The Navy and the Nation

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The United States has been swept up in a process of inexorable post-Cold War change. Will the Navy reflect and even symbolize that change, as it has in the past? Or will the Navy move toward splendid isolation on the margins of American life—as it also has in the past?

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This is third “Navy and the Nation” to appear in Proceedings. The first was written by Assistant Secretary of the Navy William McAdoo, in 1894. The second was written by Charles Francis Adams, Secretary of the Navy, in 1930. It is an unusual title. Why? It says, “We are about to talk about more than just Navy things.” In these pages, we talk about our work, and our work has been the work of reefing the sails and holystoning the decks, and drilling the gun crews. That is what we do, so that is what we talk about here. But there are times when we need to talk about the wider world.

This is such a time. And the wider world is our own country. The first two articles called “The Navy and the Nation” appeared in times of upheaval and change for the United States—and for the U.S. Navy. That is why it is time for a third. But this one will be different.

The earlier articles were written by Navy political leaders. They were meant in part to explain the Navy to the rest of American society. But they were also meant to drive home to the Navy how it belongs to America, that it does not exist in isolation. Those articles were meant to be reaffirmations—or reassurances.

If this third “Navy and the Nation” had been written by one of today’s political leaders, it would have a solemn and unimpeachable message, something like:

It is important to stress what the Navy does for the nation: how it helps guard us, protect our interests, and represent us. And whatever the Navy does for the United States, it does for the whole world. It is a part of a world system that we helped make, a world system that shares our values. Americans still believe that this world is worth defending. And the Navy is essential to this world’s defense.

Whether we admit it to ourselves or not, we are afr The defense world we built for a Cold War is slipf away. Familiar peacetime attitudes have become m popular at home; Americans have become less intere* in what happens abroad. It is getting harder to exp' what we are doing in the world, and why the world * needs us so. It is becoming natural for us to compare l^l to 1919, and to fear the worst for the Navy.

But this is not another peacetime era. The battles to fought are not simply with the forces of rampant and xc gent nativism, or against our weary willingness to down the cares of leadership. The world is caught time of great historical change. The fall of the So' Union, a second industrial revolution built on inforfl tion, and the rise of a giant web of new economies in A all are pushing the world to rethink itself. Out of the de of communism comes a new search for identity tl touches us all with its energy—its passionate wil' exist—whether in Bosnia or Algeria or in our own citi Add to this a global competition brought on by huge p^l" 1 of skilled labor entering the world economy from & Asia and Eastern Europe, and it becomes clear that cozy structure of the Cold War world will not long h‘’

It’s not just the world out there that’s being pul and twisted—we, too, are remaking ourselves. We h our own cozy structure, which no longer works. We W it for the Cold War, but there was much more to it tl the buildings that faced the Soviet Union. There was equally big domestic wing. The whole structure '' founded on a concept of national mobilization, run by great federal state—a vision that most Americans now ject. They see the imperial city and its ruling apparat selfish and corrupt. And the national mission that autlj rized it—along with its ruling elite—is also gone.

Because the Cold War elite and their politics no Ion- speak to Americans, a new structure will have to be vented. This is nothing new. Periodically, we find ¹ structures we have built for ourselves to be confining

Proceedings / May ¹

in need of renovation. We have revised our national idea and changed our collective agenda four times before in our history. But this time it won’t happen quickly or easily. For our society and its politics, it will be a mess.

Rather than worrying about the perils of peacetime, or about justifying its budgets, the Navy should think about what war will look like after the world remakes itself— things 20 or more years away.

But, for the next ten years, the Navy needs to think about the course of American society. Because as the United States changes, so will its Navy, which will be swept up in the change but also can come to symbolize it. This has happened four times before; it can happen again, and the Navy should be prepared for it.

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this mythology in the Navy world view that history it| A has been reinterpreted—not by historians, but casually

In a January 1991 article for Proceedings titled “2010: A New Navy,” I saw the Navy changing with a new mission and a new force structure. But I was looking at the Navy and the world, not the Navy and the nation. I was seeing things incorrectly. That is what is wrong with Navy thinking today: The Navy does not see change for what it is, hut as it wants it to be. The Navy is crippled by its own mythology of change.

What is that mythology?

The Navy has always imagined itself as our natio: cutting edge to the world. But what American vision d¹ it represent? In Navy mythology, it is always a mono! of eternal U.S. values and beliefs—human rights, of trade, and freedom of the seas. The Navy stands up these values and beliefs abroad. This is how the Navyi the nation connect, aside from times of war.

When the Navy looks back on its part in The Gf American Story, it sees a heroic agent helping pull insular, parochial society into the world. So embedded.

informally by Navy society itself.

