Military fans in the old world often talk about discussing maritime power, so what is maritime power? This question seems very simple and seems very complicated. If used to describe it in the most plain and credible language, maritime power can be regarded as a power to use the ocean.;

Maritime power is the power to use marine shipping trade to obtain natural resources and economic benefits in peacetime. Maritime power is the power to prevent the enemy from using the ocean to benefit during wartime. Through the rich economic benefits brought by maritime power, a powerful force required to maintain maritime power. This mutually causal formula can be roughly described as the meaning and value of maritime power.

Sinking the enemy's fleet is just the simplest way to seize sea power, establish a new order of world trade and draw endless money from it. This is the true meaning of sea power. Only consumption without output cannot last. Just as in the old world, the bald eagle, as the current maritime overlord, has been promoting free trade and globalization for decades. The fundamental reason is not democracy and freedom, nor universal values ​​and human rights, but it is an instinctive act that protects its own maritime rights and interests.

The US dollar, commonly known as small green paper, was once called US dollar in the old world and could be exchanged for a fixed proportion of gold, thus gaining sufficient credit. Since the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, the US dollar has been decoupled from gold and has actually transformed into unsecured paper money, which is the so-called fiat currency. To put it bluntly, it is a piece of white paper covered with stamps!

All over the world, the benchmark settlement currencies for foreign trade transactions are US dollars. For example, the import resources of rabbits, whether they are crude oil, iron ore, grain, or increased holdings of gold, all of these commodities are denominated in US dollars.

In a word, as long as you continue to use the US dollar to settle world trade, the bald eagle can sit at home and play quantitative easing with 8 cents of small green paper printed as real money and silver to pay debts and pay military expenses, and collect seigniorage from the world. The core force supporting this order is world trade, which makes other competitors unable to refuse the US dollar settlement system. The power of the bald eagle's currency hegemony is the powerful Militarist navy with eleven aircraft carriers as the core. Therefore, the bald eagle's monetary hegemony is called "naval-based system" by some sarcastic experts. If you cannot understand this, you will never realize the importance of controlling sea power.

Whoever can control the maritime power will control the world trade. Whoever can dominate the world trade will gain wealth from the whole world. With enough wealth as a backing, it is not a problem to burn money with weapons and equipment, which in turn will strengthen the control over the maritime power.

Even in the just-concluded Battle of Dongning, Luo Zhengdao severely damaged the Goblin Fleet and the Guard Fleet, but still could not stop the Goblin Second Empire from retraining a navy. The reason why his situation was so passive was largely due to his failure to control the sea power. Luo Zhengdao only used violence to break the Goblin's attempt to use regional sea power to threaten himself, but failed to establish his own regional sea power. In the short term, Luo Zhengdao did not have to expect anything at the artifact level of the world sea power. The two mountains of the Yaling Empire and the Elf Federation were not shaken by him, and constantly hitting the Goblin Navy would also become a long-term mission.

The link that really prompted Luo Zhengdao to feel pressure is the next step, how to obtain the rich benefits brought by maritime power, and if you cannot obtain benefits from the seizure of maritime power, this kind of act of destruction that rely solely on force cannot last.

In Chinese history, the story of Zheng He's seven voyages to the West made countless younger generations sigh that they missed the opportunity. The actual situation is far from that simple. The so-called maritime power aimed at promoting national prestige is consumed but not real benefits and cannot be sustained. If it is not stopped in time, this huge expense will drag down the finances of the Ming Dynasty a hundred and eighty years in advance.

When ambitious Portuguese explorers drove sailboats with hundreds of tons of displacement into the Indian Ocean, they received nearly endless profits of spices and oriental specialties, even if they were exchanged for cannons and killings, they also saw the bloody nature of sea power.

In contrast, the Zheng He fleet of the Ming Dynasty, which was highly political, was a diplomatic mission that showed off the majesty of the Celestial Empire. It was nothing more than supporting the face of the emperor who came to the court and solved the emperor's face. There was no doubt that the colonization and trade of the Portuguese could bring tangible benefits to the national finances. The political achievements project of the Ming Dynasty consumed national resources, and it would be a failure to put real money into the treasury. This behavior of spending money to buy face has no essential difference from the countless political achievements project that was used to waste the people and damage the money in different eras.

Since this is the case, Zheng He was stopped by his voyage to the West and could not say the word "sad". This was originally an unsustainable act of squandering national strength.

In short, the core of creating sea power is to build a positive cycle of starting from powerful force, trade networks set up a stage to perform, and ultimately obtain huge wealth from the trade system and feed back to strengthening force. If you cannot do this, even if you have strong military power, talking about sea power will eventually be a mirage-like joy.

Under the threat of Will Nidham's increasingly active threat, the Second Goblin Empire had chosen to open the five ports to trade, opening a small gap slightly to the country's doors that had been closed since the border was banned from the sea. This extraordinary move even stimulated Luo Zhengdao even more than the news of the expansion of the Goblin fleet.

As the saying goes, running thousands of miles is just for wealth. The vicious pirates are not saints who consciously and voluntarily stand in the same camp with the exiled nobles of humans, but are overly arrogant and arrogant goblins forcing them to the same bench.

