One of Donald Trump’s campaign promises was to build up the US navy to 350 ships, a big leap from its current strength of 274. He seems to be moving closer to putting that promise into action by pledging to raise the US defence budget by $54 billion, or 10 per cent.
At a time of budgetary austerity, this is a huge sum, as it is in terms of global defence spending. Just the planned increase is similar to the total defence budgets of each of Britain, Russia and India. But it may turn out to be peanuts when matched against Mr Trump’s stated goal to boost American security and, as he puts it, stop losing wars and start “winning” again.
On his shopping list are not just ships, tanks and aircraft but also an alarming idea to boost US nuclear weapons capacity and make it “top of the pack”, thus tearing up more than 40 years of arms control agreements with Russia. Apart from going against the advice of senior officers who say that the US nuclear deterrent is sufficient, the president’s ambitions would sink his plans to improve relations with Russia.
The naval plan is more concrete and, not surprisingly, is likely to be supported by naval officers. It is worth looking at what the number of ships might actually mean for US security.
First, the number afloat has long been a political football, and Republicans have complained that the size of the navy is “smaller than it has been since 1917”.
This is a fatuous comparison: a century ago ships just had guns and binoculars and they lost sight of the enemy in the fog. These days they go into battle with aircraft, cruise missiles and sophisticated electronics enabling them to extend their reach over large distances. They are also hugely expensive.
It is worth recalling that the US navy has not engaged in a battle at sea since 1988, when one of its ships was damaged by an Iranian mine and the navy responded by attacking oil platforms and sinking an Iranian frigate, the only time it has destroyed a combat vessel of a hostile power since the end of the Second World War.
The lack of major engagements for 70 years suggests that the predominance of the Americans has ended the era of naval battles. The US navy is probably more powerful that the next five navies combined, and no one dares to mess with it.
But if the navy is so far superior to all others – Russia has only one 30-year-old diesel-powered aircraft carrier while the US will soon have 11 – then why bother to spend more money? This is particularly true at a time when the US has a ballooning debt, which the Republicans, at least during the Obama years, made a fetish of seeking to reduce.
The funds can only come from cuts elsewhere – including a proposed 37 per cent reduction in the state department and foreign aid budget.
This has aroused protest from retired military officers who point out that these civilian agencies – perhaps 4 per cent of total spending, compared with up to 56 per cent which goes on the military – perform key tasks without which the military would find it harder to operate. One particular concern is that US funding for the United Nations (22 per cent of the total) and its peacekeeping operations (29 per cent of the total) may be cut.
One reason for Mr Trump’s promise is clear – he loves the military. He has appointed three generals to key positions. Despite whispers of a “junta” taking over, they have proved the most capable, public-spirited and educated of the team Mr Trump is building. One of the reasons he claims to admire the military is that, as a rebellious teenager, he was sent to a military boarding school, where he flourished in the competitive environment. He later successfully avoided the draft for the Vietnam War – though that has not stopped him claiming to know more of military affairs than the soldiers who have seen combat.
No one has ever said that the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were strategic defeats because of a lack of ships and planes. The reasons lie not in hardware, but rather in a combination of arrogant civilian leadership, that failed to understand the political realities on the ground, and an officer class too ready to salute for fear of losing their budgets if they said no.
The contrast with Russia’s intervention in Syria is instructive. The Russians turned the tide of war in favour of their ally, the Syrian regime, with no more than a few dozen aircraft and a handful of ships. What was important was the correct use of military, intelligence and diplomatic assets to achieve a clearly defined goal.
The most likely arena of conflict for the US navy is in the seas around China, particularly where Beijing has been reinforcing artificial islands to strengthen its claim to the South China Sea. America’s 10 aircraft carrier groups have not stopped this process because the stakes are too high to risk conflict. Would another 70 ships make a difference? Unlikely.
In 2015, Mr Obama’s defence secretary, Ash Carter, took a rare public stand against the naval lobby’s “more is better” thinking.
He wrote at the time: “The navy’s strategic future requires more focusing on posture, not only on presence, and more on new capabilities, not only on new ship numbers.”
In simple English, smarter weapons, not more ships to place around the globe.
The logic here is that managing the rise of China as a regional power is likely to be conducted more by electronic warfare than a naval battle on the high seas.
In fact, it may turn out that the Pacific Ocean is wide enough for both countries to share and keep an eye on the other. But that is not a prospect that gets the juices running in Washington.
Alan Philps is a commentator on global affairs.
On Twitter @aphilps