a Central Defense Staff, only a third of the members of which were Navy at best, often on a rotational basis among the three services. None of this was conducive to formulating or articulating maritime strategy or to convincing government of the need for a primary strategy based on the well-founded historical role of the Royal Navy as the guardian of the United Kingdom’s security. The Royal Navy’s ability to compete for the primary place was diminished.
The new Central Defense Staff became characterized as a process-driven organization in which intense highly bureaucratic committee work, balancing of conflicting interests and constant attempts to meet each service’s requirements and funding requests by compromise, became the order of the day. In this process the core and vitally important functions of debating, deciding, and agreeing on grand strategy based on vital national security interests were often lost. The UK Strategic Defense Reviews (SDRs) of the recent past decades have been described as emblematic.
As we move through this book readers should consider the impact of the above on the other key themes that we will address, in addition to the issue of strategic decision making, which we will review shortly. Meanwhile, let us return to the US Navy and address how the key changes that faced the Secretary of the Navy and the Chief of Naval Operations played out. We will then be in a position to compare and contrast the respective organizational changes between both navies.
The US Navy was most fortunate from 1960 onward in one critical regard when compared with the Royal Navy. The very nature of the political system and of the Constitution of the United States helped maintain the enduring influence of the Navy after the organizational changes described earlier. Two factors were paramount. First, the legislative and the executive in the United States are separate, and second, the position and role of the Secretary of the Navy remained intact and unchallenged, even though the secretary lost his seat in the cabinet in 1949 and the new secretary of defense was all-powerful, in a hierarchical sense. Seven secretaries, Franke, Connally, Korth, Fay, Nitze, Ignatius, and Chafee, from 1960 to 1972, still enjoyed autonomy to act in the best interests of the US Navy via well-established constitutional channels. The Chiefs of Naval Operations during this period—Admirals Burke, Anderson, McDonald, Moorer, and Zumwalt, from 1960 to 1974—never faced the dilemmas confronting the First Sea Lords and their staffs during the same period. Both the naval political and uniformed leaderships had well defined and legally correct means to access the Congress at several levels and by multiple means. They had ways to represent not just their programmatic and funding interests but also core strategic issues that drive the annual defense budgets.
The open forum of public unclassified hearings served US Navy interests well. The personal strengths of successive Chiefs of Naval Operations shone through in open questioning in the House Committee on Armed Services (HASC) and the Senate Committee on Armed Services (SASC), as well as in the classified hearings, to which the public and press were not admitted. Key strategic issues were aired in public—hotly debated, often with rigor, candor, and good humor but sometime also with aggressive and well-placed direct questions by members and senators, who had been well briefed by extremely competent and knowledgeable committee and personal staffs. The chairman and ranking members of these committees were hugely powerful. The US Navy therefore had constant opportunities to state its case for resources, in thoroughly staffed congressional presentations. The staff of the Chief of Naval Operations has its own congressional liaison staff, which can legitimately interface with congressional committees and influence the defense debate and make the case for programs, manpower, ships, submarines, aircraft, weapons, and key Operations and Maintenance (O&M) funding.
Another element in this process is that of industrial-naval relationships, with the contractors who seek naval business at every level of production and service. These contractors, their lobbyists, and the very representatives and senators in whose districts and states they reside and run their businesses, have closely interwoven relationships by which they pursue programs in which they have crucial employment and other interests. The corresponding Appropriations Committees of record on both sides of the Congress control the purse strings for naval funding—the HASC and the SASC may authorize, but only the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees can legally appropriate funding. These committees are all-powerful, sounding at one level the bell of success for a program or, by ending appropriations, the death knell of a failed program. The constitutional ability of the US Navy to influence this process is well defined, well understood, and practiced with great expertise. Senior flag-officer success in part rests on an ability to perform on Capitol Hill. Three- and four-star officers have their days on the Hill, often with the Secretary of the Navy sitting between the Chief of Naval Operations and the Commandant of the Marine Corps. The Royal Navy has no such privileged constitutional process to make its case in Parliament or to seek funding by direct influence.
Culture and relationships are factors that run deep, and often silently, in US Navy and congressional relationships. Many members of Congress have served in the US Navy, several with great distinction. In recent times, Sen. John McCain from Arizona and Sen. John Warner of Virginia are distinguished Navy veterans. There are countless others. Many members of Congress have served on both sides of the Potomac, in the Pentagon and on the Hill. As a result they not only understand the process but have predisposed loyalties and views on what is what and how things should be done. Their personal loyalties to the US Navy are ingrained, and they understand the Navy’s strategic arguments. Their staffs fill in any gaps in technical knowledge and work with the uniformed Navy to obtain briefings and documentation from the staff of the Chief of Naval Operations. This is a healthy, dynamic, and ever-changing political-military dialogue between the executive and legislative branches of government. The system in the United Kingdom is very different indeed and does not serve the interests of the Royal Navy well in an era of defense cuts.
Nothing is perhaps more representative of the fundamental political-military differences between the environments in which the Royal Navy and the US Navy have to do business than in the very nature of their top political leadership and their leaders’ constitutional positions. In the United States, several presidents have had prior experience in the Congress—they have seen the other side of government, and from a different perspective. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had been an Assistant Secretary of the US Navy earlier in his career, just as Prime Minister Churchill had twice been First Lord of the Admiralty. Several post–World War II presidents have been US Navy veterans; Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and G. H. W. Bush were all distinguished examples. Several were highly decorated, with extraordinarily commendable war records. They all understood the Navy: how it works, what the Navy does and why, and the strategic significance of sea power. By contrast, only one British prime minister since World War II has served in the Royal Navy: Prime Minister James Callaghan (1976–79), who served in World War II from 1942 to the war’s end. His father had been a Royal Navy chief petty officer. Prime Minister Callaghan joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR) as an able seaman, completing the war as a lieutenant, RNVR, with very creditable service. However, the UK top leadership has enjoyed nothing like the deep personal knowledge and experience of the listed US presidents, several of whom experienced intense combat operations. This factor makes a significant difference when the US commander-in-chief faces difficult decisions and choices—that is, they know the face of battle and the consequences of their decisions. Moreover, regarding the equally critical aspect of budgetary allocations and priorities, a former Navy president was likely to understand and respect what the service was asking for and why. In the spring of 1982, Admirals Lewin and Leech had to provide Prime Minister Thatcher overnight a naval primer following the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands. She had zero prior knowledge; most fortunately, however, she was a very quick study and under the most expert guidance of these two fine World War II veterans grasped the plans they laid before her. Twenty years earlier, in 1962, at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, President John Kennedy needed no such instruction in the use of naval power to thwart Soviet intentions and operations.
Let us now analyze and appraise the strategic significance of these changes to both navies. The changes in both countries were quite monumental with respect to the status quo of World War II. Two things become clear from the above review. First, the US Navy came
