This solemn week marking the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania, reminded us of the loss of thousands of Americans, and citizens of other countries. Thoreau’s silent arsenal of time may have caused many to forget that the second highest single day of deaths by violence in our nation’s history changed much of our world.
The 2,977 killed on September 11 is surpassed only by more than 3,000 killed at the Battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862. Americans living through the Civil War knew there would be more days of Union and Confederate soldiers blasting away at each other. Twenty-five years ago, Americans braced for more domestic terror attacks far into the future. One did not need to be an alarmist to think more terror cells were waiting to strike.
A free nation wants to know what went wrong preceding a catastrophe. Our intelligence services and law enforcement agencies, we learned, operated in silos, often keeping important information from each other. We corrected, overcorrected and adjusted our national security systems. We continue to engage in a robust national debate on the role of the security state and personal freedom.
Our allies stood with us. America’s strength comes not only from our own military, weapons, and wealth. Allies multiply and extend our power. More than 50 nations assisted us with troops and logistical support in the war against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. That was a visible, concentrated demonstration of our many alliances. They have quietly continued to keep us safe and allow us to engage in expanding the blessings of freedom together.
President Donald Trump disdains alliances with free nations. He denigrates and democracies and embraces tyrants. Our allies have begun to more than wonder if Trump is a one-off nightmare for the world order based on reliable rules. Each week the president’s noxious ramblings raise doubts that we will go back to before with a new leader in 2029.
The damage from these erratic and often impulsive policies is difficult to rank. Any accounting of them will include Connecticut. Much of our prosperity depends on exporting to and importing from other nations. The idiotic trade war with Canada is only one example. When the world becomes a more dangerous place, America and other nations turn to Connecticut, yes, us, to design and manufacture new advanced weapons.
Our natural resources do not include oil, natural gas, or precious metals. Connecticut is home to brains.
The world’s leading submarines and fighter jets do not design themselves. Submarines planned and manufactured on the Connecticut shoreline are the best in the world. At a time when drones and missile technology are changing the nature of armed conflict, submarines remain essential to a nation’s defense.
This summer, the federal government issued a $76.6 billion award to General Dynamics for 14 submarines, nine Virginia-Class attack submarines and five Columbia-Class ballistic missile submarines. It is, as the hero of this story pointed out in June, “the largest shipbuilding contract in modern history.”
That hero is U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, of the state’s Second Congressional District. The Vernon Democrat has become the leader who has made the most enduring contribution to the state’s economy. That historic contract includes $5 billion for supplier and workforce improvements.
Courtney has steadily increased his influence in Congress on defense matters. When I asked my former state legislative colleague if rapid changes in weapons technology brought on by Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s full-scale invasion of that democracy undermines the value of submarines, he quickly replied, “There is some armchair chatter that meta computers and AI could make undersea more transparent, but it’s all bar talk. US subs are still the quietest in the world, and the US Navy never stops in developing new stealth technologies.”
Opportunities abound. Last month, Courtney announced a $13.6 million award to the University of Connecticut from the National Institute for Undersea Vehicle Technology. The money will fund 20 research projects for the next several years. UConn’s leaders should do more than acknowledge Courtney’s ongoing contribution to the advancement of knowledge, which is, after all, the fundamental purpose of education. It ought to listen to him and expand its engineering program, one of UConn’s academic standouts, to its Avery Point campus in Groton.
UConn continues to act like the state’s fourth branch of government and the only one over which the other three exert no meaningful counterweights. The school’s leadership ought to understand that we are living through a golden age that has much more to do with Courtney’s savvy devotion than anything UConn’s administration has achieved.
Courtney’s work on submarines extends far beyond our shores. Two years ago, he was appointed as an Honorary Officer in the General Division of the Order of Australia. That’s no participation medal. It reflects the 10-term legislator’s diligent, often quiet as an Electric Boat sub, work on AUKUS, the alliance of Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States for defense and technology research.
Australia will be spending billions on the AUKUS alliance for the quiet submarines we build, not those noisy diesel ones it was going to buy from France. And what has Australia received in return? The Trump administration increased tariffs on our ally.
Those tariffs are not the end of the story. Donald Trump is either in the boot or under it. His tariffs on China last year caused that communist nation to exercise its choke point on rare earth metals, essential to modern manufacturing, especially in defense. An unsettling scramble to alternative sources ensued as President Xi Jinping, the “brilliant” dictator Trump admires for his “iron fist,” schooled the former pitchman for Trump Steaks on the immutable essentials of an ill-judged trade war.
Free people find solutions. The elixir to the gathering storm on rare earth metals controlled by China may find the start of a solution in Australia, a nation with the fourth largest rare earth elements reserves and one led by sober-minded adults.
With that historic submarine contract buttoned-down, another vital role may await Courtney: becoming conversant in the powers of cerium, promethium, yttrium, holmium, and 13 other rare earth elements found in Australia. We are going to need an advocate who doesn’t treat our friends down under like enemies in the alliance of free nations.
Kevin F. Rennie at kfrennie@yahoo.com