It is odd that the former Chief of Naval Operations John Richardson (CNO, 2011-2015), was the force behind the resurrection of the book, The Rules of the Game (1996), by Andrew Gordon. The book went out of print before the United States Naval Institute Press republished it in 2013. The book, which examines the Royal Navy between the battles of Trafalgar and Jutland, has several lessons that the CNO deemed important enough to merit his intercession to bring it back into print, and he discussed these in his May 2017 remarks following a presentation at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
According to Richardson, "…there are a lot of interpretations about what the major messages of that book are…." For Richardson, the primary takeaway is that there is a tension between trusting a commander's initiative and understanding of the mission and the new technological ability to micromanage those commanders from Washington.
For many other readers, the book’s chief message is the difference between "ratcatchers" and "regulators." “Ratcatcher" was coined by Admiral of the Fleet Sir Walter Cowan. He was talking about his then battlecruiser senior, Admiral David Beatty, and his "ratcatching instinct for war." In short, Cowan deemed Beatty the consummate warrior. This view was in marked contrast to his opinion of Admiral of the Fleet John Rushworth Jellicoe, a quintessential "regulator." Regulators were those officers who achieved seniority during the years of peacetime, and from too much technological change. For regulators, this change became all-absorbing and minimized the primacy of warfighting and warrior admirals.
Gordon's point, ironically missed by Richardson, was that the Royal Navy, which history judges to have achieved a victory at Jutland, went into the war with an entirely too heavy upper tier of "regulators" in the flag ranks, and the consequence was the catastrophic loss of six capital ships.
It is curious that it seems that neither Richardson nor it seems, other Navy leaders were interested in developing ratcatchers. Rather, like the Royal Navy in 1914, our Navy has developed, since the end of the Cold War, an entire generation of regulators.
Does Anyone Read History?
Vice Admiral Robert Lee Ghormley served as Commander, South Pacific Area, at the beginning of the United State's involvement in World War II. Ghormley, who rose to this position, at least in part, through his relationship with the President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, is judged by history to have been an ineffective combat leader. A review of Ghormley's record makes one thing plain: He was anything but a warrior before the war. Instead, his career was replete with political appointments. Ultimately, it appears that he was assigned as the naval commander in the Guadalcanal area, not because the Navy was looking for proven warriors, but because he had "earned" the job by his good, loyal, and political service, and by having the right sponsorship.
When the Navy undertook major operations in the South Pacific, with Marines landing at Guadalcanal in 1942, Ghormley quickly demonstrated himself to be insufficient to the task. He was overly cautious, detached, pessimistic, and completely indecisive. He was the definition of a peacetime admiral and unsuited to operational-level war at sea. In October 1942, at the height of the operations, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz replaced him with Vice Admiral William F. "Bull" Halsey Jr., who quickly and effectively took control. Halsey, unlike Ghormley, was a decisive, aggressive, competent, and battle-trained carrier admiral.
The greatest, American fighting admirals of World War II are universally agreed upon: Nimitz, Halsey, and Raymond A. Spruance, the hero of Midway. None of these admirals could be described as a political admiral. Ghormley was a regulator. Spruance, Nimitz, Halsey were ratcatchers.
In the past, there may have been time for the replacement of regulators with warriors, but today, this approach is unacceptable. With the advent of hypersonic weapons and a precipitously declining number of U.S. combat ships, each of which takes years to build and costs billions of dollars, we have neither the time nor the industrial base to support this sort of luxury. We are not going to be able to slowly build our way to victory, as we did in World War II when the Japanese were completely unable to keep up with American industry's ability to produce, quite literally, 151 aircraft carriers.
The Last Ratcatchers
This is not to say that we have not had our share of warrior admirals since World War II. Certainly, during the Cold War, where there was still room for ratcatchers. High on that list one could find both Vice Admiral Henry C. "Hank" Mustin and Admiral James A. "Ace" Lyons Jr. Unfortunately, these and those like them quickly disappeared following the end of the Cold War, and figures like Lyons were soon derided as utterly anachronistic. Later, Admiral Stan Arthur, a Vietnam-era warrior, and beloved figure in the aviation community, fell afoul of then CNO Admiral Jeremy Boorda's intensely political expedients and was prevented from assignment to Pacific Command. Arthur, a warrior of significant fame, was over his head when it came to the hard politics of Washington. It was not what he was about. He and other ratcatchers were quickly rendered vestigial, including leaders like, Admirals John T. (Chick) Hayward, Joseph Metcalf, and Al Konetzni.
