Editor’s Note: This essay is part one of a three-part series based on a report by the author. Download the full report here.
Part I
Legacy
America is a maritime nation by necessity. This fact was recognized at the dawn of our Republic. John Jay, who served as the secretary of foreign affairs during the period of the Articles of Confederation, in Federalist No. 4, foresaw the importance of our trade with India and China, for he specified both countries by name. In 1791, Alexander Hamilton averred that external commerce is dependent upon the maintenance of American naval power.
Due to the vision and sacrifices of countless Americans, our nation became the world’s preeminent maritime power. This achievement spurred international commerce from and to our shores. America relies on the oceans that bracket our nation for trade, the capture or importation of energy and essential commodities, and as avenues over which we project influence and, when necessary, power. Free use of the seas is foundational to any modern nation: therefore, it must never be taken for granted.
America venerates international trade that is free from compulsion. Our cherished principles of liberty have allowed successive generations of citizens to enjoy economic mobility and prosperity that are unequaled but are now menaced by the People’s Republic of China’s organized system of pillage and economic imperialism.
The economy of the United States is not, should not, and cannot be autarkic: fair trade is essential to American prosperity. America must not allow China or other belligerent nations to control global infrastructure, international trade, wild marine fisheries, or the supplies of critical materials and components.
Economic life is a dominant concern of every country. We must establish sets of rules that will prize the American worker and farmer by opening markets globally, while opposing China’s and other belligerent countries’ predatory deceits. Maritime power, in all its forms, constitutes the irreplaceable foundation for these goals.
Our Navy is charged with two essential missions: sea control and the support and projection of power ashore. Associated roles include strategic deterrence, the preservation of freedom of navigation, naval presence, and, when necessary, sea denial, which is the foreclosure of an adversary’s sea lines of communication or its maritime presence.
Sea control no longer means an absolute domination of all the world’s oceans, but the selective command of the seas at times and places of our selection. It is a prerequisite for every surface operation to which we may commit our Navy.
In his remarks on the occasion of the recommissioning of the battleship USS New Jersey (BB-62) on December 28, 1982, Ronald Reagan declared that to affect sea control, our Navy must be able “in time of emergency to venture in harm’s way.” Our fortieth president recognized that this attribute was the sine qua non of naval power; Ronald Reagan thus echoed the words first expressed by the Father of our Navy, John Paul Jones.
Our Navy must, within areas and through timeframes ordained by mission parameters, be able to control surface, air, subsurface, informational, and electromagnetic domains. To thwart the use of such realms by an adversary represents sea denial. This was a primary objective of the Soviet Union; it is now a principal mission of the Chinese Navy.
In his New Jersey address, President Reagan stated that “the United States is a naval power by necessity, critically dependent on the transoceanic import of vital strategic materials. Over 90 percent of our commerce between the continents moves in ships. Freedom to use the seas is our nation’s lifeblood. For that reason, our Navy is designed to keep the sea lanes open worldwide, a far greater task than closing those sea lanes at strategic chokepoints.” These words are as true today as they were more than four decades ago.
The strength of America’s maritime power may be determined by our analysis of its application and not static measures manufactured by political forces that seek to hide gross deficiencies and lapses in foresight. Results, and not platitudes, describe the real world; inarticulate ruminations describe an imaginary one.
Thresholds in geopolitics or in warfare may not be immediately recognized; political demands may also inhibit observations and their avowal. In such cases, it is frequently through hindsight that we realize that a significant shift in status or in the correlation of forces has occurred.
Threshold warfare concerns actions that occur in a haze of detection, attribution, and uncertainty. The internet and social media can magnify parameters of such conduct, for uncertainty can be plied as a weapon in war. Therefore, it is the visibility and mobility of the Navy that permit the film of threshold warfare to be pierced decisively, for naval actions are visceral. This vital aspect of naval presence has been reflected throughout the administrations of many presidents. Dr. Henry Kissinger, who served as the assistant to the president for national security affairs and as the secretary of state to Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, would pose one chief question at the cusp of international crises: “Where are our carriers?”
