Alex Clarke interviews Peter Babbington, former commander of K Company in 42 Commando during the Falklands War. His unit was the first in the assault at Mount Kent and was the assaulting company for the Mount Harriet operation.
DOWNLOAD Sea Control 68:
Falklands Series 4 – Peter Babbington
Remember, subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher Stream Radio. Leave a comment and rate five stars!
This article is part of a series hosted by The Strategy Bridge and CIMSEC, entitled #Shakespeare and Strategy. See all of the entries at the Asides blog of the Shakespeare Theatre Company. Thanks to the Young Professionals Consortium for setting up the series.
When curtains close on Shakespeare’s 1606 The Tragedy of Macbeth, audiences are left to ponder the fate of Scotland. Contemporaries of the playwright were well aware of the Union of the Crowns a mere three years prior in 1603, uniting the rule of England and Ireland under James the VI, King of the Scots. But few could claim to know the events that followed Macbeth’s toppling by the hands of an English army half a millennium earlier. Part of the problem is that as with many popular pieces on Scottish history, such as Braveheart, a factual recounting – if one could be determined in the first place – is sacrificed to good story-telling.
Dunsinane, written by David Greig and playing in an excellent National Theatre of Scotland production at the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Sidney Harmon Hall in Washington, DC, through February 21st, brings a few elements of the story closer to what is known: Macbeth ruled for over 15 years and wasn’t widely considered a tyrant. The narrative largely picks up where Macbeth left off, chronicling England’s attempt to establish a friendly regime across its northern border and the subsequent insurgency and counter-insurgency campaigns. Greig uses this context to explore military, political, and moral themes (more on those later) quite familiar to those who’ve lived through or in the shadows of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But what does sea power have to do with a land war and occupation of physical territory? A monologue from a boy soldier opens the show:
“We boarded our ships at the Thames mouth.
There were two thousand of us and also
Some horses for the knights to ride and animals
For us to slaughter on the way.
We stood on the Essex shore a mess of shingle,
Some of us new and eager for a fight and others
Not so sure but all of us both knowing and not knowingWhat lay ahead of us.
Scotland.
Scotland. Where we would install a king.
…..
Of the river Forth and we landed in a place called Fife –
Which is wild compared to Kent –
And there we camped in woods near the abbey of Inchocolm.And waited until at last he came to us – Siward
Our commander – and he told the sergeants it was time
To prepare us to fight.
Clearly sealift and local sea control can smooth the path for an initial military assault. The sea journey described above is just shy of 400 nm, and would have taken far less time than a northward march, thereby increasing the chance the expedition maintains some element of surprise. Whether the landing force is completely unexpected or merely arrives sooner after word reaches Macbeth and his advisors at Dunsinane, seat of his power, the force would have faced less entrenched and ready resistance. Additionally, had Macbeth received early warning, the mobility afforded by the sea would still have allowed the expedition some latitude in choosing where to disembark – a perennial complication for military planners facing an amphibious landing, from the American revolutionaries accounting for the movements of the British to Nazi Germany awaiting the Americans.
Invasion by sea would also have impacted the campaigns’ logistics. The initial requirements for foodstuffs and military supplies would have been greater than on a march, which could have offered a mix of supplies provided by other vassals when available and foraging in their absence. But the fact that the force set off from Essex indicates many of the forces were raised by southern nobles, easing the burden on the expedition’s northern commander, Siward, Earl of Northumbria. A march through his lands, bordering Scotland, would also have risked engendering a hostile populace enroute that might have joined Macbeth’s cause.
As in a later invasion of Scotland during the (2nd) English Civil War, the sealift could have been retained for resupply over open sea lines of communication (SLOCs) to limit the need of the expedition to disperse and forage after landing. It is unclear in Dunsinane whether the ships were kept at hand. But indications are that the English did not anticipate a long phase of contested nation-building to defend their installed king’s regime, and likely expected to rely on Siward’s neighboring realms as the situation changed. They may also have believed local sea control and predictable SLOCs would be challenged by other powers such Norway, which commanded more allegiance from some Scottish chiefs than the king at Dunsinane. This allegiance in turn was easier to command when, due to Scotland’s extensive coastlines, sea control could be no more than a localized or transitory thing, meaning other foreign powers could provide even overt support to prop up local proxies with little risk of interception.
