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By Admiral R. J. Kelly, U.S. Navy
When Soviet Pacific Fleet Commander Admiral Gennadi Khvatov walked the red carpet in Vladivostok, Admiral Charles Larson—then his U.S. counterpart—kept a watchful eye. As Larson's successor, the author must also keep tabs as the Soviets improve or replace old ships and submarines, such as these going to scrap in Nakhodka.
When Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney said, “I can't find anybody who knew 24 months ago what was going to happen over the last 24 months,” he summed up very well just how rapidly and unexpectedly the world has changed in the last two years. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the independence movement in Central and Eastern Europe, and improved Soviet-U.S. relations—even in cooperation against a former Soviet client state in the Gulf War—all serve to reinforce just how amazing the circumstances now are. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait commenced just when idealistic futurists were predicting that the end of war as a means of settling disputes was finally at hand. They claimed the world had become too economically interdependent to profit by going to war. Everyone had too much to lose. But after the invasion began, more pragmatic realists no longer had to strain to be heard over the idealistic din.
Saddam Hussein and his henchmen proved that the world is still a very dangerous place and that protection of legitimate interests, including the freedom and sovereignty of smaller free states, requires military strength
ready to act.
To be sure, the global security picture has changed in many ways over the last two years. Most of the changes— such as the formal dissolution of the Warsaw Pact— have been very positive. Others, however, have not. But hidden among the headlines are many strategic constants that warrant the retention of robust U.S. military forces, including a formidable Pacific Fleet. Recognizing the differences between continuity and change in the Pacific is key to restructuring our forces in the region so that we can reduce our force structure prudently.
Some of the most important decisions that U.S. strategic planners must make in the coming months will be based on their assessment of what has changed and what has not. In the end, those decisions will determine just what our strategy will be for the future and what forces we will need to support it.
Already, however, we in the Navy know that our future force will be approximately 25% smaller in 1995 than it is today. The decision to reduce by that amount is based on the twin factors that have always driven force structure modeling—strategic need and affordability.
The biggest and most important change to influence our security planning is the fall of the Soviet Union from the ranks of superpowers. Although we have long regarded *t as such in a military sense alone, the extent and depth of Soviet economic backwardness—and sharp decline— have shocked even the most experienced and knowledgeable observers. How could a nation claim to be a worker’s paradise when its general population goes hungry while bountiful crops rot unharvested and when hundreds of thousands of miners strike because they lack soap and shoes?
Despite its economic collapse, however, the Soviet Union retains tremendous military capability. While it clearly is no longer capable of launching a coordinated attack on short notice against NATO forces in Europe, it st'll retains the capability to destroy the United States and U-S. allies with its still formidable nuclear arsenal. The Soviets also continue to divert a considerable amount of their gross national product to their military, despite the "'holesale collapse of their economy. More important to the U.S. Navy, the Soviet Navy seems immune to the types cutbacks now being taken by the Red Army.
The Soviet Pacific Fleet is improving, even as it shrinks.
That is because it is scrapping long-obsolete ships and submarines and replacing them with its newest and finest. Accordingly, we must keep a wary eye on them as we shift our national defense effort away from containment of the Soviets and toward deterrence and containment of regional instability.
In August 1990, President George Bush outlined the tenets of our new security strategy. Coincidentally—almost prophetically—he presented the new strategy on the very day Iraq invaded Kuwait, saying that “in a world less driven by an immediate threat to Europe and the danger of global war—in a world where the size of our forces will increasingly be shaped by the needs of regional contingencies and peacetime presence—we know that our forces will be smaller.”
The President further went on to say that our future security efforts would be based on three complementary pillars:
>- Forward presence in key areas > Rapid response in a crisis
>- Retention of the national capacity to rebuild our forces rapidly
The immediate challenge for the Navy is to adapt its 25% smaller force to the President’s new strategy, which will require some immediate changes to the way we maintain our peacetime presence throughout the Pacific theater. It will also mandate a change in the way we plan to accomplish our other two crisis-oriented Navy missions: sea control and power projection.
Presence
In outlining our new strategy, President Bush stressed the importance of forward deployments and why ready, forward-deployed forces will continue to be central to our planning:
“U.S. interests can be protected only with capability which is in existence, and which is ready to act without delay. [The invasion of Kuwait] underscores the vital need for a defense structure which not only preserves our security but provides the resources for supporting the legitimate self-defense needs of our friends and allies.”
The two most important goals in keeping naval forces forward deployed throughout the Pacific are to deter any potential adversary and to assure friends and allies of our resolve to support common interests.
The challenge to our presence mission is to do it with reduced forces, maintain credibility with our allies, deter potential adversaries, and still have the flexibility to respond to short-notice crises with sufficient force to support our objectives. We are developing a plan that will match means to ends in the Pacific theater. The key to success in this effort is the ability to respond rapidly to a crisis with appropriately tailored forces. Simply put, strong forces deter aggression, weak ones encourage it.
