On the water, I responded to various naval officers who noticed that I questioned in my latest
book whether the Navy has had any impact on national strategy in recent years.
I see raising issues like this as part of my job-that is, speak up when I think the emperor has no
clothes. The commonality in these discussions is that the denunciations are
posted on blogs and websites while the attaboys are sent privately by e-mail.
As David Halberstam once said to me, "That's the nature of the business.
[pause] Suck it up."
Responding to my question of why the Navy hasn't had much effect on
national strategy since 9/11, a friend who is a defense expert shot this back:
I would disagree with Tom; naval officers and thinkers have had a
profound, but entirely negative, effect on American post-9/11 strategy: think
of Mike Mullen, Fox Fallon, Giambastiani and Bill Owens. The first two fought the surge, fought COIN
(and Mullen still is), wanted to bug out of Iraq, favored a "light footprint"
and "offshore balancing," etc. etc. The
latter two were apostles of "transformation" of the "transparent battlefield"
variety, which led us down a very bad and wrong path.
Meanwhile, here's a comment from an active-duty Navy officer whose name
cannot be used here:
The reason the Navy doesn't have the sorts of folks like H.R. McMaster
or John Nagl is that our personnel system is set up to discourage folks from
taking the opportunities that would give them the knowledge base they need to
do it. When I was selected to go to a
fellowship at RAND I was counseled that it would negatively impact my chance to
screen for command, primarily because the tour would result in a not observed
fitness report, which doesn't look good up against the guy that goes and works
in an office somewhere, but gets an observed fitrep. I decided that 9 months at RAND couldn't
really be that big of an impact, and I would volunteer to go back to sea again
after to make up for it, but it was a big impact, despite co-authoring two
studies and participating in several project teams. Then when I was accepted to
the PhD program in security studies . . . , I was all but told that I would not
select for command if I came here, again because of the not observed fitness
reports. We are never going to have
warfighters and strategists with the requisite knowledge skills in both sides
of that coin if folks have to choose one or the other. When people point out that Admiral Stavridis
managed to get a PhD, from Fletcher no less, and still say competitive up the
chain--this is an argument I've heard--I'd say it's not fair to point to one of
the most brilliant naval officers in decades as the example, and there are very
few others, of how the system works well.
. . . I wish we had more naval
officers engaged in the national debate over grand strategy, as I think the
Navy has a big part to play in it, and our skills sets as naval officers tend
to be a bit broader than in some of the other services as we are routinely
forward deployed working with allies and friends, engaged with activities
beyond the limits of traditional warfighting.
Unfortunately, the best contribution the Navy's added to the national
security debate in years might just be the three unnamed snipers who took out
those teenage pirates on Easter Sunday.
However capable we are at completing the mission given us, if we don't
have a voice in the debate over what the right mission is, or what the right
strategy and policy should be, we are selling ourselves short.
Photo: Flickr user Amanda M Hatfield
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