Storm Warnings in the Pacific -- Dr. Mackubin Thomas Owens

Storm Warnings in the Pacific -- Dr. Mackubin Thomas Owens

For the past sixteen months or so, the attention of the United States has been focused on the Russo-Ukrainian War, which continues to sputter along with neither side able to achieve its goals. But dangerous as that conflict may be, there are more serious dangers on the other side of the world. Although the United States has global responsibilities, strategic sobriety requires that our policymakers establish priorities among various interests and strategic goals.

As Frederick the Great once observed, he who tries to defend everything everywhere ends up defending nothing. Resources are limited. If necessary, a strategist must be willing to sacrifice that which is relatively less important to that which is more important.

In the case of U.S. strategy, our interests in the Pacific are paramount. Russia is a declining power. In the long run, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is a rising one with a much stronger hand to play. It has been clear for some time that China seeks to displace the United States as not only a regional but also a global hegemonic power. In the service of its goals, Beijing has pursued a coherent grand strategy aimed at securing its geographic heartland while working assiduously to undermine the US-led alliance system along the Asian rimland.

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Accordingly, the PRC has pursued a massive military buildup, including an ambitious maritime modernization program. Today, the size of its navy rivals that of the U.S. Navy. Although still qualitatively inferior to its American counterpart, the PRC Navy boasts more hulls, and its shipyards are churning out modern ships at breakneck rates that far outstrip U.S. naval output. 

Aided by the “tyranny of distance,” the PRC has sought to deny the United States unfettered access to the Western Pacific by means of an Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) strategy that features the deployment of a layered cruise and ballistic missile system that threatens U.S. and allied forces operating in the Western Pacific. The ultimate goal of the PRC is to deny the ability of the United States to operate west of the “second island chain,” the series of islands running from Japan’s Bonin and Volcano Islands, through the Marianas and Western Caroline Islands to Western New Guinea and the eastern maritime boundary of the Philippine Sea.

Most critically, Beijing has claimed “indisputable sovereignty” over the South China Sea, seeking to dominate this vitally important maritime region by quashing the competing claims of smaller and weaker powers: Vietnam, Taiwan, the Philippines, Borneo, Malaysia, and Singapore.  Starting with its seizure of Scarborough Shoal in 2012, China has illegally claimed features in the South China Sea, building and militarizing numerous artificial islands.

I’m sure that US Navy flag officers are cognizant of these developments, but I have seen little evidence to indicate that they have raised the necessary objections to business as usual. What is needed is a strategic renaissance within the US Navy of the sort that occurred in the late 1970s and early 1980s, which created the naval forces and doctrine that helped to defeat the Soviet Union and end the Cold War.

This naval revolution began at the Naval War College here in Newport in the 1970s. Employing studies and war games, naval strategists developed Sea Plan 2000, the genesis of what would become the U.S. Navy’s maritime strategy. That strategy, of course generated a great deal of controversy.

It was opposed by analysts who focused on NATO’s central front — they said it threatened to divert resources to what they considered a peripheral purpose. And it was opposed by those who felt that a naval strategy that threatened action against Soviet bastions on NATO’s maritime northern flank and against Vladivostok in the Pacific was provocative and destabilizing. In fact, the maritime strategy proved to be a major contributor to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

To understand the importance of the maritime strategy and its execution, it is useful to recall the state of the United States Navy in the 1970s. That service had reigned supreme at the end of World War II, but it was the victim of its own success. The navies of Japan and Germany lay at the bottom of the sea, and the newly created U.S. Air Force now challenged the U.S. Navy as the first line of defense in the emerging Cold War. The lack of a maritime adversary and the Cold War emphasis on nuclear weapons weakened the budgetary position of the Navy.

The Vietnam War also consumed naval resources as the fleet aged. All of this contributed to a change in the Navy’s culture. Its traditional offensive orientation declined, as did its emphasis on strategic thinking, weakening the strategist-operator cadre that had served it so well in World War II.

During the 1970s, NATO focused on the balance of NATO/Warsaw Pact ground and tactical air forces, minimizing the importance of naval forces. But when the Soviets launched a massive naval exercise, Okean ’70, it confirmed the view of American naval strategists that the USSR was determined to challenge U.S. maritime supremacy, just as American military planners were beginning to forgo the enormous strategic leverage of sea power. This was the situation that prevailed as Ronald Reagan became president and John Lehman became his secretary of the Navy.

I have argued that Lehman was (and remains) the most consequential secretary of the Navy since the end of World War II. He was not only a tireless advocate of American naval power but also a champion of aggressive naval officers capable of executing operations under extremely difficult conditions. He sought to recreate the aggressive US Navy culture of World War II that he believed had declined by the 1970s.

Lehman’s selection of aggressive, offensively focused officers to implement the maritime strategy calls to mind the “Nelson touch,” the lasting influence of Lord Horatio Nelson on the Royal Navy during the Anglo–French wars of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Even after his death in 1805 at Trafalgar, captains of the Royal Navy continued to operate in accordance with Nelson’s standing order: In the absence of signals and command, “no captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy.” What the U.S, Navy needs today is the sort of  “Lehman touch” that rejuvenated the service three decades ago.