How does the world’s second largest navy position itself to become the world’s largest?
No, I’m not talking about China, for those who were not tracking during the pandemic year 2020, that was the year the United States meekly surrendered the top position to the People’s Republic of China.
One could argue we remain the most “capable” but we are not the largest. If you have not accepted that cold fact, you should take a moment and soak it in. We’re in the second year of being #2 and falling with an aging fleet.
How does that feel?
While everyone is dealing with their feelings, perhaps it is best to engage with facts. To look forward to what needs to be done, we need accurate fixes; one where we went off course, and one where we are now.
In an article earlier this week at Foreign Policy titled “The Dangerous Decline of American Naval Power,” Kori Schake provided a top-shelf powerhouse of realism outlining the absolute state of our Navy and its nation in 2022.
She starts, correctly, by stomping (softly and politely as Kori does everything) firmly on the well-meaning but horribly wrong camp that helped bring us here; the utopians;
For years, the United States clung to a near-religious belief that as China grew more prosperous, it would become more democratic and politically liberal.
We know how that worked out.
You can start this story when Nixon whet to China, but the utopian tendency metastasized with vigor in the 1990s from delusions that technology transfers from Loral Aerospace was fine and that of course the old unfinished Soviet carrier would be a floating casino. The next two decades flowed through distraction with Central and Southwest Asian wars of empire, delusions of peaceful China’s rise, and then denial of their expansion to primacy.
These utopian delusions are still with us, but as the hard reality of what China is becomes hard to ignore, today’s utopians have other ideas – which seems cribbed like so many things today from someone’s notes from the Model UN they attended as 17-yr olds – that manifest themselves in how we respond to China.
Kori uses as examples of this breed two new books;
Two new books assess the challenges and importance of contemporary maritime power relations. Bruce Jones’s To Rule the Waves and Gregg Easterbrook’s The Blue Age are primarily concerned with international security, building on the naval strategist and historian Alfred Thayer Mahan’s premise that “the history of sea power . . . is largely a military history.” … (Jones calls) for an “alliance of alliances” in which the United States would orchestrate global cooperation among all energy-consuming economies. He would also have Washington “tackle the question of winners and losers from globalization” and “adopt the kinds of plans needed to abate carbon emissions.” But he offers few specifics to flesh out any of these proposals.
That is, as always, the problem with the utopian mindset. As unrooted in history as they are vacant in details, they rarely survive the follow-on question or ability to adapt if any of their fragile assumptions become incorrect.
Easterbrook is even more utopian than Jones, proposing the establishment of a “World Oceans Organization” that would provide “a true global governance system” to protect worker rights, restrict weapons, regulate offshore energy projects, enforce free trade, and guarantee environmental standards throughout the world’s waters.
Remember, it was the well-meaning but fatally blinkered utopians who got us here – helped along by a distracted and conflicted military nomenklatura both uniformed and civilian. This is not the mindset and world view that will get us back on course.
If we wish to be a serious nation we need to no longer delude ourselves with cute and comforting theories followed by promises of a fleet next Tuesday for a self-esteem boosting vanity project today to save us from the hard work and investment too long delayed.
You don’t hire the contractor who built a bad house to do the renovations.
To preserve the decaying international order that Jones and Easterbrook laud, the United States will need to restore the military and civilian maritime power that it has allowed to atrophy.
Start with this core fact; the United States of American is by geography, economy, security needs, and comparative advantage a maritime and aerospace power. That is the core of the argument; all else is commentary.
The contest between Beijing and Washington will increasingly become a struggle for naval power. … The cultural problem of inattention to warfighting proficiency in the U.S. Navy comes from the top. The Biden administration is channeling its energy to other priorities: its Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, issued last March, prioritizes “a global pandemic, a crushing economic downturn, a crisis of racial justice, and a deepening climate emergency.” When announcing Lloyd Austin as his nominee for defense secretary, Biden extolled the need for the military to distribute vaccines. Defense Department social media accounts stress the agency’s commitment to expanding diversity, ending sexual harassment, and tackling climate damage. These are all important issues, but they are not the reasons the United States has a military.
Correct. Spot on. The lack of seriousness that comes from seductive utopian concepts has for too long won out over the hard requirements known for centuries that must be met to be the premier maritime power. The People’s Republic of China – who a century ago had almost no navy or modern naval tradition to speak of – seems to have hoisted the lessons of history on board much more than the leadership of the United States who have let their inheritance whither and decay at a rate almost as great as the boastful claims and self-adoration of its leadership that watched over its decline.
The USA has a navy and a military for a reason. Those, like Kori who know this, need to follow her example and step out, push back harder against the unserious utopians, grifters, and automatons in the nomenklatura who have for too long been content to manage decline as long as their direct deposit hits every two weeks.
Let’s rewind back to a fix we took at the beginning of this post;
China supplanted the United States as the world’s largest naval power in 2020.
If you haven’t had a chance, take that little nugget out. Pinch it. Scratch its surface. Give it a sniff. If you’re brave enough, touch your tongue on it. Embrace it. It is the legacy we give to the younger generations.
It is an all-hands effort to fix, but own it. Everyone. You either made it or will have to fix it. One thing you can’t do if you wish to have a legacy to give to following generations – is ignore it.
Washington’s waning interest in naval strength sends the wrong message to its allies and partners. If the United States wants to continue setting and enforcing the rules of the international order, it should heed some age-old advice: never turn your back on the ocean.