The Politics of Strategic Adjustment: Chapter 9

The Politics of Strategic Adjustment: Ideas, Institutions, and Interests

Peter Trubowitz, Emily O. Goldman, and Edward Rhodes (ed.)

1999

9. . . . From the Sea: The Process of Defining a New Role for Naval Forces in the post-Cold War World
Edward A. Smith, Jr., Boeing Corporation's Washington Studies and Analysis Group

In September 1992, the United States Navy and Marine Corps published the white paper From the Sea. The paper represented the fruits of the Naval Service’s efforts to deal with the changes in the national security environment wrought by the end of the Cold War and to redefine itself in terms of twenty-first century roles and missions. Although intended for general publication, the paper’s primary focus was internal: to engender a fundamental shift in naval thinking—away from the open ocean confrontation with the Soviet Navy, and toward a much more subtle and more flexible use of naval forces commensurate with a more uncertain strategic environment. The final and much abbreviated white paper outlined this “new” strategic concept for the Naval Service and heralded a broad transformation of the Cold War Navy.

The following chapter addresses the thought process behind From the Sea and how the Navy created its own internal consensus. It differs somewhat from those preceding in that it is a first-hand account of the internal Navy debates which led to that seminal white paper. In this sense, it is a natural continuation of Emily Goldman’s work in the immediately preceding chapter. Indeed, it focuses on many of the “how” questions she raises. How did a large, well-established institution such as the Navy stimulate—or impede— strategic adjustment? What assessment of the potential problems and requirements of a new age drove that institution to conclude that a shift in focus from blue-water to littoral operations was necessary or even possible? How much did the changed requirements reflect the collapse of the Soviet Union? How much was the new concept a response to the external pressures of public opinion, Congress, and the budget described by Rhodes, Shulman, Tubowitz, Nincic et al., and Sparrow? And, how much did they reflect a successful institutional adaptation of the kind Emily Goldman describes?

At its heart, this history outlines a process of strategic adjustment that was begun and sustained from within the institution itself. The development of the ideas contained in From the Sea and later amplified in Forward...From the Sea, and their institutionalization within the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps illustrate a dynamic interaction between military institutions and the set of ideas and assumptions that define their purpose and shape their planning and behavior. The examination of “how” the Naval Service reinvented itself in the early 1990s thus highlights both the central role of institutions in the generation and weighing of new ideas, and the critical impact of ideas in reshaping the institutions that generated them. The picture which emerges from this history of that process is that, while the end of the Cold War dictated a change in strategic direction for the Naval Service, the determination of what that direction would be was the product of self-conscious, self-examination by that service. Today, as the Naval Service strives to implement the concepts of From the Sea and Forward...From the Sea, and to relate them to a still larger incipient “Revolution in Military Affairs,” it is useful to put the white paper process and debates into the context of a far-reaching strategic adjustment parallel to those undertaken by the Naval Service in the 1890s and the interwar years.

Getting Started

The detailed discussions that led to From the Sea occurred over a six month period from October 1991 through April 1992, in a forum with the uninspiring name, the “Naval Forces Capabilities Planning Effort.” The NFCPE began in response to a directive from Secretary of the Navy H. L. Garrett to the Chief of Naval Operations and the Commandant of the Marine Corps: they were to assess the naval capabilities the United States would need as it entered the next century. ₂ The timing was significant inasmuch as the directive was drafted and the initial phase of the study took place amid the death throes of the Soviet Union, in the months after hardliners attempted but failed to overthrow the government of Mikhail Gorbachev. It was obvious to all NFCPE participants from the start that the old world order was dying and that the United States Naval Service would have to change. However, the Secretary’s instructions were to go beyond simply reacting to the immediate effects of the Soviet collapse and to create “a new zero-based plan for naval forces spanning the next fifteen to twenty years,” in effect, to provide an entirely new strategic concept for the naval forces of the United States. ₃

The NFCPE was carried out in three phases. During the first phase, from October through December 1991, a working group consisting of eighteen captains/colonels and commanders/lieutenant colonels drawn from the Navy and Marine Corps staffs and from the Marine Corps Combat Development Center (MCCDC) was set up. The working group reported twice a week to a six-member flag steering group headed by Rear Admiral Ted Baker and Major General Matt Caulfield which provided immediate supervision and feedback. Finally, the overall effort was chaired jointly by then Vice Admiral L. W. Smith and Lieutenant General H. C. Stackpole, the Navy and Marine Corps staffs’ respective directors for operations and planning, who were responsible for reporting back to the two service chiefs and the Secretary. The working group was asked to assess:

what had or had not changed in the national security environment; and
what implications these changes held for the roles and missions of forces.

The group was to postulate planning assumptions about the future environment for use in later deliberations and was to produce a clear vision of the future role of naval forces. The implicit starting point for the first phase was an emphatic “zero”: What was it, analysts were to ask—if anything— that naval forces did for the national good that justified the money taxpayers were spending to build and maintain them?

During the second phase, from January through April 1992, the working group was revised and expanded to twenty-five members in order to include a full spectrum of operational expertise and representatives from the fleets and Navy theater commanders and to ensure that all segments of the Naval Service participated actively in the final product. This group and the flag oversight group was directed to build upon the assessments of what had or had not changed in order to develop a new strategic concept, to define the capabilities required to pursue such a concept in a new maritime strategy, and, then, to complete the first draft of a white paper explaining the new concept.

To this end, the group was required to tackle a long list of touchy questions directly affecting the services’ internal constituencies. How could future national security needs in the maritime arena be met at the least possible cost? How could the Naval Service use its forces more flexibly and better integrate Navy and Marine Corps capabilities? Could the Naval Service relinquish some of its historical roles? Could the infrastructure at home and abroad be slashed? Finally, and given the declining Soviet threat, what kinds of forces would the United States need for the future? Providing answers to these questions involved wrestling with complex issues of future Navy roles in presence, crisis response, and deterrence, and of the size and character of the forces that would be required to fulfill these roles. Yet, it was clear that the final white paper needed to be simple, direct, and concise if it were to have any value either inside or outside the Navy. ₄ Therefore, the final paper could not incorporate in any detail the extensive underlying debate on the issues and, it had to limit itself to describing the new strategic concept and the capabilities it demanded.

