DEFEATED BY VICTORY: The Modern United States Navy in Retrospect

This dissertation examines the transformation of the United States Navy from the world’s largest and most powerful sea force in the history of the world in 1990 to a shell of its former self in only thirty years. The funding the Department of the Navy received during the Cold War to fight the Soviet threat all but dried up and as a result, policy was altered to face the new fiscal reality. A smaller, more agile, and flexible force was envisioned to fill a support role by projecting power ashore rather than fighting on the open ocean with a peer competitor. To do this, the Navy envisioned a naval force structure to include several new and smaller ship classes that would have the ability to operate in shallow coastal waters referred to as the littorals. A massive reduction in the number of personnel needed to man this new fleet contributed greatly to the struggles the Navy largely inflicted upon itself. After decades of wasteful spending on ineffective ships, struggles with recruiting and retention coupled with an increase of administrative burdens on an ever-shrinking force called more often to intervene in hotspots around the world, the Navy is ripe for restructuring now that it has entered an era of great power competition. Using a wide variety of primary and secondary sources from the National Archives and the Department of the Navy, along with scholarly works on the different topics addressed in the study, this research argues that the Navy has made a series of missteps in nearly every aspect of its operations since the end of the Cold War. Because of these mistakes, the Navy is at a greater risk to enemy attack and challenges to its sea power than at any point since the end of the Second World War.