A new voice has joined the ranks of those concerned with the size of the U.S. Navy. Gregg Easterbrook, author and contributing editor at The Atlantic, wrote an op-ed at the New York Times on 9 March entitled “Our Navy is Big Enough,” in which he lays out why the U.S. Navy need not grow and why its funding is sufficient. His argument is a tendentious restatement of the poorly informed ruminations of others. He thoroughly misunderstands the role of navies in general, and the U.S. Navy in particular, and he inaccurately portrays the rising support of a larger Navy as a partisan wish of the Republican Party. Let us begin with that last point.
Two consecutive independent National Defense Panels charged with reviewing both the 2010 and 2014 Quadrennial Defense Reviews reached the same conclusion: that the U.S. Navy was not large enough to meet its global commitments. These conclusions were affirmed by two leading Democratic Party members of those panels, former Secretary of Defense William Perry (2010) and former Under Secretary of Defense (Policy) Michele Flournoy, the latter of whom is considered very close to the presumptive Democratic nominee in 2016, Hillary Clinton. Additionally, the current (Democratic) Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus is basing his entire legacy on growing the fleet to 300 ships by 2020, a fleet which on March 2 stood at 275 ships. Easterbrook’s suggestion that this is some kind of Republican cabal is simply not supported by the available evidence.
Moving beyond his misreading of the bipartisan nature of the support for a larger fleet, Easterbrook fundamentally misunderstands what the U.S. Navy does, and why it is sized and formed as it is. He falls into the common trap of comparing our Navy against other navies, as if there were another nation on earth with our global interests and global responsibilities. More correctly (and I credit my friend Ron O’Rourke at the Congressional Research Service for this approach), most of the world’s people, resources, and economic activity are not found in our hemisphere, but in Eurasia. It has been a cornerstone of our national security policy since the end of World War II to prevent the rise of a regional hegemon in either part of Eurasia. A good bit of our military looks like it does to accomplish exactly this, by which I mean a powerful Navy, long range bombers, and long range airlift. We are the only country whose military is designed to move itself to another hemisphere and conduct large-scale military operations there. Easterbrook’s citation of our number of carriers and comparing that to other nations fundamentally ignores the uniqueness of both our role in the world and our geography.
The U.S. Navy is sized in order to protect and sustain our nation’s globally dispersed interests and treaty obligations. This currently amounts to the provision of forward deployed credible combat power in the Western Pacific and the Indian Ocean/Arabian Gulf and mission tailored forces globally. We do this with Carrier Strike Groups and Amphibious Ready Groups, built around the “nuclear-powered supercarriers” of which Easterbrook writes. His citation of our present force of 10 carriers is correct technically, but public law requires the Navy to maintain 11, a law the Department of Defense sought temporary relief from until the USS FORD (CVN 78) joins the fleet. Even 11 carriers is insufficient, as the U.S. decision in the halcyon days after the Soviet Union fell to remove significant naval power from the Mediterranean has left this critical theater underserved as crisis after crisis occurred. The United States needs a minimum of 12 to ensure that it can keep three forward deployed at all times, with today’s fleet of 10 so insufficient that deployment lengths are routinely in excess of 10 months.
Easterbrook also errs by fixating on navy versus navy battle, as if this is solely what the U.S. Navy is sized and constituted to do. The destruction of enemy fleets is an important wartime role for the Navy, but so too is power projection ashore. As our land forces are increasingly returning to garrison in the United States, this globally available power projection capability is often our most flexible, powerful, and useful option available to the president when crisis occurs. Additionally, he completely ignores the role played by naval forces in providing peacetime forward naval presence, which assures allies, deters potential adversaries, and keeps global trade moving.
With respect to the threat, Easterbrook’s calm assurances of the limitations of the Chinese Navy (the People’s Liberation Army Navy, or PLAN) demonstrate a dangerous underestimation of the growing strength of this force. Our friends and allies in the region do not share his blasé view of China’s rising military might, nor should they. Moreover, Easterbrook fails to acknowledge that China does not have to build a navy bigger or more powerful than the one the United States operates; it simply needs to build one that is bigger and more powerful than the portion of the U.S. Navy that Washington can devote on a daily basis to the Pacific.
Finally, Easterbrook has a causation problem. He argues:
For many centuries, naval rivalry was a central aspect of great-power relations. Yet for more than half a century there has been no great-power naval rivalry — because the United States Navy rules. The last major sea battle was at Okinawa, in 1945. Piracy still occurs, but in the main, global trade has flowered because sea lanes are open and commercial vessels ply the oceans unthreatened by warships. Free commerce upon the oceans brings nearly all nations, including developing nations, higher living standards and less poverty.
What exactly is it that he believes led to the situation in which “the United States Navy rules”? What created the conditions under which “free commerce upon the oceans brings nearly all nations, including developing nations, higher living standards and less poverty”? It was the preponderance of the U.S. Navy, its overwhelming might, its ability to protect U.S. global interests and project power thousands of miles from America’s shores. This preponderance is the result of enlightened statesmen and thinkers who balanced what we needed the U.S. Navy to do with the available resources, not narrow-minded ship counters who compared our fleet with the regional navies of other nations. Now, with a competitor rising who actively seeks regional hegemon status in contravention of the bedrock of our national security policy for seven decades, Easterbrook would have our Navy decline while the first true threat to the conditions he waxes about above, gathers before our eyes. No thanks.
Bryan McGrath is the Managing Director of The FerryBridge Group LLC and the Assistant Director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for American Seapower.