Sea Control
Any military force in combat has learned the hard
lessons of logistics. Simply buying the most advanced weapons available and ignoring the supporting infrastructure is a time-tested formula for failure. No military objective can be won without paying adequate attention to sustenance. The latest convert to this proved logic is Saddam Hussein.
Almost immediately after Iraq invaded Kuwait, the United States directed and led the effort that stopped contraband cargo destined for or coming from Iraq. Denied critical spare parts for its military machine, Iraq began to lose the war even before a shot was fired. This interdiction campaign was only possible because the U.S. Navy was already on scene when the United Nations imposed economic sanctions to drive Iraq out of Kuwait. The Navy was able to establish the dominating sea control that made the interdiction campaign so effective.
Just as important, sea control allowed Coalition naval forces to operate freely in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea. As a result, we were able to project tremendous power ashore nearly at will.
Power Projection
President Bush added a fourth pillar to the new national strategy in that same speech: force projection. The Navy in the Pacific certainly has the flexibility and mobility to respond rapidly, if already forward-deployed. Our force can move to a crisis area to maintain air and maritime superiority for a limited time until more U.S. Pacific forces are available as reinforcements.
Pacific naval forces are also structured to provide the unified commander with a balanced force—from a single unit up to a carrier battle group—to meet any situation. In addition, naval forces also offer freedom of movement on the high seas, thus making them the force of choice if basing/access rights are restricted or impossible.
Technology and the Future
The liberation of Kuwait began when the Navy fired Tomahawk cruise missiles from ships in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. Targeted against forces and facilities in Iraq and Kuwait, the Tomahawk represents the technology we are depending on to remain effective as we shrink.
Weapons such as these will allow us to disperse more offensive firepower among the ships of the fleet, thereby taking some of the load off the already strained carriers and their air wings. This technology will allow us to cover the far reaches of the theater with fewer ships than we have now. Even a single ship armed with the latest weapons can provide the militarily credible presence necessary when a full carrier battle group is not warranted.
But just as the world is changing very rapidly, and with it our security strategy, the very foundation of why we need to pursue a global security strategy remains firm. Two of the most important parts of this foundation are the absolutely critical nature of our overseas interests and the timeless role geography plays in the formulation of security strategy.
Economic Interests
The United States is the world’s largest trader. For nearly two decades, the value of our trade with the countries on the far side of the Pacific has been greater than our trade with Europe. While Japan has traditionally been our single largest trading partner in the Pacific, other countries such as Hong Kong and South Korea have combined to rival our total trade with Japan.
We import several items from Pacific sources that are key to our high-tech defenses. Some of these are not produced domestically. They include telecommunications equipment, microcomputers, heavy industrial products, machine tools, and precious metals used in manufacturing. It is thus imperative that we maintain close alliances with those trading partners, that we work to maintain stability in the region as well as guarantee the freedom of the seas for commerce so that the flow of products will not be threatened. Our economy is so intertwined with the international community that we cannot survive in isolation.
Geographic Realities
The timeless lessons of geography are not lost on those who need but do not have access to the sea. It dominates their thinking and planning. Likewise, as a trading island nation, we cannot afford to be seduced by catchy phrases such as “the world is getting smaller.” It may be getting smaller in terms of the time it takes to fly from one spot to another, or instant communications, but it is not in terms seaborne commerce comprised 69% of U.S. export and import trade by value—totaling nearly $415 billion. Air shipments comprised only about 5% of the total. There is simply no alternative to maritime trade for moving most of the bulk goods upon which the U.S. economy depends.
In addition, we know from history that the majority of our heavy forces and their logistical support must go by sea, generally in commercial bottoms. Even though Army and Air Force personnel were airlifted into Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Shield, their heavy equipment followed on ships. We must provide the sea bridge for these forces and the sustainment that must follow.
Conclusion
In the final analysis, we must shrink the Navy with an eye for tomorrow, as well as the distant future. Navies take a long time to build. The average projected service
of travel by sea.
The Pacific Fleet’s area of responsibility covers more than 102 million square miles. There are 35 littoral nations in the area that depend on the seas for commerce and protection. While the seas are truly the highways of commerce, the vastness of the Pacific can also be a hindrance. It takes a carrier battle group more than 35 days steaming at 14 knots to reach the Persian Gulf from the West Coast of the United States. The sea lines of com- ttiunication, carrying the life blood ot the nations that border the Pacific, are just as large for commercial ships as they are for the Navy.
Shipping by sea, however, remains the most economical means of moving bulk cargo. For example, in 1989 life of our ships is now 30 to 40 years. This means we must live with our decisions until the next generation of naval leaders has come and gone. We must resist pressures that suggest we look only at the present and the immediate future.
As we shrink, however, we must keep a close eye on how the Navy supports the new national military strategy today and how it will do so in the year 2020. While the world will change significantly between now and then, our most vital interests and geography will not.
Admiral Kelly is Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet.