Lisa Franchetti is trying to break a paradigm. Admiral Franchetti is the newish chief of naval operations (CNO), or seniormost uniformed U.S. naval officer. What she says matters. Judging from her just-released “Navigation Plan,” or policy directive to the U.S. Navy, the CNO has come to believe that the Navy’s strategy, operational doctrine, and fleet design have fallen behind discomfiting new realities. Realities such as a domineering China that brandishes the armed might to make its weight felt throughout the Western Pacific. And she’s right to be disquieted.
To prosper the service must come to terms with the new normal. No longer is U.S. maritime supremacy a given. It has to be fought for—and against daunting odds.
Adapting to new times means learning to play defense. The Navigation Plan designates “nontraditional sea denial” as one of nine “key capabilities” needed to get the U.S. Navy ready for war by 2027, the deadline set by CNO Franchetti. Sea denial is a strategy of the weaker combatant. Shifting toward it portends wrenching cultural change for the U.S. Navy, a fighting force steeped in the lore of offense at sea. No one—not even the biggest of bosses—can simply ordain that an institution with a proud history of commanding the sea reorient its fleet design and operational methods toward denying a stronger antagonist maritime command.
Bureaucratic politics doesn’t work that way.
The CNO may find that instituting what amounts to a cultural revolution in the service is easier said than done. That’s because bureaucratic institutions are like machines. They exist to mass-produce the same repertoire of outputs over and over again. With machinelike efficiency come ingrained worldviews—attitudes that resist being modified when the times and circumstances change around the organization. Worldviews are stubborn things. They tend to persist even after the need to change course becomes plain. In short, bureaucracies do not readily reinvent themselves even when top leadership mandates change.
In fact, it often takes a trauma to shatter prevailing practices and habits of mind, sentiment, and deed—compelling the people constituting the organization to revise their practices to fit new circumstances. It takes a Pearl Harbor, or a 9/11.
It’s easy to lampoon bureaucracy for being ungainly and slow. Oftentimes it is. But something more........