Diplomacy & Crisis News

Insisting that Iran must abandon its missile program could fall into the hardliners’ trap and make a new agreement impossible.

Le personnage célébré en 2014 permet de taire l'homme détesté, insulté, menacé, caricaturé au début du XXe siècle ; celui qui fut en butte à la haine constante des nationalistes comme des affairistes, des cléricaux, des colonialistes, des antisémites, des militaristes, des diplomates, et de toute leur (...) / France, Colonialisme, Histoire, Idéologie, Intellectuels, Personnalités, Politique, Presse, Socialisme - 2014/07

An international operation coordinated jointly by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the international police organization INTERPOL has disrupted trafficking networks that supply terrorist groups across West Africa and the Sahel, the UN agency reported on Monday. 

The shifting ground in the Middle East is creating new options for breaking the stalemate.

Though Israel remains opposed to Palestinian independence, 2020 marked the year of its acceptance in the region.

Foreign Policy’s five best reads on the dramatic shift in energy policy in 2020.

It could make 2021 the year Americans rediscover science.

The United Nations is marking 2021 as the International Year of Fruits and Vegetables, spotlighting their vital role in human nutrition and food security, as well as urging efforts to improve sustainable production and reduce waste. 

The discovery of U.S. spy networks in China fueled a decadelong global war over data between Beijing and Washington.

Cette recension a été publiée dans le numéro d’hiver 2020-2021 de Politique étrangère (n° 4/2020). Laure de Rochegonde, chercheuse au Centre des études de sécurité de l’Ifri, propose une analyse de l’ouvrage dirigé par Amélie Férey, Assassinats ciblés. Critique du libéralisme armé (CNRS Éditions, 2020, 368 pages).

Si le fait d’abattre un ennemi n’est pas nouveau, la conduite de la guerre au XXIe siècle a vu l’émergence de tactiques visant à l’éliminer avant même qu’il n’attaque. Ces opérations d’assassinats ciblés ne sont toutefois pas respectueuses du cadre légal international. Pourquoi une pratique considérée comme illégale a-t‑elle été adoptée par des États censés placer le respect du droit international au cœur de leur politique étrangère ? C’est cette énigme que s’attache à résoudre Amélie Férey, chercheuse en science politique au Centre de recherches internationales de Sciences Po (CERI), dans cet ouvrage issu des recherches et des enquêtes de terrain menées pour sa thèse de doctorat.

Initialement très controversés, les assassinats ciblés sont devenus une pratique courante dans un paysage stratégique contemporain marqué par l’avènement de la « guerre contre le terrorisme ». Ainsi François Hollande a-t‑il reconnu que la France avait mené des opérations « homo » (pour homicide) au cours de son mandat contre des chefs djihadistes. En 2019, l’armée française s’est en outre dotée de drones armés, très prisés pour les opérations de targeted killing.

Pour comprendre la manière dont les démocraties sont parvenues à faire accepter ce droit de tuer, l’auteur examine les arguments mobilisés par les gouvernements américains et israéliens – qui en sont les figures de proue – depuis le début des années 2000. La légitimation de ces frappes, explique-t‑elle, est symptomatique d’un changement dans l’art de la guerre et fait intervenir quatre aspects de la légitimité : les aspects traditionnel, formel, conséquentialiste et substantiel. Une violence politique serait légitime à condition qu’elle respecte la tradition guerrière, qu’elle n’aille pas à l’encontre des régulations légales, qu’elle permette d’obtenir des résultats satisfaisants, et qu’elle puisse faire l’objet de contrôles, en particulier démocratiques. Les régimes libéraux que sont Israël et les États-Unis s’autorisent donc à perpétrer des assassinats ciblés parce qu’ils estiment que ceux-ci sont conformes au droit (c’est-à-dire qu’ils sont légaux), qu’ils engendrent un bien-être général supérieur au coût humain qui les accompagne (qu’ils sont par conséquent utiles), et qu’ils peuvent se justifier moralement (ils sont dès lors considérés comme moraux).

Comme le souligne Frédéric Gros dans sa préface, l’intérêt de cet ouvrage tient aussi à ce que l’auteur, sans condamner les assassinats ciblés, fragilise les argumentations visant à les légitimer. Ce faisant, elle aide le lecteur à se repérer dans les grands débats qui entourent cette pratique. Tient-elle de la frappe punitive ou de la guerre préventive ? A-t‑elle un rôle dissuasif et lutte-t‑elle efficacement contre la menace terroriste ? Cette analyse, si elle se fonde sur les cas américain et israélien, est aussi intéressante pour saisir les ambivalences de la position française sur le sujet.

Alors que l’exécution par un drone américain du général iranien Qassam Soleimani en janvier 2020 a donné lieu à de vifs débats, cet ouvrage apparaîtra essentiel à tous ceux qui veulent comprendre les procédés par lesquels certains États s’autorisent à « éliminer l’ennemi avant qu’il ne nuise ». Il éclaire les évolutions et les reformulations de la violence légitime en démocratie libérale, à l’aune de la « guerre contre le terrorisme ».

Laure de Rochegonde

>> S’abonner à Politique étrangère <<

With a week to go until elections are scheduled to take place in the Central African Republic (CAR), the UN is concerned about an escalation of armed attacks, amid reports that armed groups have taken control of towns near the capital, Bangui.

Swedes can’t figure out their government’s coronavirus approach, a progressive push on U.S. foreign policy, and an honest assessment of the Arab Spring’s fallout.

James Holmes

Security, Americas

America needs to ensure it can deter, and defeat, any enemies.

Key point: The number of ships matters. However, it is a bad idea to only use that metric when deciding what kind of a navy is needed and how it stacks up vs other countries.

The walking dead are ravaging Capitol Hill—again! I refer not to literal ghouls but to misleading ideas about navies that refuse to die in policymaking circles. The living dead shamble around during election season or just after—in other words, at times of political flux like this one, when one house of Congress has changed hands and the other is undergoing a leadership shakeup.

Take out one zombie factoid with a shot to the head and ten or a hundred more just like it trample the fallen corpse to get at you.

The latest to traffic in undead ideas is Sen. David Perdue, representing my erstwhile home state of Georgia. He’s taking over as chairman of the Seapower Subcommittee, an arm of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee. The new chairman exhibits a gratifying sense of urgency about America’s return to history after its post–Cold War strategic holiday, and about the need to bulk up the sea services to wage protracted strategic competitions against peer competitors.

That’s the good news. In stating his case, though, Senator Perdue uttered a factoid that is as manifestly incomplete as it is commonplace as an index of naval power. “Today we have the smallest Army since WWII, the smallest Navy since WWI, and the oldest and smallest Air Force ever,” he told Defense News. “At the same time, we face complex threats from China, North Korea, Russia, and Iran.”

That’s a dark picture to paint, and Perdue is correct in a strict factual sense: at 287-odd ships, there are fewer vessels in the U.S. Navy inventory now than at any time since the Great War. (Actually, the inventory has rebounded after bottoming out in the 270s—but only by a handful of vessels.) But the important question is whether the navy is powerful enough to accomplish the goals assigned it by senior commanders and their political masters. Naval power is not solely a function of hulls in the water. Think of ships as delivery vehicles. They deliver combat power to a particular scene of action at a particular time, in concert with friendly sea, ground, and air forces, to overcome the combat power a particular foe has staged there.

