Maritime Strategy Into The Twenty-First Century AUTHOR LCDR Alton A. Lovvorn, USN CSC 1991 SUBJECT AREA - National Military Strategy Executive Summary Maritime Strategy into the Twenty-First Century I. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to review the foundations of the current Maritime Strategy, discuss the role of the Maritime Strategy in today's world, and the continuing, positive role the Maritime Strategy can play in the future. II. Problem: With the internal chaos in the Soviet Union, the signing of the START Accords, and the discussions between the United States and the Soviet Union on the reduction of Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE), there are many within the United States that are calling for a scrapping of our Maritime Strategy. III. Data: The destruction of the Berlin Wall combined with the reunification of Germany provides the United States with the opportunity to reduce its military presence in Europe. However, with the retrenchment of the Soviet Union in eastern Europe, the potential for unrest in the newly democratized countries has increased. The economic strength of a resurgent Japan and the military muscle of an outward looking China cause all nations within the Pacific Rim to look toward a "balancer" of power in the region. The emergence of India as a naval power in Southwest Asia adds to the instability of the region and is perceived as a threat by her neighbors. Since the strategy of the United States is deterrence, and since the United States ranks number one in the volume of exports to Europe, Asia and Latin America, the United States must maintain the sea lines of communication. IV. Conclusion: The Soviet Union, though retrenching militarily, still is the only nation to have the military power to threaten the United States. Other countries of the world rely on the United States to maintain a status quo in their region. Since the United States is essentially an island nation, a forward-deployed Navy is necessary to maintain free the sea lines of communication and support our allies overseas. V. Recommendation: Refocusing of the Maritime Strategy is necessary in order to reflect the growing regionalism of the world and to sever the Eurocentric fixation of the United States; however, the basic premise of the Maritime Strategy is sound and will safely carry the United States through the twenty-first century. Maritime Strategy into the Twenty-First Century Outline Thesis: Public debate of our national goals and policies is necessary for the maintenance of a strong, informed republic; however, the current maritime strategy requires not a scrapping so much as it does a review and refocusing. I. Development of Naval Strategy A. Birth of the nation 1. Jefferson and the gunboat Navy 2. Civil War B. Alfred Thayer Mahan and Theodore Roosevelt C. Post-World War II D. The 1983 "Maritime Strategy" II. Focus of the current strategy A. National strategy B. Eurocentric/Soviet orientation III. Political Realities A. Maritime nature of the U.S. B. Fiscal realities of defense C. Soviet Union 1. START and CFE 2. Continued military capability D. Pacific Rim 1. Japanese economic clout 2. Chinese military capability 3. U.S. as a regional "balancer" E. Southwest Asia 1. Kuwait and Iraq 2. India IV. Refocusing A. Severing Eurocentric fixation B. Necessity of broad, balanced regional strategy MARITIME STRATEGY INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY by LCDR A. A. S. Lovvorn, USN CG -12 Since 1988 the world has witnessed dramatic changes in the world order. President Gorbachev has led the Soviet Union from its diplomacy of "nyet" to a diplomacy described by Gennady Gerasimov as the "Sinatra Doctrine" -- each country going its own way. With each step the Soviet Union has taken to integrate itself fully into the world order, the United States has seen long-held assumptions crumble into the pages of history books. General Colin L. Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, referring to lost "Army buddies," acknowledged these disappearing assumptions: I've lost the Fulda Gap on the border in Germany where I began my first Army assignment . . .during the height of the Cold War. . . The Berlin Wall is gone. . . . The Warsaw Pact is about gone . . . The Brezhnev Doctrine is gone.(13:12) With each dying assumption, calls ring out from Congress, the news media, and the public for a discarding of our maritime and military strategies. Public debate of our national goals and policies is necessary for the maintenance of a strong, informed republic; however, the current maritime strategy requires not a scrapping so much as it does a review and refocusing. There are enduring defense needs that must be met on a daily basis to ensure the maintenance of our national goals. To understand the validity of the maritime strategy, one must have an understanding of the formation of America's maritime thought since the founding of the country. Since the birth of the United States, interest in the Navy has waned more than waxed and maritime strategy has received even less attention. Thomas Jefferson argued for a strategy of gunboats to protect the coast, but his strategy was proven erroneous with the War of 1812. America built a Navy to defend and preserve her national honor; however, there was no serious thought to defining a maritime strategy for the nation. The Civil War saw a dramatic increase in the size