Charles W. King

The recent outbreak of Ebola in a remote part of Congo prompted a rapid and comprehensive response from the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) including the first time in its seventy year history that its Director has traveled into the midst of an active hotzone. The response from the United States has been decidedly muted, unlike the previous outbreak in West Africa that began in 2013 where thousands of U.S. Army troops were deployed to construct field hospitals and support aid efforts. In the years since the West African outbreak the Trump Administration has requested Congress roll back funding that had been allocated for addressing Ebola and other virulent outbreaks. While costly, the expenditures by the United States between 2014 and 2016 to combat Ebola in West Africa, primarily through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (C.D.C.) and U.S. Agency for International Development (U.S.A.I.D.), represent an important strategic deployment of American resources to address a national interest.

Like food aid, medical aid to foreign countries, especially to address potential epidemics, is not solely altruistic. Infectious diseases like Ebola and Marburg are easiest to contain when populations of infected are localized. The the outbreaks of SARS and Avian Flu, which are much less lethal to humans than Ebola or Marburg, demonstrate how difficult fighting a disease that has penetrated the international travel network. If the United States was attempting to prevent Ebola or a similar disease from making it through American border posts, seaports, and airports it would be significantly more costly and dangerous than the billions spent in the West African campaign. American support for the fight against Ebola in West Africa between 2014 and 2016 was ultimately a single-digit billions line item in a trillions of dollar budget. A medical quarantine of the United States would not only be a major federal expense, but would have a significant effect on gross domestic product and economic growth.

The relatively contained outbreaks close to their origin are also important for the development of medical remedies and vaccines. The WHO is now deploying a vaccine for Ebola that was first tested in the last months of the West African outbreak in the thousands of doses in Congo. Without international funds for fighting in West Africa or Congo Merck, the pharmaceutical giant who developed the vaccine, would not have been able to incentivized to do so, which would hamstring future responses whether the outbreak was in the developed world or the undeveloped world.

It is also in the long term interest of the United States that the developing be stable and prosperous world. Stable developing states are markets for American goods and services. Unstable ones are sources of not only misery and death, but dangerous pressures on the United States and its allies, the Syrian Refugee crisis being only the largest and most recent example. Civil strife has been simmering in Congo and among its neighbors for decades, the return of major conflict at the same time as an outbreak could be orders of magnitude deadlier than the 2013-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa which killed approximately eleven thousand people. Epidemics cause their own refugee crises, but combined with flight from conflict such an outbreak could be un-containable by current measures. Policy-makers in the United States and Europe have a good case for supporting medical aid to the rest of the world, both in crises and in times of relative calm. They simply need to make it.

Charles W. King

Assessment by American and Israeli intelligence agencies of the April 13th strikes against the chemical weapons facilities of Bashar Al Assad have revealed that the stikes did little to impede the regime's ability to use chemical weapons against its people. This prompts the question of what was the point of these strikes, and why has the United States, France, and United Kingdom not continued attacking Syrian facilities. The cessation of strikes suggests that their objective was not to render the Assad regime incapable of using chemical weapons, but a number of possible objectives remain. One is that the strike made the regime unwilling rather than unable to use chemical weapons in the future. Time will tell if the strikes did deter the future use of chemical weapons, but current indications are not encouraging. Even if Assad does not use chemical weapons again, that does not mean that deterrence was the intent, in total or in part, of strikes.

Being seen to done something, and something violent, in response the use of chemical weapons is important for the Trump Administration both at home and abroad. Abroad the United States needs to demonstrate that it’s longstanding threats of harsh treatment for any government that uses chemical weapons are credible. With little ability to implement harsher sanctions or further isolate the Syrian government, military strikes were the logical choice to demonstrate American resolve and ensure credibility. However, the relative ineffectiveness of the strikes dents this credibility somewhat.

The Trump Administration also has obvious domestic political motivations for using military force against Syria, it puts the Administration in direct contrast to their bête-noire, the administration of Barack Obama. Assad’s forces also used chemical weapons during the Obama Administration, crossing what that administration described at a “Red Line”. The Obama Administration was roundly criticized for its response to this line being crossed, which was to implement, through the United Nations, a disarmament program we now know to be ineffective.

Making foreign policy based on domestic political considerations is dangerous. Neither Woodrow Wilson nor Franklin Delano Roosevelt would have come to the aid of France and the U.K. if they had relied on the opinion of the American people. William McKinley was unable to resist the overwhelming push for war with Spain in 1898.

While the resulting victory in the Spanish-American War proved beneficial for the United States as it expanded its reach in the Caribbean and Western Pacific public opinion rarely coincides with good strategy. The First and Second World Wars are prime examples of when the United States had clear strategic interests but was prevented from acting on them by domestic politics.