During both phases, the effort was formally blessed as the Department of the Navy’s “highest priority.” The working group was given a “blank check” to requisition whatever support it required and was encouraged to conduct a series of very frank and not-for-attribution exchanges with experts of its own choosing both inside and outside the Naval Service. Over the course of the study, visitors included the Secretary and Undersecretary of the Navy, the Chief of Naval Operations, Commandant of the Marine Corps, directors of air, surface, subsurface and amphibious warfare, intelligence personnel, civilian and military planners including those from the Air Force and Army, senior Congressional staff members, and defense thinkers from industry, academia, and research corporations. The group was also invited to task the Center for Naval Analyses for statistical and analytical support and did so extensively throughout its deliberations. Finally, the group took advantage of a rapidly growing body of published material that included President Bush’s Aspen Address and a variety of speeches and articles by Congressional thinkers such as Senators Nunn and McCain and then-Representative Aspin and others. To encourage free, “out-of-the-box” thinking unconstrained by bureaucratic interests, all the group’s internal debates were conducted on a strictly enforced not-for-attribution basis. Representatives from the different warfare communities—the principal internal constituencies—and from the fleet and theater commanders were encouraged to keep their respective chiefs informed of the direction the proceedings were taking, but under the same strict not-for-attribution guidelines. Finally, to further insulate the group, participants were detached from their parent commands for the duration of the study and were offered separate performance evaluations covering the period of the study.

The process of building consensus within the Naval Service began midway through the second phase when, in late February 1992, the working group briefed its preliminary findings to what was reported to be the largest convocation of Navy and Marine Corps flag and general officers ever assembled—by one reckoning 80 percent of the three and four star officers in both services and some 50 additional flag officers. The participants were given thick dossiers of “read ahead” materials including outlines of the working group findings and a selection of the published material the group had considered. During a three-day session at the Quantico Marine Corps Base—isolated from Washington and away from most telephones—all participants were encouraged to speak freely both in plenary meetings and in smaller seminar groups which considered geographic and functional issues such as command and control. By the session’s conclusion, there was a general agreement as to the basic premises of the working group’s analysis and as to the direction the final study would take. Nonetheless, a lively debate over the white paper’s specifics continued throughout the final drafting and review process right up to its publication in September 1992. At that point, the debate ended. Thereafter, the sentiment was, as one senior flag officer succinctly and forcefully put it, “This (‘... From The Sea’) is now our future. Let’s get on with it. Get aboard, or get out.”

The final phase, that of fleshing out the operational dimensions of “littoral warfare” and of defining the force structure required to provide effective naval capabilities for the new age, began even before the publication of From The Sea. When first submitted for review and comment by the Navy and Marine Corps leadership in April 1992, the draft white paper had been accompanied by a voluminous “Capabilities Package” that outlined the NFCPE’s estimate of what would be necessary to implement From The Sea in coming decades. That in turn sparked a Navy staff reassessment of Navy roles and missions and a special wargame was sponsored by the Secretary of the Navy to test both these expansions and the From The Sea concept—all before the paper’s actual publication. These efforts subsequently continued on the Navy and Marine Corps staffs and in the activities of groups such as the Navy Staff’s Resources Requirements Review Board and the Chief of Naval Operations Executive Panel. Although a subsequent amplification of From The Sea entitled Forward...From The Sea was issued two years after the initial publication, it pointedly did not change the original work but largely confined itself to expanding that paper’s explanation of forward presence. More recently, both the Navy and Marine Corps have published “Operational Concepts” spelling out in more detail how they implement From The Sea, and how its concepts are fully congruent both the 1994 National Military Strategy and the joint operations foreseen in Joint Vision 2010. Indeed, the years since the original white paper’s publication have been marked by a growing appreciation among naval officers of just how radical a change From The Sea really was. In effect, the Navy “reinvented” itself and began its own “Revolution in Military Affairs” well before similar adjustments were even considered by the other armed services.

What Changed?

The decision of the Department of the Navy’s leadership to undertake the NFCPE was a clearly a reaction to a myriad of changes in the country and the world. However, from beginning to end, it remained an internal Navy Department reaction to those changes and not one directed or pressured from outside. As might be expected, both the Navy leadership and the group began with a visceral feeling that naval power would remain a vital part of dealing with these changes. However, the “zero-based” starting point for the effort forced participants to start by questioning this deep-seated assumption, that is, by questioning the very existence of the institution in light of the changes in the world around them. The first problem confronting the NFCPE, therefore, was to identify which world and domestic changes would be decisive for the future of U.S. naval forces—that is, which would have the heaviest impact on future naval force requirements or, indeed, remove the requirement for naval power entirely. The working group proceeded from two very basic assumptions: first, that, given a continued if diminished threat to lives, territory and interests, the American people would accept the need to maintain some form of military forces; and second, that the American people would be unwilling to abandon entirely their leadership role in the world, necessitating something more than military forces for a simple continental defense. To the degree that naval forces met these requirements for military force efficiently and effectively, the public would be willing to support some form of navy. The group did not immediately address the specific requirements, or the way in which that navy would plan to meet them, thus letting budget and resource questions as to the size or nature of the future navy follow from the ensuing detailed analysis.

Even with these assumptions, the candidates for consideration as definitive change were many and varied: they ranged from domestic and global demographic shifts through ecological and environmental concerns, to problems of budget and prospects for the domestic and world economies. Almost all would certainly affect either the nature of the Naval Service or the frequency and types of crises it would be called upon to handle. As each candidate was considered, the list gradually narrowed to a small number of broad transformations that were judged to be the most far-reaching and the most salient for assessing naval roles and missions in the next century. ₅ What emerged was a set of three fundamental “sea changes” in the world environment:

the collapse of the Soviet Union and with it the Cold War national security order;
the rise of a global economic interdependence; and
the accelerating pace of technological change.

These headings were never intended to encompass entirely the way that the world of the twenty-first century was likely to be different from that of the twentieth. Rather, these phenomena were deemed essential elements bearing on the core question of why and how naval forces would be called upon to do things differently in the future.

Collapse of the Soviet Union

The disintegration of the Soviet Union was an obvious starting point; it had, after all, invalidated the Forward Maritime Strategy upon which Navy forces and operations had been based since the early 1980s, and had been the impetus for the entire effort. Nonetheless, its importance for the NFCPE stemmed not so much from the loss of a defining naval adversary as from the fact that the collapse had signaled a fundamental shift in the nature of the world system within which navies would be used. Here was a transformation that evoked parallels to 1815 and the end of the protracted Anglo- French and Napoleonic Wars of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. These historical parallels, in fact, gave rise to discussions of how the Royal Navy had dealt with its changing roles and missions in the first half of the nineteenth century. The focus of the NFCPE discussion, however, was on two specific aspects of the overall Soviet collapse that had altered fundamental aspects of the worldwide national security system:

the change in the nature of deterrence, and
the shift from alliance to coalition as the basis for international security cooperation.

The change in deterrence seemed to affect the future requirements for naval forces on several planes. “Deterrence” in its Cold War-Soviet context had always carried an understood if not stated prefix—“strategic nuclear.” The collapse of the USSR had removed the “strategic nuclear” and “Soviet” connotations and revealed a much more complex problem in which deterrence was no longer exclusively nuclear—or even nuclear, biological and chemical—in character, but was and would remain a core element of military strategy at all levels.