If the U.S. and allied force outguns the antagonist at the decisive place and time, it is sufficient regardless of how many or few ships take part in the engagement. If not, then U.S. naval commanders have a problem. So we should divorce calculations of naval might from brute numbers of hulls, which reveal little about whether a given fleet size is adequate to apply enough combat power at likely hotspots to fulfill U.S. strategic goals.

What U.S. maritime strategy calls on the navy to do matters a great deal to this calculus. For instance, a 287-ship force might well suffice to mount a hemispheric defense of the Americas, working alongside allied forces from Canada and Latin America. It would probably boast surplus capacity for such humble duty. Yet a fleet that size might be woefully understrength to take the fight to China in the South China Sea, Russia in the Black Sea, or Iran in the Persian Gulf. In short, reaching back to World War I to compare raw numbers reveals little about the outcomes of probable encounters in the here and now, and thus about the prospects for U.S. tactical, operational, and strategic success or failure.

Tallying up ship numbers, then, makes poor shorthand for U.S. naval power. Bean counting yields one datapoint, albeit an important one. There is some bare minimum of assets needed to concentrate strength at scenes of battle. But bean counting not only disregards the enemy, the surroundings, and the goals set by the navy’s overseers, it doesn’t differentiate among ship types. A century ago a battleship counted as a ship of war, and so did a winsome destroyer. A fleet made up entirely of battleships would have been the same as a fleet composed of destroyers by Perdue’s standard. It would have been an entirely different creature.

Today, similarly, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier bearing scores of warplanes counts as a ship. But so does a littoral combat ship with light armament and one-thirtieth the flattop’s tonnage. So does a lumbering amphibious assault ship that deposits marines and cargo on embattled shores rather than assail enemy fleets. Simple ship counts obscure elementary distinctions like these while making no judgment about the balance among ship types and missions within the fleet.

Statistics can lie. If you couple the “smallest navy since World War I” talking point with the results of realistic wargames showing that the U.S. Navy fields too few vessels vis-à-vis prospective foes under realistic circumstances, though, then you have the makings of a useful benchmark to gauge whether U.S. naval means are sufficient to advance U.S. strategic and political ends. And in turn you can bellow forth a rallying cry to lawmakers, administration officials, and the electorate to furnish more shipbuilding resources.

Apart from gamesters, you can consult scholarly work for informed opinion about these matters. For instance, back in 2010 a team of scribes from the Center for Naval Analyses compiled a study postulating that the U.S. Navy stood at a force-structure “tipping point” beneath which it would no longer be the globetrotting service it has been since Congress passed and Franklin Roosevelt signed the Two-Ocean Navy Act of 1940.

If the sea service dwindled much further in numbers and especially in capability, maintained the CNA team, it would possess too few assets to discharge the missions entrusted to it. The U.S. Navy would revert to the regional force it was before World War II.

The fleet still hovers around that tipping point nine years hence. At least Senator Perdue errs in the right direction by fretting over fleet numbers. In all likelihood the U.S. Navy is too small, even when you redefine ships as delivery vehicles for combat power and estimate U.S. battle strength through that unorthodox but illuminating technique. Still, friends of American sea power need more than soundbites to lend punch to their pleas for a larger fleet.

Now, so as not to pick on Senator Perdue too much, it’s worth noting that the World War I comparison is far from the most loathsome zombie to stampede through force-structure debates at times of political change. However flawed, Perdue’s talking point at least alerts Washington and the nation to danger. Taking other ubiquitous factoids at face value could induce America to relax its guard at a time when relaxing is the last thing it should do.

Two such fallacies come to mind. One holds that the U.S. Navy is “larger” than the next X navies combined, X usually being some double-digit number. That being the case, it should smash smaller rivals into kindling with ease, right? But this factoid makes no sense whatever when cross-referenced against numbers of hulls. Reputable estimates indicate, for instance, that China’s navy will boast over 500 vessels by 2030, even as the U.S. Navy struggles to field a 355-ship fleet. How could America’s navy constitute the larger force?

It turns out that this living-dead factoid refers to the total tonnage of the U.S. Navy fleet vis-à-vis foreign navies. On average American ships displace—or, roughly speaking, weigh—more than their counterparts overseas. Like numbers of hulls, tonnage is not a meaningless figure. Larger vessels can carry more fuel, armaments, and stores. Bigger is better—to a point.

But aggregate tonnage must also be taken in context. For one thing, the size of a ship says little about the armament and sensors installed aboard. A mammoth vessel could bear minimal armament. Combat logistics ships—transports for fuel, ammunition, refrigerated stores, and the like—are a case in point. Undefended by escort vessels, a large ship can make easy pickings for a much smaller foe such as China’s fleet-footed Type 022 Houbei catamarans. These lightweight 225-ton craft pack a heavy wallop in the form of eight anti-ship missiles. Offensive power need not correlate with tonnage, in other words.

For another, U.S. Navy men-of-war must carry more supplies than probable adversaries. After all, likely battlegrounds lie thousands of miles from North American shores. U.S. expeditionary forces must haul everything they need to fight in a China’s, Russia’s, or Iran’s backyard, or they may as well stay home. Meanwhile local defenders may get away with smaller vessels because they operate close to home—near their supply and operational bases—and because they’re backed by the combined firepower of shore-based air and missile forces. Antagonists, in other words, might make do with lesser craft and still attain their goals. The Type 022 is not a war-winning craft on its own. It is a formidable craft when integrated into a defensive thicket made up of ships and shore-based weaponry.

It’s a fallacy, then, to compare the tonnages of U.S. and foreign navies and conclude the battle result is a foregone conclusion. Doing so oversimplifies radically. In reality the bulkier U.S. Navy will square off not against a hostile navy but against a hostile joint force—a composite of sea, air, and ground forces operating close to home. In warfare as in sports, the advantage goes to the team making a home stand. Girth is no guarantee of victory for the visitors.

The second noxious factoid relates to budgets. All too often even knowledgeable pundits or officials cite the U.S. defense budget relative to likely competitors and conclude American supremacy is guaranteed. Because Washington spends more than the next Y powers combined—Y, like the X in tonnage comparisons, being some double-digit figure—then victory must be a sure thing. If you spend more you must have purchased superior strength. Right?

Not necessarily. He who spends the most may not win, just as he who weighs the most may not. Officialdom must not draw false comfort from budget comparisons suggesting that the United States holds a lopsided advantage over its rivals because it outspends them. Again, think about where likely sea fights will take place: in waters and skies close to hostile shorelines. The U.S. military must maintain pricey base infrastructure, not to mention those bigger, more expensive ships, planes, and armaments, merely to get into the battle zone. Fighting close to home is cheap by contrast. Advantage: red teams. Prevailing against distant opponents off their own coasts tends to cost you more than it costs them.

Factor in such disproportionate expenditures and the margin between U.S. and foreign spending doesn’t gape nearly so wide as budgeteering implies.

You would think the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had put paid to the conceit that the bigger, higher-tech, more expensive force inevitably triumphs. Substate enemies brandishing makeshift weaponry gave the U.S. and coalition armed forces fits during those conflicts. Afghanistan is sputtering to an indecisive conclusion at best. It’s hard to imagine that China, or Russia, or Iran would fare more poorly than the Taliban or Iraqi militant groups considering all the resources these martial states can tap.