Sea Power
Is our Navy up to the fight? It is now, but what of the future? Recent procurement plans could relinquish command of the seas in crucial areas, for the People’s Liberation Army Navy of China is ascendent. By being derelict in the creation and substantiation of an appropriate maritime architecture for our nation, our government has reduced our Navy’s capacities and has prejudiced its warfighting capabilities. Gross mismanagement throughout the Department of Defense has compounded this crisis; progressive and ludicrous doctrines concerning military personnel have wrought extensive damage.
President Reagan understood our Navy was but one component of our country’s maritime strength. In his National Maritime Day Proclamation of May 21, 1985, President Reagan referenced several aspects of sea power, asserting that the United States must support the “[m]aintenance of a superior Navy, Marine Corps, and a highly capable Coast Guard” and “[a]n economically independent United States flag merchant marine of not less than its current capabilities,” as well as “[a]n adequate shipyard mobilization base.” These five necessities have been allowed to wither; a new course must be established lest these pillars disintegrate.
America’s armed forces have not been defeated at sea, on beaches, on the field of battle, or in the air, for our military has always overcome any loss or setback. Our military has, instead, been thwarted by an irresponsible and self-serving political class that demands extraordinary sacrifices of our servicemen and women in pursuit of goals that may be ill-defined or patently unattainable.
Wars are distinct from military actions. Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of our Constitution specifies that only Congress can declare war. We must return to the Founders’ original intent lest the waste and carnage of the last two decades presage further national decay and malaise.
Wars should only be declared and fought if vital American interests are attacked or are in imminent danger of being destroyed or crippled. Such conflicts necessarily include those joined because of the collective defense agreements we hold with allied nations. Rather than making America more vulnerable to attack or to the onset of war, such collective defense agreements have been proven to reduce the chances for combat due to the strength and the permanence of America’s alliances, which require that each nation does its part.
Military actions, short of war, must be limited in objectives and duration. If such engagements are to be brought, there should be an exigent need or manifest national imperative that warrants our military’s commitment to battle in the absence of a declaration of war. Such engagements should only be undertaken if objectives are expressly defined, and a clear exit strategy is articulated before the onset of military operations.
This posture should not be taken as being an analogue of the Powell Doctrine, which was named in recognition of the geostrategic precepts advanced by General Colin Powell. Specifically, the Powell Doctrine bears the potential to degenerate into a determinative appraisal of popular public opinion concerning the commander in chief’s selection or abnegation of military options. We are a Republic; in war or conflict, statesmanship is needed, not opinion polls.
Wars may either merit our involvement or be alien to the American creed. As a nation, we must distinguish military engagements of limited scope from war. This separation is the means to ensure that our military will be supported earnestly.
If a war is not deemed meritorious, thereby being unsupported by Congress’ acting in its legislative capacity, such a conflict should not be joined; neither should such an engagement be posed as a military action to avoid the will of Congress and the American people. A measured action or a limited commitment as part of an alliance may be considered, but either course must be governed by prudent military principles.
Facts can be mislaid but they can never be destroyed. When America’s principles, objectives, capabilities, and commitments are aligned, our nation’s security is strong. To the degree that any of these elements is missing, our power is diminished. Freedom cannot be imposed on a people; it must be sought. This may occur after an abject defeat, as was the case with Germany, Italy, and Japan. It will not occur as the result of nation-building. Limited military engagements do, however, occur, for our nation must respond to assaults and certain provocations and threats.
Mistakes involving the categorization of core elements of our military power have led to onerous and costly misapplications of our forces and entry into needless armed conflicts of disfiguring scope. Military power supplements diplomacy and intelligence operations; its proper use is to enforce a set of conditions or circumstances that America wishes to maintain or impose, now and into the future. Instead of this construct, which must reflect a set of discernable or logical rules, national authorities often make ad hoc decisions.
The proper employment of the Navy and Marine Corps is presently hampered by a category mistake as to their essence. This mistake has been committed by our nation’s past and present civilian and military leaders.
The Department of Defense, in its collective voice, believes the combined power of all our services is required to respond to current operational requirements. Though the present doctrine and design of contingent and wartime operations emphasizes joint action, this formulation, when wielded by unbound political forces, has served to permit geostrategic errors of great moment, as our engagements in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and the Second Gulf War attest.
