Center for a New American Security

Dear Sir or Madam:

A few days ago, the Virginian-Pilot reported on a raunchy video made by U.S. Navy Capt. Owen Honors. They posted the video on their website but edited the content to cover up some of the faces of sailors and Marines. Why did you, two days later, elect to post the unedited version of the video and not cover up the faces of sailors and Marines? I myself can see no added journalistic value in doing that. And if I were one of the sailors or Marines in the video, which I likely participated in making because the second-in-command of the ship on which I was serving politely asked ordered me to do so, I might be a little pissed off. Sailors and Marines in a chain of command, last I checked, do not sign letters of consent before making these kinds of videos.

But then I read in today's Politico that not one but two tapes were sent by an anonymous leaker -- one to the Virginian-Pilot and one to the Navy Times. But whoops! The tape sent to the Navy Times apparently went unopened for several days, allowing your newspaper to get scooped by the Virginian-Pilot due entirely to your inability to open you own mail. So if I were the kind of person who questions the motives of journalists scrambling to amass page views (and I'm just a blogger, so what do I know about page views?), I would ask whether or not this was a cheap way to play catch-up on a story in which you got scooped due to your own incompetence. I would also ask if throwing members of your primary readership under the bus was worth those extra page views.

You stay classy, Navy Times.

Yours,

Abu Muqawama

Couldn't we have let Mark Lippert do his reserve duty in the White House? I know SEALs need good intelligence officers (insert your own joke about SEALs and intelligence in the comments), but is an intelligence officer for a SEAL team as strategically important as the "deputy national security adviser for operations and chief of staff of the National Security Council"? Am I the only one scratching my head here? C'mon, folks, have the dude throw on a uniform and sit back down at the same desk. If you want to, you can just ask Lippert to spend a little more time sleeping, eating and lifting. And he can talk in some outrageous surfer-dude accent if it will make the Navy happy.

My CNAS colleague Bob Kaplan has an op-ed in the New York Times today on -- what else? Aargh! -- pirates. Bob thinks this running fiasco off the Horn of Africa doesn't reflect well on U.S. naval power.

That a relatively small number of pirates from a semi-starving nation can constitute enough of a menace to disrupt major sea routes is another sign of the anarchy that will be characteristic of a multipolar world, in which a great navy like America’s — with a falling number of overall ships — will be in relative, elegant decline, while others will either lack the stomach or the capacity to adequately guard the seas.

I guess there is an argument to be made there. After all, navies are responsible for basically four missions.

1. Protect seaborne commerce.
2. Protect movement of armies and their supplies.
3. Deny enemy trade and commerce.
4. Deny movement of enemy armies and supplies.

If our navy can't do #1 and #2, then we might need to re-think what we're doing. I would defer, though, to what Old Boy Galrahn has to say about this, as well as to the thoughts of Martin Murphy, pretty much among the world's leading piracy experts. This may present a tactical problem to the U.S. Navy that does not demand a complete re-set of the force structure.

Another invaluable resource these days is the Naval Institute's blog. These nerds are to the high seas what we are to population. Only more nerdish. If that is possible.

This is crazy. The New York Times is reporting that the U.S. Navy and the pirates are sending more ships to the standoff. The Guardian, meanwhile, has a helpful scorecard comparing the two sides and their capabilities.

The U.S. Navy is defenseless against semi-naked, trash-talking Chinese:

Maritime experts were given a rare glimpse of the underlying capabilities of the Chinese navy on Sunday, when crewmen involved in a stand-off with a US surveillance ship in the South China Sea revealed the fleet's previously hidden firepower.

The exposure came as the American vessel USNS Impeccable was attempting to defend itself against what the Pentagon claimed was co-ordinated harassment and aggression from five Chinese ships. Being unarmed, the Impeccable turned its fire water hoses against two of the Chinese vessels that had come within 50 feet in a threatening posture.

Then, the Pentagon records in the admirably restrained language of international diplomacy, "the Chinese crew members disrobed to their underwear and continued closing to within 25 feet."

In the annals of great naval battles, the contretemps may not rank alongside Trafalgar or Jutland. But it must be a contender for this year's award for naked aggression.

The Chinese Foreign ministry has remained silent on the incident, which in the circumstances is probably sensible.

As I understand it, navies exist to do four things:

1. Protect seaborne commerce.
2. Protect movement of armies and their supplies.
3. Deny enemy trade and commerce.
4. Deny movement of enemy armies and supplies.

You might add "artillery in support of land operations" to this list. (And any naval officers or sailors should chime in here. I took my understanding from this man.) But basically, the core tasks have remained the same through the years. Tom Ricks makes the excellent point that if you can do these core tasks with aircraft carriers and battleships, great. But if you need more ship-boarders (SEALs) to accomplish the mission, then perhaps you might want to recruit and train more of them rather than buying a shiny new boat.

Keeping the sea lanes open, especially for oil, should be a top priority for the U.S. military. Instead we seemed to defer to the Indians, Chinese and others, letting them take the lead. The Navy may feel that all its special operators -- the guys trained to board and take over ships -- are busy in Iraq and Afghanistan. So, admiral, does that tell you that you probably need more ship boarders, and maybe fewer aircraft carriers or anti-missile systems? You think maybe?