They are all gone, and now it is virtually impossible to cite one in recent times apart from, perhaps, Admiral Scott H. Swift. Swift commanded the Pacific Fleet between 2015 and 2018. In February 2018, an article by Swift was published entitled "Master the Art of Command and Control." (https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2018/february/master-art-command-and-control). What was plain from both Swift's reputation in the fleet and this article, was that here was a four-star admiral whose head was in the game. Swift was actively and persistently thinking about fighting the next war. Seeing a senior admiral concerned with warfighting, rather than the corporatism that marks today’s regulators was remarkable, inspirational, and, from the fleet’s perspective, completely unexpected.
Unfortunately, Swift never went beyond the Pacific Fleet. While he was widely considered to be in line to assume command of the Indo-Pacific Theater, his rise was terminally impacted by two collisions, one involving USS FITZGERALD (DDG-62) and the other in USS JOHN S. MCCAIN (DDG- 56), in the 7th Fleet operating area in 2017. The result of these collisions was an embarrassing disclosure that although mistakes had been made on each ship, enormous and systemic failures had contributed significantly. The fires of these collisions blazed out of control for some time, until the CNO Richardson ensured that every operational commander from the ship’s captains to Swift were caused to fall on their swords.
Did Swift have anything to do with the lack of training, maintenance, and personnel that contributed to these disasters? No. Did Richardson wish to make examples to calm the foment? He did. No one in Washington - those responsible for the systemic failures - was told to go home. The regulators were all saved. The last ratcatcher, however, was sacrificed.
How We Got Here
Not many have read The Rules of the Game. Instead, starting in the early 1990s, the Fleet was force-fed Steven R. Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It was the end of the Cold War, and the Navy was beginning to understand that a "peace dividend" was expected. In response, the Navy began to adopt civilian business practices, under the assumption that what worked to make business more efficient and effective surely would be good for the Navy.
This effort led to initiatives inspired by corporate methodologies, such as Total Quality Management (TQM) and by the early 2000s, the Navy Enterprise. For example, by 1997, under Admiral John Nathman's leadership of the Fleet Readiness Enterprise, the Navy started embracing an "enterprise" approach, aimed at empowering stakeholders across commands to collaborate holistically—mirroring business practices aimed at optimizing resources and outcomes. This shift focused on readiness at reduced costs, a concept rooted in civilian efficiency models rather than traditional military hierarchies.
Not to impugn Covey's work or the Navy's desire to achieve new efficiencies, but there are fundamental differences between businesses, driven entirely by "shareholder capitalism" and an organization aimed at the level of necessary self-destruction required to achieve victory. Business is designed to grow and perpetuate itself at all costs. The military is designed to degrade itself as required to win. These ultimate goals are different.
Navy leaders began to eschew traditional military leadership or what might be called a warrior mentality. Instead, Navy leaders drank the new Kool-Aid of corporatism wholesale. It was believed that the way ahead was to induct the sort of officers into the flag ranks would who understand where the Navy was, and had to go, in a way that ratcatchers simply did not.
The Coin of the Realm
In 2004, the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Vernon Clark, spoke before the students at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. There is no transcript of this speech. However, students in the class reported a particularly illuminating discussion during the post-speech Q&A.
The class included a sizable number of officers who were fresh off the Operation Iraqi Freedom battlefields, including officers from the Army, Marine Corps, and Air Force. An Army officer asked the admiral why there were so few post-command-at-sea naval officers in the class (there were fewer than five in a class of several hundred). How did the Admiral expect to fill the flag ranks if the best and brightest weren't represented at the Navy's own war college? In response, the admiral replied "Warfighters are a dime a dozen. I can get their input and ideas anywhere. In the flag wardroom, I need executives who can help me run this corporation and make good business decisions."
In case you don't think that the view of the CNO doesn't matter, you are sadly mistaken. When the board formed to choose the year's admiral selection concludes, the list of selectees is immediately sent to the CNO. The CNO then annotates, next to each name, the exact number of stars that that officer will achieve during the remainder of his or her career.