Whether fleeting or near-absolute, a mastery of the waves confers both advantages and dangers. When it comes unchallenged at the start of a campaign it can breed an overconfidence that the rest of the endeavor will be as easy. Additionally, while command of the seas can be a great enabler in projecting power against an enemy state, it is of more limited use if a war transitions to a counter-insurgency phase where the nexus of success resides with the support of the people. This is not to say it’s of no use – the success of the U.S. counter-insurgency campaigns in the Philippine-American War were possible only through extensive naval activities – but unhindered SLOCs could only set the stage in cases such as Vietnam and Iraq, where what happened ashore was in many ways divorced from what happened at sea. It’s a lesson those eying an enemy (or wayward province) across the waters would do well to remember.
In Dunsinane, sea power is a minor character, and the end of major combat operations it supported does not mark the beginning of peace. That comes with acceptance of defeat by the enemy, which as Clausewitz notes cannot always be imposed through the mere “total occupation of his territory.” And, as the German states learned in the Franco-Prussian War, the destruction of a regime’s forces can create a power vacuum filled by those even more loathe to throw in the towel. In the face of a recalcitrant foe, an occupier that increases its stay tempts provoking the people and swelling the ranks of the enemy.
While Siward and the English may have factored in the risk of rising resentment in their decision to invade by sea, they seem to overlook that of outlasting their welcome. In lines that could have been taken from The Accidental Guerilla, a book by Gen. Petraeus’s senior counter-insurgency advisor, David Kilcullen, Siward’s subordinate Egham says:
They’re not fighting us because of their Queen. They’re fighting us because we’re here. The Scots will fight anyone who’s standing in front of them. They like fighting. In fact – they’re fighting us partly because we’re stopping them from fighting each other.
Successful insurgencies and counter-insurgencies make this fighting personal. The former try to provoke an emotional (over-) response from the latter, while the later try to win the hearts and minds (or at least acquiescence) of the people through a return to a semblance of normalcy. In the forthcoming novel Ghost Fleet, by Peter Singer and August Cole, which also draws inspiration from the recent decades of counter-insurgency, a colonel chides another commander for “taking the losses from the insurgency personally…missing [the] greater responsibilities.” The death of Siward’s son at the beginning of the play makes the campaign immediately personal for him. While he and Egham both try to protect their men from harm by seeking accommodation with their former enemy, once the blood of their comrades is spilled in the insurgency phase Siward quickly goes through the seven stages of grief to punitive violence.
I don’t have as much experience with counter-insurgency as others writing in this series do, so I can’t say with certainty how I would handle the personal nature of it. Twice – in 2009 and in 2015 – I was ordered to spend a year with the war in Afghanistan, but twice those orders were cancelled – after 1 week and 4 hours respectively (I learned after the first time to wait awhile before telling my wife, just to be sure). But I’ve been lucky. Sailors by the thousands have been called from Active Duty assignments and the Reserve to serve in the counter-insurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, and some are still being sent to the latter to this day. This is to say nothing of the contributions of the U.S. Marine Corps. Sea control may not make much difference in the counter-insurgency campaigns of Dunsinane or Afghanistan, but at the individual level the line between sea power and land power, between sailor and soldier, has blurred.
Scott Cheney-Peters is a surface warfare officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve and the former editor of Surface Warfare magazine. He is the founder and president of the Center for International Maritime Security (CIMSEC), a graduate of Georgetown University and the U.S. Naval War College, and a member of the Truman National Security Project’s Defense Council.
On Tuesday Dr. Ashton Carter begins his tenure as Secretary of Defense. While many observers regard Dr. Carter as a caretaker nominee tasked to mildly manage the Department of Defense (DOD) during the President’s last two years of office, the experienced and capable Dr. Carter has the potential to do much more. His strategy as Secretary should have three priorities.
First, Dr. Carter must develop new concepts and field new capabilities necessary to assure the ability of the United States to deter and defeat aggression, in particular by China. While the U.S. military was largely focused on Iraq and Afghanistan, China developed formidable Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) capabilities that threaten U.S. allies and partners in the vital Asia-Pacific region and complicate U.S. operations. While multiple states, including Russia and Iran, are fielding A2/AD capabilities, and while A2/AD capabilities may continue to proliferate globally, the ability of the United States to deter and defeat Chinese aggression serves as a bellwether for U.S. capabilities worldwide.
