The Sovietization of the American Navy and The Institutionalization of Lying

A society does not ever die from “natural” causes, but always dies from suicide or murder-and nearly always the former - D. C. Somervell

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american naval decay

I've been trying to learn more about the military to understand the state of the U.S versus China ‘cold-war’. I was suggested this piece in American Affairs by Malcom Kyeyune by another writer on Substack. On that note, I suggest checking out their work for the only Marxist analysis of Jihadism.

In short, Kyeyune's piece highlights the literal decay of the American military, in particular the Navy. It's a state institution plagued with issues of budget constraints, outdated military equipment, recruitment shortages, costly and disruptive practices of redesigning ships that were already order and so on.

While America is battling exhaustion and political polarization at home, it is now facing something it’s never faced abroad: it is locked into a security competition against multiple opponents who, when taken together, are in fact vastly superior to America in terms of industrial capacity.

Navy leaders have found themselves in this situation due to the general decay of industrial capacity within the U.S itself. As the Vice President emphasized, America is unable to produce the ships it desperately needs. Simply put, the U.S is currently unable to produce the quality and quantity of ships needed for a contemporary war.

CORRECTION (May 5th 2025): A commentor pointed out the numbers I got from American Affairs regarding global capacity were incorrect. After looking at the sources sent and some others, I can confirm this is correct and the relatity of the U.S. shipbuilding capacity is much clearer. Below I’ve kept what I originally wrote but I’ve corrected the numbers in text.

“It’s believed Chinese shipyeards have a manufacturing capacity of 23.5 million tons vs the U.S’s 100,000 tons. That means their capacity is 232 times greater. China represents 56% of global shipbuilding capacity, the U.S. just about a quarter, and Europe aroudn 10.5%.”

The issue isn’t just U.S. capacity in general but relative to China. Chinese capacity in 2023 shits at around 33 million in gross tonnage (GT) which represents around 51% of ships built. South Korea has 28%, Japan 15%, with the rest being at a percent or under. The U.S in practice is at around .10%. However, 2024 estimates that out of the 133m GT that were order, China secured orders of 98m, just shy of three quarters!

The outcome of this situation within the Navy is the growth of systematic fraud and institutional lying. Officers in the Navy who report to superiors within the military and in the civilian government are constantly lying about statistics on requirements, personnel levels, readiness and so on. Lying has become an "institutional requirement" for the functioning of the system.

The question is, why? What makes this worse is, everyone knows theirs a problem, everyone knows that the military isn't working. Nonetheless, everyone inside the institution itself keeps coping by lying through their teeth.

the soviet specter

In reading Kyeyune's piece, I was not only shocked to see the state of the U.S navy, but also by a sense of déjà vu. I was immediately struck by the similarities between the issues within the U.S Navy and those that were facing the USSR in the mid-1950 to early 1960s. As I read on, I saw the author was clearly aware of this point:

“The cancer eating away at the U.S. military is of a similar genus to that which once ate away at the Red Army; the oblivious and out-of-touch responses coming from elites inside Washington aren’t particularly different from the attitudes of Soviet elites of days past.” (Kyeyune, 2025)

Nonetheless, it's worth discussing this further. This brings me to the work of the late Italian economist and expert on Actually Existing Socialist (AES) countries, Mario Nuti. He trained under the likes of Michal Kalecki and Oskar Lange in Poland, where he lived and studied for many years. He trained in Cambridge under Nicholas Kaldor and Maurice Dobb. Needless to say, he had a lot of knowledge on heterodox political economy and firsthand experience with how AES economic systems functioned. His analysis of the Soviet-type systems is thus invaluable.

Domenico Mario Nuti (1937–2020)

Nuti outlined the features that caused repeated crises and contradictions in the Soviet-type systems as follows. The societies were centralized in economic and political decision making. This led to what Nuti called an accumulation bias, which included features such as:

• prioritizing industry over agriculture

• heavy over light industry

• productive inputs rather than consumption goods

• reinvesting of large amount of gross product per year

• persistent factor imbalances due to adherence to form of accumulation outlined above

Essentially, central planners would constantly push to reinvest surplus into machinery. I cannot understate how immense this reinvestment was. As Nuti states, gross investment ratios as a percentage of national product were often around 30% in the late 1960s/early 70s in the USSR.

In the abstract, it would seem to be a dream to always reinvest and grow. And this did lead to rapid growth, but it was unsustainable. Eventually labor reserves would be exhausted. What aggravates this problem further is that the commitment to price stability prevents an adjustment, leading to shortages of goods and queues.

What happens next is that these inefficiencies in economic spheres become more explicitly political, as calls for reform grow. Yet, the presence of economic inefficiencies leads to further calls for centralization.
Nuti makes an interesting model out of this, and a graph that is honestly inspiring to me:

Figure in Nuti 1985

He makes a prediction of three potential outcomes:

i) a virtuous circle leading to progressive economic decentralisation and political liberalisation towards liberal market socialism

ii) a vicious circle towards political anarchy and economic collapse

iii) the more probable course of economic and political fluctuations.

Nuti did a lot of work on these dynamics, and while the case of the Navy is not about central planning, the general conditions are very similar. The issues in the U.S. are very much a product of a "political cycle" of pressures.

different system, similiar problem

All the same elements were there. The fact that everyone knew there were problems, everyone knew that it wasn't working, but no one was able to fix it. If we consider that in both the USSR and the U.S. military "lying had become an institutional requirement" speaks to shared characteristics of both the Soviet and American systems

Whether it was lying about reaching productive quotas in the former case, or about the amount of ready soldiers in the latter, both are predicated on systematic informational asymmetries. I think I can outline what is happening in both systems in abstract terms.

