It’s Time to Clean Up the U.S. Navy’s Image Problem
The victor in strategic competition triumphs by impressing important audiences—by making them believers in its combat prowess relative to its rivals.
Image mismanagement, then, wrongfoots American seafarers for peacetime strategic competition, when perceptions—rather than missiles slamming into hulls—distinguish victors from vanquished. The navy must solve its material problems, lest it underperform its potential in the critical theater—the popular mind.
James Holmes is Professor of Strategy at the Naval War College and coauthor of Red Star over the Pacific (second edition, forthcoming 2018). The views voiced here are his alone.
Image: Flickr.