To begin with, the massive nuclear arsenal created by the Soviets continued to exist. Even the most optimistic of assessments estimated that the successor states would take years to dismantle it—if they did so at all. Therefore, as during the Cold War, there would continue to be other states able to destroy this nation and, thus, that some form of strategic nuclear deterrent would be required. To be sure, the nature of post-Cold War strategic nuclear deterrence had changed. The deterrence problem had been characterized then by the doctrine of “mutually assured destruction” by which tens of thousands of nuclear warheads on each side were tightly controlled by a single hair trigger, but with little likelihood that either side’s trigger would actually be pulled. The problem posed by Soviet disintegration was one of multiple but possibly less reluctant nuclear triggers—that is, an increased likelihood that a smaller number of warheads might be loosed. This continuing, if altered, threat demanded that some form of strategic nuclear forces remain an operative part of the national security equation even as a drawdown in such forces was undertaken by all sides.

However, this relic of Cold War deterrence was overshadowed by new deterrence problems. Far more pressing was that of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Intelligence estimates indicated that a growing number of countries would come to possess some form of nuclear, biological, or chemical capability over the next two decades. That prospect seemed to make it dramatically more likely that some regime or non-state actor would actually use a weapon or device either against their neighbors or against the U.S.—a problem very different from that of Cold War strategic nuclear deterrence. Here again, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Cold War system of client state relationships was a factor. The Russians were no longer in a position to discourage acquisition of weapons of mass destruction by former Soviet clients or to offer credible security guarantees against neighbors who did acquire them. Further, the Persian/Arabian Gulf wars had underlined the utility of such weapons for threatening neighbors or deterring outside intervention.

Such a spreading nuclear, biological, and chemical threat posed two additional questions for naval planners. How could naval forces arrest or at least discourage the proliferation of such capabilities? What constituted an effective deterrent to their use? The latter, in particular, provoked vigorous debate over the usefulness of a massive nuclear deterrent in dealing with regional states that had only a small arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. The NFCPE concluded that potential opponents presumed that any such attack on United States territory would provoke a strategic nuclear response, so that a massive U.S. counterattack under those circumstances was still credible. Similarly, nuclear or biological attacks on U.S. forces, wherever located, would make a nuclear response almost mandatory and therefore believable as a deterrent.

In other situations—attacks on allies or on non-nuclear states in general or threats to use or acquire nuclear and biological weapons—the likelihood (actual or perceived) of the United States using its nuclear arsenal to respond became more and more tenuous. The debate concluded that, if Americans themselves were questioned whether they would actually use their strategic arsenal to retaliate against anything less than a direct attack with weapons of mass destruction on U.S. territory or forces, then, almost by definition, that arsenal’s credibility as a deterrent was uncomfortably open to question by others. Further, as the working group deduced, precision guided munitions, which the United States had already demonstrated that it would use, were probably a far more credible and, thus, effective deterrent for these “lesser” threats.

The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction pointed to yet another aspect of how deterrence had changed, for the focus of twenty-first century deterrence was likely to be second and third tier states rather than the former Soviet Union. This shift implied a considerable broadening in the scope of deterrence, from highly specific task of deterring global thermonuclear war to the far more extensive one of deterring regional crisis and conflict. To make matters worse, projected demographic changes in second and third tier states, a widening gap between haves and have-nots, and an already evident resurgence of religious, ethnic, and tribal hatreds promised no lack of strife for the future.

During the Cold War bipolarity, deterrence of such regional conflict had been part of both sides’ overall strategy, in the framework of preventing a superpower confrontation that could escalate to global war. The same bipolarity had permitted regional actors to balance off one superpower against the other, making possible actions—such as Egypt’s attack on Israel in 1973—that might otherwise have provoked superpower intervention. In the absence of an exploitable superpower bipolarity, but with the continued potential for U.S., UN or coalition intervention, these local powers now were left to their own devices in deterring extra-regional intervention. In practice, they had to obtain some means of deterring the United States, without whose participation extra-regional intervention would generally be impossible. As even major regional powers lacked the military forces to defeat the United States militarily, they would have to threaten political rather than military defeat—that is, losses that were politically unacceptable within the United States. Not only was this prospect a clear departure from the parameters of Cold War deterrence, but it implied, with equal clarity, a major change in what naval forces would be called upon to do and how they would do it.

Global Economic Interdependence

The second major impact of the Soviet collapse was on the system of formal long term alliances that had become a constant of international security cooperation. The NFCPE took as a given that alliances last only as long as the threat that led to their creation. The question posed by the Soviet collapse was, therefore, how security cooperation would function in the absence of any overarching threat at all. It was problematic whether NATO, the core alliance, would find a new raison d’être. In fact, the Gulf War had made it apparent that even a rejuvenated NATO would operate in new modes of cooperation; it would be much more like a coalition—that is, an informal temporary alignment of powers to meet a single transitory threat. For NATO members at least, the alliance structure did evoke habits of cooperation and a base of communication, credibility, and interoperability. However, future operations were likely to be outside the NATO area and would be defined in terms of coalition warfare transcending the historic alliance relationships. The problems of setting up and operating a multinational effort to undertake effective military or other national security action would have to be solved on an ad hoc basis. In effect, each coalition contingency would require the establishment of a NATO-like cooperation, communication, credibility and interoperability without the benefit of the alliance’s forty plus years of experience. The successes of Desert Storm, however, invited the false assumption that a coalition could readily be put together and, despite some difficulties, confidently be expected to function well in combat. ₆

Again, these discussions led the NFCPE to more questions. What difficulties would the United States face in coalition operations not drawing on the legacy of Cold War cooperation? What actions would the United States have to take to ensure that future coalitions could be formed and then operate successfully? These questions were particularly relevant as the trends wrought by the demise of the Soviet threat all militated against the fundamentals of cooperation that had brought success in Desert Storm. NATO military forces themselves were declining precipitately in size and capability. U.S. bases and forces overseas were in steep decline, as were the level and frequency of exercises. These problems and the altered world security structure implied not simply that the old naval mission of “presence” needed updating but rather that it would gain a critical new dimension, that of laying the groundwork for potential multinational efforts. The Desert Storm experience indicated that essential elements had to be in place before the coalition became necessary. Long-term (if not necessarily continuous) interaction with potential partners was called for by whatever U.S. or other NATO forces could be brought to bear. However, as overseas bases declined in number, this kind of long-term, preparatory presence and interaction would fall increasingly to naval forces deployed to critical areas.

For the United States Naval Service, therefore, a twofold effect of the Soviet collapse was seen: it would expand the requirements for effective deterrence from a strategic nuclear context to one far wider in its nature, scope, and scale; and it would place a renewed emphasis on the traditional roles of presence and crisis response—albeit without the earlier requirement to guard against uncontrolled escalation of local crises into confrontations.