Photo credit: Official U.S. Navy Imagery
Robert Warner 
Ben Hirschman 
matt 
Ben Hirschman 
Craig Regan 
Dean Hewitt 
Nathan 
hokie_19997 
Tom 
It’s not just about size. It’s about who, what, and where – and how to get “there” from here… Check this link for some cross pollination. Congress is deeply in the weeds and dragging all of us down.
http://breakingdefense.com/2015/03/cyber-subs-a-decisive-edge-for-high-tech-war/?utm_source=Breaking+Defense&utm_campaign=b0d3597919-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4368933672-b0d3597919-408503149
I don’t disagree with Mr. McGrath’s argument in principle, but nowhere in this piece does he make that argument effectively. Every piece of evidence he presents can be countered with the argument that Mr. Warner presents in the comment above: it’s about how where we allocate our resources, rather than how many resources we have.
Do we always need three carriers forward deployed? Ok, let’s make sure that no more than eight (73%) are in port at a time. That doesn’t seem too difficult to me, and I’m pretty sure a majority of our carriers are indeed forward deployed at any given time.
Worried about China? I think the pivot was meant to take care of that. We can still reallocate resources from 2nd and 4th fleets. To be clear, I’m not recommending that we take that course of action, but Mr. McGrath does not effectively state why that would be a bad strategy and why an increase in the fleet size is necessary.
Ben – I generally agree with your point of view however you are incorrect on two important counts that bear correcting. First, the Second Fleet has been disaggregated. It exists administratively under the Commander Fleet Forces Command, and is somewhere between a force provider and a major maneuver element of the Navy. Yes, there are still ships in Norfolk, but they have tasks to do. Moving them to the Pacific in peacetime or even in contingencies requires sacrifices elsewhere. Secondly, the 4th fleet has no ships (or forces of any kind) of its own. Ships, aircraft and submarines “chop” into and out of it, but 4th fleet cannot provide forces to anyone as all of its forces are provided by someone else….(largely Fleet Forces Command out of Norfolk, VA)
Matt – Thank you for the correction. I think if Mr. McGrath incorporated that point that the USN lacks a great deal of flexibility in reallocating resources, which based on your point seems to be the case, it would have made it a much stronger case.
There is nothing more vital to the U.S. and its allies then the Navy.
To grow below the expect rate of inflation in the next 15 years is not ‘runaway’ ship building. It’s growing in proportion to the need.
The need in the South China Sea, middle east, Europe and the opening sea lanes in the Arctic require the presence of the Navy. The author this one describes is clearly not looking at the larger picture of a Navy in decline and the emergence of a regional leader becoming combative and ensuring greater instability and conflict.
Grow the navy, clean up the Army and arm the Marines
First, I don’t know who Brian McGrath is and what his expertise comes from or why anyone else may not be allowed to have an opinion.
I really don’t have a problem with the 12 carrier fleet, but do we need to be replacing $6 billion carriers with carriers costing $13 billion(that’s a minimum price) which are basically the same size. Do we really need to be replacing f-18s costing $65 million with f-35s which cost $250 million a copy. Do we need destroyers costing $3-5 billion and how about subs going from $3 a copy to $9 billion.
So I say, you do realize there is a breaking point for the budget. The whole military seems to be in a “got’s to have now” state. In 2001 we were spending about $300 billion, today it is over $600 billion. And if you total all programs it is over $1.2 trillion for everything.
So we let people starve, under educate kids and let out infrastructure crumble so we can have $13 billion aircraft carriers………
The strategic objective of sea control may not be best served by a small number of highly capable platforms, but by greater numbers of flexible platforms. A super-carrier can only be in one place, and it ties into close proximity the surface assets to support and defend it.
Whereas, a greater number of smaller combatants which can be served at small ports, could more effectively and efficiently exercise sea control. By way of comparison, you could get about 27 LCSs or 19 NSCs for the cost of one carrier, just in acquisitions costs.
“Size” is too broad a term. How much and of what to meet our strategic needs?
You used “LCS” and “effectively” in the same paragraph. I don’t think that’s allowed.
LCS isn’t effective against anything really other than keeping the shipbuilding industry afloat.
I do agree in principal. We could afford to trade in a CVN for small combatants. They just have to be something other than LCS.
“For many centuries, naval rivalry was a central aspect of great-power relations.”
– Gregg Easterbrook
“Such races, it is said, lead to wars, an idea probably given currency in this country by no one more than Sir Edward Grey, the Liberal Foreign Secretary who led Britain into the First World War, and who somewhat self-defensively wrote afterwards that ‘the enormous growth of armaments, in Europe, the sense of insecurity and fear caused by this — it was these that made war inevitable.’ I would be more inclined to look for causes at the decay of the Eastern European empires, but, be that as it may, there is certainly plenty of evidence that arms races do not necessarily lead to war, and the role frequently assigned to the democracies’ neglect of arms as a cause of the Second World War suggests the complexity of the issue.”
– Sir Laurence Martin, “The Two-Edged Sword”, 1981
Translation: Mr. Easterbrook is treating “naval rivalry” as a cause of international tension. Instead, “naval rivalry” is a symptom of international tension. America will not alleviate that tension by disarming itself to the point that its friends and allies no longer trust its security guarantees, and its enemies no longer trust its willingness and ability to decisively defend its strategic interests. Mr. McGrath is correct in his observation that because the United States’ security posture calls for addressing international security risks at locations as distant from American shores as possible, the Navy is disproportionately important to maintaining American security and global security by extension.