The Navy secretary's dangerously skewed priorities

 He's basing policy direction for his branch of the military on the utter hooey about the global climate being in a dire situation:

Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro just released “Climate Action 2030,” a 32-page report which identifies climate change as an “existential threat” to the U.S. Navy and the nation. In the report’s Foreword, Del Toro writes that climate is “the focal point” for his tenure as Navy Secretary, and notes that both President Biden and Defense Secretary Austin share that view. The Navy Department, Del Toro writes, will be an “environmental leader” that takes “bold climate action.” 

Here's how this will translate into actionable steps: 

The Navy Department report establishes two performance goals: to “build climate resilience” and “reduce climate threat.” Del Toro’s stated goal is to have the Navy Department “reduce its greenhouse gas emissions,” “stabilize ecosystems,” and “achieve … net-zero emissions by 2050.” Compare that to the goal of our nation’s most threatening naval adversary — China’s PLA Navy — which is to become the world’s leading naval power by 2049.

The Navy Department report is filled with color photographs of hurricanes, floods, electric vehicles, military families participating in an “oyster castle installation,” naval installations with solar panels, naval officers helping with disaster relief efforts, employees at a naval base planting salt marsh plants, electric-powered amphibious assault ships, and naval officers helping to install “mosquito surveillance and control equipment.” 

With regard to Del Toro noting that his focus is shared by Lloyd Austin and Biden, that's true. It's one of two points of focus, the other being the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion push.  

You want to talk some real existential threats? Situations such as Russia loading cruise missiles onto its submarines in the Black Sea and China surrounding Taiwan on massive "invasion rehearsal" drills in early May qualify or at least approach that status, don't they?

If the secretary is looking for a scenario to get that alarmed about, there's one staring him in the face. He doesn't need to get own board with a transition to play-like energy forms, the real aim of which would be to halt human advancement. 

 

China's getting pretty explicit about its aims

 Hey, neighbors, how about joining us in a little agreement? It's perfectly innocuous:

China wants 10 small Pacific nations to endorse a sweeping agreement covering everything from security to fisheries in what one leader warns is a “game-changing” bid by Beijing to wrest control of the region.

A draft of the agreement obtained by The Associated Press shows that China wants to train Pacific police officers, team up on “traditional and non-traditional security" and expand law enforcement cooperation.

China also wants to jointly develop a marine plan for fisheries — which would include the Pacific's lucrative tuna catch — increase cooperation on running the region's internet networks, and set up cultural Confucius Institutes and classrooms. China also mentions the possibility of setting up a free trade area with the Pacific nations.

China’s move comes as Foreign Minister Wang Yi and a 20-strong delegation begin a visit to the region this week.

Wang is visiting seven of the countries he hopes will endorse the “Common Development Vision” — the Solomon Islands, Kiribati, Samoa, Fiji, Tonga, Vanuatu, and Papua New Guinea.

Wang is also holding virtual meetings with the other three potential signatories — the Cook Islands, Niue and the Federated States of Micronesia. He is hoping the countries will endorse the pre-written agreement as part of a joint communique after a scheduled May 30 meeting in Fiji he is holding with the foreign ministers from each of the 10 countries.

One of the invitees ain't sold on the idea:

But Micronesia’s President David Panuelo has written an eight-page letter to the leaders of other Pacific nations saying his nation won't be endorsing the plan and warning of dire consequences if others do.

Panuelo said in his letter, which the AP has obtained, that behind attractive words in the agreement like “equity” and “justice” are many worrying details.

Among other concerns, he said, is that the agreement opens the door for China to own and control the region's fisheries and communications infrastructure. He said China could intercept emails and listen in on phone calls.

Panuelo said in his letter that the agreement is “an intent to shift those of us with diplomatic relations with China very close to Beijing’s orbit, intrinsically tying the whole of our economies and societies to them.”

He warns the agreement would needlessly heighten geopolitical tensions and threaten regional stability.

In his letter, Panuelo said the Common Development Vision is “the single most game-changing proposed agreement in the Pacific in any of our lifetimes,” and it “threatens to bring a new Cold War era at best, and a World War at worst.”

I concluded yesterday's Precipice piece on the Biden administration's foreign policy with this concern:

My concern is whether or not anyone with a foreign-policy-related portfolio in the administration truly grasps the magnitude of the foundational changes happening to the overall world order. The way things have been for the past seventy-seven years is not the way they’re going to be going forward. The world stage is not going to be the nice, safe environment for trade and cultural exchange to which we’ve become accustomed. It’s going to be a lot more raw now.

