Prize Essay 1971
SECOND HONORABLE MENTION
The Administration’s public words and international actions of late suggest that President Nixon perceives the “blue water option” to be an attractive strategic prospect. And, of the many moves that must be made, one move—involving our Minuteman missiles—must be made now, while there is yet time.
In six years the United States of America will celebrate its two-hundredth anniversary. The political-military policies adopted in the next half decade will determine in large measure the broad outlines of American grand strategy for the first years of America’s third century. The slowly emerging implications of the Nixon Doctrine seem to indicate that oceans, ships, and maritime prowess will play a far greater role in the U. S. defense posture than in any time since the 1930s, when the U. S. Navy was the first line of defense.
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