The Changing Role of Navies World-wide

Prof Geoffrey Till
Head of the Department of History and International Affairs, Royal Naval College, Greenwich

Published in South African Defence Review Issue No 10, 1993



INTRODUCTION


The end of the Cold War has meant two things.1 Firstly, the basic structure of the international system has fundamentally changed. Old enemies are new friends; bipolarity has been replaced by multipolarity; order, apparently by disorder; the familiar alliance systems of the past are shifting beneath our feet. In much of the developed world, the effect on defence spending of expectations of a peace dividend now that the military requirements of the Cold War are no longer with us, have been reinforced by the debilitating effects of recession. The result is that defence planners, naval ones included, are having to make do with less in a world in which it is very difficult to define the requirement. In many cases, this is their most immediate and their most difficult task.

For this reason, Western and Eastern naval planners are having to go back to basics. In theory, the operational activities of a fleet, and its size and shape, should flow logically from its agreed missions, and these should derive from the imperatives of national strategy. But uncertainties at the top of this hierarchy trickle down through the structure, gathering strength as they go. For the naval planners of East and West therefore, current uncertainties as to the future role their nations will play considerably complicate their task.

In some ways, this is distinctly reminiscent of the problems their predecessors faced in the period between the World Wars. In some ways too, such uncertainties narrow the conceptual gap between them and the newer navies of the Third World. Now many of them are less able than they were to exploit the Cold War and draw support and sometimes direction from the Superpowers. Partly in consequence, there are often, here too, fundamental uncertainties about future national roles and about derived missions. The product of such changes is often divided opinion about what should be done next. In the Republic of Korea, to take but one example of a common problem, there are evident splits between those who base their design for a navy on the assumption that the first strategic imperative of the South is to respond to the North; others argue for a regional navy capable of making a splash on a much wider scene. Many Third World countries are further burdened by a lack of infrastructure or institutional machinery to translate such a mission structure, even if they could agree on what it should be, into an appropriate and sustainable mix of platforms, weapons and people. The huge number of old ships, submarines and aircraft found in the pages of Jane's Fighting Ships that are in fact militarily useless, is ample evidence both of this fact, and of the waste of scarce resources it signifies.

The argument that everything is in flux, true though it is, should not be taken too far. Some certainties remain. Geography does not change very much and remains an important determinant of what navies must do, and indeed of their particular character. For example, navies that confront the open ocean may need large sea going ships that would be an embarrassment in the calmer waters of enclosed seas like the Baltic or the Gulf. But geography is only the most obvious of what might be termed the permanently operating maritime factors. Another constant in a world of variables would seem to be the constraints imposed by national treasuries. With the exception perhaps of a few countries along the Pacific Rim, it remains true that there will never be enough money available for naval planners to provide the forces they think their assigned missions require.

In some ways, the second consequence of the end of the Cold War has been a more substantial conceptual problem, and that is to arrive at some conclusions about the extent to which the future nature and employment of military force will be different to what we have become used to. This is more than the familiar [though historically often very difficult] question of identifying who might have to prepare to fight, where and when. Instead, it is the much more fundamental issue of deciding what the actual function of the military of the Twenty First Century will be.

The current interest in peacekeeping operations is a case in point.2 Humanitarian and peacekeeping operations are distinctive and may call for the military units engaged in them to be specifically trained for the role. Their tasks and aims will be quite different from those of war, their allies various and varying. There is little reason to suppose that the military qualities that fitted military forces for their tasks in the Cold War era will automatically be appropriate now and in the future. On the contrary, the military units involved may need to be re-rolled and re-trained in order to cope with a quite different but in some ways equally difficult set of challenges. The extent to which this is true remains a matter of debate and will vary according to circumstances.

Navies are of course as subject to these pressures as any other military forces, but sailors have always prided themselves on their versatility, their particular utility in situations short of absolute conflict, their global reach and their adaptability. Naval planners in the 1990s will no doubt argue that these qualities are particularly relevant to the new international circumstances and will be keen to do everything they can to maintain them.

The consequential spectrum of military requirement for navies, appears to be along the lines suggested in the accompanying table. We will discuss each level of requirement in turn, and then turn to the very difficult force structure questions that flow from them.

