Seizing Opportunity from Chaos: Preparing for Chaotic Maritimes
By Captain Brent D. Sadler, U.S. Navy
For the last decade, rising global powers China and Russia, and regional powers such as Iran, have increasingly and successfully challenged the global order. Today's embattled economic and political order has kept the peace in the post-World War era. At the same time, President Trump’s political campaign and transition have been unconventional, and his presidency will likely continue to buck Washington’s conventional political wisdom. While this may be a painful transition for some, it may prove an opportunity to shift the prevailing winds of blanket budget cuts and put in place a long-term competitive approach to our most significant challenges. Bottom line: the domestic and international rules of the game have changed.
In recent years, widely accepted conventions, such as respect for national borders, have come under unprecedented challenge -- most recently, the 15 December 2016 seizure of a U.S. underwater unmanned vehicle (UUV) in the South China Sea by the Chinese Navy is a prime example. There is the steady progression of Russian challenges beginning with the 2008 invasion of Georgia, 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea, 2015 intervention in Syria, and this year’s cyber-enabled information campaign directed at our Presidential elections. And of course, there has been a steady pace of horrific atrocities committed by Islamic State. Such events are symptomatic of a fundamentally changing and uncertain security environment, where today's conventional maritime practices and assumed access to international waters may no longer be relied on.
Early on the new administration will be tested, and past practice would indicate the new President would likely look to the Navy and Marine Corps as a force of choice. However, the increasingly complex, contested, and dynamic maritime domain necessitates greater interagency collaboration and enhanced regional partnerships to safely navigate the troubled waters ahead. Despite this, whole-of-government efforts have a poor track record. Overcoming this requires new approaches and pragmatic leadership, both made more likely with many conventional wisdoms being overturned. While the number of players and levers of national power used will grow, the mission for our maritime forces must remain focused on protecting open international trade, a mission harkening back to President Jefferson’s advocacy to protect commerce from Barbary Pirates with the first naval act of 1794.
Trade and Prosperity
The opportunity of emerging markets and challenges to maritime security concerns a traditional element of U.S. political culture dating back to the days of the nation’s founders. In fact, the first article of the U.S. Constitution includes pro-trade provisions: it prohibits taxing exports and charges Congress with combating high sea crimes such as piracy. This fact makes the rhetoric of the day regarding rolling back international trade deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) seem self-defeating, all the more so when considering that in 2013 the $2.3 trillion dollars in U.S. exports represented 11.3 million American jobs and 14 percent of gross domestic product (GDP); 30 percent of GDP growth the last five years has been due to exports. So, it is most likely global trade will be an enduring part of our nation’s political culture.
As U.S. foreign trade grows and constitutes an increasing share of U.S. GDP, it makes it vital to guarantee access to markets and freedom of movement traditionally provided by navies. Protecting and encouraging this positive continued trend is complicated by the greatly expanding number of “blue water” navies fostered by economies that have prospered by the same open markets and secure maritime commerce that they sometimes challenge. A metric for measuring the trend towards diffused prosperity and naval power is the expansion of the G20 nations, representing 85 percent of world trade, and increasingly a critical body for deciding global financial and trade issues.
Growth of Real Trade as a Share of GDP for United States
Source: “An Evaluation of Maritime Policy in Meeting the Commercial and Security Needs of the United States,” IHS Global Insight Inc, 7 January 2009.
As any realtor will tell you, location is king. The U.S. is blessed with a favorable geography with easy access to two oceans connecting us to large and prosperous markets on five continents. Because of our geography and large domestic market, the nation is innately positioned as a global market, which makes engagement in global maritime security essential. A similar case was made by the geographic determinism of Sir Halford John Mackinder, an early exponent of geopolitics, and revisited recently by Robert Kagan in his 2009 article “The Revenge of Geography.” Our geography merely underlines the need to invest in a maritime force that can ensure a global network of commerce and bolster favorable norms of behavior. However, the most cost-effective approach would combine a strong global Navy while securing the norms by which states conduct and protect trade such as those envisioned within the United Nations Convention on the Las of the Sea (UNCLOS).
It increasingly appears our nation is not set for clear sailing, however, as the international discord over maritime rights and perceived threats to trade sharpens from the South China Sea to the Baltic Sea. This discord is exciting naval rivalries contrary to the interests of all trading states, and failure to recognize and respond timely to such challenges will only allow them to metastasize and grow.
