Admiral Locklear Jumps the Shark

I came across this one in my Twitter feed this morning, under the headline "Climate Change Tops List of Security Threats in the Pacific Says ADM Locklear". 

Breathtaking.

Not North Korean nukes, not Chinese hegemonic impulses, not a re-arming Russia.  Climate change.

I have no issue accepting the prospect that land is being lost to the sea, slowly--glacially slowly--displacing human beings.

My problem is that a military commander with the scope of responsibility of the Pacific Commander has this atop his list of concerns.

Bryan McGrath

Cry Havoc and Let Slip the Dogs of (Land) War!

Professor Jim Lacey of the Marine Corps War College gets one thing right in his National Review Online post entitled "Why Armies Matter".  Well, maybe two things.  The first is his view that "....Around the Pentagon, the budget cutters have put away their knives and are reaching for axes. In times like these, every service naturally circles the wagons around its share of the budget pie." On this, he is correct. I have been sounding the alarum for several years now as the tea-leaves pointed to lower defense spending, that the role of American Seapower in defending our national interests should be privileged.  Professor Lacey has risen before to make his views known on the folly of reducing our land power.  I've written before here about his views, most recently in a serve and volley about Air-Sea Battle which featured the Professor's predilection for straw-man arguments. 

The second thing that he gets right is that Armies--specifically the U.S. Army--matter.  As I did in my rejoinder to him linked to above, I concede that throughout history and in the foreseeable future, state on state war has been and will be decided by land armies.  Seapower and Airpower enthusiasts always over-reach when they attempt to assert that either is a war-winning (on its own) approach.  It is ironic though, that very few land-power enthusiasts ever concede that modern war cannot be won even by overwhelming land power--without Air and Seapower--but I digress.  

I seek here to dispute Professor Lacey on behalf of American Seapower.  I am not an Airpower strategist, though I do recognize that modern American Seapower is enriched by the world's most mobile and lethal air force (Naval Aviation).  I will leave it to others to make the Air Force's argument. 

Professor Lacey takes us on an interesting and fascinating tour of history, recounting the (unchallenged) record of land-battle as war-winner.  Therefore, one should surmise, since Seapower does not win wars, it is and should necessarily be secondarily considered.  Or as a former CIA Director once stated, "this one is a slam dunk."  This view adequately considers 100% of 50% of the question, leaving the other 50% completely unanswered, unquestioned, and un-valued.  That is, what function does military power perform when it is not actively engaged in combat?  Or put another way, do we invest in our Armed Forces to do things other than fight and win wars?

The answer of course, is yes, we do.  Chief among them is that we invest in our Armed Forces to look after our far-flung national interests, to deter emergent threats to those interests, and to assure our friends and allies in an effort to create an reinforcing architecture aimed at--yes, protecting and sustaining our national interests.  Professor Lacey's historical tour concludes with a reference to Pax Americana, yet somehow his argument manages to overlook Pax Britannica and the role played by dominant Seapower in its maintenance.  Surely, if history teaches us that armies win wars, does it not also teach us that navies protect and extend the interests of powerful nations?  

And it is in this realm, where the maintenance of large standing armies--increasingly US-garrison based--becomes subject to rational strategic criticism, the kind in which Professor Lacey seems unwilling to engage.  We are indeed winding down from two large land wars, wars in which our Landpower was properly increased because we were fighting land wars.  One was forced upon us, yet morphed into something that was clearly a war of choice.  The other was without question, a war of choice.  The Administration is rationally choosing to now disengage from those wars, as (to their satisfaction) our objectives have been met and also, because of the American public's weariness with their continuance.  It is doing so after a significant recession and fiscal crisis rocked our economy, forces that should lead to a significant effort to reshape and redefine our National Security Strategy and the forces that pursue it.  My fear of course, is that it leads to a smaller version of what we have now, except less powerful, less globally arrayed, and less capable--while retaining the self-esteem boosting quality of "balance".