It is worth emphasising that this is a spectrum, demarcations between the categories of activity often being very ambiguous. Moreover a situation ashore can change too, sliding from one level of threat or seriousness to another. Naval forces poised offshore have a unique capacity to respond to such shifts. If developments ashore are proceeding satisfactorily they can be kept out of sight, but they can be moved in or reinforced to emphasise a point. Naval Forces can make the transition from the posture of gladiators to helpful bystanders and back again with little need to delay or reconfigure.

WAR-FIGHTING


Traditional maritime strategists like Corbett or Mahan3 would, of course, have found war-fighting the most familiar category of naval requirement. War fighting could range from total war at one end of the scale to limited war at the other, depending on such obvious characteristics as the length of the conflict, its geographic extent, targeting doctrine and so forth. We will look at the requirements of examples at both ends of the war-fighting range.

WAR-FIGHTING: THE RUSSIAN EXAMPLE


At the top of the range as far as the navies of the United States, of the Western Europe or the Pacific rim are concerned, there is the most serious, but least likely prospect of conflict with a major power. Simply for planning purposes, the Western naval planner might want to take the Russian Navy (RFN) as a measure of the characteristics and capabilities required, rather in the spirit that the US and British navies used to take each other in the early 1920s.4

There remains just enough of a possibility of this (given Russia's internal situation) to make such an exercise interesting, and there will certainly remain a large body of ships and submarines operating out of Kronstadt, the Kola and Vladivostok until well into the next century. Western planners may also make the point that for many of the last two hundred years, the Russian Navy was a considerable naval force. Russia's neighbours, in Scandinavia for example, are especially sensitive to the fact that Russia will continue to be Europe's strongest military power for the foreseeable future.

The requirement to be prepared for such a contingency (however unlikely it might seem) generates a need for maritime capacities and a set of concepts similar to those maintained during the Cold War. Such a requirement might be held to justify the maintenance of a nuclear deterrent at sea and the capacity to launch strikes ashore. It might be thought to require a capacity for high-tech deep water ASW operations and for the capacity to protect sea lines of communication for long periods of time. The requirement might also include the capacity to make contested amphibious landings, with all the specialist skills, escorts, mine clearance precursor work, command, helicopter and surface assault platforms and assault troops that this function requires.

In the Cold War, high-tech high cost naval capacities were justified in Western navies by the need to compete with the Soviet Navy. The justification is now switching instead to their being able to defend against capacities once represented by the Soviet Union. Most obviously, there is stress on the need to counter the ex-Soviet naval weaponry now flooding Third World markets. Again, planners now talk of the need for sophisticated capacities to monitor and supervise arms control agreements. A third example of the continued push for qualities formerly associated with the need to deter the Soviet Union, is the US Navy's recent claim that it is '... carefully examining the naval capabilities which could contribute to theatre missile defences' 5- presumably in the context of GPALS. It seems that the end of the Cold War may not mean the end of the push for quality which used to characterise it.

Advocates for the maintenance of such ambitious capacities could perhaps rehearse the arguments summarised by the old phrase, Si vis pacem, para bellum' but, given the current political situation, the 'Russian threat' or any derivative thereof, can hardly be more than a planning device and one which will probably not cut much ice with Treasury opinion in London, Washington and so on. Common expectations of a peace dividend resulting from the end of the Cold War will exacerbate the problem. As a result of this, the US and British navies will see major reductions before the end of the decade, probably significantly bigger than the 20-25% cuts envisaged before the failed Moscow coup of August 1991. European navies can probably expect far fewer US naval forces in Europe's waters from now on, a point worth remembering when considering the naval implications of events in the former Soviet Union. In current circumstances, European navies are more likely to follow the lead set by the superpowers rather than to attempt to compensate for any draw-downs in their strength.

Reduction in size of their naval forces does indeed appear to be the pattern throughout the member nations of NATO, although this may in some cases be partially compensated for by the adoption of radically new procurement and deployment policies. In Denmark's case, for example, Standard Flex 300 Flyvefisken concept of building a number of multi-role patrol boats that can be reconfigured for ASW, mine sweeping, fast attack craft or even environmental tasks, thanks to highly modularised weapon and sensor fits, is attracting some interest, since it offers the prospect of affordable flexibility.6

It would, of course, be wrong to infer that the patterns being set by Western navies and their erstwhile adversaries are universal. On the contrary, the interest currently exhibited in aircraft carriers of one sort or another by countries like China, Japan and Thailand demonstrate that expansion rather than contraction is the pattern for the countries of the Pacific Rim.