Joint operations within these conflicts produced outstanding tactical results in many circumstances, with joint service participation conveying unique and specialized advantages; this conduct of military operations, however, has too often been appropriated by politicians and academic, corporate, or bureaucratic actors to create or to extend our nation’s non-treaty, military commitments. In most instances, such commitments are not sustained over time, leading to American losses without appreciable improvements in our geopolitical posture. We must, therefore, challenge this totem and consider an alternative course.
Joint operations are a necessity in a declared war; they are not always necessary in operations short of war. Joint operations can be vital in special operations missions, but they are not in all circumstances requisite.
Balance is required in the application of joint operations. Critically, joint operations must not serve as a basis for mission expansion, overreach, political posturing, or ossification of America’s foreign military commitments in the absence of treaty obligations or a declaration of war by Congress.
Discretion
America’s recent expression and comprehension of naval power are degraded. Our matchless capabilities in this domain, which underwrite diplomacy, commerce, and intelligence collection, are too often relegated to being part of a joint instrument of force, to be wielded in the context of operations involving the other armed services. To correct this course, we must separate the roles and missions of the Navy and Marine Corps from the other military services in times short of a declared war.
Discretion in the commitments of America’s fighting services provides clarity in support of differentiating limited military engagements from war. The proper employment and roles of the Navy and Marine Corps are qualitatively different than that of our Army and Air Force; such distinctions should be enforced in military actions short of war.
The Navy and Marine Corps should serve as America’s primary armed forces in limited military engagements due to their inherent mobility and necessary readiness. The Army and Air Force, because of their immense footprint when protractedly deployed, should be equipped to serve principally in declared wars and not in endless military engagements, for their mass creates an impetus to enlarge and extend military operations. This division of roles between the services will support a winnowing of pointless and costly military actions, while strengthening the core capabilities of each branch. Exceptions to this general dichotomy, however, must govern the employment of special forces and long-range bomber aircraft due to their unique abilities.
Dominion
Our nation’s appropriate national dominion may be defined as America’s objectives, possessions, or necessary means of commerce, relations, and security. Our rule must be to accomplish our imperatives and goals with the least necessary force consistent with the contours of the entire order or mission. This implies the use of naval power as the primary constabulary means to support diplomacy and intelligence operations to achieve America’s objectives.
National dominion for the United States, as a maritime power bordered by the Pacific, Atlantic, and Arctic oceans, requires naval supremacy that must be fused with other vital elements that support national security and international trade. The parsimonious exercise of national dominion, in order to conserve American lives, influence, and treasure, requires the enforcement of naval preeminence in association with diplomacy and intelligence operations to achieve our nation’s imperatives and prerogatives.
From the foregoing, several important axioms may be deduced: first, naval power comes before general military power in enforcing our nation’s dominion. Second, it should be recognized that maritime strength forms an aegis of might when wedded to diplomacy and intelligence operations.
Sea power is the irreplaceable tool of American national dominion on a global scale. Our Navy and Marine Corps represent far more than an element of America’s warfighting capacity. America’s command of the seas reduces the requirement for battle and the need for war. It is therefore much more than a constituent part of America’s warfighting capacity, it is the prime means to avert war while still enforcing our nation’s will, thereby preserving the many benefits peace conveys.
Diplomacy and Strength
Isolationism is not a strategy. The Navy and Marines give body and shape to America’s obligations by supporting diplomacy and needed outreach while substantiating deterrence. Diplomacy and military force exist upon a spectrum of national power. Caprice or indecision subverts reconcilement between adversarial nations, but clarity and the capacity to overmatch our adversaries enable diplomacy.
In confliction zones, the capacity to reassess and to react is essential. End points must be considered before wars or military actions are broached. Forward deployments by the Navy and Marine Corps—in force—permit the creation of this adaptive space. Used judiciously, the combined military power of the Navy and Marines can avert larger conflicts and unending U.S. engagements that nullify the authority of Congress to alone declare war.
American maritime power in all its forms is mandatory if the world is to avert war; these attributes must be coupled with energy dominance. The United States must dominate the seas, but our Navy is set to lose more ships in peacetime than our country has lost in many of our wars. The Marine Corps has been permitted to decohere, and our maritime industrial base and merchant marine have been allowed to evaporate. All this must change.