In the perfect world that inhabits my brain, we would maintain a wondrous Navy, an unbeatable Air Force, a gigantic Army and a powerful, mobile Marine Corps.  Everyone would be happy and no oxes would be gored.  Adversaries and potential adversaries would cringe at our greatness.  We would pay for this grandiosity through dramatic cuts to entitlements and the budgets would balance every year.  

This is however, not the world we inhabit.  In this world, hard choices must be made about the size and shape of our armed forces.  One of the fundamental questions that must be asked (and answered) is "How should resources be apportioned among the various functions of our military power?"  For the past 11.5 years, the answer was relatively easy--that those forces involved in the winning of war should be privileged. Hence, our Army and Marine Corps each grew during that time, and they grew relatively quickly, an attribute of land forces.  Should we now maintain the same level of investment in those capabilities as the nation turns more toward the other functions of its military power, functions for which garrison force land power is ill-suited?  What are the opportunity costs of maintaining large, highly ready, standing Land Forces that are unengaged?  Given the (relative) ease of expanding land power, should resources be denied capital-intensive capabilities that take longer to create (a.k.a Seapower and Airpower)? 

For Professor Lacey's argument to be persuasive, one would have to believe that something on the order of the current level of war-fighting effort is somehow a baked-in feature of the world of the future.  I reject this notion completely.  Conversely, it is not a stretch to envision a world in which U.S. vital national interests remain geographically dispersed and clustered along the coastlines of the world.  Nor is it a stretch to envision that future Administrations would like to have the capabilities to tend to those interests.  

And, importantly, it is not a stretch to believe that we might someday once again need half-a-million Soldiers in a high state of readiness to win a war.  The question ultimately, is whether those Soldiers need to be primarily in the active duty Army and maintained at their current levels of readiness.  Professor Lacey would have us believe the answer is yes, I would have us believe the answer is no.  

One final point.  Professor Lacey teaches at the Marine Corps War College, though he rightfully avers that the views he expresses are his, not his employer's.  As a navalist, I am glad of this, as Professor Lacey's view dangerously lumps the USMC into the category of "land force" by tying its fortunes to those of the Army.  The U.S. Marine Corps is a naval force, and its value and relevance increases in proportion to its being understood as an element of Seapower.  The worst thing for the institutional Marine Corps at this juncture would be to become more distant from the Navy.  The best  thing for the Marine Corps (and for the nation) would be for Department of the Navy to start to organize, train, equip and fight as a Department.  

Bryan McGrath

North Korea Scraps Armistice Today (Again)

From here.

What happens today, March 11, 2013, local time off the Korean Peninsula could become a historic event, so I want to make sure it is noted what happened. This was the threat as reported by BNO.

A spokesman for the DPRK Foreign Ministry Thursday issued the following statement:

The U.S. is now working hard to ignite a nuclear war to stifle the DPRK.

Key Resolve and Foal Eagle joint military exercises kicked off by the U.S., putting the situation on the Korean Peninsula to the brink of war, are maneuvers for a nuclear war aimed to mount a preemptive strike on the DPRK from A to Z.

The U.S. is massively deploying armed forces for aggression, including nuclear carrier task force and strategic bombers, enough to fight a nuclear war under the smokescreen of "annual drills."

What should not be overlooked is that the war maneuvers are timed to coincide with the moves to fabricate a new "resolution" of the UN Security Council against the DPRK, pursuant to a war scenario of the U.S. to ignite a nuclear war under the pretext of "nuclear nonproliferation".

It is a trite war method of the U.S. to cook up "a resolution" at the UNSC to justify its war of aggression and then unleash it under the berets of "UN forces."

That is why the U.S. is hurling into the war maneuvers even armed forces of its satellite countries which participated in the past Korean War as "UN forces".

After directing the strategic pivot for world hegemony to the Asia-Pacific region, the U.S. regards it as its primary goal to put the whole of the Korean Peninsula under its control in a bid to secure a bridgehead for landing in the Eurasian continent. It also seeks a way out of a serious economic crisis at home in unleashing the second Korean war.