PREPARING AGAINST AN UNKNOWN ENEMY


Naval plans will therefore need to be made in the absence of an identifiable and credible major adversary and this is an unfamiliar business. Given all this, on what basis are naval planners to make their calculations? Since they can no longer take the characteristics of an identified adversary as a measure of the capabilities required, naval planners are uncertain as to what should be put in their place. Perhaps it should be the requirements of allies, or the demands of the defence industries, or sets of capabilities extrapolated from basic national interests. It would certainly be easier if naval planners could point at established interests and deduce their requirements from them 'scientifically.' In the interwar period, for example, the British based their need for 70 cruisers (no more, no less) on the measured length of the sea lines of communication that kept the Empire together. Planners can sometimes do this, but not always.

Given these difficulties, it is perhaps not surprising that planners would sometimes revert to more basic 'gut instincts' about the capabilities they feel, somehow, they just need, or rely on established precedent skillfully camouflaged. Rejecting this approach simply as 'old thinking' would be unfair if a reluctance to change reflected real continuities in maritime place and situation. Britain's maritime requirements, for example, should surely continue to be set, at least to some degree, by its geography, by its continued dependence on sea trade and by its Atlantic links with the United States. Characteristics such as these are more than merely ephemeral and should provide an element of continuity in an otherwise bewilderingly fluid world.

SWITCHES IN STRATEGIC EMPHASIS


But, as we have seen, naval planners have also to cope with a second fundamental consequence of the end of the Cold War which will have a major effect on their ideas about maritime strategy and naval policy. In the past, much of the Royal Navy's effort, both theoretical and practical, was devoted to the task of preparing for the struggle for the control of the sea. This was at the heart of its concept of operations and of its naval policy. But now there is none to challenge Western maritime supremacy and it is hard, at least at the moment, to imagine a situation in which there could be a sustained conflict at sea.

This is not to decry the continuing importance of sea control, which still underpins all uses of the sea, including the diplomatic. These uses of the sea, moreover, may well be contested. The fact that the Coalition's sealines of communication in the Gulf War were not significantly challenged should obviously not lead to the conclusion that such invulnerability can safely be assumed.

Nevertheless, Western sailors will need to recast their theories and their concepts to focus more on power from the sea and less on power at sea. Corbett at least was well aware that it was on land that human destiny was basically decided, and it was where they had an impact ashore, that navies were at their most influential. Being strong at sea was imply an enabling capacity providing such leverage.

This switch in emphasis suggests there will also need to be a shift away from the practices and the weaponry of blue-water naval operations (as perhaps exemplified by deep water ASW) and towards what the Americans are increasingly calling 'littoral warfare' in which the emphasis might be on amphibious warfare, shore bombardment, mine warfare and so on. The disappearance of the Soviet Navy, in short, implies the need to switch attention and resources away from securing control of the sea and more towards its exploitation.

It might also imply a requirement to 'think purple' to much greater extent in the future than was perhaps the case in the past. The capacity to project power ashore is increasingly seen as an amalgam of the efforts of land, sea and air-forces, perhaps even to the extent that it is becoming faintly improper even to continue to use the phrase 'maritime strategy' at all.

Both the emphasis on littoral operations and the need for the combined action of all the services are manifest in the new US strategic formulation 'from the sea''.7 This was issued in September 1992 after more than a year's reflection by the US Navy's strategists. It marks a significant departure from the Mahanian simplicities of 'The Maritime Strategy''8 and is an ambitious attempt to adapt to a new, uncertain world, where there are countless threats on shore but few at sea, since '... with the demise of the Soviet Union, the free nations of the world claim preeminent control of the seas and ensure freedom of commercial passage.' Because the US Navy, for the time being at any rate, controls the sea, it can be used as an area from which to project power ashore in defence of American interests and/or international stability. The absence of a major enemy at sea, it seems, allows the US Navy to switch the intensity of its gaze from the top of the spectrum to the middle.