In response, Dr. Carter should articulate to the public that China will serve as DOD’s pacing threat and that DOD’s recently unveiled Third Offset Strategy will seek to counter Chinese capability, just as the First and Second Offset Strategies countered Soviet capabilities. While many of the activities of the Third Offset Strategy should be classified, two key indices can serve as palpable indicators of progress. First, whether funding is reapportioned from the Army to the departments most relevant in a conflict with China: the Air Force and the Navy. Dr. Carter will have the Fiscal Year 2017 budget to do so. Secondly, within the Services, DOD must adequately fund and accelerate programs relevant in the most operationally stressing scenarios involving China. In many cases, these are crucial capabilities that the Services have been slow to develop for a variety of reasons. For instance, for the Navy, the ability to rapidly reload weapons while underway at sea; for the Air Force, a credible effort to harden and disperse airfields throughout the Western and Central Pacific; and, for the Army, the development of conventional intermediate-range offensive missiles similar to those currently fielded by China (and possibly Russia).
Dr. Carter’s second priority should be advocating for the nation to return defense spending to pre-sequestration levels. Former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta warned that allowing sequestration to happen would be like, “Shooting ourselves in the head.” The Department’s own Quadrennial Defense Review warned that, under sequestration-level cuts, risks to our nation “would grow significantly.” After these cuts took place, DOD slashed readiness and force structure in order to preserve a modicum of modernization funding. This has resulted in an increasingly hollow force incapable of appropriately facing the nation’s increased scale of threats in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and the Western Pacific. While increased funding for DOD alone is insufficient, it is perhaps Dr. Carter’s most challenging priority given a seeming lack of interest and will in Congress and the White House.
His third priority should be ensuring DOD funds are spent efficiently. The dramatic rise in DOD overhead costs, such as pay, benefits, and bases, is crowding out funding available for warfighting. This is producing a military that is better compensated than ever before, but dangerously unprepared for a major war. Dr. Carter must convince the President and Congress to enact significant military compensation reform and a new round of Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC). The opening of hearings on the congressionally-mandated Commission on Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization represents a bipartisan opportunity for Congress to take action against spiraling personnel costs. As with a new round of BRAC, Congress will need to demonstrate bipartisan leadership to overcome pressure from interest groups, allay the concerns of current and retired military members, and enact these essential reforms.
The security challenges facing our nation are numerous and unrelenting, not the least of which is continued combat in Afghanistan. With only two years in office, it is unlikely Dr. Carter will be able to reform the entire defense enterprise and address every threat. However, by focusing on these three priorities, he can surprise skeptics and set the DOD on the right course to appropriately providing for our nation’s defense.
Timothy A. Walton is a principal of Alios Consulting Group, a Washington, DC-based defense and business strategy consultancy. He specializes in Asia-Pacific security dynamics.
I was already at work when I heard about the article in Politico Magazine. After descending from Capitol South Metro Station on another windy and frosty day in Washington, D.C., I overheard some staffers talking near the security checkpoint in the Rayburn House Office Building. Unsurprisingly, they were on their phones, retweeting and sharing a link about the Navy with their friends. “The Navy ship count could be a political gamechanger,” a boyish-looking aid in a dark suit remarked. Another staffer, who looked like he was fourteen, claimed it would be a tragedy to decommission the aging Oliver-Hazard Class Frigate. I removed my iPhone from my pocket, took off my winter gloves, and then perused my Facebook news feed to see if anyone posted anything. CDR Salamander – unsurprisingly – had fired the first salvo: “We’ve been saying this for years.”
The article in question was “The Navy’s Hidden Crisis,” written by Robert C. O’Brien, a former advisor to Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney. In his muddling attempt to explain the Navy’s Crisis – once again using ship count as the only metric to assess fleet strength – he politically mischaracterizes the need for an agile and robust fleet. This type of rhetoric is predictable from Mr. O’Brien, who has always claimed the “waters are getting more dangerous” in explaining the need to build more ships. One could surmise this was a response to President Obama mocking Romney two years ago in the third and final presidential debate. “You mention the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916,” President Obama rebuked that evening, “well governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets.” The President went on, “We have these things called aircraft carriers and planes land on them . . . we have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.”
