The Carrier Question

The interwebs were aflutter yesterday with the indomitable Sam Lagrone's report that the White House had indicated its discomfort with OSD plans in the FY15 Budget Submission to cut a carrier from the Navy's Fleet, from 11 to 10.  A brief Facebook exchange ensued, in which one discussant indicated that it was a sign of just how disconnected the White House and the Pentagon are, with me then countering that it could also be a reflection of the Pentagon's inability to get beyond Least Common Denominator/Budgeting by Consensus, as in "the Army has to shed people, so the Navy has to shed a carrier".  Others chimed in saying that it could be both, which I can definitely see.

I do think that there is a disconnect between the White House and the Pentagon, but I don't think it peculiar to this White House.  Put simply, the White House is not bound by the same Marquess of Queensbury Rules that dominate the way things get done in the Pentagon.  I have railed against Jointness here enough for faithful readers to know my view that the requirement for consensus has dulled sharp edged-debates among the Services over strategy and capabilities.  Consensus and collegiality are valued above all else with the result that the building has ceased to be able to make hard strategic choices in the allocation of scarce resources.  Instead, it whittles down a generally unchanged proportional distribution of resources, resulting in a force that can do less, in fewer places, to a lesser extent.

The White House--specifically the National Security Staff--plays by different rules.  Specifically, they play by the rules evoked in this exchange from The Hunt for Red October:



The President of the United States is ENTITLED to options when it comes to the use of military power.  Surely $600B is enough to buy a sufficient range of options, right?  Well, no, actually, because so much of it is mis-allocated to capabilities and capacities that serve the ends of the Pentagon well, but serve the ends of providing the President with options less well.

I have no insight into the current National Security Staff and its relationship with the President, and I may be guilty of preference bias and other incredibly noticeable analytical mistakes.   But I think this President is TIRED of not having OPTIONS.  Don't get me wrong--I don't believe necessarily that he'd have made different decisions in the early days of Libya, the fateful night at Benghazi, or the day the Syrians used chemical weapons.  And don't get me wrong--I am NOT saying he made the wrong decisions in each of these cases.  But what I am saying is that in EACH of these situations, there was a distinct lack of forward deployed credible combat power from the sea AT THE MOMENT OF DECISION.  Sure, a week or so later we were able to rally appropriate forces--but that's not what the President expects out of the Navy.  He wants it to be available to him when it counts.  And the current 11 Carrier, 285 ship, two hub Navy is just not cutting the mustard.

We have seen this President balk at cutting carriers before, in the 2011 budget deal.  That OSD might go back to that well indicates either an assessment that political calculations had changed or simply--as some on the Facebook exchange indicated--a disconnect from the views of the President and the White House (driven in my view by the bureaucratic weight of Jointness).

What's to be done?  How about this.  PRIOR to the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs promulgating their program guidance to the Services to start the POM process each year, the President should issue to the Secretary and the Chairman THE PRESIDENT'S GUIDANCE.  In it, he would issue HIS priorities and provide top level guidance.  This would be different from OMB's dicing up the budget pie and allocating resources to the departments.  It would be "commander's intent" from the Commander in Chief designed to shape the way the Services prepare their budgets. 

I realize that doing this for every Executive Department would be onerous (though worthwhile)....but doing so for the Defense Department just seems to make good sense.

Bryan McGrath

Update:  The more I think of this, the more I realize that the recommendation I make in this piece is not original thought.  I am pretty sure it comes from a conversation I once had with Shawn Brimley of CNAS, who should be properly credited.