Ask most naval officers today about the Navy in early Republic, and they will probably tell you that Navy struggled against the inward-pulling forces of 0 tinental expansion all the way up to Alfred Thayer Mai and Theodore Roosevelt. Until the Civil War, howe'¹ the United States was more of a maritime nation th is today, measured in foreign trade as a percentage national income. Then, the Navy was the world’s foi most powerful; actually, we were the third navy at Britain and France—for Russia’s navy was a shaky sb''^,*¹° fleet, confined to the Baltic and Black seas.   ^^a*

Navalism lies behind much of the Navy’s histori^lSlrra imagination. The long-standing agenda of many of tW^naU

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^J _s),(Who teach us about the Navy and the nation goes back to y Mahan, where this mythology began. His purpose was -simple—to show that, for the United States to be a great f tlation, ^must have a great Navy. As historical interpre- ’* tations go, it has been quite successful—remarkably so, -*j^given the widespread announcement of the Navy’s obso- Hlescence in 1945, when atomic bombs seemed to make ^'Bships and sailors irrelevant to the national defense.

This is the way we have traditionally thought about the (Navy and the nation. American history has been one of devolution toward bigger and better things, and in pursuit iof a better idea. When the United States was pushing i westward, the Navy was there in a supporting role. When I the nation burst on the world scene around 1900, the Navy ;had a real starring role. Navalism wasn’t bad; it was suc- Hcessful because its explanation of the Navy’s relationship

■  to the nation fit the needs of the times. In 1900, Ameri- JHcans wanted to be a great power, after 1950, Americans h accepted, in practical terms, the defense of the world.

■   This was an evolution in which the Navy’s growth H matched that of the nation as a whole; and this implied P sense of historical evolution fit America’s sacred belief P in its own progress.

Such traditional thinking about the Navy isn’t necessarily wrong; it just doesn’t tell the whole story. It limits our understanding of the Navy-nation relationship to major historical events like wars and international crises. It is a stereotype—a two-dimensional snapshot of a relationship.

Try to see the Navy and the nation a little differently. Think about the United States for a moment not as a place, but as an idea. It is an idea shared by many people; and these people are moving through time. And as American society changes, so too does the American idea. Its inner vision is never lost, but its form is reworked. We reinterpret and reinvent ourselves as we change.

Change in American society is constant, but the rethinking of the American idea is episodic. Max Lerner, the great chronicler of our civilization, identified four of

these times, and he called them Big Changes. The Navy responded differently to each and it’s important to remember: When its response was in synch with national change, the Navy did better than when its response was to distance, buffer, or isolate itself from what was happening in the nation.

How did the Navy respond?

Enfranchisement: 1824-1836

The effect on the nation. Before Andrew Jackson, America was a society run by an upper class. Starting with the election of 1824, the old politics began to crack, and a decade later the United States was much closer to being a true democracy. The upheaval in politics unleashed national energies. Economic growth was explosive, and our international trade led this growth. In fact, the Gross National Product share of U.S. imports and exports in the 1850s was almost three times that of the 1950s.

The Navy’s response. In part, the Navy could share the American experience of Big Change by reflecting the energy of America abroad in its assistance to trade. But the Navy, still a society of the upper class, resisted the big, democratic parade. Jacksonian democrats didn't sweep the Navy up in their popular demonstrations; their vision of American military society was of themselves— the coonskin-cap militia. The Navy, running free at the rim of the great maelstrom of new democracy, brought its winds to others. Perry's opening of Japan and the long patrols off Africa and “the Brazils” against the slave trade show the Navy serving the nation’s agenda. Of all Amer-

ica’s revolutions, however, the Navy did its best to avoid this one. To some extent, it succeeded; if there is a model for the monastic fleet of the future, this is it.

But the Navy paid for its cloistered world. It stifled innovation in technology, and it lagged behind. Preserving the world it liked meant ignoring and even punishing officers who had a vision of the future. Decline was inevitable.

Revolution: 1860-1876

The effect on the nation. The Civil War went to the very heart of the American idea; it was a true revolution. The United States was also in the throes of industrial revolution. The political revolution, the triumph of the federal state, meant a more unified and focused agenda for the nation. Industrial revolution meant a very different society, which had fought a war that mirrored its own vision of mechanical (the favorite word of that era) mass democracy and prefigured the next century’s Great War.

The Navy’s response. The Navy was forced to fit into

by the war. Engineering officers fought for the future; _v birth of Proceedings in 1874 and the Naval War Collf in 1884 were signs of a quiet revolution. The Navy '' following national change, but it needed the nation to t notice.

Reform: 1896-1912

The effect on the nation. In time, the nation did t< notice—but not according to the tenets of Navy m) which has that the turn of the century was America’s c<f ing out as a great power, with the nation turning to I Navy to give greatness its edge. The more fundamefj movement, however, was our society’s coming to tetl with the consequences of industrialization, urbanizatil and immigration. America’s elites saw a society outl control, and an American idea deteriorating before til eyes. The Progressive Movement was a great enterpl to renew U.S. society.

The Navy’s response. Calling the Navy our great pol instrument in this era of reform is a shallow reading!

this vision quickly; and within months there was a Navy metamorphosis as it transformed itself to meet the demands of society. From an elite service at the margins of national imagination, it became a mirror of American society and was also remade into a mechanical mirror of U.S. industrial life—a world of steam and iron run by engineers.