Mackenzie Eaglin of the American Enterprise Institute is likewise concerned, and far more equipped that I to flesh it our with details:

America’s military leaders state time and again that China’s forcible assault on Taiwan, and therefore our response to it, is a near-term challenge. Given the lengthy time to plan, program, build and field credible combat power, a 2027 problem is really one of today. Alarm bells should be ringing in Congress as the president’s latest defense budget cuts readiness.

Given that ongoing support for Ukraine is straining some key U.S. military supplies and munitions, everyone should be concerned the China fight would demand even more and faster. As this Pentagon team is plagued with “next war-itis” by overly biasing research and development dollarsto prepare for future wars over purchasing from hot production lines today, the result is the erosion of our few remaining competitive advantages.

For fiscal 2023, the administration requested $119.4 billion in readiness compared to the fiscal 2022 request of $109 billion. The 9.84% increase is a decrease in real terms. To simply match 2019 (pre-pandemic) purchasing power under the 2.2% inflationary estimates that the Pentagon and White House are using to tout a “record” budget, the military would need to invest $133.84 billion. That still would only be a flat budget under today’s inflation.

The Army, Navy and Air Force are confronting a $26 billion gap between what the budget request provides them once adjusted for inflation and the levels of funding they would need to maintain buying power at 2019 levels.

In 2013, similar across-the-board cuts came in the form of sequestration, or a self-imposed spending freeze that disproportionately harmed the military due to inaction by politicians on debt reduction. Uniformed leaders described the abrupt cuts as the “biggest challenge to the military’s readiness.” The result is not “tough but necessary choices,” but rather destructive early decommissionings and retirements, along with extended deployments and unsafe work environments for troops.

The administration is shooting itself in the foot by not sustaining the readiness of the very systems they seek to modernize. By overusing systems and facilities without adequate maintenance, they won’t be prepared for modernization upgrades once they become available. In other words, lack of sustainment delays innovation implementation.

China's hegemonic ambitions are not a sometime-down-the-road thing. We'd better get hustling. 

UPDATE: China and Russia conducted a joint military exercise while Biden is in Tokyo visiting with Asian heads of state. 

 

 

 

 

Looks like a case of going with a supplier that best meets their needs

 France's rage over Australia choosing the US over France to supply some attack submarines has receive abundant coverage. France has recalled its US ambassador. It's caused difficulties with France's relations with Britain as well.

But according to the Australians, it came down to a question of how to best meet their security needs:

France would have known Australia had “deep and grave concerns” that a submarine fleet the French were building would not meet Australian needs, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Sunday after the contract's cancellation set off a diplomatic crisis.

France accused Australia of concealing its intentions to back out of the 90 billion Australian dollar ($66 billion) contract for French majority state-owned Naval Group to build 12 conventional diesel-electric submarines.

President Joe Biden revealed last week a new alliance including Australia and Britain that would deliver an Australian fleet of at least eight nuclear-powered submarines.

Morrison blamed the switch on a deteriorating strategic environment in the Indo-Pacific. He has not specifically referred to China’s massive military buildup, which has gained pace in recent years.

“The capability that the Attack class submarines were going to provide was not what Australia needed to protect our sovereign interests,” Morrison said.

“They would have had every reason to know that we have deep and grave concerns that the capability being delivered by the Attack class submarine was not going to meet our strategic interests and we have made very clear that we would be making a decision based on our strategic national interest,” he added, referring to the French government.

France responded to the contract cancellation, which Morrison has said will cost his government at least AU$2.4 billion ($1.7 billion), by recalling its ambassadors from Australia and the United States.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian on Saturday denounced what he called the “duplicity, disdain and lies” surrounding the sudden end of the contract and said France was now questioning the strength of the alliance.

The fact that the switch results in lost opportunity for many French businesses just doesn't stack up against these concerns, from Australia's perspective. It would be a shame if a major rift in the Western world came down to a mater of protectionism.

Sunday roundup

 Samantha Jones, who is writing pseudonymously as a "dissident Women's Studies PhD" at Quillette, asks "How Will Decolonizing The Curriculum Help the Poor and Dispossessed?"

She sets the table by reviewing the state of things in academe, the whole business about #DisruptTexts and casting the pursuit of objective knowledge as an arrogant Western notion, and the call to "integrate subjugated and local epistemologies."

