What Tom Barnett should have told Congress about America’s 21st century Navy

Thomas Barnett is one of our foremost geopolitical visionaries, so his presentations are always worth attention.  His latest is insightful and elegantly expressed, as always.  However, I have a few suggestions — minor changes to make  it better suit the current situation and needs of America.  (I have a draft post in the pipeline describing the implication of the revised Barnett speech for our naval forces.)

Statement submitted By Dr. Thomas P.M. Barnett, Senior Managing Director, Enterra Solutions LLC to the Seapower and Expeditionary Forces Subcommittee, House Armed Services Committee, United States Congress, 26 March 2009 (Hat tip to the always-interesting Zenpundit).

I fully agree with the opening of Barnett’s presentation:

I appear before the subcommittee today to provide my professional analysis of the current global security environment and future conflict trends, concentrating on how accurately–in my opinion–America’s naval services address both in their strategic vision and force-structure planning. As has been the case throughout my 2 decades of working for, and with, the Department of Navy, current procurement plans portend a “train wreck” between desired fleet size and likely future budget levels dedicated to shipbuilding.

I am neither surprised nor dismayed by this current mismatch, for it reflects the inherent tension between the Department’s continuing desire to maintain some suitable portion of its legacy force and its more recent impulse toward adapting itself to the far more prosaic tasks of integrating globalization’s “frontier areas” — as I like to call them — as part of our nation’s decades-long effort to play bodyguard to the global economy’s advance, as well as defeat its enemies in the “long war against violent extremism” following 9/11. Right now, this tension is mirrored throughout the Defense Department as a whole: between what Secretary Gates has defined as the “next-war-itis” crowd (primarily Air Force and Navy) and those left with the ever-growing burdens of the long war — namely, the Army and Marines.

Let’s skip ahead to the money paragraph:

As someone who helped write the Department of Navy’s white paper, …From the Sea, in the early 1990s and has spent the last decade arguing that America’s grand strategy should center on fostering globalization’s advance, I greatly welcome the Department’s 2007 Maritime Strategic Concept that stated:

“United States seapower will be globally postured to secure our homeland and citizens from direct attack and to advance our interests around the world. As our security and prosperity are inextricably linked with those of others, U.S. maritime forces will be deployed to protect and sustain the peaceful global system comprised of interdependent networks of trade, finance, information, law, people and governance.’

I suggest a few tweaks to the remaining text.  Better yet, let’s throw it out and substitute the following text.

The remainder of Barnett’s presentation, if I had written it

I welcome the Department’s 2007 document because we must confront the ugly reality that this no longer fits either America’s needs or capabilities.  It reflects the situation of the post-WWII era, now fading away.  The major developed nations — the “core” of Japan, Europe, and the US — have entered a period of extreme internal stress.  We all suffer from some combination of demographic decline, bankrupt social retirement systems, and unsustainable government debt loads.  We can no longer carry the burden of leviathan military forces “to protect and sustain the peaceful global system.”

America’s finances cannot bear this burden, which we have carried almost alone for so long.  The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost approximately $2 trillion, every dime of which was borrowed from foreign governments.  The cost of these wars, the current economic downturn, and the looming retirement of the boomers have initiated the solvency crisis long forecast by so many expert economists and agencies (both US and international; see here for a partial list).  The US Comptroller General, the Congressional Budget Office, the Federal Reserve, the IMF, Moody’s, Standard and Poors — we have ignored all their warnings.  Now the bills come due, and expenses must be cut.

The core nations collectively have the resources to operate a leviathan military force, but Japan and the EU show little willingness to do so.  It is not just a matter of money.  As the pseudonymous Spengler wrote at Asia Times (“Why Europe chooses extinction“, 8 April 2003):

{They} are pacifists, not merely in the Persian Gulf, but on their own Balkans doorstep. If they cannot be bothered to reproduce, why should any European soldier sacrifice himself for future generations that never will be born?

This harsh reality should force an immediate revamp of our national military strategy.  Among those warning about the folly of our current policies is William Lind who recently wrote:

The differences between the neo-liberals and the neo-cons are few. Both are militant believers in Brave New World, a Globalist future in which everyone on earth becomes modern. In the view of these ideologues, the fact that billions of people are willing to fight to the death against modernity is, like the river Pregel, an unimportant military obstacle. We just need to buy more Predators.

Meanwhile, the money is running out. The ancien regime syndrome looms ever larger: we not only maintain but increase foolish foreign commitments, at the same time that debt is piling up, those willing to lend become fewer and we are reduced to debasing the currency. Historians have seen it all before, many, many times. It never has a happy ending.

Changes must be made.  It’s time for a new grand strategy to suit the needs of a new age, the basis of our naval strategy in the 21st century.  Rather than the neo-colonial ambitions advocated in my books, I now recommend the defensive strategy recommended by Douglas MacGregor (Colonel, US Army, retired) in “Refusing battle – The alternative to persistent warfare“ (Armed Forces Journal , April 2009).  America needs to focus on defense while we rebuilt at home.  This will allow a large reduction in our military spending, both capital and operating costs.

Likewise, I recommend reading these posts by Fabius Maximus:

1. Thoughts on FMFM1-A, an important tool for survival in the 21st century, 6 July 2005
2. Lessons Learned from the American Expedition to Iraq, 29 December 2005
3. Why We Lose at 4GW, 4 July 2007
4. A solution to 4GW – the introduction, 12 March 2008
5. How America can survive and even prosper in the 21st Century – part I, 7 June 2008
6. How America can survive and even prosper in the 21st Century – part II, 14 June 2008

Perhaps other nations will see the value of a global military force to maintain peace and order.  If so, they can choose one of the following courses:

• fund our military forces,
• expand their own forces, or
• help build a multi-national military force.

Meanwhile, we will rely on our a still-powerful military force — perhaps reconfigured along the lines described by Chet Richards in his seminal book If We Can Keep It, sufficient to guarantee sudden and sure destruction to any nation which strikes at us.  More importantly, we must sharpen our intelligence and law enforcement apparatus — obviously our primary defense against threats such as al Qaeda.

Thank you for your time and attention.

Afterword

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