The U.S. is, indeed, the very criminal threatening global peace and security as it is staging dangerous war drills in this region, the biggest hotspot in the world and a nuclear arsenal where nuclear weapons and facilities are densely deployed.

The DPRK has so far made every possible effort while exercising maximum self-restraint in order to defend the peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in the region.

The U.S. is, however, responding to the DPRK's good will and self-restraint with large-scale nuclear war maneuvers and the "annual" war drills are developing into a real war. Under this situation the opportunity of diplomatic solution has disappeared and there remains only military counteraction.

The spokesman for the DPRK Foreign Ministry states as follows upon authorization as regards the grim situation that was created on the Korean Peninsula seriously threatening the sovereignty of the country and its right to existence:

First, now that the U.S. is set to light a fuse for a nuclear war, the revolutionary armed forces of the DPRK will exercise the right to a preemptive nuclear attack to destroy the strongholds of the aggressors and to defend the supreme interests of the country.

The Supreme Command of the Korean People's Army declared that it would totally nullify the Korean Armistice Agreement (AA) from March 11 when the U.S. nuclear war rehearsal gets into full swing. This meant that from that moment the revolutionary armed forces of the DPRK will take military actions for self-defence against any target any moment, not restrained by AA.

Second, the farce for the adoption of "resolution on sanctions" against the DPRK being backed by the U.S. at the UN Security Council will compel the DPRK to take at an earlier date more powerful second and third countermeasures as it had declared.

If the UN Security Council gives the green light to the U.S. in its moves for a war of aggression against the DPRK by adopting a new "resolution on sanctions", it will fully display the might of Songun it built up decades after decades and put an end to the evil cycle of tension.

Third, given that it has become difficult to avert the second Korean war, the DPRK strongly warns the UN Security Council not to make another big blunder like the one in the past when it earned inveterate grudge of the Korean nation by acting as a war servant for the U.S. in 1950.

The UNSC should immediately call into question the U.S. DPRK-targeted nuclear war rehearsals that pose a serious threat to the global peace and security, immediately disband the "UN Command" which is a tool for executing the U.S. war of aggression and take measures for ending the state of technical war.

Justice can be defended only when strength is reacted with strength and nuke with nuke.

Should the U.S. ignite a war in the end, it will cause flames of justice to flare up like an erupting volcano in which the aggressors will perish and the cursed Military Demarcation Line disappear for good. -0-

Most of this is the typical North Korean noise machine turning up the volume, but the DRPK making the Armistice Agreement invalid effective March 11 (later today) stands out as the most dangerous provocation. It is also not the first time North Korea has claimed the Armistice is over, indeed this is the 6th time they have claimed it.

 The Armistice Agreement is the cease-fire, without it there is no cease-fire and the rules of engagement is different.

The recent nuclear threat by North Korea got all the media attention, but this statement was released before the UN vote. That suggests there has been an ongoing planned effort by North Korea, indeed every move is calculated. What bothers me the most is that all events and responses are extremely predictable. North Korean observers say everything needs to stay predictable on our side to insure escalation control. What happens when they are no longer being predictable and change the rules? We take it hard, and apparently we have accepted that risk.

For an interesting take on the unfolding intelligence situation, check out this Nightwatch report from the other night. I was particularly interested in some of the local propaganda. Nightwatch is hit and miss for me, but I still read it quite often and I have always found they are one of the better sources on the internet when discussing North Korean activity. Treat their analysis like you would any open source intelligence though.

My sense is North Korea is looking for a small skirmish, some kind of clash that raises tension on the security situation, but only a limited battle not a full war. After 2010 it is unclear if they can maintain escalation control though, which may explain why they are message traffic heavy to the locals. The key here is that North Korea wants to change the dynamics of the security situation for the purposes of negotiation, because apparently they have calculated the security situation is too comfortable for everyone else for security to be used in negotiation as a concession. If that is truly the case, then if a skirmish or something breaks out North Korea would need to get hit harder than they hit the South in order to keep the security situation from being a concession in negotiation, but that isn't easy to do unless we feel you have control over escalation and deescalation of the situation.

