Given that today is the 236th Birthday of the United States Navy, it seems appropriate to take exception to something that a Royal Army counterpart said in reference to Tony Blair's 2001 assertion that the British military would be a "Force for Good..." This officer wondered how he was to deliver what he called "philanthropic violence," an obvious oxymoron. I draw a distinction between the U.S. Navy and Western armies. The U.S. Navy is a safety net. It performs 6 core functions, which provide public goods if not public good to the world writ-large. These functions include Sea Control, Power Projection, Forward Presence, Deterrence, Maritime Security, and Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief. While these core capabilities are self-serving, they also have positive externalities for not only our partners and allies, but also the world in general. They protect trade, deter conflict, intervene, provide presence, and relieve those in duress. So, when the Navy issues its next video or you watch the one below about being a "Global Force for Good," think about what a day without the U.S. Navy would be like. The Secretary of the Navy often talks about what the Navy did on a particular day in March of 2011. He spoke of it at my graduation from the U.S. Naval Academy, but I have since heard it several more times. He proceeds to discuss what various platforms, units, and sailors were doing to execute these functions around the world. I think the Navy would do better by popularizing the counterfactual, a day without the U.S. Navy. Inflation sky-rockets as the costs of trade increase, oil becomes unaffordable, shelves in stores are empty, conflict erupts in several hotspots (Iran, North Korea, ect.), a natural disaster strikes in a least developed country, and a manmade disaster strikes an ally. The world wonders what nation has the capacity and the will to help. The answer is not one. No country can match the will and capacity of the U.S. Navy to respond. This counterfactual is a day without the U.S. Navy.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Birthday Celebrations and Civil-Military Relations
Last night, I attended a seminar group entitled, "The Trouble with Strategic Leadership in International Interventions." The program kicked-off with an hour long discussion of civil-military relations, centered on the politicization of the military in Western democracies and the creep of military activities into the civilian domain or sphere of influence. On these issues, I raised two points. First, the coalition leadership in Afghanistan and Iraq may politicize issues and speak publically, but this does not imply that the military has its own autonomous political ends which are at odds with civilian control of the military. It is strategic bargaining in the public forum and is intended not to undermine civilian rule but rather to inform the civilian leaders and the polis. When bounds are overstepped, military leaders are removed. The "creep" is a consequence of meeting operational demands with available capacity, military capacity. Pair civil capacities with military security and you have the ideal setting, but as we have observed over the last ten years, the civilian capacity does not exist. Creep occurs on the operational level not the strategic. If anything, strategy seems to be coming from civilian leadership. Second, I made the distinction that pre-conflict military advice in the case of Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq was given by a cadre of military leaders whose formative operational experiences were shaped by significantly different campaigns. Korea and WWII shaped the Vietnam leadership and Desert Storm, Panama, and Grenada conditioned The Afghan-Iraq leadership. To some extent, this phenomenon explains the lack of cohesive institutional push back. Push back was ad-hoc and disorganized.
Given that today is the 236th Birthday of the United States Navy, it seems appropriate to take exception to something that a Royal Army counterpart said in reference to Tony Blair's 2001 assertion that the British military would be a "Force for Good..." This officer wondered how he was to deliver what he called "philanthropic violence," an obvious oxymoron. I draw a distinction between the U.S. Navy and Western armies. The U.S. Navy is a safety net. It performs 6 core functions, which provide public goods if not public good to the world writ-large. These functions include Sea Control, Power Projection, Forward Presence, Deterrence, Maritime Security, and Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief. While these core capabilities are self-serving, they also have positive externalities for not only our partners and allies, but also the world in general. They protect trade, deter conflict, intervene, provide presence, and relieve those in duress. So, when the Navy issues its next video or you watch the one below about being a "Global Force for Good," think about what a day without the U.S. Navy would be like. The Secretary of the Navy often talks about what the Navy did on a particular day in March of 2011. He spoke of it at my graduation from the U.S. Naval Academy, but I have since heard it several more times. He proceeds to discuss what various platforms, units, and sailors were doing to execute these functions around the world. I think the Navy would do better by popularizing the counterfactual, a day without the U.S. Navy. Inflation sky-rockets as the costs of trade increase, oil becomes unaffordable, shelves in stores are empty, conflict erupts in several hotspots (Iran, North Korea, ect.), a natural disaster strikes in a least developed country, and a manmade disaster strikes an ally. The world wonders what nation has the capacity and the will to help. The answer is not one. No country can match the will and capacity of the U.S. Navy to respond. This counterfactual is a day without the U.S. Navy.
Given that today is the 236th Birthday of the United States Navy, it seems appropriate to take exception to something that a Royal Army counterpart said in reference to Tony Blair's 2001 assertion that the British military would be a "Force for Good..." This officer wondered how he was to deliver what he called "philanthropic violence," an obvious oxymoron. I draw a distinction between the U.S. Navy and Western armies. The U.S. Navy is a safety net. It performs 6 core functions, which provide public goods if not public good to the world writ-large. These functions include Sea Control, Power Projection, Forward Presence, Deterrence, Maritime Security, and Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief. While these core capabilities are self-serving, they also have positive externalities for not only our partners and allies, but also the world in general. They protect trade, deter conflict, intervene, provide presence, and relieve those in duress. So, when the Navy issues its next video or you watch the one below about being a "Global Force for Good," think about what a day without the U.S. Navy would be like. The Secretary of the Navy often talks about what the Navy did on a particular day in March of 2011. He spoke of it at my graduation from the U.S. Naval Academy, but I have since heard it several more times. He proceeds to discuss what various platforms, units, and sailors were doing to execute these functions around the world. I think the Navy would do better by popularizing the counterfactual, a day without the U.S. Navy. Inflation sky-rockets as the costs of trade increase, oil becomes unaffordable, shelves in stores are empty, conflict erupts in several hotspots (Iran, North Korea, ect.), a natural disaster strikes in a least developed country, and a manmade disaster strikes an ally. The world wonders what nation has the capacity and the will to help. The answer is not one. No country can match the will and capacity of the U.S. Navy to respond. This counterfactual is a day without the U.S. Navy.
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ReplyDeleteFirst, totally spot on with the contributions of the US Navy. Not many people realize everything that a strong Navy brings to the table, and I think that in the coming years our Navy will be more important than ever as we seek to project our power in a slightly softer fashion (as Robert Kaplan has said, navies make port visits, armies invade). Second, (and I'm speaking mostly about the US military here since I confess I'm rather ignorant when it comes to other countries' civil-military affairs) what about not necessarily the overt political actions of high ranking officers, but rather the growing "gap" in civil-military relations that some authors (Tom Ricks and Andrew Bacevich, for example) have suggested. This gap has not yet manifested itself in action, arguably due to the persistence of a spirit of military professionalism a la Sam Huntington, but the services (especially the officer corps) are growing less and less representative of American society as a whole, due to economic and social factors and the self-selecting nature of the all-volunteer force. I know diversity was a hot button issue while we were at USNA, and it seems to be so in the fleet as well. But the fact is that a large portion of officers will come from white, middle and upper-middle class families and will hold conservative political views. Certain areas of the country and certain religious backgrounds will also be disproportionally represented. So with this demographic bubble, so to speak, in the officer corps, could it erode the sense of professionalism that has been the bulwark of our civil-military relations for decades if officers find themselves increasingly at odds with political decision makers?
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