At the end of World War Two Harry Truman ordered the use of atomic bombs against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which remain controversial to this day. Having advocated for its development and worked on producing atomic weapons, dozens of scientists signed a petition against the use of atomic bombs against people. Despite this, and the fervent belief of Generals like Curtis LeMay that the Japanese would surrender due to conventional bombing before an invasion was necessary, Truman chose to use the atomic bombs against Japanese cities.

Especially in democratic systems doing nothing can be extremely difficult, despite it often being the best way to secure long term strategic objectives. Frequently the premise that advisors are presented with is to recommend a course of action, which excludes the possibility of restraint. Policy-makers should not conflate restraint with inaction or indecision. Choosing not to act is a valid and important strategic choice that must be part of the full range of options for foreign policy.

Charles W. King

On April 13th, 2018, the Trump administration bombed a number sites in Syria in response to Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons in the ongoing Syrian Civil War. In the aftermath much has been made of the fact that the United States warned the Russian government that the strikes were incoming. In the current political climate in the U.S. this kind of coordination with Russia is being characterized in some quarters as further evidence in support of the allegations that the Trump presidential campaign colluded with Russia. Regardless of these allegations, the act of warning the Russian government of the April 13th strikes is not unusual. De-escalation procedures like this are common, and are a specific strategic choice that the United States and other have made in the past for good reason.

Throughout the Korean War and the Vietnam War both North Korean and North Vietnamese forces received substantial aid from the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union. Both sides maintained that American forces were not engaged with, killing, and being killed by Chinese and Russian forces. This was a fiction agreed upon by all sides, particularly in the air wars over Korea and Vietnam. Many of the pilots were Russian or Chinese, as were the crews and officers of much of North Korea’s and North Vietnam’s air defenses. The American, Chinese, and Soviet governments understood that if they admitted that their pilots were regularly engaged with forces of the opposing super-powers the conflicts would escalate from regional one to global, and likely nuclear, wars. Despite the intense competition between the world powers, this kind of escalation was not something they desired, and the mutually agreed upon fiction allowed that. A famous example of this is illustrated in the theatrical depiction of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Roger Donaldson’s Thirteen Days. An American pilot returns from taking pictures of missile sites in Cuba with what are clearly bullet holes in his aircraft, but having received instructions from the White House he jokingly tells his ground crew that he, “Ran into a flock of sparrows.” Admitting he had taken anti-aircraft fire would have precipitated a response that would have escalated the conflict just as the United States and Soviet Union were attempting to reign it in.

Warning rivals or even the targets of incoming attacks is also a long standing de-escalation practice, though not always a successful one. On July 22, 1946, the King David Hotel in Jerusalem was bombed. The southern wing of the hotel housed the central offices of the government of the British Mandate of Palestine, the target of the bombing. The attack was carried out by the Irgun, a right-wing militant zionist organization. Attempts were made by the Irgun to warn the British, but what happened remains controversial. What is for certain is that the hotel was not evacuated and ninety-one people were killed. The attempted warnings are nonetheless important for understanding the Irgun’s objectives. The bombing would doubtless be an escalation, but the target was the hotel, a symbol of British rule, rather than the people. By trying to mitigate the loss of life the Irgun attempted to escalate the conflict, but not too much. The destruction of building and other capital expenditures without killing the people who work there remains an important, if difficult practice in the conduct of warfare.

The decisions to inform the Russian government of incoming strikes against chemical weapons facilities in Syria is in keeping with a long-standing practice of de-escalation. Preventing the direct engagement between forces of two global powers in a warzone where they both possess a military presence is difficult but essential. The use of warnings to ensure that attacks destroy capital investments in things like weapons programs without loss of life is a feature of modern warfare along with precisions weapons and advanced surveillance. Warning the Russians of this particular attack demonstrates its limited objectives and the desire to prevent escalation to a conflict between the United States and the Russian Federation.

Charles W. King

At a recent speech on the state of the Russian Federation Russian President Vladimir Putin announced to the world a number of new nuclear weapons. These included not only a new, longer range, intercontinental ballistic missile, but also a long range nuclear torpedo and a cruise missile that is not only capable of carrying a nuclear warhead but uses a nuclear reaction as its method of propulsion. While these weapons may seem fantastical, neither is beyond the scope of current technology. The nuclear torpedo is simply the combination of existing technologies that are already being adapted for underwater drones, and is in fact a much simpler technical problem than what many Western drones are being designed to address. The nuclear powered cruise missile is technology the United States developed as far back as the 1950’s. Engine tests were performed, but not atmospheric flight tests for the same reason the program was ultimately scrapped; the large amount of radioactivity dispersed by the engine. Western defense officials will be wise to take Putin’s statement with some skepticism, it was part of a speech with primarily a domestic Russian audience, but it cannot be discounted that the Russian Federation is developing new strategic weapons.