All of this is good timing for North Korea though. The Navy has 4 destroyers in the area, but no available aircraft carriers anywhere in the Pacific and the nearest is a few weeks away. USS George Washington (CVN 73) is in a 6 month availability window that began in February. The Navy is probably saying otherwise, but if something happens they are not in a very good position to react quickly - not even close. O&M budget shortages due to sequestration and the continuing resolution probably make it difficult for the DoD to react based solely on rhetoric, although the DoD has other, more legitimate means of evaluating the legitimacy of threats from North Korea. Could be hard to tell though, all reports from South Korea have claimed that this week the North was going to conduct the largest military exercise in recent memory, and that was before all the threats happened. Maybe it isn't the exercise we think it is?

Beyond military positioning the timing is pretty good on the political level too, because if in fact something happens on the Korean Peninsula this would be the first actual crisis for John Kerry and Chuck Hagel. I can't say I feel very comfortable about that.


I do wonder, does South Korea change the Rules of Engagement to reflect the North Korean statement the Armistice is invalidated? Can they afford not to given the political implications of being caught unprepared like in 2010? Can we afford not to? This gets really hard when you step through it, particularly when everyone believes the North isn't looking for a major war.

I do not believe North Korea is looking for a major war, but I do think the North is looking for an incident. From their point of view, they have honored every legal requirement regarding any direct attack against any target beginning March 11, 2024 is not some random act of violence. That is what really bothers me, basically North Korea has positioned their nation to be legally at war on purpose, but the specific purpose is yet to be revealed.

Offshore Engagement and the Battle of Java Sea

HNLMS De Ruyter (Wikipedia, Royal Netherlands Navy/Koninklijke Marine 

I have an extended feature at the Diplomat on American grand strategy and the Battle of Java Sea:

America is in the throes of yet another debate about grand strategy, with terms like “deep engagement” and “offshore balancing” coming to characterize complex sets of policies towards allies and antagonists alike. Although the precise nature of the terms varies along with the preference of the author, Deep Engagement advocates tend to prefer robust, forward deployed U.S. military capability of the sort that we currently enjoy.  Advocates of offshore balancing argue that the United States can significantly draw down its military and political commitments and rely on normal balance of power politics to ensure that no state gains complete control over the Eurasian landmass. 

“Avoid another Pearl Harbor,” recently amended to “avoid another 9/11” has animated U.S. security strategy since World War II. It might be more useful to think of grand strategy as a way to avoid another Battle of Java Sea. Predominance is one way to accomplish this; if the United States can defeat any enemy without the assistance of a coalition, then the coalition becomes militarily superfluous. But predominance is expensive, and often convinces allies to shirk their own commitments. 

Offshore balancing certainly may force U.S. allies to pick up the slack, increasing defense expenditures to match the perceived Chinese threat. Together, forces nominally allied with the United States could conceivably outmatch the PLAN and PLAAF in material terms.  But offshore balancing runs the risk of creating conditions that would allow a repeat of the Battle of Java Sea, where a single committed opponent managed to outwit and outfight a coalition on strategic, operational, and tactical grounds. Despite its material advantage, the ABDA never worked out a strategic conception that could concentrate force and bring it to bear against the Imperial Japanese Navy.

Your thoughts are altogether welcome.

With Great State Power Comes Greater Need for Oversight Responsibility

Please recognize this post as an informal, free form flow of incomplete thoughts as a I step through several ideas that have been swirling in my brain lately. I am very much interested in your thoughts, opinions, criticisms, and resources of note that can help me mentally step through some of the issues raised for discussion below.

I recently read an article written by former Secretary of the Navy, former Senator from Virginia Jim Webb titled Congressional Abdication published this month in the National Interest. It is the best published article I have read this year, because I frequently find myself pondering much of what it says. I have no intention on quoting from the article, because I believe that if you click the link and begin reading the article - you will find yourself compelled to read it all. It is an article I believe everyone should read, and give serious consideration to the content.

