap, just for that nation keeping it canal open again threats foreign and domestic.
The viral pandemic has given all of us some idea as to the scope of economic losses such events can produce. We've lost trillions alone within the US. That matters because dollars are not just trade, or oil, they're food and shelter as well. There's a lot of money moving around the world, and it takes a lot of money to keep the world working, but the end tangible result is prosperity and within our own lifetime the eradication of poverty. That's what freedom produces via the mechanism of capitalism and trade.
There exist at least a dozen of what are known as choke points within the world's sea lanes, with Suez and the Strait of Hormuz being but two. The Strait of Malacca, the Panama Canal, the Strait of Gibraltar, and the English Channel, are others. All of those are places by the very nature of their geography which can stifle or stop world trade. We largely don't worry about a nation like Singapore closing the Strait of Malacca, though it could easily do so, crippling the world economy. We don't because Singapore has become a wealthy nation, as has the US, based upon nothing more than world trade. It wants to close the Strait no more than does the US want to close the Port of New York, simply because both would have a similar effect.
While other nations have a role, and there are frequently European and Chinese navies patrolling the Gulf of Aden to suppress piracy, no nation can more, or better, secure freedom of navigation worldwide than can the United States, and it does so only by the good efforts of the US Naval Service. When next you think about not just your taxes, but the entire US economy, consider that but 4% of the annual wealth of the US goes to national defense, and out of that is funded the US Navy. That's four cents out of every dollar you make, in broad terms, while it costs us nearly 20 cents just for our health care system, which may someday save your life, but isn't going to keep you out of poverty or the wolf from the door. Of course, come what may, it may save lives as well, as surely as that has happened before.