PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

Articulating the Threat

The almost nonexistent "defense debate" on Capitol Hill this year is not over, but when Congress broke for its August recess there seemed to be two almost diametrically opposed points of view. The first, held by those who have been advocating additional funding for national defense, is that the increased appropriations proposed by President Bush for fiscal years 2002 and 2003 are "a good start," but that much higher funding will be needed to implement the still-evolving new defense strategy being formulated by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. That is the Navy League's position as well.

The other point of view is that, with the Cold War long over and no major threat to U.S. national security--or to global peace and stability--currently obvious, modest incremental increases in defense spending would be sufficient to maintain U.S. naval/military supremacy. This view, which we do not share--but many other patriotic Americans do--deserves careful and respectful attention not only because of its seemingly reasonable plausibility but also because, if the present economic downturn becomes more serious, it may rapidly become the majority position.

From time immemorial our nation's service leaders, uniformed and civilian, have faced the same problem: how, in times of peace, to articulate the threat in terms persuasive enough to build, or rebuild, our naval/military strength before rather than after the outbreak of conflict. This is plain common sense, not only militarily but economically as well: Deterrence always costs less than war. As a nation, though, we always assume a general state of peace throughout the world. In short, we do not read the warning signs.

But those signs exist, in copious quantity. There have been several articles, for example--in publications as diverse as Popular Mechanics and Aviation Week--about a new Russian fighter, the Su-37, that some defense analysts say could be more combat-capable than the U.S. Air Force F-22 and/or the long-awaited multinational Joint Strike Fighter. And this issue of Sea Power includes a disturbing report--by Antony Preston, a world-class naval analyst--about a new Russian nuclear-powered attack submarine (SSN), the Gepard, that reportedly is superior in certain ways to most of the U.S. Navy's current SSNs.

There are several lessons here that are or should be obvious. The first is that, although Russia is supposedly bankrupt, it is still willing to invest hundreds of millions of rubles in the development and production (admittedly limited) of weapons platforms and systems of immense capability. The second lesson, of perhaps much greater importance, is that the senior military leaders and unreconstructed KGB holdovers in Vladimir Putin's government seem to have much greater influence than they did under Mikhail Gorbachev or Boris Yeltsin.

All of which still might not be so alarming--were it not for the following: (a) Russia has for many years been the leading exporter of advanced-technology ships, aircraft, and weapon systems to China; (b) Russian Aerospace Agency Director Yuri Koptev has announced, according to an Associated Press report in the 10 August Washington Post, that Russia may "pool" its resources with China or India "to build a new-generation fighter jet ... both for defense purposes and for preserving our position in the arms market"; and (c) less than one month earlier, Russia and China--once very bitter albeit undeclared enemies, it should be remembered--signed a new security alliance that, as Aviation Week reported (in its 23 July issue), affirms "Russian support for Chinese sovereignty [over] ... Taiwan."

This last report is particularly ominous. In any U.S./China confrontation over Taiwan, China does not need global maritime superiority. It needs to be dominant over just that small sliver of ocean known as the Taiwan Straits--and might soon be able to achieve such dominance through a combination of its almost 60 submarines, hundreds of land-based missile sites, and thousands of land-based fighter and attack aircraft.

If these reports about the new Moscow-Beijing axis are not enough to put us on guard, it is worth recalling that U.S. defense officials have already testified before Congress numerous times that more than a score of nations, not all of them friends or allies of the United States, have built or purchased, or are developing, not only weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) but also advanced-technology delivery systems, including cruise missiles and modern submarines. In short, despite what many of our fellow citizens might think, today's world is still an extremely dangerous one--in several ways more dangerous than the bipolar world of the Cold War era.

The self-imposed task the Navy League now faces in carrying out its educational mission is therefore in all probability more important, and more difficult, than ever before. But this situation is not new--far from it. In 1952, when the Navy League was celebrating its 50th anniversary, Fleet Admiral William F. Halsey sent us a warm message of congratulations for all that we had accomplished over the previous five decades. He pointed out, though, that our primary mission of "keeping the American people informed about their Navy" had not been fully accomplished--and perhaps never could be. Nonetheless, he said. "You must continue, more strenuously than ever, to combat the forces ... who would cripple our defense. You must continuously keep before our people the need for an up-to-the-minute Navy in our team of well-balanced Armed Forces. Today our Navy is good--let's make it better and keep it so."

Those were good marching orders then, and they still are today. We should always remember, though, that the best and most effective way to carry out Admiral Halsey's mandate is not through pious abstractions and vague generalities but by articulating, as specifically as possible, the real and present threats that still exist. Which is precisely what I hope to do in my President's Messages and other communications over the next two years.
In the long term, the greatest threat this nation faces is not external, but internal. The real threat is not enemy missiles and submarines and WMDs but our own ignorance and apathy and complacency.