The second major “sea change,” the rise of a global economic interdependence, was less obvious than the Soviet collapse, but figured prominently in the discussions of non-defense visitors to the group, especially those from Capitol Hill. The NFCPE group was left with little doubt that it would profoundly alter the world. The choice of this issue as a critical one had a major influence on the direction of NFCPE discussions in that it led directly to the core of the question of what, if anything, the Naval Service did that made it worth the money taxpayers spent on it. Equally important, the choice was also an implicit recognition that the post-Cold War world would be defined in economic terms far more than in political or military ones. Hence, the initial focus of deliberations became the role naval forces would play in protecting the economic security of the United States during the twenty-first century. As the discussion of the nature of economic interdependence proceeded, however, two questions became central. What were the national security interests, economic and otherwise, that naval forces would be called upon to defend overseas? How might naval forces be expected to support the application of U.S. and Allied economic power?

The idea of global economic interdependence implied an expanding network of interests and trade that would constitute an increasingly important element of American national economic strength. The military or naval connection to national economic security, however, was not made clear in contemporary policy or academic writings. That interdependence meant an inextricable linking of the U.S. economy to a widening circle of other economies had gone largely unstated. Also unstated was that the preservation of the stable global environment conducive to peaceful economic growth had in turn become essential to the long-term welfare of the United States itself. Thus, “global economic interdependence” was really a set of interlocking dependencies that would make even a continental-scale economy like the American one vulnerable to crisis and conflict abroad. This linkage between economic interests and a stabilizing national security strategy indicated that the traditional missions of crisis deterrence and response would take on a new economic significance, but it also pointed to other “economic” roles— some familiar, some not—that military forces might be expected to play in the future.

The traditional Cold War concern with maintaining access to overseas resources and markets remained, but in a globally interdependent world, it had changed in emphasis. Economic interdependence meant that the Navy would still be concerned with ensuring access to resources and markets, but not, as previously, with doing so specifically in time of war. Therein, however, lay a problem, for while the military requirements for wartime access were relatively clear, securing peacetime access carried unsavory connotations of gunboat diplomacy of the nineteenth century, something that would have no place in the twenty-first. What was called for was recognition that a subtler “presence” could help ensure American interests, economic and otherwise, were taken into account abroad. Similarly, the long-standing task of protecting American lives overseas took on a new economic meaning in connection with the dispersion of commercial and technological talent that enabled the United States to compete in the global economy. The picture that began to emerge was one of a complex network of interests on which naval forces would have perhaps an indirect, but nonetheless important, impact.

The working group attempted to collect American economic interests around the world in a manageable and straightforward list suitable for contingency planning. This effort was unsuccessful, because it demonstrated the opposite—that there was no limited set of economic interests or, accordingly, of countries or contingencies in which the United States would be compelled to act. Further, as operations in Liberia, Haiti, and Somalia underlined, no list of economic interests and related contingencies could by any means define all possibilities. Indeed, the message of economic interdependence seemed to be that despite an occasional wistful yearning toward isolationism on the part of some Americans, the future would be one not simply of global economic interdependence but rather of global interdependence pure and simple. In that future, political and economic national security would be increasingly entwined and, from the standpoint of naval planning, indistinguishable.

Perhaps more important than the attempt to define individual economic interests and related naval missions was the NFCPE’s recognition that potential American interests in an interdependent world were truly global and that, therefore, the range of regional instabilities which could affect U.S. national security interests was very broad indeed. This universality did not suggest that American naval forces would be called upon to play the role of global policeman—they had neither the resources nor the willingness to assume any such role. It did suggest, given the inability to forecast future crises accurately, that the Naval Service could not hope to plan forces or capabilities on the basis of any limited geographic list of concerns either now or, especially, over the long term. Inevitably, it was noted, the crisis that arose to confront us would be number 21 on a list of 20—if it made the list at all. This problem was particularly acute for naval forces as they historically have become involved in smaller and less predictable crises. Overall, it meant that the planned forces and capabilities had to be able to deal with a broad range of generic problems all over the world rather than concentrating on a geographically limited list of likely contingencies.

While the idea of global economic interdependence did little to delimit or identify the objectives of naval operations in the future, it did point to an increasing reliance on economic pressures to deter or contain conflict and crisis. That is, the greater the economic interdependence, the more numerous the external trade dependencies and, at least theoretically, the more acute the susceptibility to outside economic pressures. ₇ Present and future sanctions-enforcement operations themselves might differ very little from those of the nineteenth century, but, as the very idea of global economic interdependence suggested, the trade they now sought to interdict was substantially different in scope and complexity from that of the earlier age. That consideration suggested a reason for the limited success of recent efforts to enforce sanctions—that naval forces could no longer act independently in this role but required close interaction with other agencies of national and international economic power. In effect, it appeared that naval forces could effectively enforce sanctions only when specific and targetable vulnerabilities were identified and the trade to be interdicted was reliably tracked. A corollary to this inference was that whereas sanctions enforcement could be highly resource intensive, the better the focus and direction, the fewer the ships needed.

The lessons the NFCPE drew from its assessment of the impact of global economic interdependence upon the Naval Service were, then, two: that naval forces could not usefully plan to meet only a limited list of contingencies but would have to prepare to react anywhere on the face of the globe; and that operations in support of economic sanctions would need to be taken into account and would require an unprecedented degree of intra- and inter- governmental cooperation.

Accelerating Technological Change

The problems posed by the accelerating pace of technological change were the subject of much discussion within the NFCPE—not as to what changes and technology might confront the United States but on how we would have to deal with a constant and relatively unpredictable state of technological change. Two aspects of this permanent state of change were of concern in planning for future naval capabilities. The first had to do with the technologies the military would face or to which it would have access; the second was the role an increasingly instantaneous mass media would play in the conduct of future naval operations.

For most of the Cold War, military and civilian technologies had been largely separate, with the military technologies more heavily funded and generally more advanced than those of the civilian sector. The situation was now for the most part reversed. Constant technological change was likely to mean that the civilian sector, especially in areas such as information technologies, would be better funded and would grow at geometric rates. For their part, military technologies tended to be subsumed into large highly complex systems, and they were tied to a lengthy and often cumbersome acquisition process—a combination that condemned them to, at best, arithmetical rates of growth. As sophistication of military technologies increased, so too did the time required to develop and field new weapons. The drawdown in defense budgets in the United States and elsewhere only compounded the problem by lengthening lead times and reducing the margin for error. Finally, technological change in the future might be so far-reaching as to make any naval forces planned now obsolescent even before they entered service. Short of wartime, it was assessed, the gap between military and civilian technology would not be closed, and the challenge for military planners would be to exploit quickly and efficiently the technological advances of the civilian sector. From this perspective, then, a permanent state of accelerating technological change confronted military planners with the dual problem of how to maintain sufficient flexibility in both hardware and in the acquisition process to take advantage of new “commercial off the shelf (COTS)” civilian technology as it became available, and of how to deal with opponents who could do likewise.