But Western sailors are also quick to warn against the simplistic conclusion that since there is at the moment no credible adversary who might need to be dealt with in a major war at sea, there is now no need for significant navies. The point is that command of the sea was only ever a means to an end (rather than an end in itself). It is now up to Western naval planners to show not what they need in order to be strong at sea, but what they can contribute to national (and global) security now that they are in that happy state.

This relative shift in emphasis from control of the sea to its exploitation would have obvious implications for force-mixes. It implies most obviously a relative decline in the perceived importance of deep water ASW, and a relative increase in force projection capacities.

WAR-FIGHTING AGAINST THE LESS SERIOUS ADVERSARY


This category of task clearly illustrates the fact that the lines between the various levels of maritime activity are often ambiguous. War against a less serious adversary is a vague concept that is unlikely to offer much in the way of hard guidance to the naval planner, although most may respond intuitively that they will still need the same range of capabilities, only at a perhaps lower level. Each case moreover would be difficult to predict and is probably unique in many of its particulars. Desert Storm for example was fought in a highly distinctive set of geographic, strategic and political circumstances which would make it dangerous to simply rigidly apply the lessons learned there to other, different situations.9 But the problem is that in dealing with a world of multiple and unpredictable risk, almost every possible adversary and every capability can be made to look a necessary element in future planning. Particular examples make general conclusions even more elusive.

Even when dealing with a less serious adversary, or perhaps with a serious adversary in a less threatening situation, naval planners may well argue that it makes sense to treat minor opposition as though it were major. This approach may take the form of focusing on a continuing need for quality in order to cope with sophisticated ex-Soviet equipment now flooding onto world markets. Such a desire to err on the side of safety may well be re-inforced by the acute sensitivity of western electorates to prospective loss of life in the conduct of operations of risk. Both General Powell's preference for the principle of overwhelming force in the conduct of Desert Storm and current hesitations about possible international intervention in Bosnia illustrate such sensitivities on the part of Western decision makers and their consequent desire to make sure that the forces engaged be as well equipped as possible. Even for the conduct of military operations at a lower level of intensity, therefore, there appears to be a premium on quality.

SHADES OF NAVAL DIPLOMACY


With the limited application of force, such as the US naval operations against Libya in the 1980s, we shade into militant diplomacy, and coercion. This second dimension of naval activity comprises the continuing, indeed expanding, tasks of naval diplomacy. Naval diplomacy is based on war fighting capacity and is likely to be relatively even more important in a disorderly world than it was in the old days, because of the contribution it can make to the defence of international stability. Over the past few years, we have seen many examples of this type of activity, especially in the Gulf, the Mediterranean and around the coasts of Africa. Naval forces do have great advantages in the diplomatic role, for they are inherently flexible, mobile and their liability is limited, so that if things go wrong, which often happens, naval forces can be extracted so much more easily than their land, or possibly air equivalents.

MARITIME COERCION


Coercion may mean the deterrence or control of forces threatening regional or global stability. Examples of this are sadly common in the post cold war world. The sanctions campaign against Iraq was one, and the current sanctions campaign against Serbia is another. Geography, and in this case permeable land frontiers offering alternative points of access, may make such a sanctions campaign largely symbolic of external disapproval rather than forcing the target policy-maker to change his or her mind. In other instances, maritime power may be decisive, the US intervention of Grenada being a case in point.

ALLIANCE BUILDING


In fact, though, the real benefit of the sea-based sanctions campaign against Iraq in the wake of the invasion of Kuwait, may have been not so much a vain attempt to force Iraq back, but to build the political coalition that would make any subsequent military action politically acceptable to domestic electorates and to the international community generally. As such, and from a Clausewitzian point of view, it was arguably the most decisive use of military force in the whole Gulf conflict.

This demonstrates the way in which maritime forces may often have an important role in establishing beneficial relationships with allies, and in encouraging a cooperative approach to common problems. Navies seem able to service alliance systems, whether these alliances are permanent or ad hoc, bilateral or multilateral. The US Navy's extensive network of bilateral and multilateral exercises with countries around the world, such as its exercise programme with its NATO allies, its UNITAS programme and its impressive RIMPAC series shows that the alliance-building advantages conferred by the exercise of maritime power are universally understood.

