How Not to Deter

In the Wall Street Journal Jerry Hendrix warns:

Recently the news broke that the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Carney had fended off several missile and drone attacks in the Red Sea. While Biden administration officials tried to frame the battle, for a battle it surely was, as the Carney’s defending nearby merchant ships, it seems clear that Iranian-supplied Houthis were targeting the Carney directly as well as the commercial ships it was accompanying.

This was only one of several recent assaults on American naval assets in the region. They have happened despite the presence of the Ford carrier strike group in the eastern Mediterranean and the Eisenhower strike group in the Gulf of Aden—a conventional level of naval deterrence that should have reduced aggressive activities by U.S. enemies. Instead, Iran attacked American ships and allies.

These events show that American naval deterrence is failing, and a recent report from the Sagamore Institute concludes that it could soon evaporate.

concluding:

America’s failure to expand and maintain its fleet, or stand by its word, may have already entirely eroded U.S. naval deterrence. The Navy’s budget, size and force architecture all need urgent attention from Congress if the U.S. is to preserve its ability to deter its enemies. Failure to do so imperils global trade as well as America’s place in the world and the safety of its people.

I don’t know how Capt. Hendrix knows that the Carney was attacked. We say the ship wasn’t attacked; the Houthis say that they didn’t attack it. Perhaps he has insider information?

IMO if we had deliberately set out to weaken our military deterrent we would have done much what we have over the last 30 years. In terms of the Navy here was our force strength in 1992:

At present we have 291 active battle force level ships.

As I see it military deterrence has much in common with criminal deterrence. For deterrence to be effective enforcement must be swift and sure. Over the last 30 years we have overutilized our armed forces (Somalia, Yugoslavia, Gulf War, Iraq, Afghanistan). Rarely have we achieved our objectives. The advantage we have is a seasoned military. Over-seasoned, some would say. Now we’ve given away our inventories of munitions to Ukraine. We’re producing more at a rate below the rate at which Ukraine is using them.

I believe we should use our military much more sparingly than we have but when we use it our military should achieve our objectives decisively. That also means that the objectives must be ones that can be achieved with military force. So, for example, we were never going to turn Iraq or Afghanistan into liberal democracies allied with the United States. That was beyond our military’s capabilities.

I’m not certain what objectives Capt. Hendrix wants to accomplish or what sort of navy would be required to accomplish them. Maintaining freedom of navigation for merchant vessels has historically been seen as a vital U. S. interest. Unfortunately, ours is not the only navy whose battle forces have declined over the last 30 years. Both France’s and Britain’s have declined precipitously while China’s navy increased enormously. I don’t think that our navy should be the world’s only force maintaining freedom of navigation for merchant vessels but we may have no alternative.