That’s the trouble with the undead: you can’t reason with them. You have to shoot down ghoulish ideas one by one when the herd swarms. Looks like we’d better stockpile ammunition for a long siege.

James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College, coauthor of Red Star over the Pacific. This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.

Charlie Gao

Security, World

The F-5E modernization program continued through the 2000s and 2010s, with the final jet being delivered in 2013.

Here's What You Need To Remember: If you're a developing country without a monstrous military budget, the F-35 isn't for you. The F-5, a sleek, fast, and affordable upgraded third-generation fighter, might be.

The F-5E “Tiger” is one of U.S. aerospace industry’s largest export successes. Designed as a budget lightweight fighter, the F-5E is still operated by many nations around the world despite the availability of more modern fighters.

Its continued service is enabled by miniaturization of electronics, which allows for more powerful radars and more systems to be integrated into the same spaces as the original system. This approach is exemplified by the F-5EM operated by Brazil, one of the most advanced variants of the F-5E flying today.

Brazil first acquired F-5Es in 1974 after comparing it to rival NATO light fighters like the Harrier, Jaguar, Fiat G.91 and A-4 Skyhawk. Forty-two units were purchased originally, followed by twenty-six more in the 1980s.

These aircraft served in without much modification until CRUZEX I aerial exercise in 2002. The exercise simulated conflict between the Brazilian Air Force (FAB) and a French Armee de l’Air force equipped with Mirage 2000s with E-3 Sentry AWACS support. The results were abysmal, with France expected to take air superiority in a real conflict despite some good simulated kills by FAB Mirage IIIs.

This sparked a significant push to modernize the FAB’s capability to defend Brazil’s airspace. Modernization of the Mirage III was explored but deemed to be cost ineffective. The F-5E showed much more promise.

In the 1990s, Chile, facing a similar need to modernize, created their own variant, the Tiger III Plus with assistance from Israel Aircraft Industries. A similar program with newer technology could be done with the FAB’s F-5Es.

The program began in the 2000s when a contract was awarded to the Brazilian firm Embraer to modernize forty-six F-5Es with European and Israeli technology. The key aspect of the modernization was to “extend” the legs of the F-5E from being a short-range “point defense” fighter to something that could cover more ground over Brazil’s rather large borders.

To this end, the radar was upgraded to the SELEX Grifo-F, which involved lengthening the nose cone of the aircraft to account for the larger radar antenna. But while the new radar was better, the F-5EM was designed with a secure data link to connect to FAB E-99 AWACS aircraft and ground radars, which were envisioned to vector the F-5s onto a target.

The role of the data link in FAB doctrine is significant. In addition to the dominance displayed by the French Mirages working with E-3s during CRUZEX, the FAB always favored vectoring their fighters from more powerful radars due to poor experience with the original F-5E radar. During a night intercept of a British Vulcan bomber in 1982, the F-5E’s onboard radar was unable to effectively search for the massive aircraft, the fighters were reliant on ground radar.

To take advantage of the additional range given by the data link and radar systems, the Israeli Derby active-radar medium-range air-to-air missile was integrated into the F-5EM. While lighter and shorter ranged than heavier missiles like the AMRAAM and R-27, the missile gave the FAB much-needed beyond-visual-range capability in air-to-air combat, the third nation after Chile and Venezuela to gain such capability.

Many other systems were added or upgraded on the F-5EM. In addition to the Derby, Israeli Python III short-range missiles were integrated. The Israeli DASH helmet mounted display was installed in the cockpit to cue those missiles, making the F-5EM a formidable close range fighter.

A radar-warning receiver, onboard oxygen generation system, hands-on throttle and stick, and INS/GPS navigation are all included. The addition of all these systems came at a cost though. The starboard M39A2 20mm cannon was removed to make space for electronics in the jet.

Finally to address the F-5E’s meager internal fuel capacity, provision for air-to-air refueling was added.

The F-5E modernization program continued through the 2000s and 2010s, with the final jet being delivered in 2013. Eleven additional F-5Es were acquired from the Jordanian Air Force in 2009 to increase the number of the type in FAB service.

The type is expected to serve on to 2025, with the integration of the new A-Darter beyond visual range air-to-air missile expected to happen soon. The new Gripen Es being acquired by the FAB are expected to supplement the shorter ranged F-5EMs.

Brazilian experts stress that the FAB’s capability gap with neighboring air forces was only narrowed by the upgrade and that the F-5EM still remains an outclassed fighter in modern air combat due to its shortcomings and old-school design. Regardless, it was the best the FAB could do on a limited budget and the resulting craft was quite good for the money spent.

Charlie Gao studied political and computer science at Grinnell College and is a frequent commentator on defense and national-security issues. This article first appeared in 2019.

Image: Reuters.

James Holmes

Security, Americas

Learning from past battles will help ensure U.S. flattops can keep sailing and survive modern threats.

Key point: Battleships lost their purpose due to advanced technological threats. Today, aircraft carriers are also threatened by powerful weapons.

How can the U.S. Navy prolong the relevance of its big-deck aircraft carriers amid increasingly menacing surroundings? In part, through hindsight. The Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor rudely evicted dreadnought battleships from their perch atop the navy's pecking order. The day of the aircraft carrier had arrived. And yet battleships found new life for a time, pressed into service for secondary but vital functions. That could be the flattop's eventual fate as well. Naval-aviation proponents may find insights from battleship history discomfiting. They should study them nonetheless.

Amphibious operations, not sea fights against enemy surface fleets, gave battleships renewed purpose after Pearl Harbor. Dreadnoughts took station off the Solomon Islands scant months later, pummeling Japanese Army positions to support U.S. Marines embattled on Guadalcanal. The opposed landing is among the most grueling missions amphibian forces can undertake. Debarking from amphibious transports, making the transit from ship to shore in fragile landing craft, and clawing their way onto the beach under fire constitute the most delicate part of the endeavor.

Carl von Clausewitz pronounces defense the stronger form of war. Never is this more true than in amphibious combat. Defenders strew obstacles along the beaches, position gun emplacements to rake landing craft approaching through the surf and make things hellish while soldiers and marines are at their most vulnerable. Nor is island warfare any cakewalk, even after the force is ashore. Softening entrenched enemy defenses, then, is imperative both before sea-to-shore movement commences and after the fighting moves inland.

Battlewagons rendered yeoman service as shore-bombardment platforms throughout World War II. Reactivated Iowa-class battleships, moreover, saw action during the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the first Gulf War. Nor is this purely an Asian enterprise. Indeed, this Friday marks seventy years since swarms of Allied ships descended on the French coast. Troops stormed the Normandy beaches in history's most epic opposed landing. Some 10,800 Allied combat aircraft dominated the skies, flying from airfields in nearby Britain. Battlewagons, cruisers, and destroyers cruising offshore rained gunfire on German strongpoints.

To deadly effect. Battleship gun rounds are comparable in weight to a Volkswagen Bug. Imagine flying economy cars exploding in your midst and you get the idea. So lethal was Allied naval gunfire that Desert Fox Erwin Rommel informed his Führer that "no operation of any kind is possible in the area commanded by this rapid-fire artillery." Quite a testament coming from one of history's great commanders.