She reviews the attempt - all too successful - to make Francis Bacon, of all people, a controversial figure back in the 1990s:

During the “Science Wars” of the 1990s, between scientific realists and postmodernists, Sandra Harding, Carolyn Merchant, and Evelyn Fox Keller condemned Francis Bacon for what they deemed misogynistic sexual metaphors. Although they could have critiqued Bacon’s writing and left it at that, these feminists went much further, arguing that misogyny is at the heart of modern science. In 1995, Alan Soble made a convincing case that postmodern feminist readings of Bacon are based on misquotations, passages taken out of context, projection, and scholarly uncharitability. I would add that these critiques are wholly contingent upon the technological advancements produced by applying the epistemology advocated for by thinkers like Bacon. Imagine the short-sightedness of encountering a metaphor you dislike in a 17th century philosophical treatise, then proclaiming that the entire epistemological basis of modern civilization is inherently flawed—all while typing on a computer powered by reliable electricity, in a stable country, where you’ve never gone hungry.

She says, with more tact than I can muster, that there is more than a touch of spoiled-brat-ism in all this:

It is also essential to underscore that demands for decolonization in Western universities are the product of affluence. What do you think that impoverished people in the global South care about more: decolonizing Western epistemology or increasing their prosperity? While indigenous people are probably proud of their epistemology, I would bet that the majority care more about meeting their material needs. Decolonization activists might consider how changing epistemology in Western universities will solve the main problems experienced by most people in the world, including extreme poverty, rampant political corruption, substandard infrastructure, inadequate police, and dysfunctional judicial systems. The political advancement of the Enlightenment, liberalism, provides a framework for solving these problems by establishing limited, republican government; enforcing the rule of law; and protecting individual rights and liberties, especially freedom of speech, so that people can have honest discussions about problems and work toward solutions—without descending into authoritarianism and violence.

And she concludes by grimly reminding us that this has implications beyond the confines of the campus:

Be forewarned: decolonization demands won’t stop at the university gates. As Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang state, decolonization is not a metaphor; it is a struggle over dispossession, the repatriation of indigenous land, and the seizing of imperial wealth. If you have any European heritage, the activists will soon demand that you be decolonized, too.

Elaine McCusker and Dov Zakheim of the American Enterprise Institute explain why slashing the Pentagon budget would be a disaster.  

There is little that is new in the letter that 50 members of the House of Representatives sent to President Joe Biden on March 16. In particular, the letter raises the disingenuous argument that “we could cut the Pentagon budget by more than 10% and still spend more than the next 10 largest militaries combined.”

This statement is misleading to the point of irresponsibility.

Completely overlooked is America’s role in the world, and with it the necessity of implementing a strategy that responds to its international interests. Equally important, the statement omits differences in economic systems, purchasing power and transparency that impact the comparative defense budgets of the United States and its increasingly powerful competitor, the People’s Republic of China. 

And it's not just China that we have to think about:

As a global power with critical interests and key allies in Europe, the Indo-Pacific region and the Middle East, the United States must maintain forces that can separately address threats in all three regions against one or more hostile powers. It therefore makes little sense to compare American defense spending to that of regional powers.

In one of my journalistic roles, I report on our state legislature for a local media company, and this next subject has been hot lately. Our local state Representative and state Senator have their heads squarely on their shoulders, bu there's a lot of pressure on them to relent in the matter of enhancing choice in the matter of education. A lot of it takes the form of intimations that public school funding is suffering at the expense of charter schools, private schools and home schooling. Corey DeAngelis, a scholar with the Cato Institute, the Reason Foundation and the American Federation for Children, in a National Review piece entitled "The Pernicious Myth of Shrinking Public School Budgets," demonstrates that this is just not so.

A young British woman named Keira Bell, writing at Persuasion, has a story to tell that will break your heart. She had a truly crummy childhood. Her mother was a mentally ill alcoholic and her father was absent to a considerable degree. She was a tomboy, and as adolescent hormonal changes began to set in, she was encouraged to consider that maybe she had a gender identity different from her sex. She found a clinic willing to indulge her in this, and started down the rabbit hole of puberty blockers, breast binders, male hormone treatment, and finally a double mastectomy at age 20. And then remorse set in:

The consequences of what happened to me have been profound: possible infertility, loss of my breasts and inability to breastfeed, atrophied genitals, a permanently changed voice, facial hair. When I was seen at the Tavistock clinic, I had so many issues that it was comforting to think I really had only one that needed solving: I was a male in a female body. But it was the job of the professionals to consider all my co-morbidities, not just to affirm my naïve hope that everything could be solved with hormones and surgery.

The Very Stable Genius was in rare form Saturday night performing for Republican donors, This loudmouth narcissist was our president for four years:

Donald Trump spoke to Republican Party donors at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Saturday night and tore into Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell, calling him a “dumb son of a bitch” and “a stone-cold loser.”

