On the Continuing Decline of the Royal Navy

RUSI has a new paper out by Vice Admiral Sir Jeremy Blackham and Gwyn Prins, in which they take on the unenviable task of advocating for Seapower in the UK.  This isn't the team's first crack at the subject, as their paper "The Royal Navy at the Brink" made quite a splash in early 2007.  I say unenviable, as the budget crunch facing much of Europe and the US is putting a good deal of pressure on the UK defense establishment, especially the Royal Navy.

There is a lot to like in their narrative--I find myself often wishing more American Seapower advocates wrote like this--but I have a tough time getting my mind around the logic. 

What I don't get from their analysis is "what size Navy does the UK need?".  I understand that they believe the one they have is too small and aging; but what I don't discern is a solid understanding of how to appropriately size the UK's fleet?  I have some passing familiarity with the logic of US Navy fleet sizing--but if anyone can lay out how the UK's fleet size is determined, I'd be grateful.

I ask, because if I were a subject of the Queen, I'd wonder what it is our (the Royal) Navy does.  I'd ask this, because I'd have some sense of that behemoth across the Atlantic--the Americans and their Navy.  Doesn't the US guarantee the passage of goods on the worlds oceans?  Isn't it American Seapower that serves to regulate the global system?  While we do some important things, aren't those things mainly in support of the Americans?  Can the Royal Navy make an intellectually coherent argument for itself as a "sea control" fleet?  If so, how much sea should it control, and where?  Just why is it that the UK has a strategic deterrent force on ballistic missile submarines?  Does the money the RN spends on that deterrent interfere with its ability to do other naval missions that it considers important? 

Put another way, I think Blackham and Prins do a fantastic job in justifying American Seapower--they simply don't make a persuasive case for UK Seapower.  Their comparisons to Australia and its rationale for enhanced Seapower are undercut by the plain fact that Australia is sharing a hemisphere with the most important geo-strategic challenge to the Anglo-American world since the fall of the Soviet Union.  Geography matters.

I'm not saying there isn't a compelling case for the RN--just that these authors aren't making it. Only one great power at a time gets to make the "sustaining the global system" argument, and at the moment, it is the US.  The RN needs to define itself differently.

Bryan McGrath