Marines’ role cannot be shortchanged
Guest perspective: Corps must be placed squarely within rubric of U.S. sea power
As we continue to plunge
headlong into shortsighted military unpreparedness driven by a strong
case of strategic blindness, fiscal uncertainty and political timidity,
it is worth considering the critical role played by the U.S. Marine
Corps in protecting and sustaining national interests far from our
shores.
In order to do so
properly, the Marine Corps must be placed squarely within the rubric of
American sea power, the most flexible, ready and present component of
U.S. military power. Alongside the other elements of American sea power —
the dominant surface and submarine forces, and the world’s most mobile
and lethal form of air power (carrier aviation) — the Marines represent a
middleweight land force designed to project land power from the sea.
The
Marine Corps is not a second land army, although its employment since
2001 has caused it to be viewed like one. Marine leaders have been
rightfully vocal about the naval roots of their service in recent years,
and it is this aspect of its existence that guarantees the continuing
relevance — no, the criticality — of the Marine Corps.
We
believe that in light of the drawdown from the land wars of the past
decade and in order to implement President Barack Obama’s “rebalance”
toward Asia-Pacific, the importance of American sea power in the guise
of the Navy-Marine Corps team will only increase. Geography may not be
destiny, but it certainly helps define strategy.
The
United States is thousands of miles across the Pacific Ocean from five
treaty partners and a considerable mass of American national interest.
The appetite for permanently garrisoned forces in the region seems to be
on the wane, even as friends and allies look to the United States for
assurance against destabilizing and persistent Chinese actions.
If
we hope to remain a Pacific power with the ability to assure friends,
deter threats and preserve access to the global commons that tie our
economies together, the logic proceeds that we will need to rely more
heavily on the Navy-Marine Corps team for sea-based power projection.
It
is difficult to think of a future crisis in East Asia that would lack a
critical role for the Marine Corps. While the Pacific Theater is
maritime in nature, there is a considerable amount of land that retains
strategic value, some of which is under the sovereignty of nations with
whom we have mutual defense treaties.
A
desire to avoid “land wars in Asia” should not blind us to the reality
that in order to protect our interests, we may very well have to conduct
“land operations” throughout East Asia and Oceania.
For
instance, small islands throughout the First Island Chain (the
Japan-Taiwan-Philippines archipelago) could become a mechanism for
either China or the United States and its allies to contest the local
sea by controlling the land. Such operations are the natural purview of a
force designed for amphibious employment, and that force is the Marine
Corps.
To be prepared, we must take the following actions:
• We must build more ships. Specifically, we must build more amphibious ships.
The Marine Corps has a
war-fighting requirement for 38 amphibious ships, while the geographic
combatant commanders’ peacetime presence requirement is similar. Neither
is met by the nation’s current shipbuilding plan, which provides for
about 30 until well into the next decade and eventually 33.
The
utility of these ships is apparent, providing for transport and power
projection in time of war and crisis, and disaster response capability
in peacetime. However, there is at least a $4 billion average annual gap
in funding for the Navy’s planned shipbuilding budget in the decades
ahead. But filling this gap and resourcing the current shipbuilding plan
does not require a large shift in Defense Department resources,
according to Ron O’Rourke of the Congressional Research Service, but
instead just 1.1 percent to 1.5 percent more of the department’s current
average annual budget.
•
The Navy and Marine Corps must become more integrated. Forward-deployed
American sea power is poised to provide for a “bubble” of diplomacy,
influence and power of a definable range, within which naval forces
execute multidomain dominance.
This
is not a war-winning force, and it does not operate without critical
support from the Joint Force. It is, however, powerful, flexible, mobile
and fully integrated, capable of providing continuous conventional
deterrence and crisis response to the vast majority of cases in which
military power might be called upon.
Command
and control stovepipes within the task organizations of the Navy and
Marine Corps must be dismantled, with a common command structure
implemented that sees the land power of the Marine Corps as one of its
several primary tools. With the fielding of the VSTOL variant of the
F-35B, Marine tactical aviation must necessarily evolve from its
singular focus on ground support to a broader mission in support of the
Seapower Task Force.
The
Department of the Navy should consider a variant of the littoral combat
ship in which a detachment of Marines provides for maritime security
missions while Marine attack helicopters neutralize targets at sea and
ashore. The bottom line is that the Marine Corps must fully return to
its roots and provide this nation with flexible combat power from the
sea.
• We must properly
size the Marine Corps. Pressures to draw down the force as a result of
defense sequestration cuts should not exert undue influence on the size
of the Marine Corps, which must be maintained as America’s force in
readiness. The nation can and should provide for a Marine Corps at a
minimum 180,000 Marines.
While
no one can predict the future with clarity, one must make informed
choices about future trends in order to manage current resources. Some
call this strategy. We see a limited appetite among the American people
for the occupation and administration of foreign lands, even as we
understand the desire of the American people to remain powerful and
influential wherever our interests lie.
The
U.S. Marine Corps, operating as a critical component of
forward-deployed American sea power, will play an increasingly important
role in ensuring Americans that we can and will carry out their
expectations.
Rep. Randy
Forbes, R-Va., is chairman of the House Armed Services Seapower and
Projection Forces subcommittee. He is co-leading a bipartisan
Asia-Pacific Oversight Series for the House Armed Services Committee. Bryan
McGrath is assistant director of the Hudson Center for American
Seapower at the Hudson Institute, and is managing director of the
FerryBridge Group.
