The thesis in Alfred Thayer Mahan’s seminal 1890 treatise, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, was that “in a general way … the use and control of the sea is and has been a great factor in the history of the world.”[1] In Mahan’s world, one’s territory needed to be defended from only two attack vectors—by land or by sea. Mahan’s world was one of two-domain warfare.
Today, there are seven warfare areas. The first five are familiar: air, sea, land, space, and cyber— traditionally the domain of the military services. The two others, often ignored in national defense strategy discussions and not explicitly recognized as such, are economic and education warfare.
In air, sea, land, and arguably space, the United States maintains its lead in technology, innovation, capability, and resourcing. In cyber, the United States is fully engaged, with the question of who is “winning” still in the balance. But in the other two—economic and education warfare—the United States is not necessarily in the lead. They are ignored at the nation’s peril.
If one wants to be politically correct, economic and education warfare are characterized simply as “competition.” But, in truth, other nations of the world, not just China, are stealthily waging economic and education warfare outside the boundaries traditionally the responsibility of the military, and others are significantly outpacing the United States in educational achievements in many areas having national security implications.
Education
In education there is a national shortage of talent—military and civilian—of those competent and experienced in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) skills. By one estimate concerning data-science-analytics (DSA) talent pipelines, “by 2020 the number of DSA job listings is projected to grow by nearly 364,000 listings, to about 2,720,000 openings. If McKinsey’s predicted supply of 2.8 million analytically savvy workers is accurate, then nearly every one of these workers must change jobs annually to fill open DSA positions.”[2]
The country’s premier institutions, especially those offering Ph.D. programs, rely on foreign students for some 90 percent of enrollment, much of their tuition covered by the taxpayer through work-study programs, stipends, and tuition waivers. A new report found that “81 percent of full-time graduate students in electrical and petroleum engineering programs at U.S. universities are international students, and 79 percent in computer science are. And over the period 1995–2015, domestic student enrollment in electrical engineering dropped by 17 percent, while international student enrollment increased by 270 percent.” [3] As of the end of 2016, there were some 600,000 Chinese students studying in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia.
While some argue that the influx of foreign students is good for expanding knowledge and contributing to the U.S. economy, statistics show that in the STEM disciplines that drive research, technology, and innovation, U.S. students—those who are eligible for security clearances to do the nation’s military and national defense work—are a small and declining percentage of the graduate population. This problem has national security implications. Foreign students are replacing U.S. citizens in part because U.S. K-12 programs are not adequately preparing students: “Thirty years ago, America was the leader in quantity and quality of high school diplomas. Today, our nation is ranked 36th in the world. … High schools are not preparing students with the skills and knowledge necessary to excel after graduation. Only one in four high school students graduate college-ready in the four core subjects of English, reading, math, and science.”[4]
A McKinsey Global Institute report provides an example of the problem in the field of robotics.
Given the large numbers of jobs that could be affected by technologies such as advanced robotics and automated knowledge work, policy makers should consider the potential consequences of increasing divergence between the fates of highly skilled workers and those with fewer skills. The existing problem of creating a labor force that meets the demands of a high-tech economy will only grow with time. Advanced economies are already facing a shortage of high-skill workers, particularly in technical fields. Secondary and tertiary curricula need to be aligned with those needs. Critically, policy makers—as well as employers—can no longer focus only on building the skills of young people entering the labor force. They will need to support the whole workforce, including through retraining.”[5]
Economics
In economics, the national security challenge can be assessed in terms of international commerce and research leading to new products, services, and growth in GDP. The United States’ long-term balance of trade continues to drain the Treasury Department of dollars and tax the nation’s ability to fund national defense priorities. At risk is the country’s ability to continually refinance the federal debt and fully fund DoD priorities. China alone holds some $3 trillion dollars of U.S. debt—a potential economic weapon if one considers the need to continually refinance this debt. And China is using that store of U.S. dollars to finance many programs not in the interest of the United States. An example is China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI),” an economic and political strategy currently being implemented across Africa and other continents, with huge financial backing by the Chinese government. [6] With regard to the BRI, “The ambition is immense. China is spending roughly $150 billion a year in the 68 countries that have signed up to the scheme. Its ultimate aim is to make Eurasia (dominated by China) an economic and trading area to rival the transatlantic one (dominated by America).”[7]
Current literature identifies the tactics already in use. In his 2018 book China’s Great Wall of Debt, Dinny McMahon argues that China, while striving to be become a rich nation, continues actions that constrain trade, affect the U.S-Chinese balance of payments, and restrict access to its markets, at the same time subsidizing strategic industries to the harm of similar industries in other countries:
China has long used foreign nations’ access to its economy as a political tool. When the Oslo-base Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded Chinese political dissident Liu Xiaobo with the 2010 Peace Prize, China punished Norway by heavily curtailing imports of Norwegian salmon. When, in 2016, in spite of Beijing’s objections, Seoul agreed to allow the United States to station THAAD—a highly advanced radar system—in South Korea, China responded by curtailing tour groups from traveling to Korea and suspending business at more than half of Korean conglomerate Lotte Group’s ninety-nine China stores. And when, late in 2016, the Mongolian government allowed the Dalai Lama to visit, China expressed its displeasure by imposing new fees on Mongolian exports to China.[8]
McMahon writes that in 2015 “China exported 112 million tons of steel, more than what was produced by the U.S. Canada, and Mexico combined. … In the same year, the U.S. steel industry lost 12,000 jobs.”[9] These, and other examples, comprise a worrisome strategy to catch up to and surpass the U.S. in power and influence, not by military power, or coercion, but rather by strategies and actions articulated by Mahan some 225 years ago.