But after the war, the Navy turned its back on the nation—and the engineer. It returned as fast as wind would carry to the old world of sail and sailing master. The nation—consumed with reconstruction, labor strife, and railroads West—let it go. Yet Navy culture had been changed

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Mahan. The Navy became a symbol of national refo(g_er and naval officers like William S. Sims were highly ^vl _ety. ible, public heroes of the Progressive cause. Admirals W^g, national plenipotentiaries and represented the drama 'j_np Progressivism—the march of American civilization'_con abroad. Today, we call this an age of imperialism, ^ Am Americans saw things differently then. To both Theodn'^g Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, Progressive Amer^woi represented a new wave, post-imperialist vision. It ''’’sur important for the Navy as a society to embody the rtf _a)t_c values of the Progressive elite. This was a naval serV>‘ j absolutely in synch with the new national idea, and '^v'¹ era the new national elites that emerged to put it into pl^J froi The Navy was never more central to national life. unt Crusade: 1933-48         mo

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Proceedings / May

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The effect on the nation. Depression and world tha remade the United States into a mobilized, globally ^c> vie gaged society led by a great federal system. The nattf out of the Cold War era was committed to a worldwide cf*

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ade and the ultimate vision of a United Nations. The trategic stalemate between good and evil seemed per- anent, but the goal of a democratic world that shared values remained. The mobilization construct of World II never really left us; the Navy in 1980 still looked like the Navy of the Good War.

The Navy’s response. This Big Change took the Navy from a self contained, professional service to a much big- ^re‘° ger society that looked very much like the national soci- <y ^v'ety. The Navy was the nation in World War II, and that ^s ideal remained throughout the Cold War. What was seen ^ima in public discussion as the Cold War’s military strategy— ^t,0,rcontainment—was really the strategic expression of the ^m- "American idea in that age. The Navy was committed to ;od^the world because the United States was committed to the ^ner'¹ world. It was a 50-year-long global crusade. The Navy ^ "'survived and prospered, by becoming a different society ^e ^.altogether.

^erVf But something happened as the unity of the Cold War J "''era began to unravel. After Vietnam, elites moved away ¹ pl^;1, from national service—and from the people who still volunteered to serve. The Navy’s elite—its officers—also moved, but with the people. Today we see a national elite d " that is increasingly estranged—in its beliefs and its world ly f view—from the American people. But the officers of lat'¹’ our military services, no longer part of the national elite, e c(^l

In the earliest days of naval aviation, how many visionaries foresaw the aircraft carrier and the Dauntless dive bomber—here, at Midway on 4 June 1942—replacing the battleship as decisive factors in major fleet engagements? Such imagination is desperately needed today, in sensing the future of technology and the course of America.

are much closer in values and attitudes to the majority of Americans. This is why, at the end of the Cold War, opinion surveys show again and again that military service is the profession the people respect most. And this is important—because the problem of a national elite that does not lead is central to the coming Big Change.

The Navy and the Next Big Change

Contrary to the myth, the Navy story has not been a long struggle to pull America into the world. The truth is that at each time of national change, the Navy had a choice either to go along, or to try not to go. Why is it important to separate myth from reality?

Proceedings / May 1994

It is important because it shows us the real relationship between a military service and the national society it serves. We can’t just talk about the Navy performing abstract duties in pursuit of an abstract national mission.

As the nation makes formal changes, it asks the Navy to change too. This implies physical changes to force structure as well as shifts in values and institutional attitudes, so that even the shape of the fleet and its mission come to reflect the state of the American idea and the spirit of the age.

pie, driven by ideas, do. That is what is happening tod.

The coming Big Change is all about the new spirit that takes down the worn-out structures—and the ideology—of Cold War America. This renewed American society will emerge from a true conflict of visions—not as a simple consequence of ethnic or racial shifts in American society. The Progressive movement of the 1890s was influenced by the great immigration, but immigration did not create it. In similar ways, Jacksonian Democracy, the New Deal’s social welfare, and Civil War abolitionism all seized on physical developments in society as metaphors for or means to achieve their visions. Apparent physical change does not drive Big Change. Peo-

The old order doesn’t work; it doesn’t give; and it doeC explain. People want to know what America is aK today—where we belong and what we mean. It is possible to know what spirit will prevail, what values be ascendant, and what agenda our nation will

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Nevertheless, we can suggest some very basic questio' _not that people will be asking throughout this time of chan?

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►    What is the relationship of the individual to the state ^

►                                                                                                             What is the citizen’s true civic responsibility?    _cu|

►    What is the role of religion—a single, national set⁶ j_ate

values—in making political values legitimate?    if j

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It is up to the Navy to think for itself about change^s Na this level. The Navy should be prepared to accept that ^ different national society will remake the Navy in its o'*¹ t_re; image. The nation is changing now. What should the Na^v igc look for in a time of Big Change? How should the Na' >. , try to adapt?                           wa

Does the Navy want to have maximum choice and op portunity during the gathering Big Change? Or does¹ _Spj want to escape again to the margins of American life, an¹ thi, seek safety there? Right now the Navy’s awareness ^c _See what is really happening in the nation is near zero.