The Risks of Failing to See the Sea

This week some 50,000 men and women from 31 countries will conduct an enormous military exercise in and around Norway. Called Trident Juncture 18, it will be one of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s largest exercises since the end of the Cold War. Europe’s roads have seen a procession of military convoys in recent weeks, but few Europeans have noticed the journey of 65 naval vessels, including an aircraft carrier, to Norwegian waters.

To its detriment, the West suffers from what is sometimes called “sea blindness”—a general ignorance of maritime and naval affairs. Even the United Kingdom’s famous Royal Navy needs a team to travel the country illuminating the public about what it does. “I always thought sea blindness particularly bad in Germany, so it was painful to discover that it exists even in a seafaring nation like Britain,” retired Vice Adm. Hans-Joachim Stricker, a former commander of the German fleet, told me.