Opinion: 'We forget': Lessons from war can help us protect ourselves in a dangerous world

When I was a boy in the 1950s, paradise for my family was a pine-paneled cottage at the top of Shurtleff Road halfway between Eastham Campground and Thumpertown beaches. A winding path brought us through the beach grass to the edge of the dune and the fadeproof blue waters of Cape Cod Bay at high tide or its russet-toned flats at low.

As beautiful and mesmerizing as the wide-open vista that unfolded before my eyes, was the rusting hulk of the SS James Longstreet, what we all called “the target ship”. At the time, I was too young to understand what it represented literally and signified symbolically. To a 7-year-old boy, it was simply a conspicuous and intriguing anomaly sitting unexpectedly in the bay where my brothers and I swam each day.

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The Longstreet, a cargo ship, was one of the nearly 3,000 liberty ships built in American shipyards from 1941 until the end of the war. After its service, it was intentionally scuttled by the Department of Defense in April 1945 on a shoal in the bay for bombing and searchlight practice. Aircraft from the South Weymouth Naval Air Station and the Cape’s Otis Air Force Base used it for target practice. The ship’s presence was a reminder of America’s resolve, industrial competence and democratic ideals. It quickly became a well-known postcard icon. Once in full view, the target ship has rusted into oblivion, but to those with long memories, it lingers still.

Living in the shadow of the Cold War

World War II ended four years before I was born, but as a child in the Cold War 1950s and 60s, the war cast a long shadow given Soviet hegemony, the Berlin Wall, Nikita Khrushchev and the Cuban missile crisis. Along with many Americans in 1963, I (then a teenager) read the apocalyptic novel "Fail-Safe" about a group of American bombers armed with nuclear weapons mistakenly streaking towards Moscow. I was waking up to the reality that the world is a dangerous place and was beginning to understand why on some summer nights the sky lit up with white flashes of light accompanied by the explosive booming of falling practice bombs.

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Today, it is difficult to imagine that blemishing the daytime scenery of the bay from Brewster to Wellfleet with an old warship would be tolerated, much less the nighttime display of noisy engines, triangulating searchlights and the whistle of small-scale ordnance that occurred during target practice. But in the 1950s and 60s we were a nation standing at attention. Along with our allies, we had defeated German Nazism and Italian Fascism and were now confronting Soviet Communism. Aesthetics be damned.

Russian invasion of Ukraine reminds us the world can be a dangerous place

Today, as a result of Russia’s ruthless invasion of Ukraine, we are reminded that the world is still an unpredictably dangerous place. We’ve known this in the abstract, I suppose, but compared to Europeans, we Americans have led a relatively charmed life. If we are honest with ourselves, we will admit that a year ago it was unthinkable to most of us that one nation would unleash missiles on the civilian population of a sovereign nation in an unprovoked war, even though the former has maintained an occupational force in 20% of the republic of Georgia since 2008 and had annexed Crimea in 2014.

Did these actions not register? Is American amnesia at fault? Were the lessons of the 1938 Munich Agreement too far back in time to have signaled a present-day warning?

We can talk all we want about a rules-based international order, but Ukrainians from Mariupol know first-hand that Geneva Convention agreements count for little in the presence of short and long-range range ballistic missiles. In his influential book "Man, the State, and War" (1959), Kenneth Waltz, a founder of neorealism, argued that because we live in a world without a central government and its enforcement procedures, every country must fend for itself, which translates first to spending on defense; second, to forging sound alliances. Oh, that it were otherwise, but now even Sweden is intent on joining NATO. The Russia/Ukraine differential in regard to defense spending is 10:1. America’s Javelins and Stingers along with NATO’s assorted weaponry have helped shrink the gap and played a significant role in Ukraine’s ability to stand up to Russia with resolve and grit that has moved us all. But….

Military training vs. environment

I am not a hawk when it comes to defense spending, nor am I an expert on the intricacies of line-item defense budget expenditures. However, it is easy to imagine that large amounts of money are wasted on pork-barrel defense projects, so the argument often expressed that we can’t afford to keep spending more money on the Pentagon because we need that money here at home might prove a reasonable one. But who has the crystal ball that tells us how much to spend and on what? In light of the above, two local matters with national import strike me as worthy of our attention.

There were few objections to the bombing of the target ship until the early '70s, at which time the practice was suspended, so it bears noting that today several individuals and groups are objecting to the National Guard’s proposed 5,000-acre machine gun range at Camp Edwards. My gut reaction is to question any proposal that calls for the clear-cutting of 170 acres of forest, but I won’t presume to evaluate how essential a machine gun range on Cape Cod is to our national security. Undoubtedly, there is a case to be made for the training of military machine gun operators, but there is also a case to be made that questions the appropriateness of locating it on Cape Cod. At issue? Whether the range will adversely affect the region’s watershed and wildlife habitat and generate unwarranted traffic and noise.

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While I am ambivalent about the proposed machine gun range, I am reassured by another development. Because of the rapid pace of technological change, the tools of warfare have evolved significantly since the days of the SS James Longstreet, so it is especially interesting to learn about the Cape Cod Space Force Station and the renewed sense of purpose its name change (Air Force to Space Force) signifies. Its mission is to monitor missile launches and high-satellite “interest passes” in order to protect our electronic grids and other technological infrastructure such as our GPS systems, communication satellites, surveillance reconnaissance programs and strategic missile warning systems. This wide-scale undertaking — counter action to Russia’s ongoing cyber harassment and China’s predatory inclinations — is very much in accord with our proactive Cold War thinking. In light of the disaster unfolding in Ukraine, I think it likely that no one who looks into this multi-pronged program will question its importance.

In her novel "Animal Dreams," Barbara Kingsolver refers to “the American disease” and characterizes it simply as “We forget.” Amid all the problems that lurk in a volatile world, one thing strikes me now as crystal clear — when it comes to protecting ourselves, we need to remember to maintain the long view. Although it may seem counter-intuitive, it is easier to do the older one gets. The target ship is gone, but from my usual vantage point at Thumpertown Beach, I still look for it a little to the left on the horizon.

This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Cape Cod: We must remember the lessons from war to protect our future