China is far more powerful across a range of measures than Russia. The ongoing deployment of the long-range Chengdu J-20 fighter; the construction and the deployment of China’s first nuclear-powered supercarrier, to be equipped with fifth-generation fighters; the sightings of Chinese, sixth-generation aircraft prototypes, including a long-range bomber; and other elements of China’s large-scale naval construction program, threaten the entirety of the Indo-Pacific.
Japan and Taiwan are the central links of the First Island Chain, which is composed of the archipelagos that are most near to the East Asian mainland. Therefore, an invasion of Taiwan would allow the Chinese Navy to breakout and contest the United States for control of the entirety of the Indo-Pacific and with it, the preponderance of world trade. China would also be in position to strike the Second Island Chain, which includes Guam.
China seeks to use its present window of opportunity, afforded it by callow American leadership, to subdue our way of life. This is impermissible. It is not rational to permit China to be a principal exporter of goods to our country and the source of our largest individual trade deficit, as it targets our Navy, builds militarized islands in the South China Sea, and threatens to invade Taiwan.
Prosperity and opportunity are only possible if advanced within a cordon of security. America’s defense alliances are critical to global peace and to our nation’s survival as the world’s dominant economic power.
In April 1961, President John F. Kennedy met privately with General Douglas MacArthur, who recommended that America not engage in combat on the Asian mainland. MacArthur’s injunction against American involvement in Indochina was based not only upon the general’s campaigns in the Korean War but his study of battles within China during World War II.
MacArthur believed that our Navy and not our land forces would be determinative to secure victory over communism in Asia by lacerating the potential for China to topple newly independent countries. Regrettably, President Lyndon Johnson did not heed this dictum. General MacArthur’s logic, however, applies today in our consideration of the necessary defense of the First Island Chain.
Change
To persevere in any contest with China and Russia, we must reject politically correct or progressive indoctrination and commit to excellence in military training and procurement. New weapons can be deployed expeditiously if doctrinal, bureaucratic, industrial, or contractual constraints are removed.
Doctrinal blindness to preserve established organizational structures must never be tolerated. To effect needed change in the Department of Defense, duplication and inefficiencies must be eliminated. This requires structural change at the highest levels, including the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Weapons development must be returned to the purview of our nation’s warriors and not be entrusted to bureaucrats.
America must lead in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, unmanned combat vehicle design, electronic warfare, and new materials. Several virtual cybersecurity national laboratories must be established to aid our military.
In the Indo-Pacific, America must expand the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, whose members are the United States, Japan, India, and Australia, and integrate it with the existing Australia-U.K.-U.S. (AUKUS) treaty. The new defense alliance that should be formed should also have as its founding members, the Republic of Korea, which is part of the recently consummated American-Japanese-Korean trilateral pact, and France, for America’s oldest ally has substantial territories in the Indo-Pacific, in which 1.65 million of its citizens live.
This new defense pact could be called the Indo-Pacific Treaty Alliance. As with NATO, non-treaty nations should be invited to be observers. Such nations could include Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan. As with NATO, specific defense spending goals should be promulgated. Given the threat China poses, defense spending increases on the part of all member nations should be sought.
Our nation’s leadership must make Xi Jinping understand that he will never defeat America militarily and that any attempt to invade Taiwan will be met with the certitude of his nation’s retreat and its removal from America’s financial and consumer markets. In addition, China must not be allowed to expand its domain or suzerainty to the northwest—should Russia splinter into smaller states after the termination of its assaultive war against Ukraine.
Central to the wellbeing and security of American families is a United States that leads the world in both military and economic power. America must use its strengths prudently and conservatively, for we are most secure when we lead by example and not by armed intervention.
Richard B. Levine served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy in charge of the Department of the Navy’s technology transfer and security assistance organization during the Reagan administration. Richard also served on the National Security Council staff, in the White House, as Director, International Economic Affairs, and as Director, Policy Development.
The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.
Center for Maritime Strategy
By Richard B. Levine
Editor’s Note: This essay is part one of a three-part series based on a report by the author. Download the full report here.
