....To know the U.S. Navy’s rot at its deepest means pulling back the curtain on a seemingly unlikely historical antecedent: Namely, the ruinous inner-working of Medieval and Early Modern Muslim empires.This is the dynamic of the "slave dynasties." Corps of "Mamluks" or "Ghilman" ("enslaved soldiers") came to rule both Arab kingdoms and Caliphate. This aggressive artifact, burrowing deep into the heart of Muslim empire, reached its peak at the Ottoman Empire’s very height, where the business of the Sultan and his Sublime Porte became the business of its Janissary Corps.
This is what happens when servants become masters. Today, the business of the Navy is the business of its prime defense contractors, which have effectively taken over their titular overlords — the old bureaus — in the Department of the Navy. Today, the ideal cursus honorum, or life passage, for a naval officer is no longer to “make flag” and command a carrier strike group, but rather to realize one’s true destiny after retirement, with a seven-figure berth at one of the Big Five.
Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, RTX (formerly Raytheon), Boeing, and a few others do good work (of course), yet it is they who now define the Navy's course. Their splashy ads proclaim their loyal service, everywhere, and which also — subtly yet undeniably — proclaim that it is they who truly rule.