By JOHN A. PANNETON, National President
The Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard are rapidly changing focus and broadening the diversity of their missions, presenting a de facto challenge to the Navy League.
Under internationalist leaders, the services are vastly increasing their outreach to new friends in Africa, Asia and South America, forging alliances, training indigenous forces and providing disaster relief to those in need. Underlying this evolutionary shift is the realization that now, more than ever, our nation needs friends and allies across the globe.
Adm. Mike Mullen, chief of naval operations, recently shared “a powerful truth” with students at the Naval War College: “Today — given the threats we face in this new world of ours — only the global community can [ensure] true security, freedom and prosperity.”
Meanwhile, the Navy League remains largely a domestic organization, with only 16 of its 270 councils located on foreign shores. Our bylaws stem from the early 1900s and place restrictions on the membership of non-citizens, and our maritime policies and legislative agendas focus principally on domestic issues. All of this is in keeping with the history of our proud and productive organization. But the Navy League now must rise to today’s challenge.
The time for change is near because the sea services are moving quickly to find new friends and create fresh multinational alliances. In this issue (p. 28), Gen. Michael W. Hagee, commandant of the Marine Corps, notes the Marines are “building that partnership capacity” in locales such as Niger, Kenya and Georgia. And he is looking for more places to win hearts and minds.
“The world’s major Islamic nations … are Indonesia, India and in the Pacific,” Hagee said. “Most are democratic countries and we should be engaging with them [and] … supporting them.”
Adm. Harry Ulrich, commander, U.S. Naval Forces Europe, takes the same approach. His forces are helping repair and maintain the ships of African nations and he is urging states in the region to create an intelligence-sharing network to improve their awareness of ship movements in contiguous seas and oceans.
Adm. William J. Fallon, commander of the Pacific Command, is reaching out across Asia to build on the goodwill generated by U.S. assistance after the 2004 tsunami. American forces are in Indonesia today, providing relief to those left homeless by the earthquake that struck Java May 26. The hospital ship USNS Mercy is the midst of a five-month humanitarian mission to provide medical care and civic assistance, such as the rebuilding of clinics, in the western Pacific and Southeast Asia.
The Coast Guard each year trains hundreds of international students at its schools and operational units. In 2005, its Mobile Training Teams made 98 deployments to 45 countries.
One goal of the U.S. sea services, said Mullen, is to bring together “that proverbial 1,000-ship Navy … comprised of all freedom-loving nations standing watch over the seas; standing watch over each other.”
These are a small fraction of international initiatives by the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard that place them and the Navy League on divergent paths. “The powerful truth” is that the Navy League must make an evolutionary shift of its own, or risk irrelevance.
Our organization needs to reach out to allied naval forces and their support groups. That means bolstering our international membership, increasing our foreign councils, ending our “associate” program for non-U.S. citizens and supporting friendly sea services. I began this evolutionary shift last year with the appointment of the first National Vice President for International Relations.
In a speech two decades ago, then-President Ronald Reagan summarized the situation confronting Navy Leaguers today: “We cannot play innocents abroad in a world that is not innocent.” The time has come for the Navy League to expand its horizons.
Semper Fidelis.