The former was a formidable but tractable problem. The latter, however—essentially a question of dual use technology proliferation—posed a more difficult challenge, one whose scope could not be sufficiently bounded for rational long-term planning. If a system could be bought on the open market without the expense of military research and development normally required, then any state, or even non-state, might obtain and use it. The threat of technological surprise took on a wider meaning in such circumstances, and military technological superiority became a matter of scale and operational adaptability rather than of aggregate system capabilities. Indeed, given an opponent who only needed to inflict damage on a force, not defeat it, a high-technology arms race became possible in which small critical acquisitions by a potential opponent could compel substantial efforts to produce an effective deterrent.

The core problem of the accelerating pace of civilian and military technological change was that of adaptation, whether to the opportunities or to the threats presented by new advances. The corollary was a mounting need to monitor technological change, to understand its military potential, and to track its proliferation—a new urgent aspect to the old problem of technological surprise.

The second major impact of technological change was seen in the development of instantaneous mass media—in the NFCPE’s shorthand, “the CNN factor.” It was apparent that the success of future military operations, particularly in crisis responses, would be defined in political as well as military terms, and that political success in turn was heavily dependent on media response. The implications were that the media could no longer be excluded from operations and that planning needed to consider how results would be reported in the press. Desert Storm coverage had underlined a whole range of relevant factors: casualties and damage to one’s own forces, immediacy of response, proportionality of means, and the extent of collateral damage, to name a few. The Iraq experience also highlighted the degree to which both parties to the conflict were “served” by the reportage; Central Command planners had to consider not only how actions would be portrayed to the American public, whose continued support was needed for success, but also, what problems and opportunities the same coverage would present to Saddam Hussein.

The direction of technological change here was clearly toward further increase in the simultaneity of media coverage and, more interestingly, toward its ever more rapid global dissemination in the future. This development seemed likely to have only a limited impact in the information saturated West, but it stood to play a major role in countries of the second and third tier, where control of the media was tantamount to control of the state.

Assessing the Threat

An undercurrent throughout the discussion of the three “sea changes” was uncertainty as to exactly how the changes would affect the size and nature of the threats naval forces would face. Indeed, the 1992 National Military Strategy, with which the NFCPE group worked, had defined the threat itself in terms of uncertainty and the risk of being caught unprepared. NFCPE planners and intelligence analysts were confronted with a threefold problem:

for the short term, of assessing how rapidly the old Cold War military threats were declining so as to be able to draw down forces rationally;
for the middle to longer term, of determining what the residual military threat would be, so as to be able to plan the right force structure for the Naval Service; and,
for beyond the foreseeable future, of defining what manner of military threat might force the United States to reconstitute all or part of the military-industrial base the nation was now planning to dismantle.

With respect to the third issue, the NFCPE working group was careful to note that the narrow margins of security assumed in planning for the middle-to-long term rested on the superiority of American military technology in a number of critical areas. Thus, a hypothetical threat that could compel reconstitution had to be envisioned in terms not only of some new global adversary that would cause a general, massive rearmament, but also— and perhaps more importantly—of lesser opponents with access to new systems that undercut a technological advantage underpinning the margin of security. An example would be a potential enemy’s acquisition of an effective counter to stealth or cruise missiles.

To make matters worse, the ambiguities of the military threats that forces were to face would be compounded over time. The further into the future the NFCPE attempted to project, the more uncertain became the supporting threat assessments provided to it and the greater were the risks of wagering the scarce resources on the wrong programs. Yet, there was no way to avoid crucial decisions on programs that might take ten to fifteen years to enter service and might remain the core of our naval capabilities for thirty or forty years beyond that. In effect, the NFCPE was being asked to map out, for the first half of the next century, strategy and structure to address a series of unknowns. To gauge those unknowns, to discern something of the size and nature of the military threat therefore became critical, with respect to both what navies could do to deal with the new world and what they would need to do it.

In these deliberations, the working group accepted from the start that it was not possible to predict any specific crisis, threat or weapon system that U.S. naval forces might face in the decades to come. At the same time, the group recognized that a purely “generic” threat was insufficient even for planning much less for convincing a reluctant public to pay for what one hoped would be “adequate” forces. Fortunately, intelligence analysts supporting the NFCPE were able to be specific enough to provide some indication of the scale and sophistication of forces that might be encountered. It was vital therefore to distinguish carefully between what intelligence could and could not know.

Intelligence could not predict future intentions. Thus, one could not know how much specific countries would spend on defense or which weapons and systems they would be buy over the next decades. By extension, therefore, it also could not be known what the orders of battle would be in 2010 and beyond or what specific weapons and military capabilities U.S. naval forces would face.

On the other hand, intelligence could know, with an acceptable margin of error, what a given country’s probable population and general economic situation would be from 2010 to 2020 as well as, again in general terms, its economic and educational infrastructure and its technological and industrial base. From these relatively reliable outlines, analysts then could extrapolate what a nation’s military potential might be, should it decide to exercise a military option.

One result was a rough measure of the scale of military forces that the country might generate and sustain; the measure used as an index the maximum number of men who could be sustained under arms and postulated Iraq as the standard for a major regional power. Similarly, the maturity of a state’s domestic technological and industrial base and its ability to buy expensive military technology in the international arms market (which was assumed to be fairly open) provided an index of the likely level of sophistication of its military forces.

Using these parameters, very rough indices of scale and sophistication of military forces were established. Countries were assessed simply as able to generate either small, medium, or large-scale forces and of being able to produce (or procure and then maintain) either low, medium, or high-technology systems in suitable quantities. Nations were then grouped by region. In most regions, all countries clearly fell into the small-to-medium category as to scale and the low-to-medium one for technology. However (the vestigial but still formidable Russia aside), two regions—Northeast Asia and the Middle East—contained countries with both the demographic and economic wherewithal to raise and maintain large-scale forces and to equip them with modern, if not state-of-the-art technology. Likewise, both areas not only encompassed economic and security interests of the United States but also would be affected by direct products of the “sea changes”: access to weapons of mass destruction, insusceptibility to deterrence, released ethnic hatreds, and proliferation of technology. Implicit was that even in the absence of a Soviet threat there remained the potential for regional challenges supported by formidable arrays of military force.

Since the naval armaments that would be operational through at least 2010, if not 2020, were for the most part already in existence or being built, planned, or developed, the NFCPE team could also project what kinds of technologies might be available on the international arms market. That analysis, in turn, would characterize the systems that would be on the market, or at least the levels of sophistication represented, as well as when they might be offered and in what numbers. A “trickle down” effect was assumed that in turn implied a hierarchy of sophistication. That is, “high-technology” militaries might be expected to have at least a substantial quantity of the most modern equipment available; “medium-technology” forces would possess hardware one to two generations old; and “low-tech” militaries would be limited to weapons more than two generations removed from the “state of the market.”