The phenomenon of the naval support of alliances certainly exists, but for what reasons? There is, firstly, the obvious point that joint naval action has the advantage of sharing risks and responsibilities and so may provide the most acceptable means of responding to threats to the common security. Secondly, cooperative naval activity, perhaps in support of some regional collective security organisation, may be a local confidence-building measure. Thirdly, cooperation with an ally that is technically or tactically more advanced can have important advantages in training and equipment. Lastly, naval cooperation can also be a means of influencing the perceptions and behaviour of the stronger ally, and of winning a degree of political prominence perhaps not justified by raw considerations of military power. Such has always been a conscious, if unstated, function of the Royal Navy, in its dealings with the US Navy.

In some cases, such activities may be directed at encouraging the development of institutions. UN peacekeeping operations are a case in point. Firstly, they may provide benefits in training, equipment and influence; secondly, they contribute towards the resolution of the particular problem that prompted their creation. But thirdly they may be part of the process by which the structure and machinery of collective security organisations at the regional or global level are built. Developing a UN naval peacekeeping capacity might well be one means by which that organisation is developed into the kind of collective security organisation its creators hoped for. One of the advantages of UN peacekeeping operations is that they may involve countries otherwise marginalised by their economic weakness.

Equally clearly, one of the motivations for the WEU and NATO operations currently being conducted in the Adriatic has to do with the development of, and the relationship between, those two collective security organisations. What is at stake in the Adriatic, therefore, may be the future shape of Europe's so-called security architecture, quite irrespective of the influence such activities may have on events in the former Yugoslavia.

There are only nascent regional collective security organisations in areas like the Western Pacific, South East Asia, the Indian Ocean and the South Atlantic. If local states wished to create or energise them, maritime operations would have an important role to play in setting them up. For all these reasons, the concept of 'Multinational Naval Cooperation' (MINCO, as it is commonly called10) will almost certainly be a matter of increasing interest for naval planners around the world.

Alliance building by the use of naval forces will surely continue to be conducted by a multiplicity of means including joint naval exercises, joint procurement, staff exchanges and so forth. For all such purposes, naval planners will find themselves in unfamiliar territory, since they will need to provide forces designed with allies, rather than adversaries, in mind.

Navies will also be 'independent actors' to a much smaller extent in the future than they were in the past. Solutions to common problems will be sought in the company of others more frequently. There will certainly be a procurement angle on all this too. Unless hard-pressed national navies cooperate with one another in the procurement of the vessels and weapons they need, they seem likely, certainly in the West, to encounter serious budgetary problems.

INTERNATIONAL MARITIME ASSISTANCE


The last type of naval diplomacy is something of a rag-bag, but an increasingly important one. One of the major preoccupations of Western planners is with naval peacekeeping operations. While the incidence of peacekeeping operations on land may have increased since the end of the Cold War, there is nothing new in the idea. But, more recently, there has been a great deal of interest in the question of whether and to what extent this activity can and should be extended in an 'interventionary' direction on the one hand11, and to the sea on the other. At the moment the debate is wide open and it is as yet by no means clear what the answer to these questions will be.

Since the Gulf War, such activities have included the monitoring of cease-fires or embargoes, the separation of forces, caring for refugees, the provision of assistance (for example the mine-clearance exercise still continuing in the Gulf), looking after merchant shipping, and increasingly the furnishing of humanitarian relief and its protection.

In recent years there have also been several instances of the sea-based rescue of threatened citizens (through service assisted or service protected evacuation). Two examples, both conducted by international forces led by the Americans, are particularly worth noting. The ability of navies to provide sustained but controlled and acceptable limited presence was well demonstrated by the remarkable but barely noticed maritime force that was able to wait off strife-torn Liberia for seven months before moving in to rescue 2400 people. The potential reach of maritime forces was shown by the US Marine Corp's ability to fly helicopters 460 miles at night from their amphibious warfare ships to pull 260 diplomats and foreign nationals from the US Embassy in Somalia.12

