The USS Theodore Roosevelt. What happened, why it matters, and why the press dropped the ball.

The USS Theodore Roosevelt is not a cruise ship.

The ship with its complimentary ships left San Diego on January 17, 2020. At the time, COVID 19 tests basically didn't exist in any sort of quantity in the United States and the Pandemic hadn't yet become that.  It was, at that time, a Chinese epidemic.  There would have, therefore, been no reason to include test kits in its medical supplies and it's very unlikely that the disease was present among the 4,865 sailors on board ship.

On January 20, the first reported case of COVID 19 surfaced in the US in Washington States.

It arrived in Guam for a port visit on February 7. By that time, the Pandemic was rolling and was known to be in the U.S. and Italy, but it still wasn't regarded as a pandemic yet and still wasn't appreciated. The Italian cases had only surfaced on January 31.

On February 26 Defense Secretary Mark Esper ordered combat commanders to inform him before they made Coronavirus related protection decisions in order to keep the military from being scene to contract President Trump's declaration that the number of COVID 19 cases, fifteen, would "be close to zero" "within a couple of days."  Two days later Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly stated that the 7th Fleet, of which the USS Roosevelt was part, would be spend fourteen days between port visits in order to slow the virus, however.

On March 5 the Roosevelt put in at Danang, Vietnam.  Vietnam had already reported sixteen cases but it also reported them all as having been resolved.  Crew from the ship were allowed liberty in Vietnam, but were also screened for COVID symptoms upon returning to the ship.  We now know, of course, that not everyone who picks up the virus exhibits symptoms.  Three days later new cases of COVID 19 are reported in Vietnam, including in two British tourists in Danang.   The Roosevelt leaves Vietnam the next day, although not because of that.

The Roosevelt is an aircraft carrier, of course, and flying missions, some of which leave the ship and return to it, keep on keeping on.

On March 15 sailors based in San Diego begin to report with the disease. 

On March 22, the first sailor on board the Roosevelt is diagnosed with it.  Two more are the following day. All re medicated off the ship, but reports keep coming in. 

On March 26, the entire ship's crew starts getting tested.  The Acting Navy Secretary reports that the ship will put in at Guam in a scheduled stop but the crew will not be allowed to leave the pier other than those who are to be evacuated for medical treatment there.  It puts in on the following day and eight sailors are removed for treatment.

On March 29, the Navy Secretary asks his chief of staff to contact the commander of the vessel and the two exchange emails. The commander and his officers were struggling with what to do.  They senior officers of the ship were joined by two Admirals who were senior to the commander, Cpt. Crozier, in regular fleet roles.  They favored smaller mitigation efforts than Cpt. Crozier as they did not want the Roosevelt removed from action as a surface asset.

Let's repeat that, they didn't want the Roosevelt removed as a surface asset in the Pacific. This is a critical pint.

The following day the deputy spoke to Crozier who complained that his superiors were not reacting to the ships situation properly.

Later that day, March 30, Crozier sent a four page unclassified memorandum via email to at least twenty Navy personnel including his staff and individuals inside and outside of his chain of command that asked for urgent help in executing all but 10% of his crew from the ship least sailors "die unnecessarily".  Crozier's commander, Rear Adm. Baker, learned of the email when he boarded the ship later that day.  Following that the Acting Secretary held a conference call regarding the situation.  Following that, Corzier posted to the ship's Facebook page (yes, it has a Facebook page) that “The TR Team is working with the great folks at Naval Base Guam to get Sailors off the ship and into facilities on base to help spread the crew out.”

The next day Crozier's letter hits the San Francisco Chronicle.  Sailors begin to be evacuated.

By the following day, April 1, up to 1,273 sailors have been tested, of whom 93 have tested positive, of which 7 were asymptomatic.  593 tested negative.  A plan to leave a skeleton crew onboard the ship, which carriers nuclear weapons, is developed.  Later in the day, according to the Secretary, the Secretary begins to receive communications from sailors on board the ship contesting Crozier's descriptions of the level of the emergency.  The Secretary and the Department of the Navy publicly supports Crozier but Moldy indicates privately that he's now inclined to relieve Crozier.

