In Post-Imperial World 'Navy Is Like Oxygen'

Review by Bill Doughty

War, anarchy and authoritarianism are children of crumbling empires. That's the gist of Robert D. Kaplan's retrospective collection, "The Return of Marco Polo's World: War, Strategy, and American Interests in the Twenty-First Century" (Random House, 2018). Kaplan sees the importance of a strong navy in a changing world.

Mahan

Noting that the U.S. Navy nearly half the size it was in mid-1980s, Kaplan warns, "A great navy is like oxygen: You notice it only when it is gone."

Decreases and delays in American warship production, coupled with increases in near-peer competitor shipbuilding, threaten U.S. Navy maritime influence.

As the Navy loses supremacy on the seas, according to Kaplan, similarly to what happened to the British Empire a century ago, other nations – including China and India –  are gaining influence and building more ships and ship-fighting technologies.

Kaplan reminds us of the influence of Navy Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan in 1890. Mahan, of course, called for the nation to become a great sea power, recognizing the oceans as the global "commons." Protecting sea lanes meant ensuring peace and prosperity. The Chinese are the Mahanians now," Kaplan contends. As Communist China expands its influence, Kaplan warns of the possibilities of conflict over freedom of maritime trade in Asia.

Such risk of conflict is a daily threat already in the Middle East, where the messy remnants of the Ottoman Empire and Arab Caliphate continue to flare in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran, with the Kurds in the middle. Kaplan explains Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's "compulsive authoritarianism" and attempts to create "a mono-ethnic state" and a return to Ottoman-like imperialist tendencies. Again, the shadow of empire.

U.S. and Turkish military forces conduct a joint patrol in northeast Syria, Oct. 4, 2019.
(U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Andrew Goedl)

"The map of former Syria and Iraq will continue to resemble a child's messy finger-panting with Sunni and Shi'ite war bands expanding and contracting  their areas of control – the result being flimsy and radical micro-states," Kaplan observes.

Neither continued conflict nor abandonment of partners in the region will win a war on terror: "Remember that right now there are millions of Arab refugees from these wars stuck in the region whose children are not being educated, making the next generation even more prone to radical Islamist propaganda."

Kaplan's map of history is vast and three-dimensional. As always, he shows the importance of geography and culture. And he gives examples from empires as far back as the Mesopotamia, Chinese dynasties, Persian Empire, Arab Caliphate, Greece and Rome.

Kaplan

As for recent events and the post-imperial world, Kaplan contends the vacuum is being filled vitally by a "raft of supranational and multinational groupings such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, European Union, International Monetary Fund, International Court of Justice, World Economic Forum," and United Nations.

Kaplan writes about the need for balanced leadership that carefully manages realism with idealism in the new world order. He says the Navy is part of a national leadership in protecting allies and projecting power.

"History moves on. World War II and the Cold War recede. But the United States is the most well-endowed and advantageously located major state on Earth. That good fortune comes with responsibilities that extend beyond our borders. Just look at the size of our three-hundred-warship Navy and the location of our aircraft carriers on any given week. Realism is about utilizing such power to protect allies without precipitating conflict. It is not about abandoning them and precipitating conflict as a consequence."

After World War II, the United States led by example and has silently undergirded a peaceful world, Kaplan contends: "protecting the sea-lanes, the maritime choke points, and access to hydrocarbons, and in general providing some measure of security to the world."
"This is not traditional imperialism, which is no longer an option," he writes about such international cooperation undergirding peace and prosperity, "but it is the best available replacement for it." Indeed, if a great Navy is like oxygen, then the world's economy depends on the U.S. Navy to breathe.

The Independence-variant littoral combat ship USS Gabrielle Giffords (LCS 10) transits the Philippine Sea during Exercise Pacific Griffin 2019, Oct. 1. Pacific Griffin is a biennial exercise conducted in the waters near Guam aimed at enhancing combined proficiency at sea while strengthening relationships between the U.S. and Republic of Singapore navies. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Josiah J. Kunkle)

This week, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday presented the keynote address at the 12th Regional Seapower Symposium in Venice, Italy, noting in echoes of Mahan, "... our global economy floats on seawater.”

