Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
It’s a problem the Navy is going to have to address…and soon, if we want to stay in business.
I think the Navy has a good idea of why it should exist, and what it should be doing. The problem is, the Navy hasn’t had a good advocate since John Lehmann…and he left office over 20 years ago.
Then add the effects of Goldwater-Nichols and the obsession with Iraq. Goldwater-nichols effectively put a muzzle on the services, forcing them to toe the DOD party line. And the Iraq obsession kept money flowing into Army and Air Force coffers, and let the United States avoid the painful rebalancing of forces that was indicated after the end of the Cold War. Toss in a risk-averse attitude toward any sort of public relations, and you have a recipe for Big Trouble.
The problem the Navy has, like the case for the F-22, is that most people confuse/conflate the concept of defense with deterrence. “Defence” is what happens after deterrence fails. A force built to deter is perforce always going to have a lot of very expensive pieces of equipment sitting around doing nothing–which seems wasteful and unnecessary to the uninitiated (or even the initiated. I well remember a talking-head ret. 3-star Army Gen complaining about the Navy budget by disparagingly commenting on the fact that the Navy, thanks to all their budget appropriations had now: “….made the oceans safe for whales.”)
We used to make fun of the old SAC slogan “Peace is Our Profession,” but on reflection, wise guys like myself were perhaps “too clever by half” in that we didn’t fully appreciate the extent to which that slogan conditioned the public to willingly accept pouring large amounts of their tax dollars into the purchase of weapons systems which never fired a shot and sat around a lot( or in the case of ICBMs, sat around all the time.) The general public seems to have understood the concept of deterrence well in the nuclear context–but less so in the conventional roles. Control of the air and the seas is the predicate for the ability of land armies to fight far away on foreign shores, but we have so dominated post WWII in these areas that such control is now taken for granted. Already much is made of the fact that the F-22 can’t drop bombs and hasn’t fired a shot in anger in Afghanistan by it’s critics. All of these expensive toys–ac carriers, submarines, F-22s, are like the hidden superstructure or skeleton/framework upon which the house is built and which allow the shingles, siding and paint to be attached. The public only sees the glossy paint, copper guttering and shaker-shingle roof–but all would collapse with out the hidden foundation and framework.
Now carriers and F-22s aren’t exactly hidden (save the subs
) but if they are not being used THIS VERY MINUTE their utility is cast into question.
The Navy and the Air Force need a new ad agency and some fresh creative thinking on how to better explain their vital functions (roles & missions) and the difference between deterrence and defense–and why the former is much to be preferred to the latter–and why the kinds of weapons one needs to but to achieve the former are often very different from those needed for the latter (think F-22 vs A-10.)
erratum: “needs to BUY to achieve…”
Virgil, all you need to do is have the union dock-workers at every major point of entry plaster a “this container delivered courtesy of the US Navy” sticker on each container. Within hours that message will be out on the interstate highways, the railroads, etc…
And they’re union workers — once they see their jobs are dependent upon freedom of navigation more than union dues, they’ll fall right in line and deliver the votes as a block.
Which, I can’t believe it hasn’t been done already, but the Navy isn’t known for great marketing campaigns.
– Max
When John Lehman came aboard as Ronald Reagan’s SecNav he published an unclassified pamphlet called “The Maritime Strategy”. Everybody got it. The overarching mission was clear. This was the last great strategic communication campaign from the Navy, to my knowledge.
The situation today is murkier. There is great need to clarify the murk, and to provide clarity to the broader organization and to the country at large.