And yet furnishing fire support was quite a comedown in status for the battlewagon, once the pride of navies from London to Washington to Tokyo. Seafarers reared on the works of Alfred Thayer Mahan and Sir Julian Corbett assumed fleets of "capital ships"—battleships escorted by their lighter, but still-heavily-gunned, thickly armored brethren—would duel for maritime supremacy at the outbreak of war. By sinking or incapacitating an enemy battle fleet, the navy would secure the blessings of "command of the sea." That meant virtually unfettered freedom to blockade enemy shores, assail enemy merchantmen, or project power ashore.

The battleship once performed the glitziest of missions, but Pearl Harbor demoted it to secondary, unglamorous duty. Ships built to withstand hits from exploding VWs could venture within reach of shore-based enemy defenses—artillery, tactical aircraft, and the like—with good prospects of survival. And commanders could risk them with impunity. If the aircraft carrier was now the centerpiece of naval warfare, it was imperative to conserve flattops for future actions. After December 7, by contrast, the dreadnought was a wasting asset searching for a mission.

So why not send these vessels into harm's way? Once dethroned from the battle line, in short, battleships became expendable assets. In so doing they became ground-pounders' favorite ships. Therein lies wisdom. Herewith, are five lessons from the battleships' twilight years, applied to today's high-tech, access-denial/area-denial age:

Extend striking reach: As noted before, modernized battleships saw action in Korea, Vietnam and the Persian Gulf. But these were relatively permissive surroundings where few defenders could do serious damage to armored vessels. More forbidding settings might have told another story. To be sure, battleship guns boasted extravagant range by gunnery standards. They could send rounds over twenty miles downrange. But that's short range for today's speedy attack aircraft and antiship missiles. Closing in on enemy coastlines, perversely, compresses the time available to ward off attack. That would render a battleship's staying power doubtful despite its ability to take a punch. Boosting the range of a ship's main armament, it seems, is critical to survival in this age of gee-whiz antiship weaponry. The farther away from enemy countermeasures, the better a man-of-war's prospects for staying alive—and accomplishing its goals.

Boost shipboard defenses: On the other hand, the laws of physics are a stern taskmaster. Battleships could disgorge one or two rounds per minute from each of their nine big guns. Hence, their devastating impact on defenders at Normandy. But the rate and volume of fire may suffer as the range separating the firing platform from its targets increases. Long range also reduces the amount of territory a vessel can reach. These problems are acute for a carrier, which reuses the delivery systems—the aircraft—that put ordnance on target. Aircraft have to launch, make their way to the combat zone, turn loose their weapons and make it back to the ship to refuel and rearm. That cycle takes time—and the farther offshore the flattop, the longer it takes. The strike group, thus, needs to get as close to its objectives as possible. Consequently, anything ship designers can do to harden ships against air and missile attack will improve the carrier's, and its escorts', ability to stand into danger at acceptable risk. Rugged construction, stealth, exotic weaponry, such as lasers and electromagnetic railguns—any of these will enhance warships' capacity to withstand landward assault and project power. Suffice it to say, striking the balance between self-protection and offensive firepower is a dicey prospect.

Don't cling too tight to the old: Seamen have a habit of falling in love with ships, ship types, and missions. Letting go is hard to do—even when circumstances warrant. Mahan defined capital ship broadly, to mean any warship capable of meting out and taking heavy blows. Naval commentators, nonetheless, construed his writings as advocacy on behalf of a specific ship type—the armored battleship. Once that assumption found its way into U.S. Navy strategy and doctrine, it took incontrovertible evidence—such as Japan's air assault at Pearl Harbor—to shatter habitual ways of thinking about sea combat. Better to remain intellectually and doctrinally nimble and repurpose old ships, aircraft and armaments when need be. Remember Rommel's verdict on naval gunfire at D-Day. Naval gunfire exuded little sex appeal. But it was a decisive factor in France.

Embrace the new: The reciprocal is that navies tend to see new, experimental ships as fleet auxiliaries—as assets that help the existing fleet execute what it already does, only better. Early on, for instance, naval officers considered the submarine an adjunct to the battle fleet. Aircraft carriers and their air wings were "the eyes of the fleet," scouting and screening for battleships, rather than offensive weapons in their own right. The dreadnought thus lingered on long after its successor, the flattop, hove into view. (Today the U.S. Navy may be repeating the pattern with unmanned-aircraft development. Having debated whether UAVs should emphasize ground attack or surveillance, navy potentates evidently favor the latter. A new set of eyes for the aircraft-carrier strike group may be in the offing.) Hanging onto old hardware and doctrine can represent a grievous mistake—so can being standoffish toward novel warmaking methods.

Find an alternative: It is entirely possible that the technical challenges cataloged here are insoluble at any affordable cost, much as restoring the dreadnought's supremacy was impossible in World War II. Accordingly, it behooves the U.S. Navy and friendly services to experiment with new technologies and concepts now, in case the sunset of the aircraft carrier approaches. We make much of the abrupt switch between battleships and carriers as the capital ships of choice. But navy leaders didn't conjure the carrier into being in 1941, when they needed a new capital ship. Rather, farsighted leaders such as Admiral William Moffett—a battleship-officer-turned-air-power-enthusiast—had pushed the development of naval air during the era of battleship supremacy. Hence, the implements to prosecute an aviation-centric strategy already existed when the navy needed them. Commanders merely had to divine how to use them. As things worked out, the ex-capital ship performed support duty while its replacement bore the brunt of navy-on-navy fighting. Not a bad division of labor.

In short, battleship history suggests that today's leaders face an array of technical, tactical and operational challenges. It also suggests that imagination poses the stiffest challenge. One hopes there's a William Moffett out there thinking ahead to the next big thing.

James Holmes is Professor of Strategy at the Naval War College and coauthor of Red Star over the Pacific, just out in Mandarin from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He was the last gunnery officer to fire battleship guns in anger, in 1991. The views voiced here are his alone.

This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.

James Holmes

Security, Americas

There are several lessons that could be applied to a modern war with China today.

Key point: There are three important take away from that costly, but effective, campaign. Here is how America won—and would win again.

This year marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands. The battle is one of seven naval engagements that—together with hard-ground fighting on the part of the U.S. Marines and Army—make up a six-month bloodletting known to history as Guadalcanal. It’s a struggle replete with insights into martial strategy and operations.

There are three big ideas that come out of studying the Solomon Islands campaign. First of all, the physical setting may impel strategic and operational deliberations. The Solomon Islands is a chute of an island chain. Guadalcanal constitutes its southeastern terminus, while the Japanese fortress at Rabaul lay just beyond its northwestern terminus in yesteryear. The Solomons commands little intrinsic value apart from its strategic geography. It invites the greats of literature to turn eloquent phrases disparaging it. James Michener, to name one, terms Guadalcanal “that godforsaken backwash of the world.”

This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Yet “location, location, location” makes as good a slogan in strategy as in real estate. War is a business of positions, as the little Emperor Napoleon liked to point out. Position augmented by military power translates into strategic advantage for a site’s holder.

And the Solomons abounded in geostrategic potential during World War II. Imperial Japanese Navy warplanes based on Guadalcanal could fan out, menacing shipping steaming along sea routes connecting North America with beleaguered Australia. They could help isolate a crucial American ally in the Pacific War. They could stop the U.S. armed forces from commencing their long march up the island chain toward the Japanese stronghold at Rabaul, the Philippine Islands—which had fallen during the onslaught that engulfed Pearl Harbor—and thence toward Japan itself. And Imperial Japanese Navy warbirds could help Japan stake its claim to even more South Pacific turf.