“I’m committed to advancing our relationship and our shared values of democracy, free and fair trade, the rule of law,” CNO Gilday said. “Combined with a robust constellation of allies and partners who desire to build and strengthen the international economic order, we are operating towards the same end – continued security and stability that results in a free and open maritime commons.”

CNO Adm. Mike Gilday speaks at the Regional Seapower Symposium in Venice, Italy, Oct. 17, 2019. The symposium goals are to foster open and constructive exchange of views and ideas, enhance a comprehensive approach to many sea-related matters, and boost mutual knowledge and trust among naval partners. (U.S. Navy photo by Cmdr. Nathan Christensen)

The essays in Kaplan's collection, some written more than a decade ago, are still relevant and provocative, particularly 2006's "When North Korea Falls."

This is an engrossing and often prescient book, well worth a Navy read. Among the dozens of people Kaplan acknowledges and thanks are Navy Adm. (Ret.) James Stravidis, Marine Corps Lt. Col. David Mueller, Army Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, and Air Force Col. (Ret.) James H. Baker.

Army Gen. David Petraeus calls "Return" a work that "will be regarded as a classic. "These essays constitute a truly path-breaking, brilliant synthesis and analysis of geographic, political, technological, and economic trends with far-reaching consequences."

The Sailor Who Brought Victory in WWII

Naval Cadet William D. Leahy, 1898 off Santiago.

Review by Bill Doughty

A Sailor was center-stage both in winning World War II and in setting up a successful strategy for the Cold War.

Some historians see Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy as a figure in the background, but he was in fact a key strategic thinker, planner and leader as Chief of Naval Operations, chief of staff to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, chairman of the joints chiefs of staff, national security advisor, ambassador, and, with President Truman, creator of central intelligence for the United States.

Using hundreds of source documents and other resources, Phillips Payson O'Brien shows Leahy's phenomenal influence before, during and after the Second World War in "The Second Most Powerful Man in the World: The Life of Admiral William D. Leahy, Roosevelt's Chief of Staff" (Dutton, Penguin House, 2019).

Midshipman William Leahy graduated from the Naval Academy in 1897. He learned to sail aboard the USS Constellation.

President Taft visits U.S. Pacific Fleet on Navy's birthday, Oct. 15, 1911 with aide, Lt. Cmdr. Leahy. 

He would become the highest ranking American military officer to have served aboard the Constellation when the United States dropped the first atomic bombs in 1945.

Early in his career Leahy served in China, in the Spanish-American War, in the Philippines Insurrection, and during what was called the Banana War in Nicaragua. As a lieutenant commander, he became aide to President William Howard Taft.

Serving aboard warships in World War I and in overseas diplomatic assignments, big and small, Leahy gained an international perspective. He and Roosevelt bonded when the future president was assistant secretary of the Navy and later during FDR's 12-year presidency.

"Sharing a similar outlook on the world, Leahy and Roosevelt melded from the start. Both were convinced of the need for a large and efficient U.S. Navy. Roosevelt had manifested a love of the sea since boyhood and was fascinated with the importance of sea power. He was a believer in the historical theories of Alfred Thayer Mahan, the American naval officer who argued in the late nineteenth century that sea power was the greatest determinant in world politics. Mahan's ideas became fashionable and spread across the globe, influencing thanking not just in America but in Europe and Asia as well. In a series of books on various periods of history, he posited that control of the seas was practically an immutable law of international relations; that nations such as Great Britain, which could exercise dominance on the world's oceans, would inevitably triumph over other countries that could not. For Americans like Roosevelt and Leahy, Mahan helped codify an instinctive belief that the United States needed a much stronger fleet. When Roosevelt became assistant secretary [of the Navy], he engaged in a correspondence with Mahan about sea power, and, with war looming in Europe, the need to popularize its value. Yet Roosevelt, like Leahy, did not believe in sea power as part of some imperialist drive to conquer. He saw sea power as something vital to the United States' security, regardless of whether an American empire existed or not."

"By the late summer of 1937, Leahy was entrenched as the most powerful CNO in naval history," O'Brien writes. During the war, he became "the most powerful chairman of the joint chiefs of staff in American history, with or without congressional authorization." After the war he set out a plan to work with partners and Allies for a lasting peace.

