I think a submarine is a very worthwhile weapon. I believe we can

In the councils of statecraft, a lean trumpet sounds: “I think a submarine is a very worthwhile weapon. I believe we can defend ourselves with submarines and all our troops back at home. This whole idea that we have to be in 130 countries and 900 bases… is an old-fashioned idea.” Hear the cadence—saltwater steel against sprawling garrisons; quiet vigilance against bannered overreach. The saying contends that true security is not the clatter of distant outposts, but the calm, hidden strength that makes invasion folly and adventurism unnecessary.

To the ancients, this would feel familiar. Empires that laced the earth with forts mistook breadth for safety. The wiser polis trusted walls well-built, fleets well-placed, citizens well-drilled. The old-fashioned idea is not age itself, but the habit of scattering power until it thins: a spear so long its wielder stumbles. In this telling, the submarine becomes the modern trireme of prudence—unseen, unpanicked, answering aggression with presence rather than parade.

Consider a witness from war’s own ledger. In the Pacific struggle of the 1940s, America’s “Silent Service” strangled supply lines not by planting flags on every shore, but by prowling the deeps—patient, precise, devastating. A handful of steel hulls changed the arithmetic of an ocean. Later, in the long chill of the Cold War, ballistic-missile submarines kept a nation’s ultimate deterrent far from spectacle: no trumpet, only certainty enough to make rashness rare. These are case-studies in economy—security by posture, not by ubiquity.

There is a moral argument braided in the metal. Distant garrisons tug the soul toward meddling; the map begins to dictate the mission. A doctrine anchored at home does the inverse: it disciplines the hand, bids the treasury serve the hearth, and keeps the soldier’s promise close to the citizen who made it. Troops back at home is not retreat; it is alignment—strength husbanded for the storm that truly matters, not spilled to police the weather everywhere else.

Yet the counsel is not naiveté. It does not deny alliance or vigilance; it denies reflex. The ocean, patrolled by quiet guardians, can be a moat rather than a highway to entanglement. The sky, watched by sober eyes, can be a roof rather than a ceiling for ambition. Such a stance requires craft: intelligence that sees early, diplomacy that speaks plainly, and forces designed to deny, deter, and, if compelled, to strike swiftly without needing to stand upon every distant hill.

History warns what the counting-house confirms: the empire of 900 bases is also an empire of promises—each a thread tied to a hand that must, someday, be tugged. Threads multiply, hands tire, and the treasury forgets its children’s names. By contrast, the fleet below the horizon and the army beside the plow let a nation be strong without being scattered. This is the core of the saying’s worthwhile wisdom: defend the doors so the rooms remain free.

So the lesson to pass down is plain and stern: measure security by resilience, not by reach. Build instruments that change adversaries’ calculations, not instruments that demand your constant footprint. In practice: (1) Invest in deterrents that hide well and endure—your modern submarines, your hard-to-spoil supply, your civil defense. (2) Keep treaties you can actually keep, and shed boasts you cannot. (3) Let the budget remember the citizen first: veterans cared for, families whole, debts honest. (4) Teach leaders to ask, before each far venture, whether presence advances peace or merely rehearses the old-fashioned idea that everywhere must be yours to guard. In this way, a people remains formidable without becoming famished, and the flag is honored most by the steadiness of the hands that keep it home.