18. More Navy
Not content with one hour of arguing that Britain should double down on a powerful navy at the expense of all other military spending, we’re back for more - plus lamentations about not having joined the navy ourselves, examinations of our youthful decision making, tales of naval derring do from our family mythologies, and the slightly heretical suggestion that we’d perhaps be better off as the 51st state of the USA.
So what’s so great about a navy?
It’s a more strategic weapon. Large scale warfare boils down to trade, getting the materials you need to keep fighting and being able to support your allies. Disrupt this and you win, much more comprehensively and quickly than via other means, and this is what warships do well.
It’s a lot more humane. Air power ultimately comes down to bombing civilians, while naval power tends more towards starving your opponents of the materials they need to keep fighting. Less collateral damage, but also a shorter war - and a shorter war is a more humane war. And even more humane is a war that never happens. If you can present a credible threat that you can take down an enemy’s trade network they are much less likely to start a conflict in the first place.
It would allow us to become the insurgents. Yes the Somalis and Yemenis have been projecting force hundreds of miles into the ocean with their tiny boats and embarrassing much larger powers, but that’s because the West has chosen to do nothing about them. We absolutely could smash them if we had the political will. Remember, the rules are a bit different on the ocean - you can’t hide. Well, you can, but you need nuclear attack submarines to do so - with these as the new capital ships, it would actually be the Brits who would be taking advantage of asymmetric warfare.
Finally, a major national project like this would provide Britain with a shot in the arm, a narrative to bring us together and revive our animal spirits. Everyone would get excited, believe in it, make sacrifices for it, and want to get involved - perhaps even turning down the high salary graduate job for a career on the High Seas.
As an aside, the record will show that we recorded this before the 2024 US election and called it perfectly... unlike some other podcasters we could mention.