Seapower policy in a perilous age: The Navy League’s view

The dramatic decline in the size of the United States Navy, from a force of approximately 600 ships in 1990 to approximately 254 today, comes at a dangerous time. Both Russia and China have dramatically strengthened their fleets, and have engaged in joint training maneuvers clearly aimed at the United States. Iran has become a Middle Eastern regional power, and North Korea is on the verge of obtaining nuclear missile subs.

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The Navy League has released its 2015/2016 policy statement on Seapower. The Executive Summary of that report is excerpted here:

As a maritime nation, the United States must have the strongest, most capable sea services and a dedicated maritime strategy to ensure conflicts are kept far from our shores and that the sea lanes are open and free for commerce. …

The commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., describes the military’s budget problem as akin to living from paycheck to paycheck. It will get us by, but at the cost of deferring equipment maintenance, home station training and modernization.

The Navy League is concerned that if the Department of the Navy, the Coast Guard and the Maritime Administration are required to continue to respond to crisis after crisis without the funding needed to build new ships, repair old equipment and provide routine maintenance, the nation risks permanent damage to national defense and puts in jeopardy the domestic and international economies that rely on the safety and security that U.S. sea power provides. Ships, crews and equipment cannot continue the current pace of operations. The retention of trained personnel will decline, ultimately leading to reduced readiness for combat and other missions.

By many measures, current funding levels do not meet the sea services’ needs. …

The United States is trying to peacefully bring China into great power status, while Beijing uses diplomatic and economic tools to try and deny the United States physical and political access around the world. China’s defense budget has increased by 500 percent since 2011. Testifying on Feb. 25, 2015, before the House Armed Services Seapower and Projections Forces Subcommittee on the Navy budget, Vice Adm. Joseph P. Mulloy, deputy chief of naval operations for Integration of Capabilities and Resources, said the Chinese navy now has more attack submarines than the United States.

The imperialistic actions of Russia have caught the world off guard, and Moscow’s long-term ambitions are ambiguous at best.

Iran and North Korea represent a risk of nuclear proliferation combined with unpredictable leadership and increased cyber warfare risks.

Iran is expanding its influence and bringing ambiguity to the “nuclear question.” Iran has built up a significant amount of asymmetric offensive capability in the form of small boats, mines and other investments that could disrupt the free flow of goods along the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important oil transit chokepoint. Al-Qaida, ISIL (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, also referred to as ISIS) and other transnational networks are now recruiting home-grown violent extremists. They have a brutality unlike anything seen in the modern world, attempting the genocide of the Yazidi people and other horrors.

We have seen cyber attacks on American corporations, such as those on Target and Sony Pictures in 2014, while hackers who are working for nations continue to target the aerospace and defense sectors with increased vigor. Our defense contractors and their intellectual property are prime targets.

The unforeseen threats that we face are the product of a number of factors. For instance, the Arab Spring, the Syria conflict and the withdrawal of forces from Iraq together created the significant unintended consequence of ISIL. The Taliban are regrouping in Afghanistan, and the full impact of their resurgence has yet to be seen. Demand continues to rise. The 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) demonstrated that the combatant commanders’ (CCDRs’) demand for naval forces has increased, and today it remains very high, particularly when factoring in the following events in 2014:

■ Russia destabilized Crimea and began destabilizing eastern Ukraine in February.

■ ISIL launched an offensive into Iraq in June.

■ The Centers for Disease Control in August predicted 1.4 million people would be infected by Ebola in West Africa.

■ Sony’s networks were hacked in November and December.

Navy officials have testified that a Navy fleet of 450 ships would be needed to fully meet Combatant Command demands. In the face of this increasingly unpredictable global environment, the readiness of U.S. maritime forces is at troublesome levels. Forward-deployed forces are ready to go, but forces that are neither forward nor deployed are not as ready as they have been in the past. The actual deployment of our naval forces has far exceeded the planned deployment schedule as reality and the needs of CCDRs intervened. Extended deployments, deferred maintenance and reduced funding means stress on our services.

In light of this environment, the Navy League of the United States supports five key points:

The Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard must:

Maintain the world’s finest maritime force to sustain U.S. global dominance.
Maintain the readiness of the operating forces and avoid hollowing them out.
Make tough budget decisions; everything should be on the table.
Preserve the quality of the all-volunteer force and take care of our Sailors, Marines and Coast Guard men and women.
Be deployed forward as America’s first response to crises around the world.