The U.S. high command, spurred by Chief of Naval Operations Ernest King, pronounced surrendering such strategically located ground unacceptable. Admiral King agitated constantly on behalf of offensive action in the Pacific theater—and he made the Solomons his project in mid-1942. The fight in and around the Solomons would last for twenty-six weeks, from the American amphibious landings in August 1942 until the Japanese pullout in February 1943. That’s a lot of resources, manpower and time to expend on something about which you care little.

Lesson one: it may be worthwhile to undertake a campaign to deny an adversary something rather than wrest it away for yourself. If so, you surrender some strategic autonomy. You go somewhere because an antagonist precedes you there. Contenders, in short, may not get to fight on ground of their choosing. Sometimes they fight where and when they wish. Other times they fight where and when they must. And once in awhile neither combatant especially cares to contest a particular battleground. They bestride the field to deny it to each other.

Such was the case with Guadalcanal. American and Japanese forces waged a “bloody and desperate campaign” for—as historian Samuel Eliot Morison puts it—real estate that “neither side really wanted, but which neither could afford to abandon to the enemy.” It’s doubtful the U.S. leadership would have felt constrained to go to Guadalcanal had the Imperial Japanese Navy not gone there first and commenced constructing an airstrip, which was dubbed Henderson Field once it was under U.S. Marine management.

For their part, it’s doubtful Japan’s military rulers would have elevated the Solomons above their principal objective in the South Pacific, Port Moresby in Palau, had the U.S. sea services not contested Guadalcanal and Henderson Field with such ferocity.

Second, setting and enforcing priorities proves dicey in theater-wide contests, let alone in contests spanning the globe. Scatter forces across the map in smaller and smaller packets, and you render each packet weaker and weaker—perhaps subjecting each one to defeat, and dooming the force to piecemeal defeat. U.S. commanders and their political masters had to juggle not just commitments within the Pacific Ocean, but between the Pacific and European theaters.

Top political leaders had agreed to defeat “Germany first” even before America entered the war. The Germany-first covenant wrong-footed partisans of naval action in the Pacific for quarrels over how to apportion resources for what amounted to two full-blown wars—both of which commanded compelling importance.

Protagonists of the European theater had official policy on their side. They argued, in contemporary parlance, that the Allies should hold in the Pacific until they could win in the Atlantic. Only then would they turn full force to the war against Imperial Japan. “Holding” for Europeanists meant parrying Japanese blows while doing little, if anything, offensive in reply. It connoted passive defense. Doing the minimum against Japan would allow Washington to conserve manpower, military hardware and resources of all sorts to thrash the Axis in Europe.

Sometimes the highest authority has to adjudicate such disputes, and so it was in 1942–43. As Morison observes, preparations for Operation Torch—the invasion of North Africa—represented the marquee show in the Atlantic theater that fall, even while battle raged in the Solomon Islands (D-Day in North Africa came that November). In October, nevertheless, President Franklin Roosevelt overruled his Europe-first military chiefs. He instructed them to reinforce on Guadalcanal while still pressing ahead with Torch.

Offensive action in the Solomons meant foregoing a cross-English Channel invasion of France in 1943—an offensive the Joint Chiefs longed to mount.

Japanese ground and naval commanders had to balance among commitments as well. Tokyo had taken on a land war on the continent of Asia—a full-blown war in itself—alongside multiple maritime entanglements in the South Pacific. Army and navy chieftains wrangled over priorities but ultimately felt obliged to follow the U.S. Navy and Marines to Guadalcanal. The Japanese high command doubled down by the close of August, several weeks into the struggle. Military rulers downgraded Port Moresby temporarily until Japanese forces could win in the Solomons.

Lesson two: no combatant can do everything everywhere on the map at the same time and expect to triumph. Japan, in particular, had to husband resources, as it was battling a foe boasting many times its economic strength—and thus many times its latent military strength. The United States found itself in similar straits into 1943, when industry had geared up to produce war materiel in vast quantities.

Wise leaders interject themselves in strategic debates when necessary—refereeing among proponents of competing courses of action.

Lesson three focuses on a more general proposition: we err when we distinguish too sharply between “Eastern” and “Western” warmaking methods. Western commentators make much of Mao Zedong’s concept of “active defense.” Mao represents the theorist of the weaker contender, not to mention a practitioner of his own strategy—a strategy meant to help the weak turn the tables on the strong. Wittingly or not, Westerners depict him as the purveyor of some esoteric Oriental art of strategy premised on deception and guile.

And indeed, Mao does draw heavily on the writings of Sun Tzu, China’s martial philosopher of undying fame. Master Sun predicates his philosophy of warfare on being nimble, wily and deceptive. Yet Mao’s writings are no mere knockoff of Sun Tzu’s. Far from it. They owe as much to Western scribe Carl von Clausewitz as to any Asian master. Maoist active defense, for example, is about luring stronger foes onto onto one’s home ground. They have to advance across significant distances just to reach the battlefield—and overextend or even exhaust themselves in the process.

The Maoist concept derives in part from Clausewitz’s observation that the combatant that seizes the offensive at the outset of war sees its strength attenuated as its forces close in on the defender. The invader gets more and more remote from his bases. His logistics grow increasingly tenuous. The enemy, perhaps aided by partisan warfare, harries the invader’s flanks with minor tactical actions, sapping his combat power. Meanwhile the defender falls back on his own bases and sources of supply—exploiting the advantages that go to the home team protecting its home ground.

Ultimately the invader passes the “culminating point of the attack,” a crossover point beyond which the defender holds the upper hand. Reversing the balance of forces empowers the erstwhile weaker contender to take the offensive—and win a conventional trial of arms. Mao distills his doctrine of active defense from this insight. Chinese statements about strategy remind us, time and again, that active defense, a product manufactured partly in Europe, remains the “essence” of Chinese martial thought and the strategies to which thought gives rise. Maoist ideas thus represent an amalgam of purportedly Eastern and purportedly Western concepts about warlike enterprises.

Pretty Oriental, eh?

But the same works both ways. Americans involved with the Guadalcanal campaign formulated Maoist-sounding ideas for holding the Solomons. Allies such as Winston Churchill’s Great Britain preferred that the United States do as little in the possible in the Pacific theater—thus shunting the overwhelming bulk of manpower, hardware and other resources into the European theater and speeding the Grand Alliance along its road to victory. Skeptics branded Admiral King’s Pacific strategy “defensive-offensive,” evidently as a term of derision. Yet his logic was sound, and Mao would have grasped it immediately: hold if you must, wage offense as soon as you can.

Gen. Alexander Vandegrift, who oversaw ground combat on Guadalcanal during its earliest, most grueling phase, likewise hit on a notion he termed “active defense.” Once U.S. Marine defenders had withstood the shock of early Japanese efforts to wrest back Henderson Field, and once American convoys had replenished manpower and war materiel on Guadalcanal, General Vandegrift started mixing offensive tactical forays into his predominantly defensive posture. The result: a hybrid form of defense that wore down a formidable, resolute foe, enabling U.S. forces to hold the airfield—America’s unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Solomons. Mao would recognize and applaud Vandegrift’s operational artistry.

Lesson three: let’s not overstate the disparity between Eastern and Western ways of war. The great Michael Handel counsels that the differences are largely illusory, and that a universal logic of strategy transcends civilizations, ideologies and historical epochs. Not just Mao but King and Vandegrift fashioned virtually identical strategies for the weaker combatant. So, for that matter, did Julian S. Corbett. Such parallelism is no mere accident.

