but part of the United Kingdom’s unwritten constitution. The monarch is the titular head of state, the head of the Church of England, and also, significantly, the Lord High Admiral of the Royal Navy.
By contrast, the elected president of the United States, after the popular state-by-state votes have been converted to Electoral College votes, nominates his or her selected cabinet officers for confirmation by the Senate—not always an easy experience for those nominated and by no means automatic. The relevant committees of record will decide whether the person nominated to be Secretary of the Navy and the Under Secretary and Assistant Secretaries of the Navy will be voted upon for confirmation by the full Senate of the United States. Once confirmed those appointed officials report through a well-defined chain within the Department of the Navy and the Department of Defense to the president. For their part, British political officials within the Ministry of Defense are members of the House of Commons or, much less often nowadays than previously, of the House of Lords. They answer through the secretary of state for defense to the prime minister, but, and this is very significant, they also answer directly to Parliament as sitting members of the House of Commons or House of Lords.
In the United States, the House and Senate Armed Services Committees and the House and Senate Select Committees on Intelligence are responsible for approving all expenditures for all defense- and intelligence-related activities. In the United Kingdom, the sitting elected members who are also appointed to political positions within the Ministry of Defense present their budgets and programs for confirmation in the House of Commons as part of the defense vote within the UK parliamentary budget process. This is a completely different process than that of the United States. As a result, there are very considerable differences in budgetary and military outcomes for the two countries’ navies and in how they are politically managed and financed. US Navy political appointees have to cross the Potomac River from the Pentagon and answer to the above House and Senate committees of record for their budget needs and also for the execution of funds across all naval domains, from personnel to acquisitions, force levels, and the underpinning strategy that is the argued basis for the annual budget process.
Committee staffers are critical in this process—the men and women who support the committees as professional staff members and in the offices of each individual representative and senator. The latter have direct interests not just at the national level, in terms of the proper funding and execution of US defense policy, but also with respect to the crucial impact on individual districts and states (for congressional representatives and senators respectively). Defense and intelligence budgets affect local jobs, bases, repair facilities; these staffs are concerned that large acquisition programs offer contractor employment in as many states as possible. The sensitive dialogue among both committee and representatives’ and senators’ staffs and Navy officials is therefore very subtle and important, totally unlike how the Ministry of Defense and the Royal Navy do business in the United Kingdom. Until very recently postwar US defense funding was characterized by what is colloquially termed “pork barrel” funding, whereby individual representatives and senators secure projects for their home districts and states. From a solely political perspective, sitting on one of the powerful defense subcommittees (parts of the all-powerful House and Senate Armed Services Committees) is a major political advantage for politicians whose home areas have significant or growing defense work, bases, or infrastructure.
The impact on the US and Royal Navies of the above major differences significantly affects how the senior uniform leadership interacts with the political and ultimate controlling arms of government. The Chief and Vice Chief of Naval Operations and the Commandant and Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps appear regularly before the key congressional committees to explain and support their funding requests alongside the political appointees—the Secretary of the Navy himself and his assistant secretaries. They may be also called to account for any other relevant matter that Congress determines appropriate. Three- and two-star US Navy officers regularly appear before both full committees and subcommittees to explain their plans, policies, and programs. The Congress has many ways to influence the US Navy, and its toolbox is full of subtle political means to influence programs and outcomes.
The United Kingdom has very different processes. Elected ministers represent Royal Navy interests in the houses of Parliament (the House of Commons and the House of Lords), and senior officers are expected not to interact politically at any level unless specifically instructed by the appropriate elected minister. Senior Royal Navy officers do not have working relations with members of Parliament similar to those of their US counterparts. The British civil service supports ministerial positions and budgets with inputs from the senior naval leadership. During our period the permanent secretaries in the Ministry of Defense and their large civilian staffs (career civil servants selected by open competition and trained at the national level) yielded considerable power as the key interfaces with ministers, as the elements of continuity in policy and programs, and sources of key ministerial guidance that in the case of the US Navy is provided directly by the staffs of the Chief of Naval Operations and the Commandant of the Marine Corps. This is a very significant difference. A four-star admiral in the Royal Navy has nothing like the political influence, access, or interaction that his equivalent does in the United States. In our fifty-five-year period, British First Sea Lords and Chiefs of Naval Staff have rarely been seen to exert their rights of access under various constitutional niceties that devolve from Her Majesty the Queen being the Lord High Admiral. One of the most significant consequences for the Royal Navy is the inability to exert direct political influence on the budgetary process and resulting programs. It has nothing like the access that the US congressional committee structure affords the senior leadership of the US Navy.
A rare exception occurred in 1982, when Admiral Sir Henry Leech, the First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff (the direct counterpart of the US Chief of Naval Operations) marched from the Ministry of Defense across Whitehall to 10 Downing Street via the Cabinet Office and directly approached the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, without any prior approval from the secretary of state for defense. He simply told her that the Royal Navy and Royal Marines were standing by and were capable of retaking the Falkland Islands after the Argentinian invasion. Somewhat astounded, she immediately rose to the occasion and gave Admiral Leech an answer to his implied request in the affirmative. Admiral Leech had the full support of the Chief of the Defense Staff, Admiral Sir Terence Lewin. Admiral Leech knew that unless he made his mark directly with the prime minister there could be delay, vacillation and, in the worst case, compromise in Whitehall’s highly bureaucratized decision-making process.
Other keystones of the countries’ systems of government—and reflections of their democratic and common-law traditions—are their respective legal systems. The judiciaries of the two countries are appointed very differently. In the United States, federal judges and members of the Supreme Court are nominated by the president for confirmation by the Senate Judiciary Committee before a full vote in the Senate. There is therefore a definite political flavor to the judiciary at the federal level. In the United Kingdom there is more judicial independence; the barrister profession, whose members reside in the four Inns of Court, provides members of the higher judiciary via a professional and increasingly transparent process of selection by independent bodies of professionals. Judicial appointment recommendations are followed by confirmation by the Lord Chancellor after nomination to the Crown. Judicial independence in the United Kingdom has been a cornerstone of the separation of politics and political parties from judicial interference.
The above sets the stage for the fundamental changes that occurred in both countries in their post–World War II defense establishments. What follows has had significant influence not just on critical issues of strategy but also on defense and intelligence activity at every level and, therefore, on how the United States and the United Kingdom have conducted their national security programs and operations and, ultimately, made decisions to go to war.
The US National Security Act of 1947 had a profound effect on the US Navy. The Navy had been a separate department of government, established by act of Congress in 1798. The 1947 act and equally important the amendment to that act in 1949 created the US national defense establishment. The offices of secretary of defense and deputy
