September has arrived and it is time to pluck a fresh quill from the goose, top up the inkwell and write again. Dr. Johnson said, “Only a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” Perhaps that is why my hats no longer fit.
Looking around the world at wars, my main impression is stasis. Little has changed since summer began. Ukraine and Russia continue to lob V1s and V2s at each other, with rising casualties and destruction but little promise of victory for either. Thanks to the advantages drones give the defense, Russia remains stalled on the ground. Blitzkrieg has become Sitzkrieg.
In the American war with Iran, the mutual sieges continue largely unchanged. We besiege Iran with a blockade and airstrikes, they besiege the world with a cut-off of Persian Gulf oil and reply to our airstrikes with a few missiles. Who will blink first? I don't know, but I doubt Iran will before the American elections in November. With world oil stocks dropping, Iran can hope a major rise in the price of oil and thus of gas will hit right before those elections. That could give the Democrats both the House and the Senate, and leave President Trump too busy fending off impeachment to carry on a war.
The big news since my summer siesta began is that the U.S. Navy is stretched increasingly thin maintaining its pace of activity in the Persian Gulf. It must uphold the blockade while remaining ready for the return of full-scale war. The former does not require much, but the latter does.
The neo-cons and their ilk are screaming for big increases in the defense budget to build more ships. But the Navy has difficulty manning the ships it has, and a $40 trillion national debt is starting to get some attention outside the bond markets, making big increases in federal spending for anything less likely.
Fortunately, a cheap solution lies ready to hand: eliminate forward stationing of U.S. naval squadrons and fleets. At present, policy requires we station a substantial number of ships outside U.S. waters, in Europe, the Med and the Pacific, and sometimes elsewhere as well. But this throws away one of a navy's big advantages over land and air forces: strategic mobility. Both of the latter require land bases for anything sustained, so they can only move over strategic distances where and when those bases are ready to welcome them. But as we have seen in the war with Iran, such fixed bases are vulnerable. Iran has hit our bases in the Persian Gulf hard, with serious losses of aircraft. The same is likely to happen to other land bases in future conflicts.
Because ships can move fairly rapidly over long distances and can be supplied at sea, they do not need local bases in areas where they deploy. In normal times, we can keep them here at home where it is much easier to maintain their readiness, train and keep their crews happy with regular access to their families. When a crisis erupts, we can send however many ships are needed, without regard to a rotation schedule. Those ships can arrive virtually anywhere in the world in a few weeks, and it is unlikely a genuine crisis will be over and done before they get there. With respect to one possible exception, a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, we can keep a few attack submarines deployed forward there to take out large Chinese amphibious assault ships. Two or three should be enough. Like other navies, we would occasionally send ships on show-the-flag cruises, but if that does overstrain the French, German and Royal navies, it should be difficult for ours.
The U.S. Navy uses the requirement to keep fleets and squadrons overseas as a primary budget justification, so ending that policy and keeping our ships at home in peacetime will not be advocated by the CNO. This is a decision that will have to come from the White House. As the political pressure to do something about the deficit and national debt rises, such a decision should not be difficult for a President. It simply takes advantage of a capability inherent in ships that we now throw away.