The Next Major Maritime Strategy Assessment

Frank Hoffman has written the latest major analysis of the US Navy and it is very interesting. Published as part of The Future of the U.S. Military Series for the Center for New American Security, this might be the must read about the US Navy during the Presidential transition period. I am going to offer this section within the report as a summery, and revisit this report at a later date. It really is excellent.

Today’s naval strategists are embracing complexity and uncertainty, as well as a broader range of missions, for naval forces. They are shifting to what British historian Geoffrey Till calls the post-Mahanian era. A post-Mahanian naval strategy supports a sustainable U.S. grand strategy that seeks to maintain access to the commons and preserve an international system dependent on interdependent trade networks. This approach recognizes that America’s influence must be renewed in such a way that it inspires others to cooperate with us to face myriad global challenges. Such a strategy realizes that “no matter how powerful the United States is, it cannot effectively address these challenges alone.” Translating this grasp of the whole problem into a defensible and affordable fleet remains a vexing challenge. Naval planners preparing forces for tomorrow cannot narrowly focus on only one threat or one kind of war. As the astute historian Colin Gray has warned, “defence planning should seek to achieve and sustain a military posture that is flexible and adaptable, and not geared to a single, preclusive vision/doctrine of future warfare.” American planning over the last decade has too often been dominated by such visions.

Force planning should not be geared to narrow visions about the kinds of warfare in order to reduce the risk of surprise. But our naval forces have to be designed to support a broader grand strategy and a supporting maritime strategy that is not solely based on fighting wars. To fulfill a grand strategy that stresses partnerships and prevention, our naval services must improve their ability to work with others as cooperatively as possible. The Cooperative Security Strategy clearly defines that task, as well as the other strategic imperatives that tomorrow’s Navy will be expected to fulfill. However, its imperatives remain tightly tied to traditional naval missions, not the strategy. Moreover, it has not constructed a compelling narrative or affordable fleet design to carry it out.

We must hedge against a dark future, but future conflict will be more complex than a straightforward contest of fleets in the Pacific. Such a symmetrical contest might fit the Navy’s ingrained institutional culture, but not U.S. security interests broadly defined. American security interests will have to be secured and advanced in tomorrow’s “contested zones”: the urbanized littorals of the rim lands of Asia and Africa. That will require more than a blue water fleet that commands the commons from standoff distance. The ability to control the commons will remain a prerequisite for attaining success—but by itself will not be sufficient. Access to and use of the commons is most at risk in the narrows and transition points of the littorals. We need to influence friends and partners in this area proactively, off shore if necessary but never from afar. Tomorrow’s fleet must partner, protect and dominate in the contested zones too.

CNAS has an interesting sense of timing. There is so much that I like in this report that I won't bother with what I disagree with until I write more analysis.

For those of you who read Bob Work's piece in Orbis this quarter, check out recommendation #4.