The United States and the Russian Federation are both investing considerable sums into their strategic weapons, but the difference between the projects being developed demonstrates the differences in American and Russian priorities. The United States’ programs consist primarily of anti-missile technology, smaller & variable yield tactical warheads, and the modernization of existing stockpiles. These projects show that the United States is focusing on the threat of smaller nuclear powers like Iran and North Korea where regional instability increases the risk of conflict, and on the safety and reliability of aging nuclear weapons. These programs will cost the United State significant amounts of money, but they represent a desire to maintain existing deterrence with nuclear powers like Russia and China and increased capability to strike small hardened targets.

In contrast the Russian focus is on new delivery systems. The various capabilities of the three delivery systems mentioned in Putin’s speech are all designed to defeat Western defensive capabilities. They also reveal that there is a profound difference in perception between the U.S. and Russia. While the United States is attempting to maintain the Cold War status quo of Mutually Assured Destruction, Russian development of new delivery systems shows that they believe the status quo has changed significantly and they need new capabilities in order to maintain a credible second strike capacity. This cannot simply be brushed off as Russian paranoia or propaganda for domestic Russian consumption. This kind of investment, at a time when the Russian economy is struggling under sanctions, is indicative of Russian geopolitical concerns.

One of the keys to effective foreign policy and diplomatic relations is to understand that foreign countries have different perceptions of history and current events. The announcement of new delivery systems for nuclear warheads demonstrates that Russian policy makers have a starkly different assessment of the nuclear balance of power than their Western counterparts. No amount of Western assurances that the deployment of anti-ballistic missile systems to Poland, Romania, or South Korea will change this view, and attempting to do so would be futile. American policy makers must recognize Russian strategic concerns, then they will be able to effectively engage diplomatically.

Charles W. King

The upcoming Block V and later versions of the Virginia-class attack submarine (SSN) will eventually replace all of the guided missile capacity lost by the retirement of the Navy’s four guided missile submarines (SSGNs), but each SSN will possess less than a third of the missile tubes of an Ohio-class SSGN. The Navy's Tactical Submarine Evolution Plan, released this week, will take advantage of existing production pipelines and produce a vessel with a similar capacity to the Ohio-class SSGNs, which were retrofitted from aging Ohio-class SSBNs. The Plan calls for the purchase of four brand new SSGNs based on the Columbia-class. Using the existing production lines of the upcoming Columbia-class of ballistic missile submarines will save the significant expense and delays of standing up new production lines to construct new or retrofit old boats.

The nature of naval vessels, in size and complication, means that the production of the first vessel in a class can be orders of magnitude slower and more expensive than the final vessel. The cost savings typical of high volume production of smaller products like cars, tanks, or jet planes is difficult to achieve constructing naval vessels, especially with the size of orders typical of many classes of vessel. The USS Columbia will be the first SSBN laid down for the U.S. Navy since 1997 when it begins construction in 2021. The Navy plans to begin decommissioning the Ohio-class in 2029. Between 2021 and 2035 Electric Boat and Newport News will construct only twelve Columbia-class SSBNs, which along with the remaining Ohio-class boats will fulfill the Navy’s SSBN needs for decades. When the Navy starts construction of new vessels to replace the Columbia-class decades in the future is will incur significant costs and delays doing so. Extending the lifetime of the Columbia’s production lines preserves that experience and efficiency.

There are some vessels for which the loss of that expertise and efficiency is too significant for the Navy to be able to afford to ever cease construction of vessels of that class. Aircraft carriers are so large and complex that while it is possible to reasonably argue that the United States does not need eleven active supercarriers the costs incurred by attempting to start production of such a vessel from scratch demonstrates that it is more cost effective to maintain more active supercarriers than for it to ever stop building them. The Royal Navy’s first supercarrier, the H.M.S. Queen Elizabeth, began sea trials earlier this year. The Queen Elizabeth-class is slated to consist of only two ships, but has taken up a significant portion of the Royal Navy’s shipbuilding budget for a decade, and the Royal Navy’s capacity in other classes has suffered as a result. If the U.S. Navy were to cease building supercarriers it might be reasonable to expect that it might not begin constructing another for fifty years, which would be nearing the end of the operational lifespan of the U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford, commissioned this year.

The requirements of maintaining a navy that can credibly project force and intervene globally is a complex strategic problem. It requires not only the logistical capacity to supply and base fleets all over the world, but it requires looking decades in to the future to assess shipbuilding needs. The U.S. Navy’s recent decisions to prioritize Virginia and Columbia class submarines may make its stated goal of a 350 ship fleet further away, but it represents a decision to maintain capabilities that will otherwise atrophy and to leverage benefits of existing successful and promising platforms over untested ones. What to do about future classes of Cruisers and Destroyers is a difficult question that must be addressed with the same forward looking and production-conscious approach.