Part I
Legacy
America is a maritime nation by necessity. This fact was recognized at the dawn of our Republic. John Jay, who served as the secretary of foreign affairs during the period of the Articles of Confederation, in Federalist No. 4, foresaw the importance of our trade with India and China, for he specified both countries by name. In 1791, Alexander Hamilton averred that external commerce is dependent upon the maintenance of American naval power.
Due to the vision and sacrifices of countless Americans, our nation became the world’s preeminent maritime power. This achievement spurred international commerce from and to our shores. America relies on the oceans that bracket our nation for trade, the capture or importation of energy and essential commodities, and as avenues over which we project influence and, when necessary, power. Free use of the seas is foundational to any modern nation: therefore, it must never be taken for granted.
America venerates international trade that is free from compulsion. Our cherished principles of liberty have allowed successive generations of citizens to enjoy economic mobility and prosperity that are unequaled but are now menaced by the People’s Republic of China’s organized system of pillage and economic imperialism.
The economy of the United States is not, should not, and cannot be autarkic: fair trade is essential to American prosperity. America must not allow China or other belligerent nations to control global infrastructure, international trade, wild marine fisheries, or the supplies of critical materials and components.
Economic life is a dominant concern of every country. We must establish sets of rules that will prize the American worker and farmer by opening markets globally, while opposing China’s and other belligerent countries’ predatory deceits. Maritime power, in all its forms, constitutes the irreplaceable foundation for these goals.
Our Navy is charged with two essential missions: sea control and the support and projection of power ashore. Associated roles include strategic deterrence, the preservation of freedom of navigation, naval presence, and, when necessary, sea denial, which is the foreclosure of an adversary’s sea lines of communication or its maritime presence.
Sea control no longer means an absolute domination of all the world’s oceans, but the selective command of the seas at times and places of our selection. It is a prerequisite for every surface operation to which we may commit our Navy.
In his remarks on the occasion of the recommissioning of the battleship USS New Jersey (BB-62) on December 28, 1982, Ronald Reagan declared that to affect sea control, our Navy must be able “in time of emergency to venture in harm’s way.” Our fortieth president recognized that this attribute was the sine qua non of naval power; Ronald Reagan thus echoed the words first expressed by the Father of our Navy, John Paul Jones.
Our Navy must, within areas and through timeframes ordained by mission parameters, be able to control surface, air, subsurface, informational, and electromagnetic domains. To thwart the use of such realms by an adversary represents sea denial. This was a primary objective of the Soviet Union; it is now a principal mission of the Chinese Navy.
In his New Jersey address, President Reagan stated that “the United States is a naval power by necessity, critically dependent on the transoceanic import of vital strategic materials. Over 90 percent of our commerce between the continents moves in ships. Freedom to use the seas is our nation’s lifeblood. For that reason, our Navy is designed to keep the sea lanes open worldwide, a far greater task than closing those sea lanes at strategic chokepoints.” These words are as true today as they were more than four decades ago.
China is building a Navy designed for offensive operations that will be buttressed by its conventional land- and air-based ballistic and hypersonic missiles. The United States Navy must preserve a decisive margin of naval superiority to counter this multidimensional threat.
The strength of America’s maritime power may be determined by our analysis of its application and not static measures manufactured by political forces that seek to hide gross deficiencies and lapses in foresight. Results, and not platitudes, describe the real world; inarticulate ruminations describe an imaginary one.
Thresholds in geopolitics or in warfare may not be immediately recognized; political demands may also inhibit observations and their avowal. In such cases, it is frequently through hindsight that we realize that a significant shift in status or in the correlation of forces has occurred.
Threshold warfare concerns actions that occur in a haze of detection, attribution, and uncertainty. The internet and social media can magnify parameters of such conduct, for uncertainty can be plied as a weapon in war. Therefore, it is the visibility and mobility of the Navy that permit the film of threshold warfare to be pierced decisively, for naval actions are visceral. This vital aspect of naval presence has been reflected throughout the administrations of many presidents. Dr. Henry Kissinger, who served as the assistant to the president for national security affairs and as the secretary of state to Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, would pose one chief question at the cusp of international crises: “Where are our carriers?”