of the Navy; yet, after the successful strangulation of the Confederacy's maritime trade, the Navy was again forgotten. The end of the war resulted in the slow rotting of the Navy's wooden hulls, and any thought of a maritime strategy was discarded quickly as the nation turned inward. Declining from the largest navy in the world in 1865 to a navy of old, tired, and obsolescent ships in the late 1880's, the U. S. Navy needed a champion. Alfred Thayer Mahan in 1890 was the advocate. First to offer a true strategy for the employment of the United States Navy, he argued that a nation's greatness, specifically using Great Britain as an example, was predicated on the ability of the nation to project its power across the seas via a strong navy. His argument reached then Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Theodore Roosevelt. An ardent navalist and expansionist, Roosevelt was the champion needed to define the role of the Navy as the United States entered the twentieth century. Grasping the trident offered by Mahan and Roosevelt, the United States stepped into the new century using her modern, pre-Dreadnought navy to protect her expansive, new empire. The end of World War I saw the United States achieve a rough parity in naval forces with Great Britain, the preeminent maritime power. This parity was recognized and formalized with naval building treaties during the 1920's. Standing on the world's stage as an equal in maritime strength, there was no thought to redefining the maritime strategy of Mahan, and the United States came to World War II with the same strategy that had brought her into the century. Following World War II, the first reevaluations began of maritime strategy. Antisubmarine warfare and the Navy's role in nuclear sttike warfare dominated the late 1940's. During the late 1950's and 1960's limited war and deterrence through ballistic missile submarines were the watchwords. In the early 1970's, Admiral Elmo R. Zumalt, Chief of Naval Operations, formulated his "Four Missions of the Navy." He defined the United States maritime strategy as strategic deterrence, sea control, power projection, and peacetime presence. Continuing the renaissance of naval strategic thinking, Admiral Thomas B. Hayward, the Chief of Naval Operations in 1979, proposed a revised maritime strategy. He focused on a flexible offensive forward power projection, conducted globally and in conjunction with allies and sister services, especially against the Soviet Union and its attacking forces. Though Admiral Zumalt had started the process, Admiral Hayward was the first to totally integrate maritime strategy into the national military strategy. (18:41) The resurgence of the United States Navy in the early 1980's, during the Reagan administration, fueled a public debate on the role of the Navy in meeting America's national goals. Guided by Secretary of the Navy John F. Lehman, Jr. and Admiral James D. Watkins, Admiral Hayward's successor, the Navy organized its strategic thought into one coherent official declaratory statement, a classified briefing and a publication. In 1983, after congressional testimony, the initial edition of the styled "Maritime Strategy" was released to the public. The current Maritime Strategy is integrated fully within the milieu of national strategy. Coupled within the framework is the demand for cooperation with the Navy's sister services. Our national strategy is built on three pillars: deterrence, forward defense, and alliance solidarity. Oriented on the Soviet Union, the current Maritime Strategy emphasizes coalition warfare and the criticality of allies to ensure the safety of the international order supportive of the vital interests of the United States and its allies. Because of the Eurocentric/Soviet orientation of the current national and maritime strategies, the United States has practised an almost benign neglect of the remainder of the world except when containment of the Soviet Union was an issue. As stated by Theodore Sorensen: The touchstone for our nation's security concept -- the containment of Soviet military and ideological power -- is gone. . . . the current strategic vacuum is likely to be filled not only haphazardly but unwisely as well.(15:1) As we move into a new decade and a new century, we must reach a credible consensus on our new goals to guide our military planning for the long term. As Admiral Kelso has stated, we must not discard our strategy but must shift it from one of a "Global Containment Strategy to one of a Global Stability Strategy."(7) Concomitantly, we must shift from our Eurocentric fixation to a broad, balanced regional planning strategy and be able to react swiftly to any regional crisis that affects U. S. national interests no matter where the crisis occurs. Before we can shift the focus of our national and maritime strategies, the United States must - recognize intellectual and physical truths. Currently, the United States is surrounded by friends and water. The economic friendly borders between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada allow the United States to concentrate on other hemispheres. The drive to maintain the United States as a world power requires that the sea lines of communication all over the world remain open and free to the products from the United States and those that are bound for it. The United States is strong in foreign trade, and now ranks first in volume of exports to Europe, Asia and Latin America.