Sailors Defy Navy Secretary, Expose US Strategic Weakness
April 7— “What the f—-!” defiant sailors shouted on the deck of the USS Theodore Roosevelt. They were interrupting Acting Secretary of the Navy, Thomas Modly. He had been dispatched to calm their near- mutinous anger over the firing of their captain, Brett Crozier.
Captain Crozier was fired after writing a letter complaining of the dangers the crew faced on his Covid-19 infested aircraft carrier. The letter had been leaked to the press, exposing the whole world the US naval vulnerabilities in the South China Sea.
Today, Modly himself was fired for failing to calm the sailors. This episode, and the chaos in the military chain of command, is yet another defeat for the “Pivot to Asia.”
“The Pivot to Asia” is a US strategy meant to contain China’s development. It involves continually deploying two aircraft carriers to the region, installing new missile systems in South Korea and deepening trade, commercial and military ties through the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). It has not been a success.
The TPP collapsed whereas China’s trade and commercial agreements took hold. The Philippines leaned away from the US and toward China. The assignment of two aircraft carrier groups backfired. Instead of showcasing imperial strength, it revealed US over-reach.
The impressive hi-tech Navy is staffed by exhausted, overworked sailors. As a result, the state-of-the-art warships kept crashing into passing merchant ships or stationary rocks!
Now comes the latest defeat in the low intensity “Battle for the South China Sea.” Both aircraft carriers assigned to the zone are temporarily out of commission. The USS Reagan is docked in Japan. The USS Roosevelt is battling Covid–19 and near mutiny.
So, if the personal protection equipment (masks and gowns) made in China that the US ordered are now in transit across the South China Sea, they are guarded solely by the Chinese Navy!
Captain Crozier was fired for asking for help in fighting the virus on his ship. Higher-ups claimed that his letter was a betrayal of his mission. As he walked off his ship, thousands of sailors cheered him. He is now in quarantine in Guam, diagnosed with Covid-19 as are 150 other members of his crew.
The top military leadership fears a revolt by rank-and-file sailors that could have been fueled by their captain’s solidarity and the slow efforts of the navy’s leadership to help. A sailors’ revolt could have echoed throughout the military.
That worries the bosses more than the letter itself. Sailors’ support for the captain was in open defiance of the high command. So was their reaction to the Acting Secretary of the Navy, Modly.
Soldiers and Sailors: Key to Communist Revolution
For the bosses, rank and file sailors are expendable. But these sailors have the power to destroy the capitalist system by turning the guns around and joining the working class in communist revolution. Covid-19 has crippled one of the most powerful assets the bosses have to control the seas. But a sailors’ revolt could spark a revolutionary situation.
The organized militancy of soldiers and sailors has played a key role in sabotaging imperialist war. Examples include the 1905 mutiny on the Russian battleship Potemkin and the uprising in the Indian navy at the end of World War II. During the US war in Vietnam, US soldiers killed their own officers and refused, en masse, to engage on the battlefield. Sailors organized petition campaigns, rebelled on the Kitty Hawk, refused orders to deploy on the Constitution, and totally sabotaged the Forrestal and the Ranger.
It’s true, as Crozier wrote, that the US is not technically at war and no sailor needs to die. But thousands of service men and women have died for the bosses’ profit and power in recent conflicts around the world.
The Covid 19 crisis must be a wake-up call to our working-class sisters and brothers in the Armed Forces. The ruling class doesn’t fight its own wars but sends us and our family to fight for them. It’s way past time for sailors, soldiers, airmen/women to take our future in our own hands. We’ll build a communist system where the safety and health of all humans will be a priority.
American sailors and soldiers were active in the fight against the US war in Vietnam—from the video Sir! No Sir!
READ OUR PAMPHLET:
“Soldiers, Sailors, Marines: Crucial to a Communist Workers’ Revolution”
available at icwpredflag.org/mpe.pdf