Leahy's legacy:

• Embraced new technologies – In the 1930s, as tensions rose in Europe and Asia, Leahy led development of anti-aircraft defenses, a prescient and lifesaving move.
• Developed key alliances within government – Leahy built ties with FDR, Sumner Welles in the State Department, and congressional leaders like Carl Vinson, who had a "political tenacity on behalf of the fleet."
• Arranged allocation of resources – Thanks to Leahy's influence, new ships were built, including 60,000 tons of new cruisers, 30,000 tons of new destroyers (crucial after the attack on Pearl Harbor), large mobile dry docks, and tankers to refuel forward-deployed aircraft carriers.
• Made the shift from battleships to aircraft carriers – Leahy ensured the Navy had resources, including the building of 15 CVs during World War II.
• Saw the strategic importance of Marianas, Philippines, Hawaii and Puerto Rico – Leahy was an early proponent of air- and sea-power and forward basing.
• Instilled decentralized merit-based leadership – Throughout his career, Leahy pushed for a flattened organization. He pushed up young talented officers and pushed out older, less competent ones.
• Insisted on a purposeful blockade of Japan – When Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan conspired to invade Indochina (Vietnam) to take oil and other resources, Leahy, Welles and FDR planned for the embargo.
• Chose naval leaders – Immediately after Pearl Harbor and Oahu were attacked, Leahy wrote to FDR with his suggestions of Ernest King, Chester Nimitz and Thomas Hart for key positions in "important naval commands."
• Corralled the strong personalities of military leaders – Leahy had the unenviable job of soothing inter-service rivalries, type-A personalities and conflicting rivalries of General George C. Marshall, General Henry "Hap" Arnold, Adm. Ernest King, General Douglas MacArthur and other military leaders, including especially those of Allied nations.
• Balanced the needs of the military with labor market – Leahy opposed conscripting and nationalizing civilian companies and workers, and he defended civil liberties in the face of authoritarian tendencies of the government during the war.
• Developed a strategy of air- and sea-power to defeat Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan – His strategy worked to near perfection within a few years. O'Brien documents Leahy's direct influence.
• Opposed large-scale invasion of Japan – Leahy opposed both a direct assault on mainland Japan and the proposed use of a biological weapon designed to destroy rice. And he was against the atom bomb targeting noncombatants. "War is not to be waged to wipe out women and children," Leahy wrote.
• Foresaw problems with U.S. involvement in the Middle East – Leahy viewed emigration of Jewish refugees to Palestine as a mistake, and he argued against getting involved in other countries' civil wars, particularly among Islamic states.
• Warned of the dangers of Communist China – Leahy lamented the U.S. failure to back up the Chinese nationalists fighting the Communist takeover, which he considered, "the greatest American foreign policy tragedy of his career." The takeover led directly to the Korean War and creation of North Korea.
• Warned of the dangers of an untruthful, untrusting and untrustworthy Russia – From Appendix 3 (Leahy's notes on relations with USSR): "In secretive atmosphere pervading Soviet Govt., possibilities for distorting truth are infinite. The Russians do not believe in the existence of objective truth and hence believe all statements to be cloak for some ulterior motive."
• Fought the "unification" of the armed forces – Immediately after WWII, the Army proposed absorbing the Marine Corps and having the Army Air Force take over naval aviation. Leahy helped the Navy successfully fend off the power grab, which he could have adversely affected a balanced civilian control of the military. "To Leahy, civilian control of the military was, as always, sacrosanct," O'Brien writes.
• Opposed an interventionist CIA – After losing influence late in his career, "Leahy watched helplessly while the CIA transformed into a force committed to widespread covert operations."
• Drafted a blueprint for postwar peace – See the Navy Reads post on how Leahy worked with President Truman for a Navy Day speech outlining Cold War strategies for cooperation and the importance of global alliances to prevent war.

Leahy stands behind FDR, seated between Churchill and Stalin at Yalta in 1945.