Sea Power
Is our Navy up to the fight? It is now, but what of the future? Recent procurement plans could relinquish command of the seas in crucial areas, for the People’s Liberation Army Navy of China is ascendent. By being derelict in the creation and substantiation of an appropriate maritime architecture for our nation, our government has reduced our Navy’s capacities and has prejudiced its warfighting capabilities. Gross mismanagement throughout the Department of Defense has compounded this crisis; progressive and ludicrous doctrines concerning military personnel have wrought extensive damage.
President Reagan understood our Navy was but one component of our country’s maritime strength. In his National Maritime Day Proclamation of May 21, 1985, President Reagan referenced several aspects of sea power, asserting that the United States must support the “[m]aintenance of a superior Navy, Marine Corps, and a highly capable Coast Guard” and “[a]n economically independent United States flag merchant marine of not less than its current capabilities,” as well as “[a]n adequate shipyard mobilization base.” These five necessities have been allowed to wither; a new course must be established lest these pillars disintegrate.
America’s armed forces have not been defeated at sea, on beaches, on the field of battle, or in the air, for our military has always overcome any loss or setback. Our military has, instead, been thwarted by an irresponsible and self-serving political class that demands extraordinary sacrifices of our servicemen and women in pursuit of goals that may be ill-defined or patently unattainable.
Wars are distinct from military actions. Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of our Constitution specifies that only Congress can declare war. We must return to the Founders’ original intent lest the waste and carnage of the last two decades presage further national decay and malaise.
Wars should only be declared and fought if vital American interests are attacked or are in imminent danger of being destroyed or crippled. Such conflicts necessarily include those joined because of the collective defense agreements we hold with allied nations. Rather than making America more vulnerable to attack or to the onset of war, such collective defense agreements have been proven to reduce the chances for combat due to the strength and the permanence of America’s alliances, which require that each nation does its part.
Military actions, short of war, must be limited in objectives and duration. If such engagements are to be brought, there should be an exigent need or manifest national imperative that warrants our military’s commitment to battle in the absence of a declaration of war. Such engagements should only be undertaken if objectives are expressly defined, and a clear exit strategy is articulated before the onset of military operations.
This posture should not be taken as being an analogue of the Powell Doctrine, which was named in recognition of the geostrategic precepts advanced by General Colin Powell. Specifically, the Powell Doctrine bears the potential to degenerate into a determinative appraisal of popular public opinion concerning the commander in chief’s selection or abnegation of military options. We are a Republic; in war or conflict, statesmanship is needed, not opinion polls.
Wars may either merit our involvement or be alien to the American creed. As a nation, we must distinguish military engagements of limited scope from war. This separation is the means to ensure that our military will be supported earnestly.
If a war is not deemed meritorious, thereby being unsupported by Congress’ acting in its legislative capacity, such a conflict should not be joined; neither should such an engagement be posed as a military action to avoid the will of Congress and the American people. A measured action or a limited commitment as part of an alliance may be considered, but either course must be governed by prudent military principles.
Facts can be mislaid but they can never be destroyed. When America’s principles, objectives, capabilities, and commitments are aligned, our nation’s security is strong. To the degree that any of these elements is missing, our power is diminished. Freedom cannot be imposed on a people; it must be sought. This may occur after an abject defeat, as was the case with Germany, Italy, and Japan. It will not occur as the result of nation-building. Limited military engagements do, however, occur, for our nation must respond to assaults and certain provocations and threats.
Mistakes involving the categorization of core elements of our military power have led to onerous and costly misapplications of our forces and entry into needless armed conflicts of disfiguring scope. Military power supplements diplomacy and intelligence operations; its proper use is to enforce a set of conditions or circumstances that America wishes to maintain or impose, now and into the future. Instead of this construct, which must reflect a set of discernable or logical rules, national authorities often make ad hoc decisions.
The proper employment of the Navy and Marine Corps is presently hampered by a category mistake as to their essence. This mistake has been committed by our nation’s past and present civilian and military leaders.
The Department of Defense, in its collective voice, believes the combined power of all our services is required to respond to current operational requirements. Though the present doctrine and design of contingent and wartime operations emphasizes joint action, this formulation, when wielded by unbound political forces, has served to permit geostrategic errors of great moment, as our engagements in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and the Second Gulf War attest.