Quick Analysis

Putin’s Saber Rattling

Earlier this week, President Biden reversed his 2022 decision, authorizing the provision of antipersonnel land mines to the Ukrainian government. It follows an earlier Administration authorization to allow the use of an advanced American missile system capable of striking as deep as 100 miles inside Russian territory. The US election season may be ending, but both Russia and the West show no indication of stepping down the conflict. Russian propaganda continues to swell as the Kremlin increases its threats to use nuclear weapons against the West. Last week Andrey Sushentsov, program director of the pro-Kremlin think tank Valdai Discussion Club (VDC), published an article on growing nuclear tensions in the region. Official Russian language in the last few years has been threatening. Since the US election, rhetoric like that in the Sushentsov article, has approached the level of nuclear blackmail. The VDC article’s main theme centers on Russia’s intent to directly confront the West militarily if the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) becomes involved in Russia’s conflict with Ukraine. “On the one hand, these threats are intended to frighten the West, but on the other, Russian propagandists themselves are starting to believe in the inevitability of escalation,” according to Ksenia Kirillova of the Jamestown Foundation. On November 11, Sushentsov wrote that “The conflict will reach a completely new level, with unpredictable consequences for Europe and the entire world.” Kirillova points out that Putin’s distorted image of the world is divorced from reality and is causing the Kremlin to issue demands that are impossible to fulfill. Financial and other Russian resources needed to support Putin’s war are growing scarcer at the same time. This week the Kremlin announced a reduction of payments to its soldiers. Recently North Korea acknowledged it was sending soldiers to fight in Ukraine as Putin is running out of bodies to use as cannon fire. The war is not going well for Russia. One question floating around the Washington intelligence community is whether Putin will act out of desperation before President-elect Trump assumes office. In recent months the Russian propaganda machine is spewing out materials from fairly reputable analytical platforms inside the country. Kirillova says that “Kremlin ‘experts’ do not conceal that such threats are only intended to break the West psychologically, as they themselves are not prepared for full-scale nuclear war.” Despite Russia’s lack of preparation for an all-out war with the West, the expanding nuclear rhetoric carries with it an increase in the threat of a full-scale war in multiple theaters of operation. In June 2023 a founder of the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, Sergey Karaganov, called for “delivering a pre-emptive strike of retaliation” on Poland to force the West to surrender. In the previous month, Dmitry Suslov, a direct of research programs at the policy center proposed organizing “a demonstration nuclear explosion” aimed at intimidating the West. In September, President Putin announced a reappraisal of Russian nuclear doctrine after speaking earlier in the year at the plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum and jokingly calling Suslov a “scary person.” Pavel Baev, writing in the European Daily Monitor, says “Putin intends his announcement to mark an escalation of nuclear brinkmanship and influence the proceedings of future Ukrainian peace efforts.” Putin is expanding the list of environmental conditions that are acceptable for using a nuclear weapon and incorporating it into Russian military doctrine. Baev adds that “The ups and downs of Russian brinkmanship are disconnected from the kinetic battles of the war, correlating instead with Ukrainian peace offensives, such as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s first peace summit in Bürgenstock, Switzerland.” Despite the increase in vitriolic language, in a You Tube video published a week before the US presidential election, Karaganov openly assured the West the primary goal of the escalation is to break the American spirit and that of the West, not outright nuclear war. By Election Day in the US, with political prognosticators predicting a win for former president Trump, Karaganov changed his tune and called for an increased role in nuclear deterrence. Kirillova points out that Western concessions to Russia are unlikely to reduce the risk of nuclear escalation. The distorted reality inside the Kremlin continues to push that President-elect Trump is an adherent of “world government,” that Ukraine will create a nuclear weapon, and Russia must prepare for a nuclear conflagration to achieve its ambitions for a new world order. President-elect Trump has indicated he will not agree to concessions that destabilize Europe, the Middle East or other regions. Going forward a strong US foreign policy may be the most stabilizing course the West can count on to restrain Putin and his intent to rebuild the Russian empire. Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept. Illustration: Pixabay

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