To rise to the four-star level, an officer must go through certain "gates," and those jobs are few. For a surface warfare officer to get to four stars, he must have command of a carrier strike group - but not just any carrier strike group. He must command a deploying strike group. Roughly eight surface warfare officers are chosen for flag, each year. Of these, only four will get a strike group. Of those four, only two will deploy with the group. And that's just the first of three gates. They also need to command 5th, 7th, or 6th Fleet, and then they need to have a four-star operational (warfighting) command; e.g., Commander and Chief Naval Forces Europe or Commander, Pacific Fleet. To get an officer though those gates, you must know which of those new, one-star admirals is going to be allowed to even get to those gates. The future is known on day one, based upon the hand of the Chief of Naval Operations. Admiral Clark, and those after him, picked corporatists.
Admiral Mullen Leads the Way
From August 2003 to September 2007, Admiral Miichael Mullen was first the Vice Chief of Naval Operations and then the Chief of Naval Operations. He was utterly steeped in the corporatist philosophies of his predecessor, Admiral Clark. The unusual thing about Mullen was that he came from a background of naval personnel. He was well acquainted with manipulation of the system, and he was also one of those admirals who ensured that his “people” received special treatment. If you were a “Mullenite” as they came to be known, you got special treatment. If you didn’t get that special treatment, the Admiral would personally call the detailer on your behalf. The detailers quickly learned this and began to reflexively give the Mullenites what they wanted. Soon, his loyal followers began to flood the flag ranks, and they were virtually all corporatists of the most virulent sort. Even when he became Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he made it his business to manipulate the Navy system to ensure that his people kept moving up and proliferating.
By 2011, the Navy’s flag ranks were clogged with Mullenites, so much so that it became considered a blight. Then Mullen retired, and only then could something be done. Admiral Jonathan Greenert became the CNO in September 2011. Immediately afterwards, he called a meeting of every admiral in the Navy. He told them that they had all done wonderfully, but that there were far too many admirals (and far too many Mullenites) and that many of them would soon be asked to retire.
The cutting began, but there were so many Mullen acolytes that the CNO had to be told by his staff that he had to stop, because like it or not, you couldn’t retire all of Mullen’s men and women without fundamentally damaging the enterprise.
Mullen carried Clark’s obsession with corporatism to the next level. Cutting Mullenites only left other, newer Corporatist. Every smart officer knew how to make flag in this new era, and nothing has changed since then. The blight only spreads.
The Net Result
The Navy's flag ranks are entirely populated by officers who read the handwriting on the wall, post-Cold War. You don't get to the top by being anything other than fiercely competitive, ambitious, and smart. So, today, we have a flag wardroom of "yes" men and women, all of whom are risk-averse, and none of whom got where they are by being like Lyons, Swift, or Arthur.
The Navy bristles when the current administration makes noise suggesting a winnowing of the flag ranks. Today’s admirals got to where they are by going along with any political expedient. Not all, but most share responsibility in the current, troubled state of the Navy. And while the Administration is making explicit noise about DEI-friendly admirals, that is simply a symptom of the larger problem of the rise of “regulators,” and the death of “ratcatchers.”
As for Admiral Lisa Franchetti, recently relieved as CNO, that was the wind that shook the barley in the field. But you can’t make the change that needs to be made in fits and starts. Rather you need to pull the entire temple down. Of course, today’s admirals are scared. Of course they bristle. Franchetti is merely a symptom of what Clark and Mullen wrought; a symbol of what needs to be changed.
If you talked to Spruance, Halsey, or Nimitz – who grounded his ship as a young commanding officer, so he wouldn't have made flag in the first place if he was in today's Navy – Admirals who understood that we wouldn't always be so profoundly at peace - I'm confident that they would tell you that we dodged a bullet when we put Admirals like Ghormley into command.
No one loves the warrior until the enemy is at the gate, and in today's Navy, no one worries about the fight. They only worry about getting another star, and they know you don't do that by rocking the boat.
Captain Furay deployed in every tour and to operational areas in the Middle East, Western and Eastern Asia, Europe, and South America while serving on numerous cruiser and destroyer-type ships. He commanded USS O’Kane (DDG-77) and USS Cape St. George (CG-71) as Air Warfare Commander. He has multiple Pentagon tours and attained a master’s from the Harvard Kennedy School.
