Potomac Pepper Strategy

May 18th, 2025

When USS Potomac (Como. Downes commanding) put Marines and Sailors ashore near Kuala Batu in 1832, it was not to start a war. Rather, it was to stop one from starting. And most importantly, to protect US interests (in this case, the pepper trade). And, while there were some casualties, they succeeded: the pepper trade continued and Potomac sailed off, US interests protected.

Earlier this week, a number of really smart guys I have the pleasure to know - all retired Naval and Army officers - exchanged e-mails expressing what might be called deep frustration with the the Navy’s inability to seemingly get much of anything right, starting with the Naval Academy and working up from there, and asked the simple question: why is it broken?

I submit that this has several parts - but at the root is the National Security Act of 1947: what the NSA did was suborn the Navy to the Army. It wasn’t called that, of course, but in reality the Department of Defense is the Department of the Army plus a few steroids. 

There was a conscious decision that we needed to be ready to fight World War II again, call it World War IIB. Instead of Germany and Japan it would be the Soviet Union, but it would still be the great Eurasian land mass, it would still require packing up all sorts of gear and hundreds of thousand (perhaps millions) of soldiers, and getting them “over there,” and it would be long and huge and complicated. And the basic ideas, the forms of WWII, were not simply kept in place, they were formalized. The major Combatant Commands (PACOM, EUCOM, LANTCOM) were modifications of what we created for WWII; plus we formalized a Joint Staff, and a combined civilian structure - all with strong Army - not Navy - leanings. And the Army became a large, standing force, and then nearly doubled with the creation of the Air Force.

It’s worth noting that President Eisenhower later suggested that this was “too expensive” an idea. His assertion of the need for a "nuclear umbrella,” and theater nuclear weapons was an explicit recognition that conventional forces, no matter how large, were not adequate to deter a great power and there was little reason to believe that the conditions that allowed the gigantic buildup of forces immediately before and during WWII would ever again exist, particularly with nuclear weapons in the mix.

As for the Army, the thing was - and IS - the Army (and Air Force) are garrison forces. That is, when let out of garrison, doctrinally, the Army and Air Force go to fight a war, that is how they are organized. They are tactically - battle - focused organizations.

The Navy was the opposite - it only really existed forward ("out of garrison" in Army terms) to establish and maintain sea control where the nation needed it, and, when applicable, put countries back in their boxes. The Navy’s job was (and actually still is) to prevent small wars from turning into big ones, to, maintain the peace, to keep people in their box, or push them back in. IF that fails the Navy then gains sea control and provides an entre where we can put the Army ashore so that the Army can fight the war.

Let me restate that: in a very real sense, the Navy does not fight the war; it prevents them and, failing that, it sets conditions so that the Army and Air Force fight the war. That, at least, is how the services are, in their most fundamental sense, organized.

Because of this need to get folks back in the box - to serve the greater needs of the nation, Naval officers of the 1800s and early 1900s who succeeded were all guys with a grasp of “strategy,” they were always faced with a rough - rarely if ever specific - goal, and always limited ways and means - and they had to develop a plan to make things work. (Como. Downes’ orders from President Jackson were to “negotiate with any government if present, and inflict chastisement on any band of lawless pirates.”) The result was that the Navy developed a series of very good strategists. If you weren’t a good strategist you would get yourself over-committed and you soon found yourself relieved. The really good Navy captains found ugly situations and made them go away; they most certainly did not let them escalate to the point that a large invasion force need be sent. There were some exceptions, but for the most part, small problems were tamped own and kept from becoming big problems.

All that was killed by the NSA of 1947, which made the Navy - the Navy staff in particular - think its task was to resupply Europe, and to a lesser extent Asia, to regenerate WWII. It made senior Navy officers think in terms of participating in the joint fight, not naval operations but joint operations, wherein the Army and Air Force would also participate, and usually lead.

Goldwater Nichols “sealed the coffin,” making promotion dependent on that Joint line of thought. 