With only a few weeks left before the election, this decisive broadside to Romney’s foreign policy battleship, combined with the former governor’s “47 percent comments,” sank him in the national election.
It is unlikely the Navy’s ship count will take center stage in 2016 as a campaign talking point. After all, the Navy and foreign policy matters rarely decide elections. The more salient economic issues are, the more likely they will affect which way voters’ decide the next Electoral College. As New Yorker staff writer Amy Davidson has pointed out, “Boat confusion is an old and telling political problem.” The number of ships does not necessarily register as a national imperative, even though open sea lines of communication provide the American culture of consumption. When politicians like Representative Randy Forbes or Senator John McCain talk about the number of ships and its relationship to national security, the public mind simply floats away.
By focusing on ship count, O’Brien’s argument is antiquated and politically irrelevant.
Although the public either misinterprets or ignores the need for a strong Navy, in recent years, the Pentagon has provided a strong and clear political narrative to Congress. Through multiple hearings to the House and Senate Armed Service Committee (HASC / SASC) subcommittees in Readiness and Seapower, combined with an aggressive strategy informing our nation’s policymakers, Navy leaders have successfully conveyed the need for a multifaceted force. On the Hill, the House and Senate Offices of Legislative Affairs meet regularly with the Armed Service Committees and ensure their full participation in ongoing strategies and fiscal matters. These engagements, which began centuries ago, have always been the winning political strategy for the Navy.
Lieutenant Junior Grade Rosende makes a convincing argument in the January issue of Proceedings about the Navy’s engagement with the people, but it is not accurate to suggest that the advocates of naval power convinced an “inward-looking citizenry” that a navy was a vital to American interests. History reveals the opposite is true. Leaders in the Gilded Age either made executive decisions or lobbied Congress in backroom deals to pursue the requisite platforms. There was no public discourse on the future of the force and to presume it took place is flatly absurd.
The Navy should not concern itself too much with generating an informed public. Rather, we should continue to educate politicians on both sides of the aisle. While I would certainly like the public to understand where the Navy fits within the national debate on the size and breadth of DoD writ large, it is not a political reality to suggest the Navy will take center stage in 2016. Unfortunately, the Navy does not attract voters. A position we are likely to hear in primaries will be the support of a large and robust naval force, and the continued fiscal support for research and development to keep ahead of our potential adversaries. There will be little discussion on the “right number of ships” because it will be met with the same type of strategy President Obama used in 2012.
Rethinking political messaging in order to avoid the same quagmire that sealed the Navy’s fate the last four years is recommended. Over time, especially after the collapse of the USSR and the reduction of capital ships, the sea services drifted away from counting and tried a new strategy: catchwords. In recent years, the term “readiness” has become the major criterion of training and the political lexicon in the Navy.
Evidently, Readiness is a bad way for the Navy to assess and encompass the breadth of our problems. Exhibit A: U.S. Navy Ship Count is down to 279 – and falling.
The word “Readiness” may make waves in Congress and especially in HASC and in SASC, but due to the Navy’s inherent complexity in meeting maritime challenges, we should redefine and expand our political employment. As Lincoln Paine aptly points out in The Sea and Civilization, “Maritime Activity includes not only the high seas and coastal voyaging, but also inland navigation.” Thereby the world was shaped in obvious ways by the economic, demographic, and technological attributes by the development of maritime transportation. Maintaining this flow of ideas, goods, people, and perspectives is essential for the global way of life. The oceans inherently knit the world together.
So does the nation need to be educated on the need for a powerful fleet? American history reveals that naval power has been sustainable for centuries without an informed public, but if the Navy decides to move that way, ship count should not be the only metric in which judge the value of the sea service. Many defense critics and the public at large view the Navy’s budget proposal with skepticism. While most naval strategists believe that we should be building ships as quickly as possible for the Pivot to Asia, branding it correctly to Congress means everything, not just proclaiming, “Build! Build! Build!” over and over.
The Navy is inherently different from the other services – and perhaps infinitely more complicated – so it should stop compartmentalizing itself politically in the same fashion as the Army or the Air Force. Tell the complete story – not the tale of “Readiness.”
LT Alex Smith is a Surface Warfare Officer who serves as a Navy Liaison Officer at the U.S. House of Representatives. He recently completed his Masters in American History at the George Washington University while serving as an NROTC Instructor.