(8:1) However, there are rough waters ahead. Only one merchant ship was on the ways in a United States shipyard in 1990. And to protect the sea lines of communication, the United States turns to the Navy. The ability of the Navy to protect the maritime interests of the United States and of the merchant marine to move the maritime trade of the United States is dependent on the far-sightedness of national leaders. In a time of fiscal austerity and military retrenchment due to the perceived lessening threat from the Soviet Union and the successful conclusion to the Gulf War with Iraq, the budget conference has allocated the Defense Department 3.65 percent of the Gross National Product for fiscal year 1992.(7) Even as the Defense budget is being reduced to its lowest level since 1939 and the Navy is being told to retire ships to achieve a fleet of 451 vice the 600 planned in the mid-1980s (16:22), additional requirements are being levied on the U.S. Navy. The tensions remain in Southwest Asia and the United States naval presence will remain at a high level for many years to come to ensure stability. In order to achieve the goals of the United States, a transformation must occur that allows the defense budget to be strategy driven versus the strategy being budget driven. As we reevaluate our defense priorities, and consequently our Maritime Strategy, we must shift to a revised naval strategy of "stability, focusing on peacetime presence and regional conflict."(16:22) The call to forego the Eurocentrism of the current Maritime Strategy is valid; however, neither Europe nor the Soviet Union can be either disregarded or ignored. Influential hard-liners within the Soviet hierarchy argue to varying degrees that six years of President Gorbachev's "new thinking" in diplomacy have seriously undermined the prestige and security of the Soviet Union. Just as the hard liners can never hope to turn the clock back completely on domestic politics in the Soviet Union, the "new thinking" in foreign policy can be slowed, even halted, but not reversed. "With the conservatives showing their muscle now, the danger is of a reappearance of a Cold War mentality," said Andrei Melville, a foreign policy academic in Moscow.(14:11) The orientation on the Soviet Union of our Maritime Strategy, coupled with the current internal focus of the Soviet Union plus the democratization of eastern European countries that had once been within the sphere of Soviet domination, leads critics of the strategy to declare its obsolescence. Additionally, critics point to the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks, known as START Accords, signed between the two countries, the discussions on reducing conventional forces in Europe, and the joint diplomatic efforts of the United States and the Soviet Union to restore the sovereignty of Kuwait, as proof that the current Maritime Strategy has outlived its usefulness and is ready for scraping. Others point out the economic turbulence occurring within the Soviet Union as reason to discount the USSR's threat. We cannot discount the Soviet Union as a threat however. Gennady Gerasimov, a Soviet spokesman, iterated a list of failures of his government and when ending his talk to his American college student audience stated: We haven't done everything wrong, there are some things we have done right. We are a military superpower.(13:13 - 14) Nuclear weapons and military power unmatched by anyone but the United States make a country a superpower no matter how economically devastated the country. When there are only two players on the world stage controlling the power to destroy a world, national interests, irregardless of current political relaxation, will sometimes collide and the continuation of our political identity, framework, and institutions demand that the United States have the ability to positively influence the outcome of events. To influence those events, our Maritime Strategy is predicated on deterrence or the transition to war, seizing the initiative, and carrying the fight to the enemy in forward areas. As stated in Maritime Strategy: "That is where our allies are and where our adversary will be."(18:7) The U. S. Navy must be able to counter the Soviet fleet. NATO's defense ministers are faced with refocusing their strategies with the military retrenchment of the Soviet Union. Viewing a Europe threatened less by the Soviet Union and relying less on the United States for protection, the alliance wants a "stronger Europeanization" of its defense.(11:70) However, a top British military official, Admiral Sir Benjamin Bathurst, cautions against a cavalier approach to defense reductions within NATO.(2O:14) While reliance on the United States must decrease, both the United States and the other members of NATO recognize that the 3,000-mile lines of communication over which Western Europe must be reinforced in times of military tension will still necessitate the forward deployment of U. S. naval forces. Though the Soviet Navy is reducing its size because of block obsolescence, its capabilities are improving as it grows smaller; it has become a more modern, more sustainable, and much more difficult force to defeat. And a smaller, modern fleet is more economical to maintain. Though there have been unilateral reductions in the Soviet armed forces, the Soviet Navy has avoided any large reductions primarily because of the perceived inferiority of the Soviet fleet. Consequently, senior Soviet naval officers are able to make an argument for continued fleet modernization.