If you take these slides and compare them to the second document in Newport Paper #33, The Maritime Strategy of 1984, you can almost match up everything in these slides to a section in the Maritime Strategy.
With history I enjoy the luxury of hindsight. As I was reading these slides, and various other documents associated with the Maritime Strategy of the 1980s, I noted this particular maritime strategy was only tested once while the cold war was still hot - in the Persian Gulf in dealing with Iran in 1987-1988.
And ironically, everything the Navy discussed ahead of time was executed. The Maritime Strategy discussed protecting sea lines of communication for oil, and that happened. The maritime strategy of 1984 specifically discussed the Army having an essential role in the littorals, and it was US Army special forces aviation that was deployed to the Persian Gulf - off US Navy ships - to deal with Iran. For a maritime strategy written before the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986, the Navy was thinking about maritime strategy in a remarkably Joint context. It was also a global context.
The focus was clearly the Soviet Union, but the scope of strategy was global and while the maritime strategy was incredibly detailed on the main issues, it included general information related to all contingencies, and it was very specific in how it prioritized theaters, what responsibilities in each theater were, and how the Navy was going to execute political policy with naval power regionally within a global context. There wasn't room for buzzwords, because this was a serious strategy by serious people intended to be seriously executed by the United States Navy.
The US Navy is about to either finish or has already finished the rewrite of the Cooperative Maritime Strategy for 21st Century Seapower, which is in my opinion perhaps the least influential maritime strategy of any nation with a coastline in the 21st century. If you want to read a serious maritime strategy in the 21st century - read the English translation of virtually every nation in the Pacific that has written a maritime strategy over the last decade. I have admittedly not read them all, but I have had the brief on many of those documents, and serious people tend to speak seriously when they have something important to say.
The Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower has almost nothing in common with today's US Navy, an organization that is being stretched to the limits to meet COCOM demands; a US Navy that is deployed for war in the Middle East; a US Navy that has been deployed again and again to conduct some form of combat operations throughout the rest of the Middle East and Africa since the day the maritime strategy was signed; and a US Navy that is involved in a major pivot to the Pacific specifically for the purposes of reassuring allies during the uncertainty associated with the rise of China, who hasn't exactly been making friendly relations with neighbors when it comes to maritime territories.
Explain why we need italics to emphasize statements like Seapower will be a unifying force for building a better tomorrow? The US Navy doesn't build a thing in the world, it insures access so that others build upon the peaceful prosperity the US Navy enables.
So here is my question. As it is completely impossible to develop anything similar to the first 12 slides shown above from the original Cooperative Maritime Strategy for 21st Century Seapower, does anyone believe it will be possible to produce slides similar to that with the rewrite of the Cooperative Maritime Strategy for 21st Century Seapower? Here is what I think... if one can rewrite the Cooperative Maritime Strategy for 21st Century Seapower based on the first 12 slides updated to the modern maritime challenges and environment the US Navy operates in today, the 13th and 14th slides become very easy to write, and the whole thing will actually sound like a strategy when it is done.
Except one thing... there is one challenge I am unsure anyone in the military can do well in the age of PowerPoint and groupthink, and it may in fact doom the effort of a rewrite the strategy regardless of content.
The Unclassified Maritime Strategy of 1986 - the Fifth document in Newport Paper #33 - which is really a collection of articles by the CNO, Commandant, and Secretary of the Navy; are written in first person singular and plural. I have read the Cooperative Maritime Strategy for 21st Century Seapower (PDF) many times, and there is something that always bugged me - for the most part; it is sometimes difficult to tell who exactly "we" is in that document. One thing that is clear as day though, "we" represented a lot of people and was not consistent. Depending upon what was being said, "we" might be the Navy, "we" might be America, and "we" might be some military or political entity that remains undefined. I linked the document, so go back and read about what "we" were saying - and maybe like me you might ask yourself who the hell "we" are.
The point is, "we" was a product of groupthink and committee that lacked clear definition, rather than the "we" that carries with it a personal touch. In 1986, "we" were Admiral James Watkins, General P.X. Kelley, and Secretary John Lehman, Jr., and the reader easily understood when "we" meant a service, because the word "I" was used intentionally in the articles when talking about what a person thought.
In 2007 "we" didn't sound anything like General Conway, Admiral Roughead, or Admiral Allen. In 2013 or 2014, or whenever this new rewrite of the Maritime Strategy comes about, my hope is that who is talking and what "we" are saying is clear to the reader - and if "we" can't produce something similar to those 12 slides highlighted above, then maybe "we" don't actually have anything important to say.
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