The result is that we now have flag officers who view the Navy as (to quote a retired 4 star admiral) “a force provider to the Joint Force Commander.” And so, in the last 40+ years, after the last of the WWII generation faded away in the early 1980s, the Navy has become lost.

What we have now - we, the nation - is a whole raft of admirals who are “joint” but who don’t really understand what a Navy does. There is no better a demonstration of this fact than in the weird silence among Navy Admirals in clearly defending the aircraft carrier. At best we hear half-baked answers from the overwhelming majority of them. 

When we do hear some sort of defense, it’s usually some quibbling about the technology of defensive systems and the development of new tactics, which misses the main point: aircraft carriers are about aircraft. If the argument is that aircraft carriers are obsolete, then what you’re really saying is that aircraft are obsolete.

If a mobile airfield can be targeted, my guess is that a fixed airfield can also be targeted. Whiteman AFB is pretty much in the same spot it was in 1942. What’s the plan to move it out of harms way? What is the plan to clear the land within say 10 miles of Whiteman of small suicide drones? They’ll be AI enabled and autonomous… Do we have a means to defeat them? Do we have a means of defending every dispersal airbase in the US - and $100 million aircraft - from AI enabled suicide drones that cost $2,000 a pop?

As for war plans - whether real or a war game, go back to the top: strategy needs clear thinkers. No strategy - not one in the last 6,000 years - has succeeded when it wasn’t  clear what the goal was. The leadership during Vietnam, during OEF, during OIF, and during another dozen operations over the years, have rarely conducted an operation with a single, clear, unchanging end in mind. Instead, they normally started with multiple goals, then added goals, then changed precedence, and then redefined. And not once did anyone ever come up with a definitive statement of the acceptable cost. 

None of those plans - those strategies (the words strategy and strategic should be illegal inside the Beltway) - were going to succeed except by monstrous expenditures of time and manpower and material - and even then, they usually didn’t. But they endure. Ask yourself how much we should be spending, in time and money, in Somalia? 

And, there’s the question of technology: AI, hypersonic missiles, Cyber, etc.

All of them are important, all of them need to be pursued. As the world’s largest economy and greatest power, we need to understand and employ this technology.

But let’s be clear: technology does not win wars. 

The US had - and still has - overwhelming technology. In Afghanistan the US enjoyed precision weapons, and “dominant battle-space awareness,” and “focused logistics,” and all those wonderful inside-the-beltway terms of art. Did the Taliban have better technology? Does Al Shabab? Are hypersonic weapons and AI enabled cyber going to bring them to their knees, tame the Hindu Kush?

Here’s a quiz: Name a war that was definitively decided by technology. Alex Roland, writing in the Foreign Policy Research Institute summed it up nicely: “Technology shapes warfare, not war.”

Just a few weeks ago we marked the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. The inestimable Col Harry Summers, whose study of the Vietnam War remains one of the clearest works analyzing that conflict, captured it perfectly. Everyone has heard the story: Col. Summers was leading a negotiating team in Hanoi, 1975 - a half a century ago. He commented to one of the North Vietnamese, Col. Tu, that: 

“You never defeated us on the battlefield.” 

Col. Tu replied: “That may be so, but it is also irrelevant.”

Simply, tactics don’t win wars. Operational art doesn’t win wars. Perfect intelligence doesn’t win wars. Logistics don't win wars. Technology doesn’t win wars. All are of use, all can be critical in winning battles or campaigns. But they don’t win wars.

Strategy and will, not tactics and not technology - win wars.

Returning to the top of the essay, the one consistent lesson of US combat operations, US foreign policy, and US national security policy over the past 50 to 60 years: we stink at strategy. Let’s pursue better technology. And better training. And all the other things we need. But also, let’s spend some time on strategy. Start with this: the goal needs to be crystal clear.

And maybe the NSA of 1947 needs to be reexamined.