Speaking to attendees of the Republican National Committee’s donor retreat about the 2020 presidential election that he lost, Trump blamed the Republican leader in the Senate for not interfering with democracy.

“If that were [Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer instead of this dumb son of a bitch Mitch McConnell they would never allow it to happen. They would have fought it,” Trump said, according to the Washington Post.

The former president also went after his former transportation secretary and McConnell’s wife Elaine Chao.

“I hired his wife. Did he ever say thank you?” Trump said. The Post also reported that Trump mocked Chao, who resigned following the Capitol riot, sarcastically saying, “She suffered so greatly.”

And Trump attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, saying, “Have you ever seen anybody that is so full of crap?” He then told those gathered that it had been suggested to him that the Covid-19 vaccine should be called the “Trumpcine.”

One for us all to keep our eyes on: Russia has amassed 100,000 troops on its border with Ukraine.  Also lots of fancy robotic weaponry. 

 

The current catch-up strategy for US defense is still not enough for the world we face

Eye-opening bipartisan report on the state of US military readiness:

The United States has lost its military edge to a dangerous degree and could potentially lose a war against China or Russia, according to a report released Wednesday by a bipartisan commission that Congress created to evaluate the Trump administration's defense strategy.

The National Defense Strategy Commission, comprised of former top Republican and Democratic officials selected by Congress, evaluated the Trump administration's 2018 National Defense Strategy, which ordered a vast reshaping of the U.S. military to compete with Beijing and Moscow in an era of renewed great-power competition.

While endorsing the strategy's aims, the commission warned that Washington isn't moving fast enough or investing sufficiently to put the vision into practice, risking a further erosion of American military dominance that could become a national security emergency.

This commission really wants to stress the urgency of the situation:

"The U.S. military could suffer unacceptably high casualties and loss of major capital assets in its next conflict. It might struggle to win, or perhaps lose, a war against China or Russia," the report said. "The United States is particularly at risk of being overwhelmed should its military be forced to fight on two or more fronts simultaneously."

In its list of 32 recommendations, the commission urged the Pentagon to explain more clearly how it intends to defeat major-power rivals in competition and war. It assailed the strategy for relying at times on "questionable assumptions and weak analysis" and leaving "unanswered critical questions."

Eric Edelman, a top Pentagon official during the Bush administration, who co-chaired the commission along with retired admiral Gary Roughead, said the report wrestled with the consequences of years of ignored warnings about the erosion of American military might.

Russia and China have "learned from what we've done. They've learned from our success. And while we've been off doing a different kind of warfare, they've been prepared for a kind of warfare at the high end that we really haven't engaged in for a very long time," Edelman told Michael Morell, the former acting director of the CIA and a fellow member of the commission, during a forthcoming episode of Morell's podcast, "Intelligence Matters."

Edelman said people had lost sight of how complicated the international security environment had become for the United States, and argued that for a lot of reasons the American public and Congress haven't been as attentive to the urgency of the situation as they should be.

The commission argued that despite a $716 billion American defense budget this year, which is four times the size of China's and more than 10 times that of Russia, the effort to reshape the U.S. defense establishment to counter current threats is under-resourced. It recommended that Congress lift budget caps on defense spending in the next two years that in the past have hobbled the military's ability to plan for the long term. 

At the same time, according to the commission, China and Russia are seeking dominance in their regions and the ability to project military power globally, as their authoritarian governments pursue defense buildups aimed squarely at the United States. 

It's gonna be a little tough to take on, though, given that we'll be spending most of the federal coffers on servicing the nation's debt in just a few short years.

The Navy's shipbuilding plan falls short what is needed

So says the Center for a New American Security's Jerry Hendrix:

This nation used to be able to do great things in a short period of time, when it thought it was important. This past week the U.S. Navy, with its 30-year shipbuilding plan, fell short of the standard of national greatness. To be sure, the plan has some strong points. Its adds 54 ships to the battle force over the next five fiscal years, raising the battle force from its present 280 ships to 324. This will take some strain off the fleet as it attempts to defend the nation’s vital national interests by maintaining approximately 108 ships forward deployed at all times, but it falls far short of the 355 ships required to meet the nation’s minimum requirements. In addition, the plan envisions a massive falloff in the ship count a decade from now, during the 2025–35 “maximum danger” era, and does not achieve the statutory goal of 355 ships until the 2050s. The plan fails due to an abundance of caution and a lack of adherence to the nation’s strategic goal of achieving a balance between capabilities and capacity.

