JD Work@HostileSpectrum
One of the key underlying operational realities undercutting the “failure to plan” strawman argument being thrown around, is that planners believed allied and partner statements about their doctrine and capabilities. Very senior flag and general officers sat in expensive headquarters for decades and talked about joint air defense, naval escort, and “niche essential” investment for CBR response or mine warfare missions as qualitative offset for clearly inadequate quantitative force structure. Regional and beyond theatre escalation scenarios were therefore bounded by declared intent to provide sovereign contributions under future conflict contingencies, should an adversary threaten national interests such as vital sea lanes of communication, or population centric counter-value attacks.
Yet those partner destroyers or even frigates could not sail, nor more than a token handful of aircraft be deployed for defensive combat air patrol, nor air defense assets engage threat systems essentially unchanged since mid 1944. It is a shocking realization of military weakness, where all the fine talk of investments for burden sharing and strategic autonomy are shown to be meaningless in the field.
Rather than face this absolute abdication of longstanding assertions and jealously demanded primacy, it is easier to craft a narrative in which the USG is somehow at fault for not carrying all aspects of all objectives across an adversary initiated crisis, immediately within the first days of operations executed with successful surprise despite an enemy literally prepared for the fight. Ignoring excuses in earlier failing to effectively address the Red Sea blockade that real force commitment needed to be reserved in case of a Hormuz threat. Or that the current threat picture is a mere fraction of what had been wargamed time and again, after effectively eliminating enemy surface action and submarine threats whilst extensively degrading ASBM / AShCM SSM arsenals and kill chains. To say nothing in the silence of cyberspace.
There are times when the military instrument is absolutely necessary for states that depend on global supply chains, and international presence, for their core economic foundations. The most telling thing emerging from the Iran war is the extent to which it was assumed that American power carried this for the West, and that any other capability need only be suitable for parade ground or fleet week review as a symbolic means of propping up the illusion of multilateral force posture.
The collapse of war risk insurance is downstream of this recognition, both in the absence of effective forces and the likely unspoken but cascading distrust of sovereign last resort assurances offered anywhere but from the US Treasury. Even with the enemy conceding their attempted Strait closure has failed, declaring they will not molest global trade so as to reverse escalatory pressure, the loss of confidence is not magically repaired. And other enemies are watching, as this says as much about pressure on a future REFORGER like deployment or unrestricted commerce warfare in the Pacific, as it does about a single maritime choke point.
