John Phe­lan Will Be a Strong Navy Sec­re­tary

John Phelan Will Be a Strong Navy Secretary

John Phe­lan Will Be a Strong Navy Sec­re­tary

The president’s nom­i­nee is the right man for the job.

US Navy carriers Ford, Eisenhower in eastern Mediterranean

Through­out Amer­i­can his­to­ry, an aura has sur­round­ed Navy sec­re­taries like in no oth­er ser­vice. Although the entire joint force mat­ters, look­ing back, it’s dif­fi­cult to imme­di­ate­ly name an Army or Air Force sec­re­tary who proved as trans­for­ma­tive as the great­est civil­ian lead­ers of Amer­i­can sea pow­er.

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s nom­i­nee for the posi­tion, busi­ness­man John Phe­lan, has not yet under­gone the rit­u­al sen­a­to­r­i­al grilling, but we know enough of his strengths to con­clude he would serve his nation with dis­tinc­tion. As a co-founder of suc­cess­ful invest­ment com­pa­nies, Phe­lan under­stands how to cul­ti­vate tal­ent and fresh thinking—resources des­per­ate­ly need­ed in today’s Navy, which too often seals itself off from both. 

A British naval offi­cer, quot­ed in The Papers of Admi­ral Sir John Fish­er, once reflect­ed: “If the Navy is to be abreast of the times, it must be turned inside out every 50 years, and the per­son­nel recon­struct­ed from the very foun­da­tion.” Phe­lan, a polit­i­cal out­sider not teth­ered to hide­bound tra­di­tions, is well-posi­tioned to do just that. If con­firmed, he might even prove as impact­ful a Navy sec­re­tary as some of his most dis­tin­guished pre­de­ces­sors.

Jose­phus Daniels fathered a pro­gres­sivism in naval edu­ca­tion and train­ing that trans­formed the branch, bring­ing com­mon sense about tal­ent and mer­it to a qua­si-aris­to­crat­ic estab­lish­ment. Then there are Claude Swan­son and Frank Knox: We owe much of Amer­i­can naval readi­ness before and dur­ing World War II to their far-sight­ed polit­i­cal acu­men. Decades before Paul Nitze nego­ti­at­ed nuclear arms con­trol agree­ments with the Sovi­ets, he served ably as Navy sec­re­tary, improv­ing qual­i­ty of ser­vice and rais­ing pay for com­man­ders. In the 1980s, John Lehman fash­ioned a com­pre­hen­sive naval strat­e­gy that off­set Sovi­et ground forces with a dom­i­nant fleet offshore—helping Pres­i­dent Ronald Rea­gan win the Cold War.

The glob­al role and nation­al neces­si­ty of Amer­i­can sea pow­er made such pre­scient and ener­getic lead­ers mat­ter. Still, doubts about the Navy’s util­i­ty have been around since America’s found­ing, which is why the impor­tance of naval forces to nation­al secu­ri­ty and pros­per­i­ty has so often need­ed an explic­it defense. In the Fed­er­al­ist Papers, Alexan­der Hamil­ton advo­cat­ed for the cre­ation of a strong navy, and his argu­ments became more urgent near the end of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry in jus­ti­fy­ing the grow­ing costs of a blue-water fleet. It’s impor­tant for the Amer­i­can pub­lic to under­stand why a strong sec­re­tary of the naval ser­vices mat­ters so much for their secu­ri­ty, econ­o­my, and way of life. 

Naval pow­er is not only a nec­es­sary mil­i­tary instru­ment of deter­rence (both nuclear and con­ven­tion­al) and off­shore pow­er pro­jec­tion, but an instru­ment for eco­nom­ic and even diplo­mat­ic pow­er. “You have no idea how much it con­tributes to the gen­er­al polite­ness and pleas­ant­ness of diplo­ma­cy when you have a lit­tle qui­et armed force in the back­ground,” quipped George Ken­nan in 1946. He like­ly had in mind the plains of Europe, but his insight applies equal­ly to the waves of Asia or those sur­round­ing Cen­tral Amer­i­ca.

As for eco­nom­ic pow­er, only the Navy can secure far­away trade lanes, fish­eries and strate­gic ener­gy reserves. A strong Amer­i­can Navy assures not only that we can­not be choked out eco­nom­i­cal­ly, but that, if need­ed, we can choke any­one who threat­ens us (our adver­saries, well aware of this, are work­ing fever­ish­ly to build their own naval forces). If the Unit­ed States needs to deter an ene­my by means of eco­nom­ic war­fare, the Navy sec­re­tary ought to know some­thing about glob­al eco­nom­ic flows, as Phe­lan undoubt­ed­ly does.

Great Britain built its empire on the strength of its Navy, as its states­men well knew. In 1925, one Baron Redes­dale declared: “To secure the great road of the sea for its own peo­ple and to refuse it to its enemies—that, and not the fight­ing of great naval actions, is the pri­ma­ry and essen­tial func­tion of a Fleet.”

The neces­si­ty of endur­ing­ly dom­i­nant naval pow­er is a mes­sage that a civil­ian sec­re­tary must deliv­er to the Amer­i­can peo­ple, who can be skep­ti­cal about the ben­e­fits of robust mil­i­tary pow­er. But the sec­re­tary must also stand up to defense con­trac­tors to ensure Amer­i­cans’ tax dol­lars aren’t wast­ed. On that score, Phe­lan has the expe­ri­ence and grav­i­tas need­ed. Who is bet­ter equipped to under­stand pro­cure­ment con­tracts and stand up to the titans of ship­build­ing and weapons devel­op­ment: career naval offi­cers, or some­one who has mas­tered mar­kets and best­ed com­peti­tors?

Phelan’s grav­i­tas would also come in handy when deal­ing with Con­gress. The uni­formed leader of the Navy, the chief of naval oper­a­tions, often needs help on that front. A uni­formed Army chief of staff could like­ly con­vince Con­gress to raise troops in times of dan­ger, but it takes a Navy sec­re­tary to make cogent argu­ments to sus­tain naval pow­er in peri­ods of rel­a­tive peace.

Final­ly, naval lead­er­ship is a poten­tial dri­ver of much-need­ed coher­ence in pol­i­cy for­mu­la­tion, exe­cu­tion, and indeed, the entire dis­parate nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment. Very few gov­ern­ment offi­cials can take in so many facets, but a busi­ness leader may be able to.

The sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion has brought a renewed com­mit­ment to the Mon­roe Doc­trine, which holds that the U.S. will not tol­er­ate inter­fer­ence by for­eign pow­ers in its hemi­sphere. Amer­i­can naval pow­er, well-man­aged and strate­gi­cal­ly deployed, will be key to ful­fill­ing that com­mit­ment. In this moment, a strong Navy sec­re­tary is required, and John Phe­lan is the man for the job.

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