The American sea services were busy on Oct. 18, 2022. The destroyer USS Roosevelt was in the Baltic Sea, visiting Poland as it concluded the Joint Warrior 22-2 exercise. The American aircraft carrier George H.W. Bush was in the Mediterranean operating with NATO allies. In the Pacific, the Sama Sama exercise organized by American, Philippine, and Australian naval forces was wrapping up, which had also brought together ships from the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force and British Royal Navy. Marine Rotational Force-Darwin 22 was returning home to California after the 11th rotational force forward deployment to the north coast of Australia. And the USS Milwaukee set sail from its homeport in Mayport, Florida, for a deployment to South America and the Caribbean with helicopters from Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 28 and a law enforcement detachment from the Coast Guard aboard.
With challenges and responsibilities for the U.S. Navy across the seven seas, the 2020s have brought about new calls for a fresh look at American maritime and naval strategy. For the most part, these writings have turned toward an alleged golden age of naval strategic thinking in the 1980s when the Reagan administration developed The Maritime Strategy. Some have contended that American naval strategists need to mirror the 1980s efforts more explicitly, while others have asserted that today’s strategy has already done that. With the dominant and potentially existential threat of the Soviet Union providing the focus of those earlier naval strategic concepts, it seems logical that a rising China would call for a similarly focused effort. But a fixation on one era and the parallels of one former adversary are insufficient. While thinking about the historical model provided by The Maritime Strategy, today’s strategists, naval professionals, and national security policymakers should also balance their thinking by returning to the maritime strategy efforts that culminated 15 years ago in the launch of The Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Sea Power, or CS21.
CS21 was steeped in the classical strategic concepts of seapower but also included revolutionary new elements for the 21st century. Specifically, it included a discussion of maritime responsibilities during peacetime that has been lost over the last decade and a half. Instead, today’s strategic guidance zeroes in on the risks of and potential for a war between the United States and its global rivals, replacing concerns about maintaining peace, preventing conflict, and enhancing prosperity with the need to have a “warfighting advantage.” Rereading 2007 strategy offers an opportunity to return to some of the classical ideals of seapower and focus on the ways that naval power serves to integrate deterrence and broader foreign policy goals.
Cooperation, Competition, and Conflict
In 2005, when the Navy staff began to work on new strategic guidance, the challenges that American national security professionals focused on were different than they are today. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were only a few years old, and were not progressing as military leaders had planned or political leaders had expected. The insurgency in Iraq was growing and by 2007, when CS21 was launched, “the surge” was beginning. The rise of China and the tensions it might engender were barely on the radar of the American national security establishment, and rarely a part of intelligence briefs. Questions remained about Vladimir Putin’s leadership of a Russian Federation which was turning from a failed economy to a corrupt petro-state. None of these challenges appeared to have major maritime or naval elements. American naval dominance remained the often-overlooked foundation of what some international leaders were labeling as the United States’ “hyperpower” status.
Co-signed by then-Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Gary Roughead, Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps General James Conway,…
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