By April 2, 114 of the ship's crew have tested positive.  On that day Moldy states he's reached a conclusion about Crozier, that being;

“Captain Crozier had allowed the complexity of his challenge with the COVID breakout on the ship to overwhelm his ability to act professionally when acting professionally was what was needed most at the time. We do and we should expect more from the commanding officer of our aircraft carriers…It unnecessarily raised alarms with the families of our sailors and Marines with no plan to address those concerns. It raised concerns about the operational capabilities and operational security of that ship that could have emboldened our adversaries to seek advantage. And it undermined the chain of command, who had been moving and adjusting as rapidly as possible to get him the help he needed"

He later announced publicly that he'd decided to relieve Crozier of command.

By the following day, 137 of the ship's crew is positive for COVID 19, 95 of them whom are symptomatic.  Crozier leaves the vessel to the cheers of its sailors.  The number would keep climbing, and would include Crozier, but as of the current date, it does not exceed 300.  It does climb, however, every day.

On Monday, April 6, Secretary Moldy addressed the ship's crew and stated:

If [Crozier] didn’t think that information was going to get out into the public, in this information age that we live in, then he was A, too naive or too stupid to be the commanding officer of a ship like this. The alternative is that he did this on purpose. And that’s a serious violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which you are all familiar with.

This goes on, with back comments from the crew in support of their commander.

So, the net results is that in a relatively short amount of time it appears around 300 sailors (guessing) from the USS Roosevelt came down with COVID 19.  Had the ship remained at sea on deployment, which actually was never exactly what was being pondered, the numbers would have grown catastrophic.  The Navy, however, after becoming aware of the problem, did develop a plan, but it was likely not an adequate one under the circumstances.  It likely was a plan, however, that comported with the evidence at the time.  Cpt. Crozier didn't agree with the plan, went around his commanders for help, and caused a situation that necessitated another result.  He's been relieved and now the Acting Secretary of the Navy has resigned.

Which leaves us with these questions?

• How did this whole thing happen in a time of pandemic?
• Was the Acting Secretary right to relieve Crozier?
• Was the firing, which is more or less what it was, of Secretary Moldy the right thing to do?
• Should anyone else be disciplined, and if so, how?

The answer to all of these, save for the first one that can't be answered yes or no, is an absolutely clear yes.

Let's break it down.

How did this whole thing happen in a time of pandemic?

The short answer to this would be realpolitik, which is often pretty ugly and aggravating.

We should likely assume that the Roosevelt left the United States with no COVID 19 on board, although we don't really know that. The timelines would suggest that, however.  It appears pretty clear that the disease was picked up in Vietnam.

But why was the ship putting in at Danang in the first place, and why now of all times.

Starting with the first question first, the U.S. Navy has started to put in at Danang as the Vietnamese Communist fear the Chinese Communist more than they do anyone else, and for good reason.  The People's Republic of China may have aided North Vietnam during the Vietnam War, as it very much did, even supplying 100,000 troops to man air defense artillery in the North during the war, but under their respective Marxism, the Chinese remain Chinese and the Vietnamese remain Vietnamese, and they do not like each other.  The Vietnamese fear the Chinese for the same reasons that many (maybe all) of China's neighbors do; the big country is territoriality aggressive.

Japan, Taiwan (itself a Chinese nation), the former European colonies on mainland China, and just about everyone else who is near China, worries about it. And for a long time the PRC has been getting pushy in a 19th Century colonial expansion sort of way.  There's good reason to worry about China, if you are near it. And Vietnam has a longer history of being invaded by China than it does for being invaded by anyone else.

So the US, the late Vietnam War aside, is a good pal to have if you live on the same block as China.

And like China, Vietnam's modern Communist state is still Communist, sort of, or not, or just hard to figure out, economy wise.  It's not a democracy, but Karl "I'd rather be a sitting on my arse in the British Library than working" Marx wouldn't recognize it as a Marxist country if he stepped out of a Tardis in Ho Chi Minh City and looked for the library.  He'd probably not make it past the Victoria's Secret before busting into tears.  Indeed, the only nation in the world that old Karl would probably feel happy about is the unhappy land of North Korea, a real Communist state.

