If you glance at the map far below (several days ago) you can see Yanbu up there on the top right side on the Saudi coast. The last time I was there was to exchange prisoners offload some unnecessary Explosive Ordnance Disposal guys and their megaton of equipment on Ocean Unit 5. I have no idea what the Harkness did with them but we were well shed of them and we then drifted down to Jeddah to get rid of the rest of the useless supercargo.
While I was there I learned that the Saudis had actually chosen Yanbu as a critical component of the new infrastructure that the Kingdom was building to get around that little geographic trap known as the Strait of Hormuz. They were sufficiently insightful and well advised to see that having 100% of their oil exports flow through a narrow waterway controlled by the Islamic Shiite Republic of Iran was simply a disaster waiting to happen. They were losing tankers every week to missile attacks launched by Iran on ships destined for Dammam and Ras Tanura and could see that there was no end in sight which I'm sure they found particularly bothersome. One might say they did it to themselves but they had help and literally everyone else wanted Iraq to kick Iran's butt in that long dismal pointless war.
So anyway, here we have the most stable monarchy in the world, long called the most conservative stick in the mud since Noah tied off the ark at the end of the float and what were they up to back in 1984? Why yes, they were making sure that they could ship their oil products and receive any goods they wanted without having to risk the narrow waters of the Bab el Mendeb or the Strait of Hormuz. Iran still squats atop the entrance/exit to the Persian Gulf and the very unstable and psychotic Yemenis control the southern access to the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
Yanbu neatly avoids both.
Now ask yourself if there are any strategic geographic traps that we have perhaps been very busy ignoring for the last 50 years or so. Are there any signs at all that we plan to do anything about them? I make mention from time to time that we don't actually have any means to sweep enemy mines laid in the approaches to our harbors or even in our harbors. You can wonder how they would get there but that would simply mean you've never been there.
The Panama Canal is not as important as it was. It's not just that the world gets smaller every time another enormous ship class is built that is actually too big to fit through the canal, it is also because the idiots that operate the country and canal thought they could double their national income by doubling the size of the canal. They didn't think it through. The canal only works because of the rainfall that collects in the Gatun Lake and nobody doubled the rainfall. Every time a ship passes through the canal it takes 52 million gallons of water out of the lake. The hard limit on the canal is not the size or number of locks, it is the amount of rainfall collected by the Lake. The idiots forgot that.
I keep seeing references every day to making sure that we spend way too much money getting ready for a war with China. It is always called the coming war with China and I keep asking how these people expect us to win or fight our way to a draw with China and if they can do neither now, what exactly has to be done to let us win or fight China to a draw in the future and how much will that cost and WHY? Nobody ever answers. They all insist that we need a huge navy to fight China for Taiwan or something and I have yet to see any evidence that the Taiwanese are willing to fight for Taiwan and absent some sincere and massive weapons programs and military buildups by the Taiwanese themselves, I'm not inclined to include them in among our vital interests. We can get whatever it is you can't do without from Vietnam or Thailand.
I've never been to China but I hear they have high speed trains whizzing all over the place and their infrastructure is like brand new....well, OK, they've only had to build it this one time in the last 3000 years which has no doubt saved them a lot of money. They don't spend a lot on defense, on the army or invading other places and they haven't really invaded anybody in my lifetime or even beyond that. They have a track record for not invading other countries that goes way back. Srsly, they should be a lesson to us all in that regard.
It really is true that all politicians and their like minded scalawags do is try to make you afraid of something and then con you into giving them more money to fight against it. Look at them! They made 2 entire generations terrified of CO2!
Look at the leading clowns of Europe who want a war with Russia and are allegedly rushing to spend a trillion $ to fake making a serious military threat to Russia and then they mean to invade Ukraine peacefully and squat on the Russian frontier after Putin has made it pretty damned obvious that he doesn't want NATO troop sitting right on his front porch. I'm sure he's beginning to wonder if he really does have to nuke a city or two just to prove his sincerity since the Europeans seem remarkably obtuse. We should bow out of the NATO and leave the kids to their idiotic spats. Our best shtick may be old but it serves us best if we let them go a little crazy killing each other for a few years before we step in and help. As we noted though at the time, there is very little upside to entering a war on a continent flush with nuclear weapons and long range delivery systems. They are quite literally incapable of behaving rationally and we really don't need to be a party to madness.