This analysis gave a concrete enough idea of who and what might pose a military threat to allow the group usefully to ask what kinds of military threat future U.S. naval forces might have to deal with and how widespread each kind might be. The latter provided an important clue for U.S. force planning; it suggested that relatively small numbers of older, less sophisticated naval units would suffice to operate in most parts of the world but that in two or three regions large high-technology forces would still be required.

Taken together, the process of bounding of the future threat “picture” and isolating the three fundamental “sea changes” delineated some radical changes in the operational environment of naval forces. It seemed to the NFCPE, nevertheless, that much in the roles and missions of the future would resemble historical, traditional models more than they did those of the past fifty years. The next step, therefore, was to examine something that appeared not to have changed fundamentally: what navies did.

What Had Not Changed

Because the mandated starting point for both the first and second phases of the NFCPE was “zero,” its members were forced to grapple with a number of basic questions about what navies in general, and the U.S. Naval Service in particular, did. How did naval forces contribute to the national good? How had they done so in the past? Would those functions differ in the future given the end of the Cold War and the presumed absence of a blue-water threat? If so, how? What roles might naval forces be expected to play in the unfolding world scene? This analysis involved an attempt, using universal or legislatively mandated functions for the armed forces as well as a broad historical perspective, to reduce what naval forces did to a set of “constants.” These constants could then be considered in light of changes in the world environment to see how the new core missions would differ from the Cold War paradigms.

Why Does a Nation Need Naval Force?

The answer boiled down to two quintessential functions: keeping peace and waging war. These two functions were not seen as entirely distinct but rather as broad, overlapping spheres of activity. Further, they were envisioned as lying on both sides of a threshold of violence, with, for example, peacekeeping sometimes involving the violent application of force and warfighting sometimes stopping short of it. Taken together, these possibilities formed a continuum, with routine peacetime operations at one end, global war at the other, and contingency operations and various levels of regional conflict between.

Within this schema, the wartime function of naval forces, whether in regional or global conflict, was by far the easiest to define and understand: “prompt and sustained combat incident to operations at sea.” ₈ Indeed, the whole focus of those parts of the U.S. Code and Defense Department Directives outlining military responsibilities was on war. Disagreements aside as to the scale and nature of the forces required for them, the roles themselves were well understood and accepted by both the naval officers in the NFCPE study group and by the public at large.

Such ready understanding was emphatically not the case with regard to “peace operations” either in the aggregate or in the particular. First, the concept itself was unclear. It implied peacemaking and peacekeeping—that is, producing or enforcing a cessation of hostilities—but it might equally extend to vaguer notions of “nation building.” Routine peacetime naval operations in and near potential crisis areas were obviously involved, as matters of forward presence or deterrence, but there was little agreement as to how they entered the equation or as on what scale. Indeed, there was a strong tendency, even among NFCPE participants, to focus solely on the familiar aspects of “warfighting” and to treat all other peacetime functions as lesser included cases, operations any force equipped for war would surely be able to undertake. ₉

Second, while within the Navy there seemed to be at least a visceral understanding of forward peacetime operations and overseas presence, there was less appreciation of such operations outside the service—as a succession of visitors to the NFCPE made abundantly plain. Indeed, most non-service visitors seemed to view peacetime operations as a matter solely of training or of being in position to react to crisis—a function, they assumed, that U.S. based air forces would be as well or better placed to fill. There was no broad understanding even inside the Naval Service of the peculiar capabilities maritime forces brought to an unfolding crisis or, indeed, of why they seemed to be the instrument of choice for political leaders dealing with overseas crises. Finally, and again even within the Navy, the appreciation of the deterrent role of naval forces was hobbled by the habitual association of “deterrence” with the phrase “strategic nuclear.” Any broader sense of the word that encompassed the idea of “conventional deterrence” or “crisis deterrence” was ill-defined and lacked concrete connection to peacetime operations or forward presence. Indeed, there was a vigorous debate even among the naval officers in the group over how, if at all, “presence” contributed to deterring crises and conflict.

The naval role in peace operations that seemed clearest both to NFCPE analysts and outside visitors was in the area of crisis response—where, it was generally conceded, navies had historically played a leading, if not predominant, role. However, there was considerable ambiguity both as to how that role had changed in the absence of superpower competition and how it was defined in the context of peace operations. To appreciate the overall concepts of peace operations and warfighting, and to identify the “constants” in these traditional naval missions, the NFCPE reviewed the roles naval forces had played in crises over the past forty years.

Role of Naval Forces in Crises

It was evident that many analysts outside the Navy were assuming that “navies fight navies” and that absent a blue-water Soviet threat, the necessity for U.S. naval involvement in crises would decrease. The working group nevertheless found that the history of U.S. military responses to crises throughout the post-World War II period indicated otherwise.

At the request of the NFCPE, the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) updated a 1978 study, Force without War by Barry Blechman and Stephen Kaplan. ₁₀ This update found that, from 1946 to 1991, there had been 325 instances in which U.S. military forces of some description had responded to a crisis—more than seven per year. Of these, only about 12 percent involved any Soviet military reaction and, for the previous ten years, none at all. Of course it could have been argued that U.S. military actions were motivated by the potential for Soviet involvement, but there have been about five military responses per year since the effective end of that possibility. Apparently there was some “normal” frequency of crises, not related to the Cold War, that—barring a decisive shift in national strategy—the United States would continue to meet with military force in the future. What, then, were the parameters of naval involvement in those “normal” crises?

It was immediately apparent that most of the crisis responses by the United States military were not of the scale of Desert Storm. Most, indeed, were rather minor incidents, involving a wide variety of security problems and falling far short of a violence, much less of organized conflict. Since the late 1970s, the most frequent reason for military reactions had been threats to American citizens, followed closely by internal wars and revolts, and then by invasions or cross border threats. The majority of crises, 63 percent, occurred in the Middle East. Most responses had been on a very limited scale and had used only forces available in the immediate area—at least in part because there had often been little or no intelligence warning. Reactions tended to be brief, more than half lasting thirty-five days or less, and one in five less than ten days. Time had been a factor in the small scale of responses, as it effectively limited the ability of the United States and its allies to bring more forces to bear.

Throughout the Cold War and up to the year of the NFCPE, maritime forces had most frequently responded. About 83 percent of all U.S. military responses from 1946–1991 had included naval forces, with about half being solely naval forces. Since the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act, with its emphasis on joint operations, fewer operations have been exclusively naval in character, but a far greater proportion, 95 percent, had at least involved naval units. Of the naval responses since 1977, around 70 percent had involved carriers, around 59 percent had involved Marines and 17 percent surface combatants only.

Two underlying constants accordingly suggested themselves. First, in crisis response, sea-based forces are chosen to counter a wide variety of local land-based forces; the focus is littoral not “blue water.” That is, naval forces are used not simply to counter other naval forces; very few of the countries who instigate U.S. reaction have any real maritime capability of their own. Second, it is an intrinsic quality of naval units, whether in combination with other armed forces or without them, that makes them an instrument of choice. Their repeated use over forty-five years reflects more than simply a predilection of individual decisionmakers toward the Navy.