Analyzing the objectives of war in relation to the war of 1778 between Great Britain and the House of Bourbon, Mahan writes,
In the critical consideration of any war, it is necessary, first, to put clearly before the student’s eye the objects desired by each belligerent; then, to consider whether the objective chosen is the most likely, in case of success, to compass those objects; and finally to study the merits or faults of the various movements by which the objective is approached.[10]
Mahan’s message was clear, and is as relevant today as it was in the last years of the 19th century: those responsible for the defense of the country must understand clearly both one’s own national objectives, those of opposing “belligerents,” and the “movements”—the strategies and tactics—employed to reach those objectives.
Implications for U.S. Policy
There is growing recognition that previously effective strategies and doctrines are no longer so. The Army–Marine Cops’ February 2017 white paper, “Multi-Domain Battle: Combined Arms for the 21st Century,” which addresses the electromagnetic spectrum, the information environment, and cognitive dimensions of warfare, asserts, “U.S. forces are not organized, trained, equipped, and postured to properly contest emerging and potential threats. As a result, the freedom of action required to support U.S. policy, by deterring, and if necessary, defeating potential enemies is at risk.”[11]
As recently as December 2017, Gordon England wrote “A long-held military maxim is to take the high ground and hold it. That may be outdated in today’s electronic and high-tech battlefields, but that notion still holds true for scientific research and engineering. Research is the foundation for engineering invention, and that leadership in engineering underpins our national security and economy. Retaining the high ground in research and engineering is necessary to deter future conflicts, win future wars and maintain our standard of living. … Yet, we’re seemingly not doing enough to keep the research high ground.”[12]
The “high ground” of research and invention is attained through education of the population, combined with focused application of knowledge gained towards research and engineering. The conclusion is that the nation’s educational system must attain this high ground with appropriate resourcing. Clearly there is need to consider knowledge education and skills training as essential and integral to national planning for the sustainment of the nation’s defense.
One wonders if current Chinese economic strategy has been lifted from the pages of Mahan. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd summarizes China’s strategy:
China seeks to achieve its national and international dominance through the hollowing out of U.S. domestic manufacturing and technology by means of state-directed industry; through a range of economic incentives and financial inducements to U.S. partners, friends, and allies around the world; and through the rapid expansion of China’s military and naval presence from the East China Sea, the South China Sea, across the littoral states of the Indian Ocean and Djibouti in the Red Sea.[13]
In the economic domain, the United States is years past the time when our nation’s financial strength was actively managed to support the nation’s security and safety. As the decades-long procession of continuing resolutions and budget shortfalls imposed by the Budget Control Act have shown, the U.S. military and national defense capability has increasingly suffered shortfalls in resourcing, negatively impacting maintenance, repair, and operations, and has reduced the nation’s ability to fund necessary levels of research and technology development that kept the U.S. the preeminent military force of the second half of the 20th century.
It is the thesis of this essay that the “factors that drive readiness” require national economic and education policies and resourcing as “warfare” elements. The implication is that leadership is the key to holistic consideration of the seven domains of warfare as presented here. Senator John McCain, speaking to the graduating Naval Academy class of 2017, addressed the leadership issue this way:
We are asleep to the necessity of our leadership, and to the opportunities and real dangers of this world. We are asleep in our echo chambers, where our views are always affirmed and information that contradicts them is always fake. We are asleep in our polarized politics, which exaggerates our differences, looks for scapegoats instead of answers, and insists we get all our way all the time from a system of government based on compromise, principled cooperation and restraint.[14]
So, where do we go from here? Just as our nation’s SSBNs are a national strategic asset—not just the Navy’s—national-level educational and skills training policies and programs, and economic policies and regulations, must be considered national strategic assets. As part of national defense, they should be structured, managed, and funded accordingly.
Endnotes
[1] A. T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History 1660-1783 (Dover Ed, 1987, first published, Little, Brown, and Co., Boston, 1890), 87.
[2] “The Quant Crunch: How the demand for data science skills is disrupting the job market,” Burning Glass Technologies, 2017, 4-6, https://www.burning-glass.com/wp-content/uploads/The_Quant_Crunch.pdf.
[3] The Importance of International Students to American Science and Engineering (National Foundation for American Policy, October 2017), https://nfap.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/The-Importance-of-International-Students.NFAP-Policy-Brief.October-20171.pdf.
[4] “11 Facts about Education in America,” Doseomthing.org, www.dosomething.org/us/facts/11-facts-about-education-america.
[5] James Manyika et al., “Disruptive Technologies: Advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy,” (McKinsey Global Institute, May 2013) 151, www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Business%20Functions/McKinsey%20Digital/Our%20Insights/Disruptive%20technologies/MGI_Disruptive_technologies_Full_report_May2013.ashx.
[6] “What is China’s belt and road initiative?” The Economist explains, The Economist, May 14, 2017 www.economist.com/node/21573751/2017/05.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Dinny McMahon, China’s Great Wall of Debt (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018) xvii.
[9] Ibid. 183.
[10] Mahan, 507.
[11] “Multi-Domain Battle: Evolution of Combined Arms for the 21st Century.”
[12] Gordon England, “US is losing ground on technology superiority,” The Hill, 6 December 2017, https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/363621-us-is-losing-ground-on-technology-superiority.
[13] Kevin Rudd, “Can China and the United States Avoid War? “ U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, December 2018 Vol. 144/12/1, 390.
[14] Ben Werner, “McCain to USNA Midshipmen: It’s Time for America to Wake Up to Threats to Our Freedoms,” USNI News, October 31, 2017, https://news.usni.org/2017/10/31/mccain-usna-midshipmen-time-america-wake-threats-freedoms.
