Pop quiz: look at this photograph of USS Green Bay (LPD 20), one of the U.S. Navy’s premier amphibious transports, making port in Pearl Harbor late last month. Now look at Green Bay’s rust-streaked hull through the eyes of a friend or foe of America. Will such imagery inspire confidence among allies, partners, or friends reliant on the U.S. armed forces to defend them against the wretched hive of scum and villainy? Or will foes be entertained?

In all likelihood allies, partners, and friends will blanch in horror while antagonists double over with glee. A successful strategic competitor convinces partners it wants to woo and antagonists it wants to daunt that there is no better friend and no worse enemy than its fighting forces. It essays armed persuasion knowing that peacetime strategic competition is virtual war. It’s a war for perceptions. The victor is the contestant that persuades others it would win a fight should the balloon go up.

Allies take heart in promises from a doughty friend. Adversaries stand down rather than undertake a forlorn hope.

The look of a fighting force can be decisive in the war for perceptions. Visuals constitute the only way to gauge capability short of an actual exchange of fire. The competitor that projects an image of competence, professionalism, and élan tends to prevail in peacetime engagements. The competitor that projects incompetence, a no-care attitude, or both tends to lose. That’s why we in Mr. Reagan’s U.S. Navy took joy in mocking the Soviet Navy when pictures of its rustbuckets appeared in the press. Photos showed who was the likely winner.

Keeping up appearances, then, is critical. As a youngster in a high-profile ship of war I chafed constantly at the importance the silly oldtimers comprising the chain of command lavished on corrosion control. With the wisdom of youth we pointed out that metal and saltwater coexist uneasily under the best of circumstances. Rust is mankind’s eternal enemy. It encrusts metal when a vessel ingests seawater into its innards to cool machinery and weapons, supply the fire main with firefighting water, and perform the other myriad functions any mechanized warship must perform before exhausting waste fluids and gases overboard. Corrosion is inevitable.

A ship can put to sea with pristine sides and superstructure yet return to port weeks later with rust streaks marring its exterior. It happens. Why obsess over it?

Here’s why. Because while corrosion is a bane that can never be finally defeated, it is possible to control it given sufficient skill and resolve. In so doing a crew maintains a professional appearance, impressing those forming their opinion of a navy. Having somehow aged into a wizened oldtimer myself, I have come to appreciate my predecessors’ profound wisdom. Visuals tell. A crew that can’t be bothered to keep its vessel looking shipshape, executing mundane but critical tasks, probably won’t take the trouble to do more important things like pursue excellence in seamanship and tactics.

Soviet crews didn’t.

So we were right to make sport of our opponents. In the material sense the Soviet Navy was a force on the make by the 1970s, fielding more and more youthful warships than we did. But the most state-of-the-art weapon is no better than the human being wielding it. That was the Soviets’ downfall. Their crews’ conduct was slovenly, and it manifested in little things such as how they kept up their ships. Therein lay a permanent truth. A fighting force can possess the most fearsome armory on the planet yet reassure, deter, or coerce few if friends and foes adjudge its operators incompetent or lackadaisical.

Bottom line, details speak volumes about which combatant is more and which is less battleworthy. Back then a pronounced advantage in appearances—and thus the advantage in strategic competition short of war—went to the U.S. Navy. But the logic of relative appearances has turned against us. Green Bay is not a one-off. Indeed, too often today’s Navy looks like a friend not worth trusting or an enemy that need not be feared.

What casts the U.S. Navy’s image into disrepute frays foreign confidence in the United States’ ability to keep its security commitments—and emboldens adversaries to defy Washington’s efforts at deterrence or coercion. In the incipient competition against the likes of China, Russia, and Iran, a photo like that of USS Green Bay constitutes a self-inflicted defeat in strategic competition around the Eurasian rim. It loosens U.S. alliances and partnerships while emboldening red teams. The United States’ strategic position around the supercontinent suffers accordingly.

Let’s tend to appearances—or lose.

About the Author: 

James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College and a Faculty Fellow at the University of Georgia School of Public and International Affairs. The views voiced here are his alone.

Image Credit: X Screenshot/Fair Use Rights.