There is a lot of hand-wringing in the 30-year plan about stable funding lines for ship construction and a decline in the nation’s shipbuilding capacity. Navy leaders rightly call out political leaders for their overreliance on continuing resolutions to support the military, and the harmful effects of inconsistent funding on shipbuilding practices, but it is not the Department of the Navy’s job to plan for such occurrences, no matter their likelihood. Naval leaders ought instead to plan for regular order and then testify openly and critically when it breaks down. Rather than a gathering of gallant sailors in a budgetary planning effort, we observe Churchill’s admonition, “the sum of their fears,” in this 30-year plan.

There are also concerns about the defense industrial base, specifically the nation’s shipbuilding capacity. The 30-year plan reports that 14 shipyards have closed over the past generation, leaving only a handful, and three others have shifted from defense to commercial shipbuilding. From this vantage, Navy leaders express concern that the industrial base is incapable of ramping up production quickly, but the question then becomes: Whose fault is that? For nearly 30 years, the Department of Defense has quietly encouraged the defense sector to seek economies and consolidate, turning a blind eye to the strategic implications of defense corporate mergers. Rather than stimulating industrial expansion, as the president himself has called for, this plan attempts to manage shipbuilding within current margins, bypassing a strategic opportunity to help guide the reexpansion of the industrial base.

Perhaps the greatest cause for disappointment within the 30-year plan is its mistaken emphasis. Despite language within the President’s National Security Strategy and the Secretary of Defense’s National Defense Strategy that directs the services to pursue a balance between high-end (and expensive) cutting-edge capabilities and expanded capacities (growth in platform numbers), the initial ship procurements over the next five years are largely directed at high-end platforms such as the Arleigh Burke–class destroyers, procuring them at a rate of three a year. Meanwhile, low-end platforms such as littoral combat ships and the new guided-missile frigate, where the Navy has the easiest path to expand its numbers, are bought in lots of one and two ships during the same time period. If the Navy were to subtract one of its destroyers and add two frigates to its shipbuilding plan in its place (a less expensive option), resulting in four low-end combatants bought per year, the Navy could expand its fleet more quickly.

The Navy, however, says that it needs ever more of the high-end ships, shifting its programmed goal for large surface combatants (cruisers and destroyers) from 88 to 104 within its overall 355-ship construct while holding its small surface combatant (littoral combat ships and frigates) steady at 52. This actually runs counter to historical fleet architectures, which place greater emphasis on small combatants for naval-presence, anti-submarine, anti-surface, and convoy-escort missions. If anything, the Navy should revert to its 88-ship large surface combatant inventory goal and expand its small surface combatant total to around 75 ships, which would be in keeping with historical norms. If the Navy pursued this route aggressively, it could achieve and hold a 355-ship inventory before another decade is out. That it is not, is troubling.

While it is true that the Navy recognizes that 355 ships represents the “Navy the nation needs,” it does not seem aware that it needs it now. 

 

Navy ships in particular engage the world's great powers. We've seen fresh evidence today, in the form of the revelations stemming from the Mueller-investigation indictment of 13 Russians, that at least a couple of those great powers are perfectly comfortable with their status and US adversaries. We need the mightiest fleet we can put on the high seas.

The military-budget increase: still not enough

Mackenzie Eaglen at the American Enterprise Institute says, "Good start, but not sufficient":

Secretary Mattis’s National Defense Strategy targets readiness, lethality and reforms to better counter great power competition from China and Russia. Yet President Trump’s budget calls for only a 2% annual increase in defense spending — enough to dig the Pentagon out of its current hole, but not enough to pursue the pivot envisioned in Mattis’s NDS or the rebuild touted by Trump on the campaign trail.

Here’s where some of those promises stand:

• Grow the Army rapidly (the budget adds just 4,000 active duty soldiers)
• Build a 350-ship Navy (now projected to take until the 2050s)
• Increase the size of the combat Air Force (two active fighter squadrons will be established in 2019, but one Guard squadron will disbanded)

Although Mattis has said that the spending requests for 2018 and 2019 will restore the U.S. “to a position of primacy,” that remains an open question. The long-term growth projected of 2-3% per year, is a far cry from the 3-5% real annual growth he has previously called for to sustain the health of the force.

In fact, the Pentagon’s five-year budget plan shows inflation-only adjustments, with virtually zero real growth. The budget actually loses ground over time due to inflation given that CBO projects it will be 2% annually, so we may see negative real growth for the rest of Trump’s tenure.

Why it matters: Given the deteriorating international situation, the likely outlook for U.S. defense spending dims the prospects for Mattis’s long-term strategic goals — and for the military’s ability to catch up after years of atrophy.

Given the latest annual global-threats report  from the intelligence community, this had better be taken seriously. The introduction says that the risk of interstate conflict is higher than at any time since the end of the Cold War.