Joint operations within these conflicts produced outstanding tactical results in many circumstances, with joint service participation conveying unique and specialized advantages; this conduct of military operations, however, has too often been appropriated by politicians and academic, corporate, or bureaucratic actors to create or to extend our nation’s non-treaty, military commitments. In most instances, such commitments are not sustained over time, leading to American losses without appreciable improvements in our geopolitical posture. We must, therefore, challenge this totem and consider an alternative course.
Joint operations are a necessity in a declared war; they are not always necessary in operations short of war. Joint operations can be vital in special operations missions, but they are not in all circumstances requisite.
Balance is required in the application of joint operations. Critically, joint operations must not serve as a basis for mission expansion, overreach, political posturing, or ossification of America’s foreign military commitments in the absence of treaty obligations or a declaration of war by Congress.
Discretion
America’s recent expression and comprehension of naval power are degraded. Our matchless capabilities in this domain, which underwrite diplomacy, commerce, and intelligence collection, are too often relegated to being part of a joint instrument of force, to be wielded in the context of operations involving the other armed services. To correct this course, we must separate the roles and missions of the Navy and Marine Corps from the other military services in times short of a declared war.
Discretion in the commitments of America’s fighting services provides clarity in support of differentiating limited military engagements from war. The proper employment and roles of the Navy and Marine Corps are qualitatively different than that of our Army and Air Force; such distinctions should be enforced in military actions short of war.
The Navy and Marine Corps should serve as America’s primary armed forces in limited military engagements due to their inherent mobility and necessary readiness. The Army and Air Force, because of their immense footprint when protractedly deployed, should be equipped to serve principally in declared wars and not in endless military engagements, for their mass creates an impetus to enlarge and extend military operations. This division of roles between the services will support a winnowing of pointless and costly military actions, while strengthening the core capabilities of each branch. Exceptions to this general dichotomy, however, must govern the employment of special forces and long-range bomber aircraft due to their unique abilities.
Dominion
Our nation’s appropriate national dominion may be defined as America’s objectives, possessions, or necessary means of commerce, relations, and security. Our rule must be to accomplish our imperatives and goals with the least necessary force consistent with the contours of the entire order or mission. This implies the use of naval power as the primary constabulary means to support diplomacy and intelligence operations to achieve America’s objectives.
National dominion for the United States, as a maritime power bordered by the Pacific, Atlantic, and Arctic oceans, requires naval supremacy that must be fused with other vital elements that support national security and international trade. The parsimonious exercise of national dominion, in order to conserve American lives, influence, and treasure, requires the enforcement of naval preeminence in association with diplomacy and intelligence operations to achieve our nation’s imperatives and prerogatives.
From the foregoing, several important axioms may be deduced: first, naval power comes before general military power in enforcing our nation’s dominion. Second, it should be recognized that maritime strength forms an aegis of might when wedded to diplomacy and intelligence operations.
Sea power is the irreplaceable tool of American national dominion on a global scale. Our Navy and Marine Corps represent far more than an element of America’s warfighting capacity. America’s command of the seas reduces the requirement for battle and the need for war. It is therefore much more than a constituent part of America’s warfighting capacity, it is the prime means to avert war while still enforcing our nation’s will, thereby preserving the many benefits peace conveys.
Diplomacy and Strength
Isolationism is not a strategy. The Navy and Marines give body and shape to America’s obligations by supporting diplomacy and needed outreach while substantiating deterrence. Diplomacy and military force exist upon a spectrum of national power. Caprice or indecision subverts reconcilement between adversarial nations, but clarity and the capacity to overmatch our adversaries enable diplomacy.
In confliction zones, the capacity to reassess and to react is essential. End points must be considered before wars or military actions are broached. Forward deployments by the Navy and Marine Corps—in force—permit the creation of this adaptive space. Used judiciously, the combined military power of the Navy and Marines can avert larger conflicts and unending U.S. engagements that nullify the authority of Congress to alone declare war.