These points were significant not because of any inclination in the NFCPE to believe that “naval forces can do it alone”—they plainly could not—but because they emphasized that any future joint strategy had to take into account the inherent usefulness of sea-based forces in responding to crises.

The history of Cold War crises indicated that most of the unique qualities of maritime forces arise from their operating in and from an environment of almost universally accepted international character—the high seas; further, the importance of this linked to the politics and timing of crisis responses. This political context and the requirement for precise orchestration in turn helped the group define some important distinctions between the military requirements for peacetime operations and those for wartime operations. It observed that the use of military forces in peace and crisis is far more constrained by politico-diplomatic considerations—and thus timing— than is true in open combat. In slightly different terms, the peacetime operational requirements stress tight control over the visibility of military action, particularly in the sensitive early stages. Thus, the potential utility of military forces as an instrument of policy tends to vary according not only to what the forces can do but also to the degree to which the conspicuousness and timeliness of their actions can be managed.

In crisis reactions, the timeliness of a military option was seen to be a function both of how quickly a force can be brought to bear and of how long it can be sustained in that use. Both are factors in how avoidable and credible a potential response is perceived to be—that is, how valuable as a deterrent it is. For example, a threatened action that all know cannot unfold within the probable timeframe of the crisis or that might be forestalled by diplomatic or political action will probably not be very credible. Likewise, a single action that demonstrably cannot be sustained or repeated invites the opponent to “ride it out”—again limiting its utility as a deterrent.

The NFCPE saw a similar situation with respect to the question of visibility. If United States policymakers seek to calm a situation or avoid a crisis, military actions are likely to be kept low key; anything requiring permission of third countries and, thus, high profile diplomatic action tantamount to coalition formation, or involving significant publicity, is unlikely to be of much use. Further, the NFCPE observed, as a contingency develops and a political decision is made either deliberately to raise military visibility or simply to accept the consequences of it, a tradeoff arises between visibility and timeliness: the greater the profile of the military reaction required, the greater the likelihood of delay in obtaining any required foreign approval. In practical terms, therefore, forces that take longer to get to the crisis area but that require no diplomatic preliminaries and can therefore be positioned at lower levels of visibility early on, might actually be the first units on scene once the political decision is made to take decisive action.

This visibility-timeliness tradeoff indicated to the working group that forward seaborne forces might well remain the core of the U.S. military reaction far into the crisis. In terms of both crisis and transition to war, there appeared a strong likelihood of a heavy reliance on sea-based elements of joint forces to provide initial capability on the scene and to secure initial entry into the area, such as in seizing the ports and airfields needed to disembark and sustain (usually heavier) follow-on forces.

Finally, the NFCPE perceived that as a crisis winds down, visibility again becomes a political consideration. It noted that as the political objective shifts in the post-crisis period from resolving the problem to enforcing the measures by which it had been resolved, so too would the set of military force options. Supporting such political objectives may mean retaining substantial forces on station—but out of sight—throughout the denouement, however protracted. A further complication is the strong likelihood that foreign or coalition support would diminish more quickly than the residual threat, leaving on-scene U.S. forces exposed and with a declining base of local support.

The questions of timing and visibility suggested to the NFCPE group one intrinsic quality that made maritime forces the centerpiece of crisis reactions: the ability to operate from the sea. The implications of this ability became more apparent as the roles of these forces for presence, surge, and deterrence were traced across the spectrum of conflict: from peacetime operations (including presence) to low-intensity conflict (including law enforcement, anti-terrorism, peacekeeping, contingency operations, and peacemaking) to regional conflicts and, finally, even to global war (with its attendant requirements for reconstitution).

The Spectrum of Conflict

For the NFCPE, peacetime operations were characterized by a duality of objectives and effects. Activities in themselves routine, such as training and maintenance, the analysts perceived, clearly can fulfill another operational purpose as well, depending on where and how they were conducted. Thus, “upkeep,” that is, maintenance, in a foreign port, might equally exercise U.S. access to those facilities, ensuring their continued availability on a low-profile, apparently routine basis in incipient crisis. Similarly, training with the forces of other nations quickly becomes a military-to-military tie, establishing the credibility of U.S. forces, and enhancing interoperability with potential coalition partners. This point suggested to the NFCPE that such ordinary activities are in fact a fundamental aspect of peacetime operations and that they have a place in the “peacetime presence” part of the spectrum of conflict.

For naval forces, such peacetime operations were seen as essentially global in scope, limited only by the extent of the high seas and the time- honored diplomatic regime for navies. They seemed to embody an “enabling” function applicable to a number of different strategic objectives. Diplomatically, a highly visible presence like a pattern of port visits helps to develop links with local leaders and citizenry, shows continued U.S. interest and commitment, and indirectly ensures that U.S. interests were taken into account. From the standpoint of national security, operations and exercises with local forces demonstrate U.S. capability and lay the groundwork for meaningful cooperation as coalition partners, should that later be necessary. These activities and objectives—which do not differ in substance from those of navies for the past two centuries—had been an underlying, if unstated, aspect of the Cold War, but it was clear that they met the requirements of a changed world order as well.

Indeed, future peacetime operations were deemed likely to differ from those of the Cold War in only three respects: the increased necessity to seek out opportunities for local overseas interaction, the increased reliance on routine overseas naval presence as the most acceptable and least intrusive means of maintaining contacts, and a new ability to arrange U.S. naval operations strictly with regard to local requirements and not having potentially to deal with Soviet forces in the area. The NFCPE group was quick to note two significant effects of the last point on forces and capabilities. First, it was also no longer necessary to be everywhere all the time, but simply to be able to be anywhere at the right time with the forces needed. Second, the carrier battle group no longer needed to be the denominator. These two points were thought particularly significant because they suggested that considerable economies of force might be obtained by precisely tailoring the forces to the situations.

The operative aspect of peacetime operations, then, was regarded as the ability of naval forces to take advantage of the international character of the high seas to remain nonintrusive and nonthreatening while operating in a given region. Nonetheless, participants readily recognized that “presence” went well beyond the essentially diplomatic and coalition building functions of peacetime operations, extending to “low intensity conflict.” The nature of these activities had much influence on the capabilities required for effective presence. The NFCPE analysts divided low-intensity conflict into two general realms: law enforcement and conflict deterrence.

Law enforcement operations were distinguished by their being aimed at individuals and groups rather than state actors. They would include the traditional naval function of deterring piracy, but extend as well to anti- terrorist operations such as the reaction to the Achille Lauro incident, and to counternarcotics. In each case the forces required—at least for individual operations—would be small, but the standing presence required would be more or less continuous and might in the aggregate involve substantial numbers, as in the case of counternarcotics patrols. Conflict deterrence, on the other hand, was a broad category that encompassed counterinsurgency, peacekeeping, peacemaking and contingency operations. In contrast to law enforcement operations, it would be directed against actual or would-be state entities, and the forces required would be larger, potentially requiring a surge capability. However, continuous presence would not be required (with the caveat that limited time might be available to respond to some events, such as threats to U.S. citizens).