Things are conceivable. Once the goblins noticed the serious mistakes they made before and chose to give up stupid policies such as relocation of the boundary and banning the sea, the pirates would happily abandon the human exiled nobles and continue to do their own business without capital to make a fortune. After all, violent behaviors against the goblins' Second Empire cannot bring much real benefits to the pirates. Their job is to plunder merchant ships and ports. The core values ​​of the pirates are limited to grabbing money, and more money can indeed be called a group of mobs without ambitions.

Compared to fighting against the goblins with real swords and guns, Luo Zhengdao competed with them for neutral forces, and it was much more difficult to operate, so he was already having a headache now.

After tossing and turning in the bed for a night of thought, the next morning, Luo Zhengdao, with dark circles in his eyes, announced a series of latest decisions to his subordinates, which really scared them and almost thought that something was wrong with his ears.

"Ah! The Chuanshan Islands are fully opened, and no longer charge management fees and port entry fees? Can you be tax-free when engaged in transactions? Only half the price for repairing ships? Your Highness, you are not awake today and are talking in your sleep?"

In the conference room, when he heard the opposition from his subordinates, Luo Zhengdao, who was slightly depressed, touched his chin and said slowly:

"Didn't the goblin say that we should open five ports to tempt pirates? We have to compete with Greenskin to make greater efforts and efforts. I want to see if the goblins have the awareness of fighting with me to the end."

This family business was built by Luo Zhengdao himself, and the team left by the old earl could not say anything. The Regent made a harsh statement and wanted to fight the goblins to the end. No one could persuade him. Who would know that there was a lot of national hatred and family hatred between the Goblins and Will Nidham. No one could let go of this matter!

He was the first to promote the use of ironclad ships in the New World. Goblins tasted the pain and imitated ironclad ships. This seemed to be very unfavorable to Luo Zhengdao. He himself did not view the related issues of technological proliferation in this way.

In the old world, words like "latecomer advantage" are often mentioned. Bald Eagle Bank uses a large number of computer equipment purchased twenty years ago, while Rabbit's bank is basically Qingyishui's latest LCD octa-core desktop computer. However, measuring the competitive advantage of the industry does not depend on the hardware facilities. Even if the market value and profit are ranked among the top 500 companies in the world, China's domestic banks have donkey dung balls on the surface. Every time they go out to play with foreign peers, the ending is almost the same. Is it because the technical equipment is not advanced and the newly built buildings are not luxurious and beautiful enough? Of course, this is impossible!

As the old saying goes, buns have meat but not pleats. The core competitiveness of the banking industry lies in whether they have personnel and reward systems with rich practical experience in financial trading and product design capabilities. Later generations who learn to walk in Handan often only see the superficial articles of the first-mover, but they actually know nothing about how to operate and operate. It is not surprising that such a rookie is fooled by others.

New technology will change the rules of the past. Compared with ironclad ships of the same tonnage, the number of sailors required to operate a wooden sailboat is about three times that of the former. The pirate ironclad ship abandons the traditional soft sails of the New World and uses relatively niche hard sails.

Because there is a bamboo woven skeleton inside the sail as a skeleton support, the hard sail has a relatively large weight, and when lifting the sail, it is necessary to use pulley sets to assist in the lifting. One person pulls the sail cable to pull out the sail, which greatly reduces the number of sail operators. Considering that the upper deck area of ​​the ironclad ship is very cramped, neither the enemy nor the enemy can invest a large number of troops in hand-to-hand combat, a ship is equipped with a hundred sailors, and it is enough to be equipped with new types of firearms with metal fixed ammunition. The firepower of individual soldiers has increased greatly. The traditional cold weapons in the past have basically become decorations.

The Pirate Iron Craft is reducing the number of sailors in all aspects. For example, a sailing battleship with a displacement of about 14,000 barrels must at least 1,000 sailors to maintain daily operation. It is more than enough to serve an iron armored ship of the same tonnage.

Affected by the naval technological innovation, rocket-type engines equipped with conventional power hard sails and wartime acceleration systems were equipped with a large reduction in scale. The above-mentioned various improvement measures reduced the human resources crisis that restricted Luo Zhengdao's hands and feet.

That's right, building a new ironclad ship only requires money, and a group of loyal, reliable, capable sailors and captains with good qualities cannot be made by just money. If you think about it this way, you won't think that promoting ironclad ships is a loss-making deal.

It is not to be ignored that Luo Zhengdao, as a time traveler, is not afraid of the spread of technology. The more advanced the technology, the more he can play new tricks. He played the original goblin rocket that had been used for thousands of years, forcing the second goblin Empire to imitate and learn his successful experience, which is enough to prove that faster progress than opponents is a more effective way to win than keeping secrets. In fact, the closer the war form is to the modern war mode of the old world, the more Luo Zhengdao can experience the comfort of being in water. Instead of fighting with his opponents in a low-level mode that he is not familiar with, it is better to raise his level and fight a war that he is more familiar with.
Chapter completed!