American maritime power in all its forms is mandatory if the world is to avert war; these attributes must be coupled with energy dominance. The United States must dominate the seas, but our Navy is set to lose more ships in peacetime than our country has lost in many of our wars. The Marine Corps has been permitted to decohere, and our maritime industrial base and merchant marine have been allowed to evaporate. All this must change.
China is far more powerful across a range of measures than Russia. The ongoing deployment of the long-range Chengdu J-20 fighter; the construction and the deployment of China’s first nuclear-powered supercarrier, to be equipped with fifth-generation fighters; the sightings of Chinese, sixth-generation aircraft prototypes, including a long-range bomber; and other elements of China’s large-scale naval construction program, threaten the entirety of the Indo-Pacific.
Japan and Taiwan are the central links of the First Island Chain, which is composed of the archipelagos that are most near to the East Asian mainland. Therefore, an invasion of Taiwan would allow the Chinese Navy to breakout and contest the United States for control of the entirety of the Indo-Pacific and with it, the preponderance of world trade. China would also be in position to strike the Second Island Chain, which includes Guam.
China seeks to use its present window of opportunity, afforded it by callow American leadership, to subdue our way of life. This is impermissible. It is not rational to permit China to be a principal exporter of goods to our country and the source of our largest individual trade deficit, as it targets our Navy, builds militarized islands in the South China Sea, and threatens to invade Taiwan.
Prosperity and opportunity are only possible if advanced within a cordon of security. America’s defense alliances are critical to global peace and to our nation’s survival as the world’s dominant economic power.
In April 1961, President John F. Kennedy met privately with General Douglas MacArthur, who recommended that America not engage in combat on the Asian mainland. MacArthur’s injunction against American involvement in Indochina was based not only upon the general’s campaigns in the Korean War but his study of battles within China during World War II.
MacArthur believed that our Navy and not our land forces would be determinative to secure victory over communism in Asia by lacerating the potential for China to topple newly independent countries. Regrettably, President Lyndon Johnson did not heed this dictum. General MacArthur’s logic, however, applies today in our consideration of the necessary defense of the First Island Chain.
Change
To persevere in any contest with China and Russia, we must reject politically correct or progressive indoctrination and commit to excellence in military training and procurement. New weapons can be deployed expeditiously if doctrinal, bureaucratic, industrial, or contractual constraints are removed.
Doctrinal blindness to preserve established organizational structures must never be tolerated. To effect needed change in the Department of Defense, duplication and inefficiencies must be eliminated. This requires structural change at the highest levels, including the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Weapons development must be returned to the purview of our nation’s warriors and not be entrusted to bureaucrats.
America must lead in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, unmanned combat vehicle design, electronic warfare, and new materials. Several virtual cybersecurity national laboratories must be established to aid our military.
In the Indo-Pacific, America must expand the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, whose members are the United States, Japan, India, and Australia, and integrate it with the existing Australia-U.K.-U.S. (AUKUS) treaty. The new defense alliance that should be formed should also have as its founding members, the Republic of Korea, which is part of the recently consummated American-Japanese-Korean trilateral pact, and France, for America’s oldest ally has substantial territories in the Indo-Pacific, in which 1.65 million of its citizens live.
This new defense pact could be called the Indo-Pacific Treaty Alliance. As with NATO, non-treaty nations should be invited to be observers. Such nations could include Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan. As with NATO, specific defense spending goals should be promulgated. Given the threat China poses, defense spending increases on the part of all member nations should be sought.
Our nation’s leadership must make Xi Jinping understand that he will never defeat America militarily and that any attempt to invade Taiwan will be met with the certitude of his nation’s retreat and its removal from America’s financial and consumer markets. In addition, China must not be allowed to expand its domain or suzerainty to the northwest—should Russia splinter into smaller states after the termination of its assaultive war against Ukraine.
Central to the wellbeing and security of American families is a United States that leads the world in both military and economic power. America must use its strengths prudently and conservatively, for we are most secure when we lead by example and not by armed intervention.
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Richard B. Levine served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy in charge of the Department of the Navy’s technology transfer and security assistance organization during the Reagan administration. Richard also served on the National Security Council staff, in the White House, as Director, International Economic Affairs, and as Director, Policy Development.
The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.