Nationalist Syndrome
When voters in the United Kingdom voted in June 2016 to depart the European Union, there was palpable surprise and consternation on both sides of the Atlantic. This vote, like similar votes being held by our allies, represents a nationalist trend which if not better understood runs the risk of imperiling some of our most valued and important security relationships -- this can be seen most starkly today with our NATO ally Turkey and its fundamentalist Islamic drift in governance. Nationalism is not easily controlled and tends towards unpredictable outbursts of public angst -- consider the Chinese Communist Party’s consternation in controlling anti-Japanese outbursts following crises in the East China Sea or deadly riots in Vietnam following the 2014 showdown between theirs and the Chinese Navy in the South China Sea.
For the Navy-Marine team, nationalism poses a potential challenge to access in critically important locations. Getting ahead of nationalistic narratives and shaping the political environment favorably for continued or expanded U.S. presence requires a renewed collaboration with the State Department in a new shared grand posture plan. The best approach integrates economic benefit and development in both the host nation and U.S. -- the assumption being that economic well-being and improvement will be the best advocate for a politically sustainable U.S. military presence overseas. Case in point, President Duterte of the Philippines is exploring a new relationship with China based on access to infrastructure investment, indicative that all politics and diplomacy is local. This new posture approach must be informed by the evolving realities of a contested maritime domain, making determining where the U.S. invests its next dollar and expends diplomatic capital a vitally important decision deeply impacting operations and the future shape of the U.S. military.
Lack of Options and a Reactive Strategy = Policy Failure
Considering policy failures of the past few years, there seems to be two root causes: The first is the lack of politically feasible military options along the full spectrum of crisis to effectively support diplomacy. This was partially to blame for the failure to act when Syria’s Assad crossed President Obama’s ‘Redline’ against chemical weapons use against insurgents. Lack of options also contributed to muted or weak responses against Chinese land reclamation and militarization in the South China Sea, and Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. The second is overly reactive policy that has neglected proactive campaigns to shape the perceptions and calculations of our competitors. Such an approach, while very much needed in the fight against radical Islam, has been visibly absent since the end of the Cold War. Any effort at addressing rising challenges in the maritime must be based on a strategy that realizes this, and includes active policies that target the ideologies (e.g. radical Islam) or nationalistic narratives (Chinese Communist party’s historical legacy) of our competitors.
The competition in which the nation finds itself today requires such a multi-track approach. Some have likened the strategic competition in Asia as a game of ‘Go’ where players are seeking to position themselves. There are even those who would claim the U.S. is playing checkers while our competitors are taking a longer more strategic view and playing chess. In realty, the nation must play all three games at the same time -- a sort of three-dimensional chess combined with strategic positioning of ‘Go’ and set-up’s and ambushes of chess synchronized with rapid, opportunistic movement embodied in checkers. Strategies should help organizations like the U.S. Government do this. However, arguably with each agency and department having its own strategy, there are too many, when only one is needed to guide the nation's efforts.
Addressing these root causes in a constructive and sustained way requires a framework for coordinating all elements of national power, something that national strategy documents and speeches alone have been unable to achieve. What is needed is an interagency playbook of campaigns and options that encourages and shapes various activities of the security establishment. There is precedent for such endeavors and there has been some limited success when the national security team led by the White House seeks to lead a government wide initiative coordinated early with Congress. One such attempt was the “playbook” drafted to respond to North Korean provocations, which was only modestly successful when put to the test during combined U.S. and South Korean Exercise FOAL EAGLE in 2013. Current efforts at updating the Goldwater-Nichols Act or reforming acquisition at the Department of Defense aside, a broader and fundamental change would be needed to realize the necessary interagency approach.
Defense’s New Maritime Map - The Five Maritimes
As near peer powers China and Russia reassert themselves globally, the regional approach taken by Departments of State and Defense will need to be reassessed. To address what is a wickedly complex and interconnected array of challenges, it is perhaps best to start by dividing the problem set into manageable parts. Such an approach is also necessitated by the nation's resource limits and narrowing relative power. However the problem set is divided, a tailored response that leverages the diplomatic-geographic contours of the world as it is will be most effective. So, ignore the bureaucratic fictions used to divide the world amongst various Geographic Commands in Defense or regional offices at State, and consider the world divided into five maritime and four land regions defined by common challenges and U.S. interests. Land regions could include Europe, Central Asia, Middle East, and the Korean Peninsula; and, the Five Maritimes would include: North Atlantic and Arctic; a triangular region consisting of the Caribbean, Gulf of Guinea, and Mediterranean; the Indian Ocean Region to include the Persian Gulf and Red Sea; and, Eastern and Western Pacific. Demands in each maritime dictate specific capabilities and approaches and represent a new framework for organizing the maritime forces:
North Atlantic/Arctic: Principle effort will be protecting the homeland from asymmetric threats and monitoring Russian out-of-area military deployments and operations. This will necessitate recapitalizing U.S. arctic capabilities, revitalizing anti-submarine patrols in former Cold War hotspots, and enhancing interagency coordination such as the Global Maritime Operational Threat Response (G-MOTOR).
