The United States Naval Institute and "Advocacy"

Below is a guest post from LCDR Benjamin “BJ” Armstrong, USN. He is an active duty naval helicopter pilot who is currently serving as an MH-60S Detachment Officer-in-Charge. He is a USNI member whose articles have appeared in Proceedings, Naval History and The USNI Blog. He has been a panelist on USNI panels at the 2010 Joint Warfighting Conference as well as the 2010 USNI Naval History Conference.

The concerns that have been expressed by luminaries of the United States Naval Institute like Norman Polmar, Rear Admiral Tom Marfiak (Ret), and VADM Robert Dunn (Ret) are on target. There are many reasons to vote against the change in mission for the Naval Institute including the change in status to a lobbying organization (and risk to the Annapolis facility), the lack of transparency in the decision process, and the mismatch between the new mission statement and the objectives and vision of the Institute. Changing the mission of the Institute will ensure that the relevance of the organization will diminish over the next several years with regards to the Sailors and Marines which the organization claims to support.

None of this means that there is no place for advocacy in the United States Naval Institute. There is always a place for educating the American public about the importance of seapower. In 1919 an article appeared in Proceedings entitled “The Responsibilities and Duties of the Naval Officers of the United States in Educating and Informing the Public on Professional Matters.” It was written by LCDR V.N. Bieg and laid out several suggestions on how the Navy could improve advocacy for the service following the First World War. He wrote, “that the deplorable ignorance exists regarding the very raison d’etre of the navy, its character, its war and peace time work, its thousand and one varied activities, even its uniform, is a commonplace and cannot be denied,” and something had to be done.

The article demonstrates that there is room for advocacy at the Naval Institute, but how the article came to be written is just as instructive. In the early decades of USNI the “Board of Control,” as the Board of Directors was known at that time, published a list of articles that they would be interested in seeing, a “call for papers” in academic or publishing terms. The Board recognized that when the military drew down following “The War to End All Wars” the Navy risked losing out in the struggle over the future force. The best way to advocate for the Navy was a subject on their mind, and they published in their “Topics for Essays: Suggested by Request of the Board of Control” a request for an article on educating the public. The challenge was taken up by a Lieutenant Commander who looked for practical answers that might actually work to draw educational information from the fleet, rather than from the senior officers of the service or from the political class in Washington, D.C.

In the same issue of Proceedings that published LCDR Bieg’s essay there were articles on the officer personnel system, the volunteer force during the Civil War, the use of automatic guns, and an essay about how to properly construct ship models for testing. The breadth of subjects covered in that issue of Proceedings demonstrates the value of the mission as it currently stands. Taken as an organic whole the issue advances “the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power” by providing articles in each of those categories while also containing an article about advocating for the Navy.

Is there a place for advocacy at the United States Naval Institute? Yes. Does that require a change to the mission that moves the focus of USNI from the pre-eminent professional organization of the Sea Services to an advocacy and lobbying organization for the Navy? Absolutely not. As I have written about before here at Information Dissemination, as well as in the pages of Proceedings and at the USNI Blog, our service continues to appear to drift away from knowledge, understanding, and belief in our history. It looks as if the Institute itself is becoming a victim of that same “present-mindedness” that believes that things are so different today, and that we are so much more capable and intelligent than our predecessors, that it is best to ignore history and look only to the present.

It is time that we honor our history, rather than turn our backs on it. There may be a need for a maritime advocacy group or lobbying outfit, perhaps one that has relationships with many organizations like USNI, the Navy League, and even the Surface Navy Association and the Association of Naval Aviators. However, sacrificing the integrity and history of the Naval Institute in order to create such a group is shortsighted. The mission of the United States Naval Institute has worked for over a century. It should remain “To provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write in order to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to national defense.”

The opinions and views expressed in this post are those of the author alone and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not necessarily represent the views of U.S. Department of Defense, the US Navy, or any other agency.

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Also see another contribution from LCDR Benjamin Armstrong yesterday over at CDR Salamander's blog discussing the United States Naval Institute and Junior Officers.