Guadalcanal, then, teaches that lesser priorities can upstage operations in ostensibly more pressing theaters of conflict. Strategists constantly evaluate and reevaluate their relative importance. The campaign also reminds us that strategists don’t vary radically from place to place or time to time. Not bad for a seventy-five-year-old fight over seemingly worthless ground.

James Holmes is Professor of Strategy at the Naval War College and coauthor of Red Star over the Pacific (second edition forthcoming 2018). He recently deployed to the Pacific with Carrier Strike Group 9, embarked in USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71). The views voiced here are his alone. This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters

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James Holmes

History, Asia

Tokyo could have decided not to attack America, but instead found another way to avoid or win the war.

Key point: A good look at history requires considering realistic alternative scenarios. Here is how tensions between Washington and Tokyo could have played out differently.

Suppose Robert E. Lee had laid hands on a shipment of AK-47s in 1864. How would American history have unfolded? Differently than it did, one imagines.

Historians frown on alt-history, and oftentimes for good reason. Change too many variables, and you veer speedily into fiction. The chain connecting cause to effect gets too diffuse to trace, and history loses all power to instruct. Change a major variable, especially in a fanciful way—for instance, positing that machine-gun-toting Confederates took the field against Ulysses S. Grant’s army at the Battle of the Wilderness—and the same fate befalls you. Good storytelling may teach little.

What if Japan had never attacked Pearl Harbor? Now that’s a question we can take on without running afoul of historical scruples. As long as we refrain from inserting nuclear-powered aircraft carriers sporting Tomcat fighters into our deliberations, at any rate.

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When studying strategy, we commonly undertake a self-disciplined form of alt-history. Indeed, our courses in Newport and kindred educational institutes revolve around it. That’s how we learn from historical figures and events. Military sage Carl von Clausewitz recommends—nay, demands—that students of strategy take this approach. Rigor, not whimsy, is the standard that guides ventures in Clausewitzian “critical analysis.” Strategists critique the course of action a commander followed while proposing alternatives that may have better advanced operational and strategic goals.

Debating strategy and operations in hindsight is how we form the habit of thinking critically about present-day enterprises. Critical analysis, maintains Clausewitz, is “not just an evaluation of the means actually employed, but of all possible means—which first have to be formulated, that is, invented. One can, after all, not condemn a method without being able to suggest a better alternative.” The Prussian sage, then, scorns Monday-morning quarterbacking.

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That demands intellectual self-discipline. “If the critic wishes to distribute praise or blame,” concludes Clausewitz, “he must certainly try to put himself exactly in the position of the commander; in other words, he must assemble everything the commander knew and all the motives that affected his decision, and ignore all that he could not or did not know, especially the outcome.” Critics know how a course of action worked out in retrospect. They must restrict themselves to what a commander actually knew in order to project some realistic alternative.

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It doesn’t take too much imagination to postulate alternative strategies for Imperial Japan. Indeed, eminent Japanese have themselves postulated alternatives. My favorite: the high naval command should have stuck to its pre-1941 playbook. The Pearl Harbor carrier raid was a latecomer to Japanese naval strategy, and it was the handiwork of one man, Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto. Had Yamamoto declined to press the case for a Hawaiian strike, or had the high command rebuffed his entreaties, the Imperial Japanese Navy would have executed its longstanding strategy of “interceptive operations.”

In other words, it would have evicted U.S. forces from the Philippine Islands, seized Pacific islands and built airfields there, and employed air and submarine attacks to cut the U.S. Pacific Fleet down to size on its westward voyage to the Philippines’ relief. Interceptive operations would have culminated in a fleet battle somewhere in the Western Pacific. Japan would have stood a better chance of success had it done so. Its navy still would have struck American territory to open the war, but it would have done so in far less provocative fashion. In all likelihood, the American reaction would have proved more muted—and more manageable for Japan.

The Hollywood version of Yamamoto puts the result of Pearl Harbor well, prophesying in Tora! Tora! Tora! that “we have awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve.” That’s a rich—and rather Clausewitzian—way of putting it. Clausewitz defines a combatant’s strength as a product of capability and willpower. Yamamoto alludes to the United States’ vast industrial and natural resources, depicting America as a giant in waiting. He also foretells that the strike on Battleship Row will enrage that giant—goading him into mobilizing those resources in bulk to smite Japan.

Assaulting the Philippines may have awakened the sleeping giant—but it’s doubtful it would have left him in such a merciless mood. He would have been groggy. Here’s Clausewitz again: the “value of the political object” governs the “magnitude” and “duration” of the effort a belligerent mounts to obtain that political object. How much a belligerent wants its political goals, that is, dictates how many resources—lives, national treasure, military hardware—it invests in an endeavor, and how long it sustains the investment.

It pays a heavy price for goals it covets dearly. Lesser goals warrant lesser expenditures.

The Philippine Islands constituted a lesser goal. The archipelago constituted American territory, having been annexed in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War of 1898. But the islands also lay on the far side of the Pacific Ocean, thousands of miles from American shores. And they had been absent from daily headlines since the days when imperialists like Theodore Roosevelt wrangled publicly with anti-imperialists like Mark Twain about the wisdom of annexation. Americans reportedly had to consult their atlases on December 7 to find out where Pearl Harbor was located. The Philippines barely registered in the popular consciousness—full stop.

Regaining the Philippines, then, would have represented a political object commanding mediocre value at best—especially when full-blown war raged in Europe and adjoining waters, beckoning to an America that had been Eurocentric since its founding. Chances are that the U.S. effort in the Pacific would have remained wholly defensive. The U.S. leadership would have concentrated resources and martial energy in the Atlantic theater—keeping its prewar promise to allied leaders in deed as well as in spirit.

Bypassing the Hawaiian Islands, in short, would have spared Japan a world of hurt—as Admiral Yamamoto foresaw. Forbearance would have granted Tokyo time to consolidate its gains in the Western Pacific, and perhaps empowered Japan’s navy and army to hold those gains against the tepid, belated U.S. counteroffensive that was likely to come.

Now, let’s give Yamamoto his due as a maritime strategist. His strategy was neither reckless nor stupid. Japanese mariners were avid readers of the works of Alfred Thayer Mahan, and going after the enemy fleet represents sound Mahanian doctrine. Crush the enemy fleet and you win “command of the sea.” Win maritime command and contested real estate dangles on the vine for you to pluck afterward.

And indeed, the Mahanian approach did pay off for the Imperial Japanese Navy—for a time. Japanese warriors ran wild for six months after Pearl Harbor, scooping up conquest after conquest. But a vengeful giant can regenerate strength given adequate time. As Yamamoto himself predicted, Japan could entertain “no expectation of success” if the war dragged on longer than six months or a year.

Doing less—or forswearing an effort entirely—always constitutes a viable strategic option. Doing nothing was an option Japan should have exercised rather than assail Pearl Harbor. That’s the lesson from alt-history.

James Holmes is Professor of Strategy at the Naval War College and coauthor of Red Star over the Pacific (second edition forthcoming 2018). The views voiced here are his alone. This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.

James Holmes

Security, Asia

Beijing’s attempts to seize other countries’ territories cannot be allowed to stand.