As FDR's key war planner, Leahy achieved the "grandest level of strategy," O'Brien writes:

"Historians relish rehashing the great strategic decisions that supposedly determined the outcome of World War II: Britain's resolve to fight on after the fall of France, Hitler's decision to invade the Ukraine instead of aiming for Moscow, Japan's doomed attack on Midway Island. Such choices add an air of suspense to the war, but they also miss the point about how modern war is won or lost. Decisions on when, where and even if can only be made after the careful determination of an even more important series of strategic choices, which represent the highest level of grand strategy, are about what kind of armed forces should be constructed. Every power in World War II had to assess what weaponry they needed to build their armies and navies, and, moreover, how to balance the need for military manpower with the necessity for industrial workers to assemble war machinery. Never do these decisions receive the intense focus reserved for the use of military force, but they are determinative."

O'Brien's biography is a priceless new look at a quiet giant in American history in the Twentieth Century. Leahy was a diplomat statesman who preferred the shadows to the limelight. In the best traditions of government service, Fleet Admiral Leahy led with humility, honor, honesty and strength.

(NOTE: Leahy was a staunch (and successful) defender of the U.S. Navy's war efforts in the Pacific, ensuring 90 percent of the Navy's assets were directed toward the war against Japan. Great Britain, on the other hand, believed the Allies should have a Germany-first policy. This led to a serious disagreement in meetings between the key Allies. "For Leahy, China was not to be abandoned, and his temper was put to the test when the British wheeled out Field Marshal Archibald Wavell. A repeated failure consistently promoted throughout his career as a way of moving him on. Wavell had been beaten soundly by Rommel in the Desert War of 1941 and deposited into India ..." British Field Marshall Wavell is mentioned in O'Brien's biography of Fleet Admiral Leahy, whose collection of poetry is a coming Navy Reads review. O'Brien and Leahy offer an unflattering picture of the British WWI military leader.)

Senior Officers of the U.S. Armed Forces make a radio broadcast in Washington, D.C., following the official announcement of Victory in Europe on 8 May 1945: General of the Army George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff, U.S. Army; Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, Senior Member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King, Chief of Naval Operations. (National Archives)

Navy Day & Peacetime Strategies

by Bill Doughty

Fleet Adm. William D. Leahy

In "The Second Most Powerful Man in the World: The Life of Admiral William D. Leahy, Roosevelt's Chief of Staff" (Dutton, Penguin House, 2019) author Phillips Payson O'Brien shows how Leahy helped shape strategies to win World War II and the Cold War.

That may sound like a bold statement, yet unimpeachable evidence rests in the text, notes and appendices of O'Brien's excellent biography of an under-recognized American hero of the last century.

In the early days and months of his presidency, Truman wisely trusted and listened to Leahy, who had been FDR's right hand throughout the Second World War. Leahy's old friend William Bullitt, a former ambassador to France, like Leahy, suggested Truman give a postwar speech similar to Woodrow Wilson's post-WWI Fourteen Points speech.

Leahy was inspired to present foreign policy and wrote "the most important speech that Harry Truman would give in the first two years of his presidency."

O'Brien provides Leahy's personal copy of the fundamental points underlying U.S. foreign policy as Appendix B. These points were announced by President Truman in his Navy Day speech, October 1945, and they ring loudly today in territorial issues related to Palestine/Israel, Hong Kong/China, South and North Korea, Kurdistan/Turkey/Syria, and Ukraine/Russia.

Point number 4 seems to speak to what happened in the Russian attack on the 2016 U.S. election and what is happening currently in the constitutional crisis unfolding in the United States. Point number 7 shows the ongoing commitment to protecting freedom of the seas as part of a global commons.

"1.  No territorial expansion or selfish advantage. No plans for aggression against any other state, large or small. No objective which need clash with the peaceful aims of any other nation.

2.  The eventual return of sovereign rights and self-government to all peoples who have been deprived of them by force.

3.  No territorial changes in any friendly part of the world unless they accord with the freely expressed wishes of the people concerned.

4.  All peoples who are prepared for self-government should be permitted to choose their own form of government by their freely expressed choice, without interference from any foreign source.

5.  By the combined and cooperative action of our war allies, help the defeated enemy states establish peaceful democratic governments of their own free choice. And try to attain a world in which nazism, fascism, and military aggression cannot exist.