The implications of this burgeoning role for the size and shape of navies intended to participate in activities in defence of international stability are fairly obvious. It would require platforms with room for stores for disaster relief, with medical facilities and with the capacity to accommodate large numbers of people. Sealift is 'an enduring mission for the [US] Navy',13 because it underpins forward force projection. On a smaller scale, the ability to operate helicopters or small vessels running to and from the shore would be helpful. The function also requires good satellite communications, effective command and control facilities, the capacity to operate Special Forces and the capacity to operate at length independently of the often poor shore, port and logistic facilities to be found in the Third World. At least at first glance, these would seem to be the characteristics of an amphibious force, and it is therefore no surprise that Western nations like the French, Spanish and Italians are doing their best to defend such forces against budgetary pressure.

International maritime assistance may also take the form of 'nation-building'. The developed world may help the less developed in skills of creating, managing and operating naval forces capable of contributing to national cohesion and/or international security. Bilateral cooperation of the sort discussed above and the provision of technical and training assistance are amongst the methods used for this purpose.14

The domestic dimension should not be forgotten. In the European tradition, armies have often been regarded as 'the school of the nation' and there appears to be little reason why this should not also apply to navies. The provision of a naval service for many third world states could become an important means by which individuals are endowed with a set of skills and values that will be of benefit to the communities they serve, perhaps after they have left the navy. Few would argue that this educational/socialisation mission should be regarded as a justification for a navy (because spending an equivalent amount on a Ministry of Education at least ought to be more cost-effective) but it could at least become a bonus conferred by a naval force justified and established for other reasons.

GOOD ORDER AT SEA


Finally, there is the last dimension of the new spectrum of naval requirement that seems to be emerging in the post Cold War world, namely the hum-drum tasks concerned with the maintenance of good order at sea. On the one hand, the threat to global security implied by problems at this level may be the least of all those discussed; on the other hand, they are certainly the most common. They seem, at first glance, to be the concern of a blue lamp rather than a blue water navy. Nevertheless, these constabulary tasks are increasingly important.

Sea-based resources (oil, gas, fish) have become crucial to the economic success of littoral states and so must be supervised and administered. Unfortunately, there are many areas of the world ocean in which jurisdiction is disputed, the gulf of Sirte and the South China sea being but two examples.

Domestic societies are increasingly vulnerable to the threats posed by drug-smugglers, illegal immigration and so on. The recent attempted landing of 10 000 Albanian refugees at the Italian port of Bari, the interceptions of Haitian refugee ships in the Caribbean and the routine turning back of economic migrants from China by the authorities in Hong-Kong show how widespread the problem is. The sensitivity of southern Europeans to population pressures in the Maghreb also demonstrates how serious such problems could be.

Increasingly, it is argued that resource depletion and environmental pollution are the real long-term threat to global security, and such concerns clearly have more public visibility now. For this reason, navies are also becoming more involved in the management of the environment, both in terms of avoiding being a source of pollution themselves, and of helping clear up pollution caused by others.15 With the help of their Standard Flex programme, the Danish Navy is making a special effort to increase its capacity to support hydrographic and scientific survey, but this is merely one example of a widespread phenomenon.

Lastly, there is the reappearance of the scourge of modern day piracy and armed robbery from merchant ships particularly prevalent in areas such as South East Asia, West Africa and South America. Currently estimated to be costing ship-owners about £200 million a year, and involving the use of violence in about 25% of cases, piracy could well prove beyond the capacity of local states to control, thereby requiring international action of some sort. The collapse of the Somali and Ethiopian navies and the consequent increase in lawlessness in parts of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden is a worrying example of a general problem. Free passage on the oceans can sometimes be hindered by national action, such as the attempted closure of the Straits of Tiran in 1967 and pressure on the Strait of Hormuz in the 1980s.

All this will have a considerable effect on the composition of and the tasks confronting the green water and regional navies, and indeed even on the overall shape of the blue water navies. There appears to be a natural tension between the requirements of green and blue-water operations and this causes doubt about the extent to which 'blue water' navies should condescend to such tasks. The defence of good order in local seas calls for large numbers of offshore patrol vessels of one sort or another, but in a budgetary sense, this requirement may compete with many of the open ocean operations already discussed; accordingly such tasks have traditionally been regarded with some suspicion by blue water sailors. Instead, such limited tasks have been seen as the function of local navies and coast guards. However, the reduced prospect of a serious war at sea is prompting some re-appraisal of such attitudes even amongst the most traditional of naval planners.