None of which makes Vietnam a Jeffersonian democracy.

But 's sort of the reason that we put in there.  We're trying to block the Chinese and the Vietnamese need some blocking.  Besides, as both we and the Chinese know, Vietnam is a tenacious combatant when adequately supplied and that's handy if something bad occurs.

None of which is a good reason to put into Danang is an epidemic.

Granted, the Vietnamese were reporting that they had COVID 19 eradicated at the time. Still, when you put in, in a port, sailors go ashore on liberty, and if there's anything circulating in a society, they're going to get it.

And hence the first mistake.  The USS Roosevelt should not have put in, in Danang. An excuse could have been made.

And that's the product of the first real error, which we've set out above:

On February 26 Defense Secretary Mark Esper ordered combat commanders to inform him before they made Coronavirus related protection decisions in order to keep the military from being scene to contract President Trump's declaration that the number of COVID 19 cases, fifteen, would "be close to zero" "within a couple of days."  Two days later Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly stated that the 7th Fleet, of which the USS Roosevelt was part, would be spend fourteen days between port visits in order to slow the virus, however.

The President isn't an epidemiologist.   The military can't openly say "whoa there. . . we don't agree with that", but it can take reasonable steps to address a situation.  On February 26 the Roosevelt had already been to Guam.  It can be argued that it really shouldn't have put in there, but that would be asking a bit much.  On February 26, the better call would have been for the Navy to ban port calls in Asia, which it easily could have done, and a pretext for it could have been found.

Heck, North Korea always provides a pretext for a redeployment.  That could have been used.

A "heads shall roll" type of mistake?  Maybe.

So we can't really fault the commander of the Roosevelt for putting into Danang, although I've seen a back channel comment that does just that.  It was a pre scheduled port call.  The decision to go there was a bad one, and the decision to route all sorts of stuff so as to not contradict the Administration could have been done differently.

So that's how COVID 19 boarded the USS Roosevelt.

But what then?

Was the Acting Secretary right to relieve Crozier?

What happened then is that  the disease, which is serious, became known on the ship and the commander either; 1) freaked out, or 2) purposely took an action that he knew would end up in his being relieved. We don't know which really occurred. What is clear is that he was massively insubordinate and had to be relieved.

Looking at it long term, it's clear that Crozier understood the threat better than his immediate superiors did, both of whom were on the vessel at various times during the early stages of the crisis.  Crozier would have stripped the ship of all but a skeleton crew and made due.  That may not have worked, quite frankly, but if something was going to arrest the spread of the disease, that would have. That was probably the only thing that would have by the time the infection was detected.

But that would have also taken a major combat asset in a tense part of the globe, one equipped with nuclear weapons and one which is a major deterrent to North Korea and China, pretty much off the table.

And there's real reasons not to do that, if you can avoid it.

China is brutal enough that it welded the doors shut of apartments where COVID 19 was present.  It's quarantine was effective, if it was, because of its extreme and brutal nature.  An extreme and brutal regime, it is a smart one, and there's no reason to think that China would take advantage of a pandemic to strike its neighbors, but it's not impossible.  If it did so, it would likely be in the guise of a humanitarian action, and quite limited, probably directed at Hong Kong, with which it was having a great deal of trouble just prior to the epidemic.  If it did occupy Hong Kong that would be unlikely to result in a larger conflict with anyone, but it's not impossible.

Indeed, if there was a larger event, it would likely be directed at North Korea, which is a pain for everyone. But there's every reason to believe that the Coronavirus Pandemic is probably a royal mess in North Korea and the Chinese would not want to bother with that.  Being cynical by policy and nature, it'd probably let hundreds of thousands of North Koreans die before it stepped in with a "humanitarian mission".

Which takes us to North Korea.

If a Chinese strike against anyone in this context is unlikely, a North Korean one is not.

North Korea has close and continual contact with China and COVID 19 is there for sure.  And the nation, other than its capacity for sheer brutality, has no real ability to deal with anything of this type.

Given that, the infection is probably severe and is probably basically unaddressed.  It's also undoubtedly in its army.