6.  Refuse to recognize any government imposed upon any nation by the force of any foreign power.

7.  All nations should have the freedom of the seas and equal rights to the navigation of boundary rivers and waterways and of rivers and waterways which pass through more than one country.

8.  All states which are accepted in the society of nations should have access on equal terms to the trade and the raw materials of the world.

9.  The sovereign states of the Western Hemisphere, without interference from outside the Western Hemisphere, must work together as good neighbors in the solution of their common problems.

10. Full economic collaboration between all nations, great and small, is essential to the improvement of living conditions all over the world, and to the establishment of freedom from fear and freedom from want.

11. Continue to strive to promote freedom of expression and freedom of religion throughout the peace-loving areas of the world.

12. The preservation of peace between nations requires a United Nations Organization composed of all the peace-loving nations of the world who are willing to jointly use force, if necessary, to insure peace."

Navy ships, planes & lighter-than-air vessels, Hudson River, Navy Day 1945.

According to O'Brien, "The final text of the speech is the best summary of Leahy's outlook as it had evolved to that time and was both a statement about the coming Cold War and an attempt to keep alive the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt."

Here's an excerpt from Truman's actual Navy Day Speech focusing on a commitment to global cooperation, outlawing of nuclear weapons and a peaceful future for the world's citizens. As Truman delivered the speech, Leahy sat by his side.

   "The world cannot afford any letdown in the united determination of the allies in this war to accomplish a lasting peace. The world cannot afford to let the cooperative spirit of the allies in this war disintegrate. The world simply cannot allow this to happen. The people in the United States, in Russia, and Britain, in France and China, in collaboration with all the other peace-loving people, must take the course of current history into their own hands and mold it in a new direction – the direction of continued cooperation. It was a common danger which united us before victory. Let it be a common hope which continues to draw us together in the years to come.   The atomic bombs which fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki must be made a signal, not for the old process of falling apart but for a new era—an era of ever-closer unity and ever-closer friendship among peaceful nations.   Building a peace requires as much moral stamina as waging a war. Perhaps it requires even more, because it is so laborious and painstaking and undramatic. It requires undying patience and continuous application. But it can give us, if we stay with it, the greatest reward that there is in the whole field of human effort ...   The immediate, the greatest threat to us is the threat of disillusionment, the danger of insidious skepticism—a loss of faith in the effectiveness of international cooperation. Such a loss of faith would be dangerous at any time. In an atomic age it would be nothing short of disastrous ...   What the distant future of the atomic research will bring to the fleet which we honor today, no one can foretell. But the fundamental mission of the Navy has not changed. Control of our sea approaches and of the skies above them is still the key to our freedom and to our ability to help enforce the peace of the world.   No enemy will ever strike us directly except across the sea. We cannot reach out to help stop and defeat an aggressor without crossing the sea. Therefore, the Navy, armed with whatever weapons science brings forth, is still dedicated to its historic task: control of the ocean approaches to our country and of the skies above them.   The atomic bomb does not alter the basic foreign policy of the United States. It makes the development and application of our policy more urgent than we could have dreamed six months ago. It means that we must be prepared to approach international problems with greater speed, with greater determination, with greater ingenuity, in order to meet a situation for which there is no precedent.   We must find the answer to the problems created by the release of atomic energy—we must find the answers to the many other problems of peace—in partnership with all the peoples of the United Nations ...   In our possession of this weapon, as in our possession of other new weapons, there is no threat to any nation. The world, which has seen the United States in two great recent wars, knows that full well. The possession in our hands of this new power of destruction we regard as a sacred trust. Because of our love of peace, the thoughtful people of the world know that that trust will not be violated, that it will be faithfully executed.   Indeed, the highest hope of the American people is that world cooperation for peace will soon reach such a state of perfection that atomic methods of destruction can be definitely and effectively outlawed forever."

The speech was delivered at a Navy Day celebration in New York City October 27, 1945.

President Harry S. Truman is piped aboard USS Missouri (BB-63), during the Navy Day fleet review in the Hudson River, New York City, 27 October 1945. Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy is just behind the President. (National Archives and Naval History and Heritage Command)

(A clip from the Navy Day 1945 speech.)