The CCJO and Strategy

This post continues the Developing Joint Maritime Operations series with a contribution from Prof. Robert C. (Barney) Rubel, Dean, Center for Naval Warfare Studies, Naval War College. Previous articles in this series examined combat, security, engagement, and relief and reconstruction; the four categories of military activity discussed in section 5 of the Capstone Concept for Joint Operations Version 3.0 in the context of Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower.

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Anyone who has read the Capstone Concept for Joint Operations(CCJO) and the Joint Operational Environment will find them to be reasonably well-written documents that incorporate a lot of the hard lessons that have been learned over the past decade or two. A new article in the Naval Institute Proceedings by Captain Vic Addison enjoins naval officers to take the CCJO's precepts seriously and develop the Navy's concepts and force structure accordingly. As a former Colin Powell Chair of Joint Warfare at the Naval War College, I am certainly encouraged by the increased sophistication of both the Joint Operational Environment document (JOE) and the CCJO, but as the director of the Naval War College's research and gaming effort supporting the development of CS21, I recognize that there are some underlying issues not addressed by the CCJO that need some public and professional dialogue, issues that profoundly affect all the Sea Services, but especially the Navy.

The heart of my concern is the junction between operations and strategy. A recent monograph coming out of the Army War College (Alien: How the Operational Art Devoured Strategy [PDF]) asserts that the Army made a mistake back in the mid-1980s as it adopted and adapted the Soviet idea of the operational art. The mistake, they say, was to identify an operational level and assign to commanders and staffs at that level the responsibility for campaign planning. There are a lot of folks in the Joint Military Operations department at Newport who strongly disagree with the monograph's argument, but it does at least bring out something that deserves more discussion than it has been getting; how operations relate to national strategy and policy, and also to national grand strategy or grand strategic concepts, if such things exist. My concern with the CCJO is that although it bills itself as the most fundamental US military concept, it addresses this junction hardly at all. It is pitched at the level of the "joint commander," whoever that might be. Given the tenor of most of the discussion, it seems to be a joint task force commander, but some of the sections, such as engagement, are more relevant to the geographic combatant commander. The fundamental responsibility of these officers is to fight wars with the joint force, but also deter, engage and do reconstruction and disaster relief if necessary. All of this is presumably in accordance with lucid instructions emanating from civilian authority. But if you at least tentatively acknowledge the concerns of the Carlisle monograph, there may be a problem here.

In fact, the very existence of CS21 is evidence of a problem at the conjunction of national grand strategy and military operations. If everything was fine in the joint world, no such document would be needed. Realize also that the document was not developed as a service programmatic pleading document (some officers involved in the development of the 1980s Maritime Strategy say they were ordered to come up with a strategy that would justify the increased investment that was being made in the Navy), but as an attempt to make the day-to-day global operations of the Sea Services strategically coherent and productive. The problem is that the current Unified Command Plan system of geographic areas of responsibility is a relic of World War II and the Cold War. It fragments the world physically and thus fragments our thinking about it. We divide the world into AORs and into a series of "planning scenarios" within them. The planning scenarios are static (even though updated periodically) and AOR boundaries are artificialities of the political process within the US military. The dynamic, fast-moving world that is actually out there does not conform. Shaping our concepts and our forces solely on the basis of the UCP, JSCP and DPSs (and now CCJO) is a recipe for falling behind events. CS21 tried to see the world as a whole and how it actually is unfolding and prescribe generally where and how the Sea Services should act to create a set of strategic conditions that are most congenial to the long term interests of the United States. CS21 prescribes acting, not reacting. I am not offering an ad for CS21, but trying to make the argument that it was a gap in our joint command structure and in our military doctrine that precipitated its development. The CCJO does not discuss how today's military, in today's world, should be used proactively to generate or maintain favorable strategic circumstances and conditions. General talk about deterrence and engagement is not enough.

Another symptom that a gap needs filling is the creation of N52, the Directorate for International Engagement, within OPNAV. If engagement could be left to the individual COCOMs and their naval components, then such an organization would not be needed. However, we have this problem that terrorists might use the seas to sneak nukes or other bad things into North America, Europe, Japan, or other places we don't want them. This is a strategic problem of the first magnitude. To avert another 9/11 or worse, we need global maritime security. This requires global naval cooperation on an unprecedented scale. Normal methods of engagement via COCOMs (as prescribed in the CCJO) are insufficient. Not only is global coordination across AORs needed, but also a different kind of naval diplomacy. I believe it truly mattered that 106 navies showed up at Newport for the last International Seapower Symposium, where the world's CNOs were interacting and networking up across regions. OPNAV N52 did a great job of orchestrating the symposium, and you could see material progress on achieving global maritime domain awareness. There is an intimate connection between headquarters staff work on a global scale and the achievement of favorable strategic conditions that the CCJO doesn't even begin to address. I suspect there is a similar kind of situation with space and cyberspace.

From a naval perspective, we also have the problem of understanding where the Chinese, and their navy, are going. China has global economic interests, and these lead to political interests. Understanding how we should interact and respond to what they do, as well as how we might avert naval arms races, destructive competition in areas like Africa, the Arctic, etc. and prevent unstable crises demands a discipline that is neither pure tactical naval warfighting nor solely theater-centric engagement. How do we get a grip on the effects of the proliferation of missiles, etc.? Again, guidance beyond the CCJO is needed. I am persuaded that there are connections between PLA, PLAN and PLAAF developments that the US Services ought to be working closely together on in some kind of joint context. Where, exactly, is that, and how should it work? The current Air/Sea Battle project between the USN and USAF is a step in the right direction.

I guess my real concern is that there is no companion volume to the CCJO that discusses military support to national grand strategy. How is it that we structure and operate our forces in peacetime so that we won't have to put them on the ground overseas constantly? Actually, CS21 tries to do that, and if you look at the current Navy recruiting commercial (the Navy, A Global Force For Good) you will see the idea instantiated. A joint military doctrine that provides guidance for how to approach the design and conduct of operations is fine, and the CCJO does that. But more is needed.