G to B
OK, try this on for size. It doesn't need to be a thousand fishing boats. It can be one guy with a bomb (dirty or not) acting on behalf of a country who didn't like what we were doing. (Did you guess we would be in Timor, Solomon Islands, Afghanistan, Iraq more than a few months before we did go in). How do we counter this? With the implied threat (ability) to go break his toys in there own country from long range. The thought that we have this ability helps keep us safe from this.