Notes From Last Thursday's House Subcommittee Hearing

America must significantly widen its definition of strategic allies going forward. As the combination of an over-leveraged United States and a demographically moribund Europe and Japan no longer constitutes a quorum of Great Powers sufficient to address today's global security agenda. In short I want allies with million man armies who are having lots of babies, rising defense budgets, and are willing to go places and kill people in defense of their interests.

Testimony by Dr. Thomas P.M. Barnett, HASC Seapower and Expeditionary Forces Subcommittee, March 26, 2024

With that statement by Dr. Barnett, Maine Congresswoman Chellie Pingree (D) gave a face like she had just swallowed a giant spoon full of wasabi with her eggroll. It was one of several memorable moments in the very clever hearing scheduled by Representative Gene Taylor (D-MISS), who really deserves a lot of credit for putting together the hearing. The subcommittee hearing turned out to be very different from my expectations, and yet very informative to see a variety of opinions emerge that would otherwise never see the light of day in the Navy discussion on Capitol Hill. Anyone suggesting this hearing wasn't a useful exercise or very insightful simply wasn't paying attention.

I thought Dr. Thompson eloquently set the context of the moment in his opening statement (PDF) when he said:

The biggest concern will be that our economy is in decline and the federal government is out of money.

How broke is the federal government?

-- So broke that during the two hours we are meeting this morning it will spend $400 million it does not have.

-- So broke that the federal debt has doubled to $11 trillion in just eight years, and threatens to double again in the next eight.

-- So broke that we are sustaining our defense posture in part by borrowing money from the same country our military planners are preparing to fight.

There is no time in living memory when US finances have been in such bad shape, and therefore all the things we thought we knew about the future availability of funding for the joint force are suspect.

Both Dr. Barnett and Dr. Thompson agreed on two interesting points. First, if we build an interoperable national fleet in the spirit of the Navy's maritime strategy we will get good results. Second, the fleet is not likely to get larger without smaller, cheaper warships. I enjoyed the way Dr. Barnett puts it in his written testimony:

To conclude, the U.S. Navy faces severe budgetary pressures on future construction of traditional capital ships and submarines. Those pressures will only grow as a result of the current global economic crisis (which—lest we forget—generates similar pressures on navies around the world) and America's continued military operations abroad as part of our ongoing struggle against violent extremism. Considering these trends as a whole, I would rather abuse the Navy—force structure-wise—before doing the same to either the Marine Corps or the Coast Guard. Why? It is my professional opinion that the United States defense community currently accepts far too much risk and casualties and instability on the low end of the conflict spectrum while continuing to spend far too much money on building up our combat capabilities for high-end scenarios. In effect, we over-feed our Leviathan force while starving our SysAdmin force, accepting far too many avoidable casualties in the latter while hedging excessively against theoretical future casualties in the former. Personally, I find this risk-management strategy to be both strategically unsound and morally reprehensible.

As this body proceeds in its collective judgment regarding the naval services' long-range force-structure planning, my suggested standard is a simple one: give our forces fewer big ships with fewer personnel on them and far more smaller ships with far more personnel on them. As the Department of Navy finally gets around to fulfilling the strategic promise of systematically engaging the littoral … from the sea, doing so in complete agreement—in my professional opinion—with the security trends triggered by globalization’s tumultuous advance, I would humbly advise Congress not to stand in its way.

Say what you want, but the man is consistent. I am a GenXer, so I tend to love the bold attitude that sounds macho when folks like Dr. Thompson and Dr. Barnett say what they believe and believes what they say. Alpha male types who see black and white while telling people what is and isn't in their opinion are so uncommon these days. I'm tired of the more common CYA approach of hedging comments and trying not to say anything that isn't quite filtered through every screen in the kitchen, which I think is what had me enjoying both Dr. Thompson and Dr. Barnett so much in this hearing. These are men who tell people what they think for a living, all you have to do is ask. The opposite of coarse is the average American politician, who doesn't tell you what they really think without first taking a poll.