(2:74) In 1990 the Soviet Union built more submarine tonnage than has been built in any other year.(7) The U. S. Maritime Strategy should not be tied specifically to a Soviet threat, but it must still reflect the reality of Soviet capability. Though not focused on the Pacific and its geopolitical realities, the Maritime Strategy does meet the requirements for crisis response in that theater. Home to a third of humanity, the Pacific has an economic dynamism that seems unbounded. United States trade with the Pacific nations, at $300 billion last year, is about 50 percent greater than U.S. trade across the Atlantic.(6:1) Since 37 percent of total U. S. trade is with Asia and since within the last fifty years the United States has fought three major wars there, a forward-deployed naval presence is essential. The Pacific is primarily a maritime theater which will evolve as our relationships evolve with China, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, the Soviet Union, and others in the region. As the Soviet Union's influence wanes in the Far East due to their own internal concerns, Asian leaders long fearful of Chinese domination or Japanese expansionism are viewing the U. S. economic and military presence as a convient counterweight to both.(6:1) Japan sees China as the most dangerous threat to the long-term stability in the Asia-Pacific region. Of particular concern to Japan is the Chinese Navy with nearly 100 submarines. Further, China is a nuclear power. The country has deployed eight intercontinental ballistic missiles and an additional nuclear-tipped missile on a submarine. Because of a constitutional restriction on the use of military force, Japan is seeking to extend its role in the Pacific region with its economic might. China, faced with different limitations, maintains a sizable military to define its interests since China remains economically weak compared to Japan. (1:23) The nations of the Pacific and East Asia look to the United States for leadership and for security. American forward-deployed forces in the Asia/Pacific region play a role of regional balancer and ultimate security guarantor. Regional instabilities, e.g., Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Philippines, coupled with other nations' concerns over the growing power and presence of China, Japan and India, require the United States to remain involved. Regional insecurities and the inability of any other country to fill the role of "balancer" necessitate the continued presence of the U. S. Navy. The issue, though, is how much presence is enough? As stated by Assistant Secretary of State Richard Solomon, "We view nuclear proliferation on the Korean peninsula as the number one threat to stability in East Asia."(6:1) Yet, the United States has begun to scale back militarily somewhat on the Korean peninsula and is moving to an air and naval presence based on access rights in several ports in Southeast Asia rather than a massive military presence in the Philippines. In a truly ironic development, Vietnamese Communist Party chief Nguyen Van Linh offered both Tokyo and Washington the use of the U. S.-built naval facility at Cam Ranh Bay. As the United States reduces its static military forces in the Pacific Rim, it has no choice but to rely more heavily on a forward deployed naval presence and must define the amount of forces necessary to remain credible. The most recent concern to world stability was in Southwest Asia. The ability of the United States to react forcefully, decisively, and rapidly was possible only through the forward deployment of our naval forces. On day one of being ordered to stop Iraqi maritime traffic, the Navy had succeeded in quarantining all of the Iraqi ports through the use of ships forward deployed to the Persian Gulf. When tasked to deploy ground forces, once again supplies were in the region in days because of the investment in forward-deployed Maritime Prepositioned Ships. Another issue in Southwest Asia is the growing naval power of India. The emergence of India as a regional power broker has heightened tensions in the region. Not only are less powerful countries concerned for their independence, there are major powers concerned about the Strait of Hormuz since the Indian Navy can potentially block access. With the Indian Navy looking at the Indian Ocean as its sphere of influence, more countries look to the United States to be the guarantor of stability, peace, and open sea lines of communication within the region. Finally, the validity of the Maritime Strategy is hammered home by the subsequent actions of the U. S. government in regard to the Kuwait Crisis. When sending the fast battleship, USS WISCONSIN (BB 64), at best speed from her homeport in Norfolk, Virginia to assume a blocking position in the northern Persian Gulf, she required sixteen days to reach station. A slightly greater amount of time is required for a deployment from the U. S. west coast to the Persian Gulf. A change to a strategy of continental basing of the U. S. Navy would have resulted in an inability to react swiftly in this decade of challenge and a change of the world order not in the interests of the United States. 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