Key point: China is building artificial islands and is claiming areas of ocean that belong to other countries. Will they get away with it?

It feels like 2014 again. That’s when it came to light that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had embarked on a seemingly quixotic project: manufacturing islands out of reefs and atolls in the South China Sea and then fortifying them to extend its sway vis-à-vis Southeast Asian rivals impertinent enough to insist on their maritime rights. The region was a fixture in headlines that year and into the next while Washington and Beijing traded barbs accusing each other of “militarizing” the situation.

This week the Trump administration renewed the controversy, issuing a revised “U.S. Position on Maritime Claims in the South China Sea.” In the key paragraph Secretary of State Mike Pompeo proclaimed that “the world will not allow Beijing to treat the South China Sea as its maritime empire. America stands with our Southeast Asian allies and partners in protecting their sovereign rights to offshore resources, consistent with their rights and obligations under international law. We stand with the international community in defense of freedom of the seas and respect for sovereignty and reject any push to impose ‘might makes right’ in the South China Sea or the wider region.”

Now, empire is a freighted word for sure. Communist China defines itself in opposition to European and Japanese imperialism, a scourge CCP leaders decry for inflicting a “century of humiliation” on Asia’s leading power. Unsurprisingly, then, China’s embassy in Washington DC leapt to deny Pompeo’s accusation.

And indeed, the CCP is not seeking an empire in the South China Sea, strictly speaking. An empire exercises dominion over foreign territories from an imperial center. Beijing wants far more than a maritime empire. It covets ownership. It wants to make the South China Sea what Romans once called the Mediterranean Sea—namely mare liberum, or “our sea.”

CCP magnates make no effort to conceal their aims. Since 2009, in fact, officialdom has frankly and regularly avowed that its paramount goal is “indisputable sovereignty” within a “nine-dashed line” enclosing the vast majority of the South China Sea. This is an extravagant claim. Think about what sovereignty is. A sovereign government exercises a monopoly on the use of armed force within borders inscribed on the map. It ordains and others obey. The law of the sea, which proscribes national ownership of maritime space—with few, specific, and narrowly drawn exceptions, none of which justify Beijing’s claims—will be no more in the South China Sea if Xi Jinping & Co. get their way.

The waters and land features within the nine-dashed line will be Chinese territory.

And an awful precedent will have been set. Surrendering the South China Sea would embolden other coastal states to repeal the law of the sea by fiat if they felt strongly about offshore seas and possessed sufficient physical might to enforce their will. Hence Secretary Pompeo’s warning against letting the primeval principle that might makes right—that the strong seize what they want in international affairs and the weak accommodate themselves to the strong—prevail.

Freedom of the sea is a pressing interest for the United States and any seafaring society. It should be nonnegotiable.

But there are reasons apart from international law why Americans should care whether the Chinese Communist Party rules a faraway expanse of which they know little. First, access. As Alfred Thayer Mahan pointed out a century ago, the paramount goal of maritime strategy is to ensure commercial, diplomatic, and military access to important trading regions such as East Asia. Commerce is king. Military access assures political access assures commercial access and the blessings trade brings. At the same time access is a crucial enabler for maritime strategy. Commerce generates wealth sufficient to fund a navy to protect commerce. Acquiescing in Beijing’s maritime claims would encumber freedom of movement for merchantmen and warships—threatening to interrupt this virtuous cycle and hurt American prosperity.

It’s never a good time to put prosperity at hazard. Doing so in a pandemic year—a year rife with economic uncertainty—would amount to strategic malpractice. What happens in Southeast Asia has direct implications for Americans.

Second, geopolitics. If U.S. foreign policy has aimed at securing commercial access since the age of Mahan, it also aims at keeping the “rimlands” of East Asia and Western Europe from falling under the dominion of some hostile power or alliance. North America occupies a fortunate geographic position, buffered against Eurasian enmities by the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. If some geopolitical competitor unified one of the rimlands under its rule, however, it might wrest away martial resources sufficient to reach out across the ocean and do the United States harm in its own hemisphere.

To keep the rimlands fragmented among competing powers and hold danger at bay, U.S. diplomats and seafarers have to be able to get to the rimlands. Consequently, the U.S. Navy, affiliated joint forces, and allied military services must rule what geopolitics sage Nicholas Spykman termed the “girdle of marginal seas” adjoining the Eurasian perimeter. The South China Sea figures prominently among these marginal waterways—and thus to America’s rimlands strategy. Washington cannot let it go.

And third, friends and allies. The United States has no strategic position in the Western Pacific without local partners and the harbors and bases they supply. It must keep its commitments to treaty allies such as the Philippine Islands lest they resign themselves to Chinese Communist supremacy and close their soil to U.S. forces. America could find itself locked out of the region. Its commercially and geopolitically driven foreign policy would falter as a result. Manila is a primary target of CCP abuse in the South China Sea, having seen waters apportioned to it under the law of the sea purloined by China’s maritime militia, coast guard, and navy. Deterring new aggression while reversing past transgressions must be central to U.S. strategy.

Clearly, then, failing to honor longstanding security guarantees to the Philippines and other allies would place U.S. foreign policy and strategy in jeopardy in manifold ways. If Americans prefer a world of wealth and safety, they have ample reason to take an interest in Southeast Asian affairs. Abandoning the region to a Roman fate risks sacrificing our own future.

James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College. The views voiced here are his alone. This appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.

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James Holmes

Security, Asia

There is no room for hubris when planning for (and attempting to win) a war.

Key point: Ignoring, disparaging, and looking down on your enemies does feel good. But it creates blindspots and prevents you from seriously planning for the worst.

Admirals say the darnedest things. Over at the U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings magazine, retired U.S. Pacific Command Intelligence Chief Capt. Jim Fanell takes PACOM kahunas, past and present, to task for disparaging China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). Respect for prospective foes, proclaims Captain Fanell, constitutes the most prudent attitude.

Such counsel is evergreen.

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Military folk must beware of hubris, the worst of all strategic habits. As ancient Greeks warned, hubris begets nemesis, meaning divine retribution. It’s insidious—especially for a force like the U.S. Navy. After all, it’s been twenty-six years since the Cold War. Few sailors or naval aviators now in uniform have known anything except American maritime supremacy. Such a historical interlude can give rise to triumphalism that taints assessments of rising challengers.

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Last month, for instance, erstwhile PACOM commander Adm. Dennis Blair told a naval conference that China’s military has failed to amass “maritime and air superiority” and thus cannot degrade American deterrence or treaty commitments in the Far East. Around the same time, testifying before the House Armed Services Committee, current PACOM supremo, Adm. Harry Harris, likened comparing PLAN and U.S. Navy submarines to “comparing a Model T with a Corvette.”

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The impression conveyed in both instances: nothing to worry about here, move along.

Fanell takes exception to these statements on two grounds. First, that disparaging the PLAN flouts the reality of mounting Chinese martial prowess and material capability. And second, that insinuating the PLAN isn’t battleworthy betrays a political tin ear. Pooh-poohing the challenge damps congressional and popular support for the larger U.S. Navy that the Trump administration and Navy leaders have been pushing. Thus, the admirals convey a false impression of China’s navy and then compound that error by sapping political support for rebuilding the U.S. Navy.

This amounts to self-defeating conduct on naval potentates’ part. After all, if China’s navy remains little more than a nuisance, as not just admirals but learned commentators sometimes say, why should lawmakers fund a pricey naval buildup to counter it?