In his testimony Dr. Barnett makes two good points in addition to what is quoted above.

First he suggests we need to be building capabilities at the low end that can be given away, an idea that was floated by Bob Work with the Littoral Combat Ship in his recent CSBA report (PDF). This idea is making the rounds, and it is a very good idea. In my opinion, if we are going to build towards protecting against an unstable maritime domain where irregular challenges can disrupt the global commercial system, the necessity to build the global coast guard needs to be integrated into our nations maritime strategy. I don't necessarily agree with Bob Work that the LCS is the platform for this, but I am open to it if the LCS costs come down. Seems to me a small ship that can be developed for $100 million, operated by the US Navy in conjunction with regional coast guards as part of a global fleet station squadron or other influence squadron for 10 years (which makes our investment $10 mil a year), is an idea whose time has come. I think a 10 year old small but capable $100 mil new PC is a fantastic investment. Several have been quietly pushing these ideas around the email, it will be useful to publicly push these ideas more often for consideration as part of coherent strategic packages.

Second, Barnett describes maintaining development, at a slow pace he suggests, the very high end capabilities to hedge against potential threats. This is an idea that used to be popular in Navy's, but appears to have lost favor, although give the Navy some credit because building 2-3 DDG-1000s would represent a modern version of this idea. I am talking about the idea of real prototypes and test vessels.

We have not built a nuclear powered surface combatant in a very long time. Perhaps before forcing the Navy to execute the laws that have forced nuclear power upon the Navy, Congress should fund, as a prototype, one of these giant 22,000+ nuclear powered cruisers for ballistic missile defense as a test platform rather than moving quickly for an entire class. Use the LPD-17 hull if necessary to do it, the point being lets actually test the theories before we make them standards.

I am looking at the next decade, and quite honestly I don't see good things for the DoD unless someone in government finds a reason to protect our strategic interests. The priorities on new domestic programs and the seeming acceptance that we will fund all these new domestic programs with even more borrowed money suggests that something has to give. It is unclear just how much creative bookkeeping will be needed to fool the world into believing we can afford all these new programs through their loans, but my guess is we will borrow too much too quickly, get told no sometime over the next few years, and the results will be devastating for the United States economy and people.

Assuming the rest of the world climbs out of the economic hole by 2011, which is what all signs point to right now, the global middle class is going emerge larger than ever. At the same time, energy is going to be at its highest demand in human history. It is noteworthy that countries like Russia are retooling their military industry so they can implement enormous numbers of projects when that time comes. As all the little men globally find themselves swimming in cash from enormous energy demand of the resurgent global economy, we will find our defense budgets in free fall and our domestic debts mounting at record speeds during a time everything costs more thanks to higher energy costs. Any casual study of little men in the energy economy nations globally will find they tend to spend their excess cash on military systems, and rarely reinvest it into their other domestic economy sectors. My prediction is next decade will be defined by two things:

1. The largest global growth of military construction and exports since the 1930s
2. The most painful period of domestic economic turmoil in the US since the 1930s

Everything is pointing to next decade being definitive for the next several generations in terms of the future strategic environment. Despite the views of theorists attempting to caution our political leaders of the near term future, it is clear we are bogged down strategically on the present (Iraq and Afghanistan) with no real congruity in our strategic vision and political policies looking to the future. Indeed, domestically, our minds are collectively on borrowing more money, raising more revenues with individual and creative tax and income concepts, all so we can create even more expenses in a federal budget that is already swimming in interest payments it already can't afford, and that is before the Baby Boomers start collecting social security money the federal government has already spent.

The Obama administration has kept two primary policies of the Bush administration: the current war policy and the "over borrow/over spend" economic model policy. If this continues, my prediction is Obama becomes a one term president because he intentionally kept the two worst possible policies one could pick from the Bush administrations bag of broken ideas. For its part, the Navy needs to get what it can while it can, because the money for the fleet we need simply won't be there.