We are in a very strange place in America today, particularly politically. In my opinion the establishment of the Republican party is frequently not very conservative, and the establishment of the Democratic party is frequently not very liberal. Partisan loyalty to the establishments is still very high, but the loyalty of partisans has become emotional, not intellectual, as the problems continue to mount with neither side willing to compromise - largely for political purposes - towards any actual solutions to any of the current challenges that all need legitimate solutions. My sense is the President is poised to step up to the very real challenges facing America, and as he does so he will become much less popular in the eyes of everyone for doing the things that must be done.

Sequestration happened. I told you - 22 months ago - it would. Very few people believed it would. The DoD is still operating under the rules of the Continuing Resolution, although hopefully that will change very soon. The result of sequestration + the CR means operations and maintenance will be sacrificed to the sacred cow of the defense infrastructure - the defense industry. It is how the two laws work together. For the Navy that means they must park ships at the pier to pay contracts that cannot be canceled. It is very easy to get all /Facepalm about how horribly managed all of this has been for the DoD, but I find myself in agreement with the argument that three and four star Generals and Flag Officers are basically political appointments to the executive branch these days, so why should we expect them to act any different than exactly that? In the end I believe sequestration and the continuing resolution are applying legitimate and correct intentions in the worst possible way. The US is in trouble, but only because all strategies in the Department of Defense today are for purposes of domestic politics, not international politics. The history of the world tells us that our nation will take a hit for taking our eyes off the ball in the hubris that we are a superpower and too big to fail, and fixing what amounts to small (in context) budget problems doesn't solve this problem.

Among our political leaders and political appointees, very few men and women stand out as unique voices with a core set of beliefs and a willingness to stand up for them. When they do - we know who they are, and even when we disagree with them we love them for being genuine. This is exactly why so many in this community and the US Navy have so much admiration and respect for men like Admiral John Harvey and Undersecretary Bob Work, and why Bob Work in particular has stood out as one of the singularly most unique government officials in the Navy community in many decades. Undersecretary Work advocated the same positions he had before his appointment, and I assure you his positions will remain consistent when he moves into his new position over at CNAS. My observation is very few people agree with him on everything, particularly his positions on the Littoral Combat Ship, but disagreement with his positions does not diminish how he earns respect among his critics for engaging them in respectful public debate on the merits of any specific issue, and most critically - the debate is always a discussion of substance.

The ability to sustain a focused debate on the substance of an issue was probably why I was easily distracted by Rand Paul's activity on the Senate floor last night. I know nothing about Rand Paul except that I know of his father, and I never agreed with his father much on political issues. It is easy to dismiss the absurdity of drawing a line in the sand on the issue of drones killing American citizens on American soil, because that would never happen, right? Common sense screams - "of course not!"

And yet Eric Holder would not commit the Obama administration to that position, the implication of his intentional omission being that "yes, drones may indeed one day kill American citizens on US soil." You may not think this is even possible, but this is a legitimate civil liberties issue and as many smart people have pointed out (example here), the administration cannot easily stand with Rand Paul on this issue, because there are legal issues regarding the use of drones in targeted strikes around the world that extend well beyond American soil that have not been sorted out legally, and there are lawsuits already out there regarding American citizens killed by drones in other countries that the Administration must tread very cautiously because of.

For me, that is really where this issue Rand Paul raises comes into play, and impacts many of the issues we discuss here on Information Dissemination. Rand Paul vs Eric Holder on drones isn't something any of us can simply dismiss as a silly political trick or an argument over a hypothetical issue, because the issue is very much legitimate. A few things to think about...

