Sunday, January 12, 2014
The U.S. Navy is soon to release its update to the 2007 “Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower”. One would hope that history and geography play substantial roles in formulating this document. The long-range strategic interests of the United States have been relatively unchanged in many ways since the end of the Second World War. The Navy has always been the principal service protector of these interests and senior naval officers should be vocal in explaining this to civilian leaders. The service can accomplish this task by ensuring that these three specific concepts are strongly reflected in its latest strategy update.
Preserve the Post World War 2 Economic System
US Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau jr.
with John Maynard Keynes at Bretton Woods1944
The Second World War destroyed many old patterns of great power politics and replaced them with a truly “new world order.” These changes were embodied in the package of postwar economic structures and regulatory agencies collectively known as the “Bretton Woods System”. The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and other currency and finance regulatory measures exemplified the concepts of free trade, lower national tariffs, and moderate government interventions in economic affairs as advocated by the British economist John Maynard Keynes. Together this globalized financial regulatory effort would identify and be able to mitigate financial catastrophes like the Great Depression before they could lead to widespread economic chaos and breed future insidious dictators like Adolf Hitler, whose fascist movement rose to power in large part due to Germany’s dire economic distress caused by the financial depression. There have been many changes to this system since the late 1940’s. Floating currency values, inflation of the U.S. dollar, and shocks caused by rapid increases in international oil prices caused significant changes in the postwar economic construct. Nations devastated by the Second World War have rejoined the global economic community as powerful contributors; the U.S. is no longer the absolute dominant force in global economics as it was in the Cold War; and new members of the global market such as China, India, Russia, and Brazil have made their presence felt in international economic planning. Despite these changes, the roots of the system in the support of free trade are alive and doing very well. Advances in technology, especially in the electronic movement of currency and financial resources have made the system more profitable than in the past. As its manufacturing system has declined and diversified, the U.S. has become dependent on the postwar international system for its financial security. It is the true “center of gravity” of the United States. The protection of this system should be the principle U.S. strategic goal.
Defend the Global Commons
Guarding the global commons has long been a USN mission
If the global economic system is the heart of U.S. economic success, then the maritime, air, and cyber pathways through which international commerce flows are its primary arteries and veins. Protecting these systems should be the next most important strategic goal. The U.S. in many ways is both the inheritor and owner of this network. First begun in the 18th century as British explorers mapped the world’s remote lands and charted distant seas, the current system of globalization was the backbone of the trade network of the “Anglosphere” of the United Kingdom, its dominions and colonies, and even former possessions such as the fledgling United States. Steam power, transatlantic cables, and trans-oceanic aviation served to bind this system together into a powerful economic community. When the U.S. replaced the British Empire as the principle seapower and guardian of free trade after the Second World War, it expanded this global commons to include allies from the war as well as rehabilitated enemies such as Germany and Japan. The end of the Cold War introduced further newcomers from the communist block and the saw the explosion of cyber commercial and financial activity. The bulk of the movement of goods and services however still moves through the world’s oceans. According to a 2012 report by the United Nations, maritime trade accounts for 80% of the financial value of all trade and 70% of all volume of goods. As the primary guardian of this vast flow, the U.S. Navy (and all its international partners as discussed in the 2007 strategy), ought to be equipped to secure this vast potential battlespace.
Maintain the Ability to Strike "From the Sea"
Robert Strausz-Hupe
Operation Tomodachi aid
The last element of national strategy is preserving the ability to strike as necessary from secure maritime locations to more remote inland areas as required in defense of the international economic order and its commercial lines of communication. The distinguished Austrian-born U.S. diplomat and geopolitical theorist Robert Strausz-Hupe from the University of Pennsylvania stated, “one cannot argue with geography.” Seapower has always been based the exploitation of geographic advantages. Sufficient expeditionary ground forces are needed to accomplish tasks in securing those Eurasian and other territories adjacent to the sea. Geopolitical analysts such as Alfred Thayer Mahan, Jacob Spykman, and Sir Halford Makinder all concurred that control of this “rimland” area (Spykman’s term), was vital to the continued freedom of trade in the maritime world. Naval forces made possible rapid access to remote coastal areas. The British Navy incorporated this movement into its doctrine in the 19th and early 20thcentury to the point that iconoclast British Admiral Sir John Fisher referred to the British Army as a “projectile” to be “fired” by the Royal Navy in support of British strategic interests. Much of the geopolitical theory involved in the conduct of both World War 2 and the Cold War revolved around preventing hostile “continental” land powers such as Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and heretical maritime states like Imperial Japan from gaining access to and subverting the free flow of maritime trade. In the absence of large aggressive continental powers, the ability to move “from the sea”, also has the ability to prevent violence and restore order to sections of the global economic system damaged by natural or man-made disasters. The U.S. Navy’s ability to mount relief operations such as the “Operational Tomodachi” effort in the wake of the Japanese Fukushima reactor accident, and more recent aid to the Philippines following Typhoon Haiyan represent this sea-based capability.
The U.S. Navy has played a significant part in the achievement of each of these three elements of U.S. national security. Any new Navy strategy must support these requirements. The Navy has many choices in what future force structure it builds to support these strategic components. Technological advancements will make that force structure more powerful and budget cuts will limit its ability to conduct its mission. That structure however must support these strategic principles that have formed the foundation for U.S. national security since the end of the Second World War. The U.S. Navy must consider these strategic “building blocks” as the foundation for any new strategy it pursues in order to support future national security needs.
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