A Navy officer testified in federal court in Washington yesterday that she moonlighted as a call girl for Deborah Jeane Palfrey's escort service for six months, starting in 2005, when the military says she was assigned to the Naval Academy as a supply officer.

Update: Just one thing, though. Does it sicken anyone else that we embarrass the hell out of the women in this case yet let the johns go free? If Abu Muqawama ran the world, we would march every single one of these clients before the judge and have them describe what they did -- to their wives and to the world. If we're going to do this to the women, we should do it to the men as well.

Really, Thomas P.M. Barnett? Because the consensus over here at Abu Muqawama is that if one of us had written a piece in Esquire that had helped end a good man's career, we might have at least something to say in either defense of ourselves or of Admiral Fallon. But maybe we're just old-fashioned or crazy or something.

Update: An alert reader points out that Barnett has responded to questions from his own readers in this post.

WASHINGTON — Adm. William J. Fallon, the top American commander in the Middle East whose views on Iran and other issues have seemed to put him at odds with the Bush administration, is retiring early, the Pentagon said Tuesday afternoon.

The retirement of Admiral Fallon, 63, who only a year ago became the first Navy man to be named the commander of the United States Central Command, was announced by his civilian boss, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who said that he accepted the admiral’s request to retire “with reluctance and regret.”

Update: Charlie, here. Check out the (fawning) profile by Thomas Barnett that served as the last straw.

As head of U. S. Central Command, Admiral William "Fox" Fallon is in charge of American military strategy for the most troubled parts of the world.

Actually, turns out, we here in the United States do still have something called "civilian control of the military." Looks like Fox found that out the hard way...though Charlie might be persuaded to give him a medal for avoiding another ill-fated invasion.

Update II: AM here. Just found the statement by Gates on Small Wars Journal. At two points in the press conference, Sec. Gates points his finger in Abu Muqawama's direction and judges the speculation that Adm. Fallon's departure signals some kind of shift in strategy toward Iran "ridiculous." If Abu Muqawama were at the press conference, though, he would have dusted himself off and asked what role tensions between Gen. Petraeus and Adm. Fallon might have played in all this. We hear the good general and the admiral aren't going to be taking any vacations together anytime soon.



Update III: Kip has a different take on this: I think it has little to do with Iran and only some to do with General Petraeus.

Admiral Fallon has become a vocal critic of the administration, and he is/was also the Commander of Central Command. As such, I have no angst with his resignation--it is an appropriate end when such a high level leader no longer feels himself able to act as spokesperson and executor of the policy of the Administration which he serves. It is the kind of end that would have led General Sanchez to a profile in courage rather than a date with buffoonville.

I also believe that Fallon's resignation reveals a fundamental tension that he was unable to resolve and led to the fighting with Petraeus...how important is Iraq compared to other imperatives in the Middle East?

Admiral Fallon is correct that we don't have a grand strategy for defeating extremist Islam nor for dealing with overall destabilizing conflict in the Middle East. He is also correct that our saber-rattling is not helpful when our saber is otherwise occupied.

In the end, however, he has been himself unable to articulate the strategic answers required to still unanswered questions.

For example, Iraq may be diminishing our ability to win in Afghanistan or to develop a larger framework for the Middle East. However, if we leave Iraq, does it devolve into a genocidal (as opposed to low grade) civil war used by various players (Saudi Arabia and Iran in particular) as a proxy conflict against one another? If so, do additional resources help us accomplish anything in the Middle East or does Iraq remain the ultimate distraction? Are we even able to keep out troops out in such a scenario?

In uniform, Admiral Fallon has been unable to provide a convincing strategy to the Secretary of Defense or the President beyond general opposition. If he indeed has the wherewithal to do so, he will now have both the stage and the moral authority to tell the American people and the next President how we can do better.

Update IV: AM here again. Great comments, Kip. Everyone be sure to read this staff editorial in the Wall Street Journal. The gang at the WSJ think folks in the Pentagon are undermining Petraeus, but they just don't get it. No where in the editorial is the word "Afghanistan" mentioned. Not once! Yet I suspect some of the concerns in the puzzle palace revolve around the other war, the one in Central Asia. It's not a matter of back-stabbing generals refusing to support Petraeus and the war in Iraq. It's as Kip argued, where you have a variety of national-security needs in the region and limited resources. Some flag officers favor a different balance than the administration (not without reason).

Update V: Tom Ricks has the inside scoop on likely successors.

"These sort of gestures do not work around here," says Timur Goksel, a university lecturer in Beirut and former United Nations official in Lebanon. "Last time they shelled the Druze mountains. What are they going to shell this time? Dahiyeh?"

People have been writing in, asking Abu Muqawama what he thinks of the decision to deploy the USS Cole off the coast of Lebanon. Apparently people in Beirut have been really spooked by this. Abu Muqawama is not sure why. He'll leave it up to the reader to decide whether or not this gesture means anything. Nick Blanford has the best article Abu Muqawama has read so far on the Cole's deployment.