Mediterranean/Gulf of Guinea/Caribbean: Maritime operations here would often be uncontested, allowing for a focus on crisis response (e.g. natural disaster response, counterterror raids) and improving maritime governance to counter illicit trade (e.g., narcotics, human trafficking, illegal fishing).
Indian Ocean Region: This region is carved into incongruent geographic bureaucratic parcels amongst Pacific, Africa and Central Commands, complicating efforts to partner with India and coherently deal with region-spanning piracy, human trafficking, and increased Chinese deployments. China’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative, establishment of its first overseas base in Djibouti, and the increasing frequency of naval deployments here belie the strategic importance of this region to China and signal an expanding presence. Until U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and shale oil supplant Russian and Middle East energy markets, however, key ally energy needs will necessitate a U.S. presence able to secure key shipping lanes such as the Straits of Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab.
Eastern Pacific: Increased Russian and Chinese naval activity deep into the Pacific are challenging assumptions of free movement of forces critical to Western Pacific and Korea contingencies. At the same time, many of our Pacific island nation partners are challenged to adequately police their economic exclusion zones (EEZ), resulting in significant financial and environmental losses. Here there is an opportunity for Departments of Interior and Defense to revitalize historical relationships and recapitalize duel use infrastructure important to local economies and securing partners’ EEZ while enabling a cost-effective U.S. presence that can ensure access to vital sea and air lanes.
Western Pacific: Allies and the balance of U.S. Pacific forces are situated here within range of thousands of Chinese ballistic and cruise missiles. Countering this threat and undermining Chinese counter-intervention strategy represents the most significant threat to long-term U.S. interests. Like Germany’s Fulda Gap during the Cold War, overcoming the challenges here will inform future defense investments for the foreseeable future. But China's actions are not the only challenge, sharpened activities will be needed to contain and even curtail the illicit trade and proliferation that sustains the North Korean regime and fuels its provocations.
Across all regions, U.S. alliances are the greatest asset, but they must be modernized to remain relevant in the changing security environment. Consider recent efforts in the Philippines, where Japan has joined U.S. efforts to improve the Philippine Coast Guard and Navy. This has been possible only because Japan has made legislative and constitutional adjustments for a proactive regional role. Critical in this Japanese endeavor has been the 2015 revision of U.S.-Japan Defense Guidelines and constitutional reinterpretations allowing collective self-defense. Moreover, both nations have committed to active and continuous coordination of national policy and military operations through the newly established Alliance Coordination Mechanism and the Bilateral Enterprise. While the alliance with Japan is rapidly evolving, more is needed to modernize and network our other alliances to best confront today’s threats together.
Concepts and Capabilities
Backdrop to today's tensions are two trends that our maritime team must contend. One is proliferation of and parity by competitors in precision munitions, most notably, China's anti-ship ballistic missiles and the proliferation of cruise missiles, such as that claimed by Islamic State to attack an Egyptian ship off the Sinai in 2014. Another is the rapid technological advance in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics that is enabling the creation of learning machines. Failure to adapt and lead in this new reality risks our ability to effectively respond and deter conflict.
In response, the Deputy Secretary of Defense has argued for a Third Offset, which like previous offsets, seeks to deliberately change an unattractive Great Power competition, this time with China and Russia.
However, existing budget structures too often place the execution of national strategy at risk, by prioritizing short-term fiscal needs over long-term strategic objectives. This was demonstrated during the 2013 sequestration when the military services were forced to make tough calls that in effect marshaled forces in the homeland. The impact was a diminution of regional exercises and combined operations at a critical moment that undermined the President’s rebalance to the Asia-Pacific. A visible example of this was the 2013 cancellation of the exercise RED FLAG that would have included the Indian Air Force at a time the nation was devoting significant diplomatic and actual capital in building a stronger strategic relationship with India. With this in mind, shifting the balance of operational funds to the Geographic Combatant Commands (GCC) could be an elegant approach to ensure national strategy execution remains resourced and coherent while freeing the Services to focus on manning, training and equipping.
Above all else, executing a maritime strategy requires a maritime force capable of operating in the Five Maritimes relying on concepts of operations (CONOP) to include:
- A joint and combined CONOP for use when the command and control of military forces is degraded, such as when satellite communications and cyber connectivity is unreliable under sustained attack.
