Taiwan and Trafalgar: Lessons From the Past for Today’s US Navy

Oct 17, 2025 - 01:00
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Taiwan and Trafalgar: Lessons From the Past for Today’s US Navy

Admiral Samuel Paparo, head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and former commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, testified before Congress in April 2025 about the growing threat from the People’s Liberation Army and Navy in the western Pacific and beyond. “China,” he said, “continues to pursue unprecedented military modernization and increasingly aggressive behavior that threatens the U.S. homeland, our allies, and our partners.” (RELATED: China’s Threat to Taiwan: Intentions and Capabilities)

China’s aggressive exercises near and around Taiwan, he continued, “are not just exercises — they are rehearsals for forced unification.” China, he said, “is out-producing the United States in air, maritime, and missile capability,” building combatants at the rate of 6-to-less than 2 for the U.S. China’s aggressive moves and military, especially naval, buildup may be presenting the U.S. Navy with its Trafalgar moment. At stake may be control of the western and central Pacific Ocean. (RELATED: Japan Set to Elect Female Nationalist, Pro-Taiwan, Anti-China Hawk as Next PM)

Oct. 21, 2025, will be the 220th anniversary of the naval Battle of Trafalgar, fought off the coast of Cadiz, Spain, by the British fleet under the command of Admiral Horatio Nelson and a combined French-Spanish fleet in the midst of the Napoleonic Wars. Bonaparte at the time controlled most of the European continent, and the combined French-Spanish fleet confronted what Alfred Thayer Mahan described as those “far-distant, storm-beaten ships … [that] stood between [France] and the dominion of the world.” A French-Spanish naval victory at Trafalgar would have made Napoleonic France supreme on land and at sea. “Make us masters of the [English] Channel,” Bonaparte told his admirals, “and we are masters of the world.”

But, as Winston Churchill later noted, “Britannia remained unreconciled, unconquered, implacable … mistress of the seas and oceans … facing this immense combination alone, sullen, fierce, and almost unperturbed.”

Nelson’s navy defeated the combined French-Spanish fleet at Trafalgar, a heroic victory that cost Nelson his life. Although Britain’s victory at Trafalgar did not directly lead to Napoleon’s final defeat — he won more victories on land at Austerlitz, Jena, Auerstadt, and Friedland after Trafalgar, and only suffered final defeat at Waterloo in June 1815 — it prevented him from invading and conquering Great Britain, which would have eliminated all effective opposition to France in the Eastern Hemisphere, leaving him free to turn his whole strength toward the Western Hemisphere, including the United States.

Technology will matter, but so will numbers because China is closing the technological gap with the United States.

Trafalgar was fought during the age of sail. If conflict breaks out in the western Pacific between the United States and China over Taiwan, the warships will be nuclear-powered, armed with precision-guided missiles, naval air power, cyber warfare capabilities, anti-satellite weapons, submarines, on-shore hypersonic missiles, and perhaps even tactical nuclear weapons. Technology will matter, but so will numbers because China is closing the technological gap with the United States. (RELATED: Competing With China in the Gray Zone)

Geography will matter — and it favors China. It is unclear whether China would be fighting with Russia and perhaps North Korea, and whether Japanese, Filipino, South Korean, British, and Australian forces would fight with the U.S. What is clear, however, is that the victor in such a war would effectively control the western and central Pacific Ocean. If China wins such a conflict, there would be nothing standing between it and our Pacific coast, except for the U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal — which the Pentagon says China will match by 2030. (RELATED: We’ll Need Innovation to Fight China, But Will We Have it?)

Admiral Paparo said that he remains confident that the United States can effectively deter a Chinese attack/invasion/blockade of Taiwan, but “the trajectory must change.” The correlation of forces has been shifting in China’s favor as the U.S. was distracted by peripheral conflicts. “Deterrence remains our highest duty,” according to Admiral Paparo, but “it must be backed by real, winning combat power.” (RELATED: Trump’s Reinvigoration of the Monroe Doctrine Informs His Turn to Greenland)

As America celebrates the 250th anniversary of its navy, let us pledge to ensure that we possess and deploy that “real, winning combat power” that will deter and, if necessary, defeat China in the event of war. The United States Navy must, to borrow Churchill’s words, remain “mistress of the seas and oceans” and face China’s challenge “unreconciled, unconquered, implacable.” That is the true lesson of Trafalgar.

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