CONCLUSION


In sum, the range of tasks confronting modern navies is likely to increase over the next few years; resources on the other hand are likely to continue to decrease. The political-strategic world will offer naval planners much less guidance than they have become used to in the Cold War era. In fact, there is nothing new in this. It was, for example, the constant complaint of the British Chiefs in the interwar period that they could get little guidance from their political masters as to whom they were to prepare to fight, as well as where and when.

In this situation, because they operate forces of almost infinite flexibility and often cannot find people willing to tell them what to do, sailors have tended to turn to what their critics call 'parametric planning.' They resist being tied down to one scenario lest it unsuits them for another and prefer to rely instead on the inherent flexibility of sea power to provide the necessary options. The sailor's instinctive aversion to the specific and almost mystical faith in the capacity of a first-rate balanced fleet to cope with virtually anything can be distinctly irritating to the unsympathetic. Thus Henry Stimson:
The Navy Department ... frequently seemed to retire from the realm of logic into a dim religious world in which Neptune was God, Mahan his prophet and the United States Navy the only true Church.16
The analogy is with the preventative all-round cover offered by a normal police force which can rarely help deter particular crimes against particular victims, but which instead aims to provide general cover. This necessary woolliness is sometimes seen as an attempt to make a virtue out of vagueness and invites suggestions that naval planners ought to improve the quality of their prophecy rather than seek to persuade treasuries to allow them to develop the flexibility needed to cope with its failures. But the point is that naval planners will probably have to make even more use of this once and perhaps still criticised, approach in the future, however unpopular it might make them with Treasuries around the world.

REFERENCES

  1. The opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and should not be taken necessarily to reflect official opinion in any way.
  2. Much of the interest in this topic was stimulated by the Secretary General of the UN's paper An Agenda for Peace dated 17th June 1992. For an interesting discussion of the issues involved, see Michael C. Pugh, Multinational Maritime Forces: A Breakout from Traditional Peacekeeping, The Southampton University Papers in International Policy, No 1, 1992. See also his Peacekeeping a role for Navies?', in Naval Forces III/1992.
  3. For an introduction to the approaches adopted by Mahan and Corbett, see G Till et al, Maritime Strategy and the Nuclear Age. (London: Macmillan, 1984) pp 28-33, 39-42.
  4. Stephen Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars, Vol 1 (London: Collins, 1968) pp 300-466.
  5. From the Sea: Preparing the Naval Service for the 21st Century, a joint paper by the Secretary of the Navy, the Chief of Naval Operations and the Commandant of the US Marine Corps, September 1992, p2.
  6. David Foxwell, Denmark's Naval Modernisation: Survival through innovation, International Defence Review, 1/93.
  7. From the Sea, op cit.
  8. Adm James D Watkins, US Navy, The Maritime Strategy, supplement to the Proceedings of the US Naval Institute, January 1986.
  9. Lawrence Freedman and Efraim Karsh, The Gulf Conflict 1990-1991 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993) is a good review of the whole issue.
  10. See, for example the proceedings and conference report by Jeffrey Sands of the Conference on Multinational Naval Cooperation in a Changing World, held at the RN College Greenwich, December 1991.
  11. John Mackinlay and Jarat Chopra, Second Generation Multinational Operations, The Washington Quarterly, Summer 1992.
  12. See General Carl E Mundy, Expeditionary Forces: A Defence Concept for the Future, Seapower, April 1992.
  13. See Bruce B Stubbs, USCG, The US Coast Guard's National Security Role in the Twenty-First Century, Center for naval warfare Studies, US Naval War College, Newport R.I., USA Nation-building CG, pp 173-7.
  14. From the Sea, op cit, p 2.
  15. H T Lenton, Protecting the Marine Environment and P McLaren, Navies and the Global Environment, both in Navy International, Jan/Feb 1993.
  16. Quoted in Robert W Komer, Maritime Strategy or Coalition Defence? (Cambridge, Mass: Abt Books, 1984) p 52. See also for references to parametric planning etc.