- A joint and combined CONOP for movement of forces through contested domains during peacetime through conflict. In the very near future, joint force deployments could be better synchronized for combined effect by routinely coordinating U.S. Army deployments such as the Pacific Pathways, Air Force Continuous Bomber Presence and Theater Support Packages (short-term deployment of fighter squadrons overseas), with Navy and Marine Corps forces.
- A joint and combined CONOP for sustainment operations over a prolonged period (a year) across contested domains such as the Western and Central Pacific in a Far Eastern crisis. Past approaches, such as marshaling forces over a period of weeks and then committing to combat with overwhelming force will likely be untenable against likely adversaries.
The Department of Defense has spent significant energy developing such CONOPs and the needed forces to employ them. Key documents highlighting this effort include the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review, U.S. Marine Corps’ Expeditionary Force 21, and the 2015 Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower(CS-21R), where key capabilities identified include:
- Long-range strike that allows air and naval platforms to engage hostile forces beyond threat range and enhance the land component’s influence into the maritime. The latter likely requires a review of the 1980s Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty limiting land-launched missiles to under 300 miles or greater than 3,400 miles.
- Mitigating the threat to command and control will require multi-path, seamless communication infrastructure less reliant on space assets.
- To sustain joint forces for long periods under various threat conditions will require dispersed shore support and new at-sea replenishment and repair capabilities. Sustaining submarine and strike operations will be key to success in any conflict in the Western Pacific, and with key support bases within missile range, at-sea weapon reload and ship repair will be essential.
- To mitigate the ballistic and cruise missile threat, new expeditionary integrated air and missile defenses are needed. Such systems will be critical in defense of fixed bases, but will also be important to defending expeditionary bases as forces rapidly disperse under cruise and ballistic missile threat.
- Events in Mali (2012) and the persistent threat to U.S. diplomatic missions are part of a “new normal,” necessitating the rapid movement of forces to and from sea. Needed are cost-effective options that realize the Marine Corps’ concept of “Expeditionary Advance Base Operations.” Such investments must also leverage the mobility of amphibious expeditionary warfare with counter Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) capabilities especially in the Western Pacific to complicate Chinese A2/AD.
- The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) is a remarkable ship meant to operate in coastal waters for prolonged periods that is capable of being reconfigured while deployed for various missions. But, the ship has become arguably too expensive by ignoring a Napoleonic era dictate to “live off the land.” The ship's reliance on limited suppliers of high-grade fuel for its gas turbines and limited endurance means U.S. logistic ships or fueling stations must be nearby. What is needed in the immediate future, especially by many of our partner nations in Southeast Asia, is a small vessel with low-cost fuel requirements and minimum manning. U.S. requirements for a successor to the LCS should include the ability to aggregate individual unit capability (anti-submarine, air defense, counter-mine) into a lethal armada through swarm tactics that would include a sizable number of autonomous systems. Numbers matter, as the time to train crews for and swap out LCS mission modules can be ill afforded in a future conflict – needless to say, any forward port for such a platform reconfiguration would likely be under direct missile threat in the Western Pacific.
Preparing for Rogue Waves
As the new administration settles in and begins formulating its policies, there is a unique opportunity to shape and influence future decisions unconstrained by conventional wisdom. As already argued, with all the changes underway in global security, there is certainty for strategic surprise on the maritimes. Preparing for such uncertainty or rogue waves under the increased stress of shrinking budgets and narrowing conventional deterrence likely necessitates a fresh look at a few new ideas.
Pursue development of whole-of government-campaigns and operations that includes Department of Defense active participation along the full spectrum of peace to conflict. These in turn must inform new exercises, wargaming, and simulations testing approaches’ success in the transition from peace to conflict. The goal is to better inform resourcing for best effecting results in the grey zone of contested maritimes. Most often today, wargaming and exercises focus on the war fight, leading to a military optimized for force-on-force combat and less for its strategic employment in peacetime under times of increasing tension. Such a focus in war games and simulation could focus military forces' training to prepare for something akin to a future version of the Cuban Missile crisis and associated naval blockade.
Seek a new global force management framework that allows for optimized maritime forces and resources to address common challenges in the five maritimes. Recommitting to a Reagan-era 600-ship navy is infeasible and won't guarantee results alone. More effective would be a balanced fleet tailored to the five maritimes - roughly three fleets; one for contesting near-peer navies in contested spaces, one for constabulary-like duties, and a third for power projection ashore. The Joint forces (including Army and Air Force) are vital players in this and need to collaborate and focus long-term capability and posture investments on supporting temporal power projection for area denial against near-peer competitors like China and Russia.