The rise of prominence in using drones to execute US Foreign Policy and US National Security Policy is a bigger issue than the limited but important aspect of drones Rand Paul championed yesterday on the Senate floor. The single biggest drone issue, in my opinion, is that drones have lowered the threshold for use of force. It is why the CIA is now operating drones for targeted killing, and why the USAF has basically restructured itself over the last decade to support this activity as needed globally. It is why the US does not fly manned military aircraft into Pakistan to kill Al Qaeda - the people in Pakistan would be outraged if we did - but those same Pakistani citizens don't seem to care when we send an armed unmanned flying computer into Pakistan and kill a bad guy. This oddly acceptable condition has allowed the Obama administration to fly drones and kill people in Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, and Afghanistan over the last four years, with an unknown level of approval or consent. AFRICOM is setting up a drone base as we speak, and it is a safe bet we will be killing people with drones in Africa in the near future. South America - you are almost certainly next.

Drones have lowered the political risk and raised the political reward of using lethal force and done so at a lower cost to the US taxpayer. In my opinion, the use of armed drones globally represents a natural and expected 21st century asymmetrical evolution of military power in our dealing with non-state actors that distributed towards smaller footprints after we engaged with overwhelming conventional military force. I see the US use of drones as a completely understandable military capability evolution. Like any new adaptation of State power that changes the rules of any battlefield in our favor, there are new considerations for using this new State power that must be addressed to insure rules of the road for others who also develop the same State power capability.

The Obama administration is reshaping the United States National Security Strategy around remotely piloted drone strike capabilities, offensive cyber capabilities, and special operations capabilities. This basically shifts the liberal use of US military power (that is very common in American history) towards three precision strike capabilities on a global scale that - legitimately - can create unforeseen collateral damage. To take it a step further, none of these capabilities have easily recognized legal frameworks because they operate outside the normal rulesets that would otherwise govern the use of lethal military power.

For example, armed drones have killed Americans - now under two consecutive Presidents. There are lawsuits in the name of dead Americans that cite the US Constitution regarding judicial process, because in the end the precision strike capability - in this case drones - ultimately killed American citizens without due process under the law. It is not even clear if the Americans were the target or not - but in the case of Anwar al-Aulaqi all indications are he was the target. Like the vast majority of Americans (according to the polls anyway) the inner Patton in me thinks the guy deserved his fate, but as an American wanting to protect my own civil liberties I certainly would appreciate if our political leaders would step out and clearly define the rule set for use of force with this global precision strike capability so that I know the law protects me and my family from the use of such State power. It is hard for me to imagine any American likewise wouldn't appreciate similar such protections under the law - particularly on US soil as Rand Paul articulates.

Another example - Cyber. The collateral damage from STUXNET has been enormous. With a weaponized cyber capability that probably was developed by the government of the United States, if we examine purely from a monetary standpoint this cyber smart bomb called STUXNET did more collateral damage than any single military strike since we dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The lack of lethality for using such a weapon makes the use of these cyber smart weapons highly attractive to political leaders, but what protections do American businesses have against these kind of State power precision payload military grade capabilities that also have huge collateral damage implications? Even more to the point, what happens when military grade smart worm does actually kill people? There is no legal framework in this country, much less on an international scale, to govern use of such weapons, and yet when examined on a financial scale this military grade weaponized cyber capability is only comparable to the use of a nuclear weapon. The political leadership of this country is waiting for people to die before they take this very serious issue specific to emerging National Security Policy seriously.

Finally, have you seen Zero Dark Thirty? It's a fictional movie, but it's a good frame of reference. Have you read about the Osama bin Laden raid, the various books and articles of substance? Lets just review what happened generically. The United States sent a military unit into a foreign country for purposes of a precision strike on a facility right next to a major military installation. What would have happened if the Pakistani Army rolled up during that action with the tactical approach of shooting first and asking questions later? The other guy gets a vote, so what if our special forces folks were immediately attacked by the Pakistan Army and never given an option to surrender? Would the folks in the White House listened intently as all members of the special operations unit were killed, or would they have allowed the unit to call in air support and defend themselves? A special forces unit has the capability, and in most situations has the higher level military support, to rain hell and fire on anyone within their sights. A very legitimate different outcome that night could have been the US military killing a thousand soldiers of the Pakistani Army in what was supposed to be a clandestine precision strike inside another country.