The state structure faces a problem caused by the division of labour between state functions itself. In many ways, there's a classic principal-agent problem caused by general asymmetries in information, capacity and duties. The politicians (principals) are responsible for setting the goals of the bureaucracy (agents). The agents are faced with massive difficulties however in meeting politician's demands

In both the case of the USSR and U.S., parts of the state apparatus are faced with conditions that are out of their control and responsibility which put them in an undesirable and unsustainable position. The managers in the USSR are given productive targets they cannot meet given current economic conditions. Navy leaders are told to meet targets that are impossible given recruits and equipment. Both are unable to perform their formal duties.

However, due to institutional rigidity (ultimately caused by political rigidities) these conditions persist. Faced with a political class which demands unattainable results and the desire to protect their own interests and those of their institution, there grows a tendency to withhold information. A norm of institutionalized lying emerges, prioritizing the appearance of functionality over actually achieving state goals.

In short, both systems suffer from a lack of political will to make change. The capacity of the ruling classes (a capitalist and non-capitalist one alike ) to effectively reform the system is absent. At best, actors understand they are in crisis (a slow moving one), at worst they are ideologically blind to what is going on. In the American case, it feels like there's a lot of ideological blindness to the degree of shit they are in. Kyeyune is blunt when writing:

Let us thus put the real nature of the issue at stake in the most blunt terms possible: the Navy is being asked to maintain the dream of the American empire. Lacking a political class willing to seriously acknowledge or address the very real crisis this empire now faces, the burden of that political crisis is being shifted onto the shoulders of admirals and generals who were never intended to take on that role in the first place, nor do they have the capability to do so.

getting out of the pinch of ideology

The denial of the 'ideology' of the military within American circles isn't surprising, at least not to someone who uses a Marxian lens. Liberal democracies are cursed by the belief that they are not themselves 'political'.

We know how the story of the USSR went. It failed to reform into a genuine form of collective governance and fell to capitalist restoration. It's a grim outcome, and it won't sound any better to hear me say I think the U.S. is worse off.

The U.S. has far stronger institutions than the USSR did, as they are based more on long-held institutionalized practices.
Nonetheless, what is needed right now is political will to transform the system. However, I believe the greatest blocker right now is one of the most powerful forces in America: ideology. As Kyeyune summarizes:

The missing link inside the American policy establishment today is a basic discussion about the future and sustainability of the empire in light of America’s industrial weakness and cultural confusion. Powerful ideological and political constraints, however, currently make such discussions not just impossible but also career-ending for any individual who would dare to attempt them. The result of this chronic unwillingness to even acknowledge basic first principles inside Washington is to trap the Navy, Army, and all the other branches of the U.S. military on the far side of the Red Queen’s magic mirror: forcing them to constantly make impossible trade-offs and sacrifices just to postpone necessary discussions a little bit into the future, dooming them to running faster and faster just so that America’s leadership class won’t ever have to move an inch. In this clash between ideology and reality, ideology is almost always the victor. And it is winning at the cost of destroying the U.S. military itself.

But as Kyeyune says, you can't really blame the Navy, just as you couldn't blame Soviet industrial managers back then. Their job is to run the military, not to build industrial capacity. It's the responsibility of the ruling class (political functionaries + capitalists) to reorganize capitalist relations. Unless we get a military dictatorship, it's not the job of Navy officers to fix these issues.

The U.S Empire is here to stay, at least for awhile. As professor and scholar of U.S. Empire Mark Schwartz was saying in a recent interview, imperial decline is a slow gruelling process.

It seems that the unipolar moment is rapidly disappearing, and a world akin to the early 20th century pre Pax American is arising. The U.S will be here for the long hall, but it's decay is being sped up by leaders who don't see how they are committing civilizational suicide. The task now for those wanting a better world is to build capacity on the ground to take advantage of ruling class crises.

References

Nuti, Domenico Mario. ‘Political and Economic Fluctuations in The Socialist System’. No. 85. EUI Working Paper. Florence: European University Institution, March 1985.

Nuti, Domenico Mario. ‘The Contradictions of Socialist Economies: A Marxian Interpretation’. Socialist Register 16 (18 March 1979). https://socialistregister.com/index.php/srv/article/view/5440.

Kyeyune, Malcom. ‘America’s National Security Wonderland’. American Affairs Journal (blog), 20 February 2025. https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2025/02/americas-national-security-wonderland/.

Tan, Kwan Wei Kevin. ‘China Has the Capacity to Build PLA Combat Ships at 200 Times the Rate That the US Can, per Leaked US Navy Intelligence’. Business Insider Africa, 33:31 200AD. https://africa.businessinsider.com/military-and-defense/china-has-the-capacity-to-build-pla-combat-ships-at-200-times-the-rate-that-the-us/xns3dtw.

‘China’s Shipbuilding Capacity Is 232 Times Greater Than That of the United States - Alliance for American Manufacturing’. Accessed 24 April 2025. https://www.americanmanufacturing.org/blog/chinas-shipbuilding-capacity-is-232-times-greater-than-that-of-the-united-states/.