Let’s take Fanell’s points in turn, starting with Admiral Blair. By “maritime superiority,” Blair presumably means “sea control,” the usual term. My colleague, professor Milan Vego, defines sea control as “one’s ability to use a given part of the ocean/sea and the associated air (space) for military and nonmilitary purposes and to deny the same to the enemy in a time of open hostilities.”

U.S. Air Force doctrine, meanwhile, depicts “air superiority” as “that degree of control of the air by one force that permits the conduct of its operations at a given time and place without prohibitive interference from air and missile threats.” It may be “localized in space and time,” or “broad and enduring.”

The common denominator is physical space. Sea control and air superiority connote imposing enough control of physical space to fulfill one’s purposes while preventing a foe from fulfilling its purposes.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that Blair has it right and China’s military can’t wrest sea or air superiority from the U.S. military and its partners—even in China’s own environs. Isn’t it reasonable to conclude that an inferior PLAN cannot degrade American deterrence or security guarantees?

Well, no. By deploying even lesser forces with skill and dexterity, PLA commanders can sow doubt among U.S. allies fearful of being abandoned to the wrath of Asia’s would-be hegemon.

Henry Kissinger’s workmanlike formula for deterrence constitutes a serviceable formula for reassurance as well. Deterrence, writes Kissinger, is a product of three variables: “power, the will to use it, and the assessment of these by the potential aggressor.” All three are critical. And because “deterrence is a product of those factors and not a sum,” deterrence drops to zero if any one variable does.

Deterrence, then, is about fielding formidable capabilities and mustering the moxie to use them. Capability and willpower represent the two basic components of strength for any combatant. But deterrence comes down to making the antagonist a believer in one’s capability and resolve. The most musclebound, most stalwart competitor cannot deter an unbeliever.

The same goes for reassurance except the target audience is different. An ally must convince its partners that it is strong and resolute enough to uphold its security guarantees. If an ally comes to doubt a fellow ally’s power, or an allied leaders’ gumption to use it, then the consortium could falter or fall through altogether. Unbelief could seep into friendly capitals.

So how can China implant doubt in U.S. allies’ minds if the PLA still holds a weaker hand? Simple: it can execute its longstanding strategy of anti-access and area denial—a strategy premised on persuading U.S. leaders that they cannot win a Pacific war at a cost they’re willing to pay.

As strategic grandmaster Carl von Clausewitz observes, the value a combatant affixes to its political aims determines how many resources it invests to attain those aims, and how long it keeps up the investment. How badly that combatant wants its goals, in other words, determines how lavishly it spends on them, and for how long. If an East Asian venture’s price tag is too high—or if China’s armed forces can drive it too high—U.S. leaders may conclude the venture isn’t worth the expense.

If so, Clausewitz would counsel them to forego it.

China, consequently, doesn’t need to command sea or sky, either partially or wholly, to prevail in a trial of arms—let alone to deter in peacetime. It only needs to convince Washington, DC the price of, say, defending the Senkaku Islands is too steep considering the meager value Americans attach to the archipelago.

Beijing can ask, sotto voce: how many American lives, and how many aircraft carriers, destroyers, or fighter aircraft, is a group of uninhabited islets worth to you? If the PLA can plausibly threaten to inflict costs greater than that outlay, then U.S. leaders may do the Clausewitzian thing and abjure the effort. In light of that possibility, Tokyo could come to question whether Washington will really keep its pledge to defend the Senkaku Islands.

Doubt would have been sowed, and the U.S.-Japan alliance would have wavered—all without Chinese forces’ seizing maritime or air superiority through combat. This is the logic of anti-access and area denial. The weak need not prevail on oceanic battlegrounds. They only need to prevail in their enemies’ minds, skewing cost/benefit calculations to China’s benefit. So it is China that could deter—and loosen U.S.-led alliances in the bargain.

Blair’s blithe dismissal of Chinese military power scants all of this.

Now for Admiral Harris. As Jim Fanell notes, comparing Chinese with American submarines misleads. PLAN commanders envision using diesel boats to ambush oncoming U.S. Pacific Fleet surface forces in times of war, elevating the costs of entry into the Western Pacific. Kilo- or Yuan-class boats will blast away with anti-ship cruise missiles, exacting as high a toll as they can. Undersea warfare, then, represents one of the pillars of China’s anti-access strategy.

Yet the PLAN submarine fleet is not a fleet meant for fighting other submarines. That’s why Admiral Harris’s quip deceives. One of these things is not like the other. Boat-for-boat comparisons reveal little.

Now, U.S. Navy nuclear-powered attack boats (SSNs) would hunt PLAN submarines should war come, and they indeed embody the state of the art. They are also few—and dwindling—in numbers, and they carry only short-range armament. Indeed, American boats must get within about ten nautical miles to launch their torpedoes. Swing a circle with a ten-nautical-mile radius around a point on your map of the Pacific Ocean. That’s the area where a U.S. Navy submarine cruising at that point can strike. You’ll notice that area is microscopic amid the ocean’s empty vastness.

Will U.S. anti-submarine forces really—as Harris implies—make short work of silent-running PLAN diesel boats dispersed for picket duty within this broad expanse? Color me skeptical.

So U.S. Navy SSNs may be Corvettes relative to PLAN Model Ts, but it may not matter much. Primitive implements can do many jobs. The Corvette is an artisanal vehicle, manufactured in small batches for well-heeled sports-car enthusiasts. The Model T was an inexpensive automobile mass-produced for Americans shopping on a budget. And yet both vehicles got drivers and passengers from point A to point B at acceptable speeds and in acceptable comfort for their day.

Now transpose Harris’s analogy to naval warfare. Long-term strategic competition involves competing on the cheap while goading competitors into competing at exorbitant cost. Is the U.S. Navy competing cost-effectively? Well, the latest-model Chevy Corvette Z06 runs over $80,000. One imagines some carmaker could put the 1927-vintage Ford Model T back into production for a minuscule fraction of that (assuming there was a market for creaky low-tech vehicles).

Similarly, a Virginia-class SSN sets back the U.S. Navy some $2.7 billion. Beijing divulges few details about how much platforms or weaponry cost, but the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force can acquire a Soryu-class diesel sub for about $540 million, one-fifth of the sticker price of the Virginia’s class. The Japanese boat is a rough counterpart to PLAN diesel boats, so use it as a yardstick. If China can purchase five submarines that meet its needs for the same price the United States can purchase one, then who’s competing more efficiently and effectively?

Which brings us to a basic point: “good enough” constitutes the standard of excellence for military hardware. If China’s navy can execute its strategy with an armada of Model Ts while the U.S. Navy bankrupts itself struggling to procure enough Corvettes, then who gets the last laugh? The answer is far from obvious. Practitioners of competitive strategies—the art of competing at low cost to oneself and high cost to rivals—would applaud the miser while fretting over the spendthrift’s prospects.

American seafarers, accordingly, had better heed Fanell’s critique. We should respect a potential foe able to make do with Model Ts, not scoff at it. That’s an adversary well equipped to compete over the long haul. Heck, if it’s smart, then the U.S. Navy might afford China the sincerest form of flattery—and kick the tires on some Model Ts itself.

James Holmes is professor of strategy at the Naval War College and coauthor of Red Star over the Pacific. The views voiced here are his alone. This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.