While Raymond contemplates the reality of children at both ends of the developmental spectrum, I take once again to the ramparts of this blog to carry the banner of Seapower against the dread tyrant--neo-isolationist, academic offshore balancing--this time packaged as the New America Foundation thinkpiece "Whither Command of the Commons? Choosing Security Over Control" and the two blogposts Raymond links to here, and here.
I initially responded to this piece privately, by attaching a series of e-stickys to the pdf version of the report and sharing it with several hundred of my closest friends. This post attempts to weave those short snippets into a coherent narrative.
First, let there be no mistake--there really isn't anything new in what Messers Lalwani and Shifrinson have put forward in their NAF work. Not that it isn't 1) well written 2) well argued or 3) interesting. It just isn't new. Take a look at anything Chris Preble from Cato has written over the years, and you'll find similar arguments. So the breathless praise heaped on the work by the blogger Raymond cites seems a bit much, considering the well-worn nature of the arguments. Again--the age of the arguments doesn't matter--I'll make ancient ones in this post. I'm specifically addressing the hype in the blogs cited above.
Second--this piece is a serious one, and should be responded to in a lenghty, point by point refutation. I unfortunately, don't have the bandwidth for that right now, so I'll do my bidding in choppy little point/counterpoints.
Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF): This work is an attempt to put forward an offshore balancing inspired military component of grand strategy, one that would address both the "free rider" problem and the problem of "insecurity" caused by the presence of US combat maritime forces in varous places in the world.
Point 1: The authors cite "cyber" as a modern "commons"--like sea, air, and space. I'm not sure this one holds up to scrutiny. Much if not most of what passes for a "cyber commons" is owned by corporations or nations, or is heavily controlled by nations.
Point 2: A good bit of their argument rests on the perception of "insecurity" or "backlash" arising from the forward posturing of US naval forces. Here's a bit from the paper: "Equally important, this approach has the potential to trigger counter-productive reactions--insecurity, counter-balancing, and backlash--that may themselves come to pose challenges....Indeed control carries in it the seeds of its own eventual unraveling." My question is when will this potential manifest itself? We've deployed in various hubs/fashions considerable combat power globally since the end of WWII--where has the counterbalancing behavior been? Ok, let's just take since the fall of the Wall--where is it?
Point 3: The authors raise the "free rider" bogeyman, as any reputable offshore balancing work must, writing: "...that by doing less, the United States can encourage other regional powers to do more in protecting the commons, thereby discouraging free-riding." "Doing more" has the potential to play out as "naval arms race", something we've seen the disastrous results of in the past. Like most other OB papers of this nature, there is a sense of security in the notion that a pullback of US forces will be at least as stable--if not more stable--than the security balance that currently exists. I truly believe the burden of proof is with the OB community on this one, as they uniformly paint a picture in which something known as "sufficient" military force would be maintained "over the horizon" to intervene--presumably JUST IN TIME to tip security balances back in our favor. Putting aside the incredible discernment required of poltical authority to intervene in a timely manner (such that blood and treasure are not wasted), the notion that naval forces--built and maintained for war but operated far from where our interests actually are--would survive future budget knives is difficult to consider. One of the PRIMARY benefits we derive of capitally intensive naval forces is the peacetime ROI we enjoy in assuring allies and deterring potential enemies--neither of which would be the case were the force operated--as the authors suggest, in places such as "beyond the second island chain".
Point 4: There is a signficant factual error here--when the authors state: "In effect, the control strategy encompasses three related ideas: 1) the US should exercise control of the commons at all times..... This is however, not supported by the Navy's 2007 Maritime Strategy, which states: "We will be able to impose local sea control wherever necessary, ideally in concert with friends and allies, but by ourselves if we must." They have quite simply over-stated the strategic aim of the US Navy--command/control of the sea WHERE WE NEED IT, which conveys with it an economy of force, strategic decision making and prioritization of effort.
Point 5: The authors grant that our current approach appears to be working, at least in the short term, but that it "...it is a particularly costly strategy because it conflates efforts by other states to preserve their sovereignty and protect their interests with outright challenges to the commons." With respect to excessive and unrecognized claims--this is EXACTLY the case, and conflation is appropriate.
Point 6: Cost. The authors state: "The current American strategy of control of the commons therefore, is prone not just to the spiral of insecurity (which they do not prove) but also to spirals of cost escalation." Well yes, of course, if we believe we should practice control of the commons AND fight two land wars AND fight a worldwide counterinsurgency. This is one of the main complaints I have about the paper---that by pulling the maritime domain out of a larger context, they've lost the larger context. The blogger Raymond cites almost jokes about this lack of context or linkage, when he says "Check. It is fiscally unsustainable to continue performing this mission. Well, unless the Army and Air Force are prepared to take one for the team and give budgetary priority to the Navy". Well, yes, now that you mention it, that's exactly what ought to happen. Instead of throwing our arms up and curtailing that element of military power MOST LIKELY to deter the next major power war, why not resource those capabilities at the expense of those more likely to dissipate our national power in the long run?
Point 7: The most breathtaking statement in the entire report: "The model for the United States here ought to be the United Kingdom, which successfully utilized the Japanese Empire to preserve Britain's Far East Interests over 1902-1920, and improve relations with the United States and Russia." Let me get this straight: The model for the US should be the 18 years in which the UK set the stage for the growth and ambition of a maritime power who would ultimately complete its ejection from the Far East and kill several tens of thousands of US and UK forces? History did not stop in 1920.
Point 8: Lots of idealistic optimism, like this: "In effect, Chinese naval expansion will either be checked by China's own acknowledgement of its limitations or by actual capability gaps relative to the United States. As a result, American command of the commons can survive growth of Chinese maritime capabilties." Maybe, but they WON'T survive if they become a surge force from Hawaii and San Diego! They will be rolled up and put away as an expensive anachronism, leaving no real way to "tip" balances back in our favor, undercutting the entire premise of OB.
Point 9: The authors come down pretty hard on efforts to more closely align with India, stating once again the horror of "insecurity". They put forward the notion that moving closer with India could cause China to feel "encircled". Putting aside for a moment whether the Indians actually want to become more closely aligned, the authors quite rightly assert that India's own growing maritime power will serve as a self-generated check on the Chinese--without getting us involved. It occurs to me then, by their logic, shouldn't we be discouraging India from its maritime buildup, as China will feel encircled anyway, no?
Point 10: Surrendering our Competitive Advantage: "Conversely, advanced fighter aircraft, aircraft carriers, multi-mission guided missile destroyers and littoral combat ships would be reduced or withdrawn to the United States--or eliminated outright--to clearly mitigate the threat posed by US assets intended to defend the commons". I ask again--how long could such a fleet last? Why would the American public support it? We would find ourselves in short order on the receiving end of fait accompli to which we would not have the means to respond--rather than--as our authors would suggest, we would summon up the might to re-estabilish our preferred conditions.
So--to summarize, this report is yet another example of a neo-isolationist strand of offshore balancing which combines loathing of "free-riders" with conjured-up "insecurity" posed by our own powerful naval force presence--without seeing the obvious potential for real (rather than conjured) insecurity flowing from abandoned "free-riders" arming themselves with new vigor. They make nice noises about the maintenance of "sufficient" combat power to protect our interests, without any real proposal on how to maintain such a force against further budget axes---sure to fall when the American people and their representatives wake up to the expensive luxury that is ships operating off San Diego, Guam and Diego Garcia--not deterring anyone nor reassuring anyone.
Read their entire paper, as you need to understand their arguments better than my snippets can portray. If you'd like my "marked up" version of their .pdf (using comment stickys), write me an email.
Bryan McGrath
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