Under any legal apparatus governed by the US Constitution, if the US would have started a war with Pakistan because of that action, it would have been a violation of every intent outlined in the US Constitution regarding the use of military force in starting a war, and under the law would have been legitimate basis for articles of impeachment for the President who - in this American citizens opinion - was doing the right thing by going after Osama bin Laden. But that's the key issue - our small special forces teams are supported by a US conventional military infrastructure of precision strike capabilities that outmatches everything else in the world. Some of our smallest special operations forces have the firepower and capability equivalent to the entire military of some nations at their fingertip. There is nothing new about special forces, but there is a lot of new about featuring special forces operations as a primary instrument of State power. Do the old rules that govern use of military force apply sufficiently to global precision strike capabilities of platoon sized forces with brigade level firepower at their fingertips? Do we need new rule sets for the emerging predominance of special forces operations in our global military taskings? Will America have to wait for Murphy's Law to kick us between the legs before Congress decides to rethink how the emerging predominance of special forces operations influences existing laws regarding the use of military force globally? When these guys come home from Afghanistan, they are not going to be sent home to sit on the couch - they will be used, everywhere else.

Has Congress sufficiently thought through this? With the nations mature long range strike network from air and sea, a special forces unit today can leverage the firepower of at least a battalion sized unit 20 years ago, but we never sent units with battalion levels of firepower around the world on quick strike missions 20 years ago. Emerging policy is to send special forces around the world on quick strike missions for the next 20 years, and my gut tells me our political leaders haven't stepped through this mentally yet.

The House and the Senate need to wake up and step up, because the growth of executive power since 9/11 has gone unchecked and is in dire need of a balance. Rand Paul may be focused on the details of civil liberties, and it is as good a place to start as any in my opinion, but the framework for 21st century National Security Policy is being established by the Obama administration - built on top of the Bush administrations eight years of very interventionist policies - that predominately feature means of very new, very capable State powers that lack rule sets, and drones is only one small piece of it.

I am generally supportive of the direction the Obama administration is taking with drones, cyber, and special forces instead of leveraging the large US Army approach of the Bush administration, but I see some serious issues with the policy that I believe needs a much healthier dose of oversight than what I - as an American citizen - has seen to date. I also believe the critical foundation of naval power - offshore, near but not intrusive State power, is being undervalued as a non-intrusive and diplomatically capable element of State power in emerging policy, and I believe it is with credible, present naval power the United States needs not always lead with the precision strike while still being able to leverage the potential use of it as a form of deterrence.

Without some serious oversight and consideration that includes alternatives to precision strike, this National Security Policy framework being developed by the Obama administration - that I generally agree with btw - is ripe for exploitation by future administrations if Congress doesn't get in there soon to address many of the very legitimate issues and shortcomings in each approach.

The Founding Fathers had it right all along. The nation maintains a Navy and the ability to raise an Army when needed. That framework works well within the construct of President Obama's National Security Policy that leverages drones, cyber, and special forces, and within that construct the Navy adds a very legitimate, very important, very enormous diplomatic wrapper of sea based military power around America's very lethal and capable precision strike capabilities. I see it as Sea Power in support of State Power, and not just State power in the context of precision strike, but State power in the context of the State Department and other elements of State power throughout the US government. In the abstract; drones, cyber, and special forces can be used in almost exactly the same way, but as asymmetrical alternatives to, a large Army invasion by the United States of another country - with the outcome of a state level war possible, after all we are - either figuratively or literally - bombing another country from the air with drones, destroying the economy of another nation with cyber, or putting boots on the ground for military operations with special operations forces. While I acknowledge it is legitimately my bias, I see sea power as a historical military framework that helps buffer an alternative to check and balance the emerging 21st century models for the liberal use of politically convenient, emerging State power military force options.