No Answers For the Tough Questions

Before we begin what amouts to another critical evaluation of the Maritime Strategy process, this blog wants to state up front we believe Vice Adm. John G. Morgan Jr. is brilliant. In reading materials he has published and in listening to him speak, we believe he is a rare gem in the Navy. While we have become vocal critics of the Maritime Strategy, it is absolutely not intended to be criticism of him personally or what he is trying to do, because we do not believe he gets enough credit for being a lone voice in the wilderness in big Navy bureaucracy for the truly visionary nature of the ideas he is bringing forward.

The "Conversations with the Country" naval roadshow continues next week, what we have labeled in the past as the Stone Age Approach to Networking. It should be very interesting, the Navy has decided to visit that bastion of naval interest, the landlocked state of Colorado. OK so our problem with the process isn't that the Navy has decided to go to Colorado, it actually makes sense to hit all 50 states, it just makes no sense at all that the Navy engages a few hundred people every few weeks and completely ignores the internet as a medium for strategic debate.

To get things going in Colorado though, the Rocky Mountain News has an editorial today by Capt. Paul Sherbo (ret), a 30 year veteran of the Naval Reserve. Captain Sherbo appears ready to discuss the Maritime Strategy, and he is asking the right questions.

It's sprinkled with the obvious phrases about deterrence, challenges, terrorism, combat power - and the encouraging declaration, "preventing wars is as important as winning wars." (Sailors, Marines and Coast Guardsmen already know this, but it's nice to see it in print.) The strategy also raises disaster assistance - such as the response to the December 2004-January 2005 Indian Ocean tsunami - to the level of a "core element." ("We've always done this," a fact sheet for the strategy says, "but now we'll plan to do it.")

Those who reach the end of the strategy paper might or might not embrace it, but there seem to be a couple of things missing.

For one thing - China. No doubt this reflects our national ambivalence about China - adversary or partner? The head of Pacific Command recently registered his concerns about a burst in China's military spending. Then there's that Taiwan thing that keeps poking them in the eye - and, not incidentally, it lies across major sea routes taking oil to Japan and the Western Hemisphere.

Another thing missing, once you reach the end, is: Now what? As in, how many ships, planes, submarines, Marines, Coast Guard cutters and so forth will it take to execute the strategy?

First Captain Sherbo is asking about whether the Navy has the ends and ways right, including the subject of China, then he moves on to inquire about the means. To date the Navy answers these questions with the unpopular answer that the CONOP and NPS, the rest of the strategy, and then tells the audience that the answers are in fact classified. The classified nature of some of the strategy only enables the criticism that what the Navy has produced is not a strategy.

However, the real problem all 3 services face in trying to sell the strategy is that not a single major procurement project was canceled, nothing. The Marines didn't give up or change anything among their purchase plans, same with the Coast Guard and Navy. In other words, all three services commit to enormous changes in regards to purpose and priority, defend those ends and ways changes rigorously, and yet refuse to change means to match the rhetoric. The fleet plan isn't even strategic in nature, otherwise the Navy wouldn't ignore the Cruiser role and make the entire flotilla an unrated mini-mothership class.

We'd welcome the Navy to engage the discussion of strategy, but honestly we don't believe the Navy is leveraging the term strategy in the proper context. The Navy has also done something they have to date been under no obligation to explain, how is the Navy so blatantly ignores the Strategic and Tactical ideas of our time, so blatantly ignores naval history, and so blatantly ignores the lessons of Strategic Maritime lessons passed by Corbett and Mahan within the context of their strategy? I would love to debate that last point, because I wonder if it would even register to decision makers when all of my arguments would be based on the two most popular maritime strategic thinkers in history. To blatantly ignore the strategic lessons of Mahan and Corbett is unforgivable if it continues. It is also impossible to comprehend, and yet obvious to any observer, why the Navy ignores the tactical lessons taught by Captain Hughes.

The Navy has a very nice strategic concept, but they can't sell it, and the Navy continues to do its roadshow with a strategy that fails to convince.