Include key allies (e.g. Japan, Australia) in deployment planning early in the Global Force Management process and in regional security and capacity building planning at State and the GCCs. The goal should be to maximize combined efforts and leverage more effectively our combined resources by integrating military forces more deeply, such as allied ships being integrated into a Carrier Strike Group. A noteworthy example of combined capacity building is the ad hoc approach between the U.S., Australia, and Japan to improve Philippine coastal patrol and maritime domain awareness.
- De-emphasize interagency parochialism at the GCC level for strategy execution by expanding its presence at these headquarters with more senior leaders from State, Commerce, Treasury, and USAID. Moreover, consideration should be given to providing the majority of Operations and Maintenance monies to the COCOM (a similar situation exists today with Special Operations Command) vice Services and their regional component commands located at each GCC.
Enhance policy and operational coherency and reduce duplication of efforts by merging like functions across government. In an era of hiring freezes, mergers, and downsizing, this should be embraced. An idea worth considering is consolidating the office of Strategy, Policy and Plans of the Services and similar policy offices of the Secretary of Defense. Similar mergers could be considered for public affairs and outreach to industry. While painful in execution, often in the long run businesses have benefited from mergers and restructuring; perhaps Department of Defense could do so as well, but with military characteristics -- not unlike regionalization of services (medical, commissary, housing etc.) that has already been done.
Because continued U.S. advantage in conventional deterrence is at stake, resources and senior leader involvement must grow to ensure the success of a Third Offset Strategy based in cutting edge technologies and revolutionary CONOPs. To do this, consideration should be given to identify a single office to lead the research/design, doctrine/CONOPs, and training/exercises for a Third Offset into a cross-disciplinary office. If done as envisioned, it could be tinned to kickstart and focus the effort coherently and at minimum cost.
Seek more deployed options for sustaining the maritime forces’ readiness, maintenance, and repairs; preferably sharing the cost with host nations. Associated expanded access and presence must be politically sustainable, meaning it must benefit U.S. and host-nation constituents. One way of doing this is to tie such initiatives to improved economic ties through cooperation with U.S. and multinational developmental bodies (e.g. USAID, World Trade Organization). Economic growth, after all, most often enables better constituent lives and can contribute to a U.S. presence more politically acceptable.
Alfred Thayer Mahan, the famous American 19th/20th century naval theorist, made the case for seapower’s influence on history and international trade theory the case for resourcing that seapower, because national prosperity, power and security are intertwined. Bottom line, a great nation like the U.S. cannot continue to grow and prosper economically without trade (every autarkic state has failed or regressed relative competitors - feudal Japan, North Korea), making maritime forces even more vital today. The suggestions here are intended as a starting point to an invigorated debate over how to secure our nation's interests, one this author thinks includes a stronger maritime presence.
Final Thoughts
We are entering a new world order where past conventional wisdoms are giving way, a world that is not necessarily safer for U.S. interests. The wars following the attacks of September 11, 2001, have shaped the military we have today. Competitors, however, have not stood still, have studied our way of war, have grown their capacity, and have advanced key capabilities to challenge us. Increasingly, this illustrates a post-9/11 era characterized in part by the uncertain trajectory of emerging powers making a new approach needed to both manage risks as well as seek opportunity.
In January 2016, the Chief of Naval Operations released A Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority. The four lines of effort make clear an intention that seeks to alter Navy culture and encourage greater collaboration and coordination across the whole of government. As such, it focuses on developing the means in which Navy employs with, by, and through its many governmental and international partners. Needed will be a way to plan, execute, adjust, and sustain policy and actions in real-time across the whole of government more broadly. Attempts at these were made by Navy in the final years of the Cold War; it is time to dust off those ideas and update them for our contemporary challenges.
A maritime strategy for a maritime nation is sensible, but implementing a strategy that can steady our alliances and maritime forces through the rough seas ahead and occasional rogue waves will stress conventional approaches. The challenges confronting the U.S. are not abating and seem to be growing in number and complexity. Today’s reality, unlike the end of the Cold War, is that there will be no peace dividend after a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Action is needed urgently to provide more options so that the nation’s leadership is unconstrained by a choice between conflict or acquiescence that would surrender national interests and prosperity.
About the Author:
Captain Sadler is a Navy FAO specializing in the Asia-Pacific. He is the Senior Defense Official/Defense and Naval Attaché, U.S. Embassy Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. As a 2004 Olmsted Scholar in Tokyo, Japan, he studied at Keio University, Jochi University, and the United Nations University. He has a M.A. from Jochi University and M.S. from National War College where he graduated with distinction in 2011. Three of his articles have been published in the FAO Association Journal.