The leadership of North Korea is not only brutal, its paranoid.  The nation is weak to start with and more isolated every day.  If it could seize South Korea, it'd massively boost its economic position, briefly, and it'd boost its strategic position, sort of.  And seizing South Korea wold prevent South Korea from seizing it.  South Korean isn't going to try that, but North Korean no doubt fears that it will.

With an army ravished by COVID 19 and with a paranoid leadership, why not try to strike while you still have an army and with the United States completely distracted? 

The military has to plan for contingencies like that. And that is a real one.  And that's why the Navy doesn't announce "gosh, we need to take the Roosevelt off the map" any more than it would state "gosh, the 2nd Infantry Division is at 50% strength due to COVID 19".  It won't do it, it can't, and it shouldn't.

But that's basically what Crozier did.

Now, Crozier disagreed with his superiors and there's every reason now to believe he was right in his assessment.  Btu announcing that in the clear created a global strategic problem for the Navy that was contrary to the desires and expressed views of his superiors.  Going around them is so far off the Navy chain of command map that it was completely improper.  Crozier had to know that.

Which leads me to believe that he knew that he'd have to resign.

Which leads to this.  He should have resigned first.

It's the old Napoleonic maxim that an officer who disagrees with an order has two choices; 1) follow them, or 2) resign.  Going around the chain of command is almost never proper and it wasn't here. 

It's that which required Crozier to be relieved, not anything else.  A military can't tolerate officers doing this.

It can't tolerate enlisted men doing it either, which we will get to in a moment.

But was Crozier right?

He may have been.

That sounds like we're talking cross purposes, but since all of this occured one sailor had died and it's perfectly reasonable to believe that more would have.  Crozier may have been 100% correct in his actions and felt the safety of his crew mattered more than his carrier.

There is precedent for things like this.  Theodore Roosevelt, for example, went over the heads of his superiors in 1898 when the members of the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry began to come down with malaria at a disastrous rate in Cuba.  Now, of course, Roosevelt wasn't a career officer, but the move wasn't without its risks and it probably did help keep him from being considered for a command during World War One, although that wasn't the only reason, to be sure.

The point is, in some circumstances, a person  must follow the dictates of their conscience even in a military organization knowing that it's going to go badly for you personally.  Crozier likely did just that.

Was the firing, which is more or less what it was, of Secretary Moldy the right thing to do?

A democratic government also doesn't put itself in a situation in which its leaders get into an open spat in public with a military leader.

Truman didn't do that with MacArthur.  He simply relieved him.  He didn't fly to his last command and call MacArthur a dangerous wackadoodle in his declining years in public.  People were mad at Truman but he just endured it.

Secretary Moldy going to the Roosevelt to address the crew was completely improper.  He made a bad situation worse, and his "resignation" was completely appropriate.

Should anyone else be disciplined, and if so, how?

Yes, top and low.

 Moldy's actions at the Roosevelt provoked an exchange with the sailors.  This is unprecedented.

There are instances of relieved commanders being cheered by troops, but not in such a  public manner.  The last I can think of involved the relief of Gen. Terry Allen and Gen. Theodore Roosevelt in Italy in World War Two. They were beloved by their men and were lauded upon their being relieved.  But neither was relieved for a disciplinary reasons (and both came back into later service during the war). 

The crewmen of the Roosevelt cheering their CO was perhaps inappropriate but Crozier should have known that an enlisted celebration of insubordination shouldn't occur and would likely lead to bad results for those who did it.  He should have tried to stop them. Simply calling them into attention likely would have worked, maybe.

Moldy going to the vessel was simply delusional.  But Navy enlisted men arguing and commenting with him is completely inappropriate in the military system and an act of rank insubordination.

Things like this are really rare in the US military, but generally when they occur they are career enders for those involved.  The discipline tends to be disguised and in the form of rank reductions and dead end assignments.  As it can't really be known how many men were involved, it simply becomes a disciplinary sanction on all of them. And that should occur here. The Roosevelt is in port and most of the men are off. They should be reassigned to command individually once cleared and it made known why this is occuring. Those assignments should make it clear that they aren't wanted and that they should leave as soon as possible.