Contingency operations, in which there was a particular need for large forces close at hand, was further broken down into shows of force, noncombatant evacuation operations (NEO), and raids or reprisals. The first and second were largely self-explanatory and (with such exceptions as an opposed NEO) seemed unlikely to cross the threshold of violence. The raid, however, was a limited war proposition; as such, it evoked a special set of requirements and became the subject of particular investigation and discussion in the NFCPE.

The concept of a “raid” or contingency strike, in the NFCPE construct, illustrated in many ways the overlap between peacetime and warfighting functions. Unlike peacetime “presence” operations, the geographic scope of a raid would be very narrow, generally limited to specific identified targets. Also, it would be of extremely short duration; for the most part, raids would involve action “across the beach” followed by a rapid withdrawal once objectives were achieved. Second, a raid would emphatically not be a “campaign.” It would be preemptive and either retaliatory or demonstrative in nature and sharply circumscribed as to timeframe and area, though it might be very intense. Also, the success of a raid would hinge on detailed planning. In practice, the upshot was that a given raid might have to be single service effort, depending on what forces were immediately available. Whatever joint capabilities could be usefully brought to bear would be used, especially the national intelligence support on which targeting would heavily rely. Finally, and to a degree not matched by other forms of wartime or peacetime operations, the success of the raid would be judged in political and media-reaction terms. Planning would therefore tend to focus on avoiding losses, producing visible results but only “acceptable” (that is, limited in type and amount) collateral damage, and minimizing the time delay between provocation and response. These latter considerations, particularly the speed of response, also implied that a raid would probably be a unilateral American action.

In the realm of warfighting—that is, lesser regional conflict, major regional conflict, and global war—interesting relationships with other parts of the spectrum emerged. The term “lesser regional conflict” had been discounted in most Defense Department discussions (in favor of acknowledging a range of regional conflicts) but it offered the NFCPE group some distinctions useful for “the gray area” between the raid and the major regional conflict. For example, like a raid, a lesser regional conflict would be limited geographically, usually to a single country or border area, but its military operations would no longer take place “across the beach” but rather both off and on shore. Also, unlike the raid, the lesser regional conflict would be a campaign and, therefore, of indeterminate duration—a factor that would drastically affect the issues of visibility and timeliness. In a further contrast to the raid, a lesser regional conflict could not be handled solely by forward deployed “presence” forces, but clearly required reinforcement and sustainment. Nonetheless, unlike major regional or global conflicts, it required little or no mobilization of reserves. In another distinction from low-intensity raid operations, some damage and losses was expected and, within limits would be accepted by the public and media; the criterion here would be to minimize losses while winning the campaign. Finally, this form of conflict could not be unilateral, but must involve at least one local ally—the aggrieved party—or, where possible and perhaps after a period, a coalition.

The NFCPE envisioned the next point on the spectrum, major regional conflict, as retaining many aspects of lesser regional conflict, but again the group noted important differences. First, the geographic scope of a major regional conflict might be expected to be larger, potentially extending to the entire region and the contiguous seas. Therefore, there might be a blue- water naval component; at a minimum, however, the conflict would stretch beyond the immediate off shore areas and would involve substantial ground and air elements, which would in turn require sustainment from the sea and therefore uninhibited control of the sea lines of communication. Also, unlike lower levels, major regional conflicts would be increasingly likely to involve at least the presence of nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons of mass destruction in the arsenals of regional aggressors, and even in their absence, there might be conventionally armed tactical ballistic missiles. On the other hand, like a lesser regional conflict, any major regional conflagration would be not a single operation but a campaign, perhaps more than one. It might, however, be of longer duration than a lesser regional conflict, its military operations probably far larger, more intense, and more complex. Therefore, it would require a range of capabilities necessitating a large-scale mobilization of reserves and at least a partial mobilization of the economy to obtain material and convey it to the theater.

While public and media support would remain crucial to the long-term success of the conflict, the emphasis in the major regional conflict would be on sustaining that support and winning the conflict. The implication for the NFCPE was that while campaign planners would have to avoid major or protracted losses, moderate losses had to be expected and more or less accepted. Further, large-scale reinforcement and sustainment would be critical to the success of any major regional conflict, limited only by hedges against a second major conflict. Finally, this level of regional conflict would be likely to require not only the full range of American military capabilities but also significant coalition support, potentially to the degree that unilateral U.S. action without it would be risky or even, over the short term, impossible.

With regard to global war, the NFCPE saw that while the likelihood of a “bolt from the blue” nuclear holocaust was greatly diminished, there was a potential for “multiple major regional conflicts” short of nuclear annihilation. (One participant observed that World War II had been, in essence, “just” two simultaneous major regional conflicts.) The idea of such a limited global war offered some interesting nuances with respect to other levels of conflict (some of which may reinforce its improbability). To begin with, concern in such a global conflict would necessarily focus on the use of weapons of mass destruction, whether directly against the United States, as in a missile or terrorist attack, or in regional contexts. As in the earlier concept of global thermonuclear war, the duration of the conflict would in effect equal the rate of escalation: if the rate of escalation could be controlled, the conflict could devolve into a World War II-style war of attrition; if not, then it could escalate into the classic holocaust nightmare. In the latter case, though mass destruction might be limited to a single region, the ecological impact would be global. If uncontrolled escalation did not occur, the conflict would entail a series of campaigns probably on a continental scale, possibly involving significant action on the oceans. Finally, in view of the potential scale of these operations, full military and industrial mobilization would be required. Unlike the case of major regional conflict, however, the focus here would be on allocating forces and material, as they became available, among a variety of fronts.

The short and mid-term probability of such a war seemed to the NFCPE remote, to say the least. It was thought worth noting, however, that there were gradations of “global” conflict and that its characteristics could be seen at a level far below the total nuclear holocaust to which the Cold War had conditioned thinking. In fact, it required only a sharp diminution of U.S. and Western forces, and a sharp increase in the capability of, and access to, weapons of mass destruction by two or more regional powers or coalitions. Global conflict, in essence, could be engendered by little more than the simultaneous outbreak of two Desert Storms.

Conclusions and Retrospective

Was the NFCPE an innately self-serving search for a new justification for an old organization or did it reform that organization to deal with a new reality? Were the participants able to pull free of their institutional biases and Cold War formation sufficiently to address that new reality clearly and dispassionately? Was From The Sea evidence of significant and meaningful adaptation to a new world or a failure to get beyond an old vision rooted in a century-old U.S. maritime strategy? It is certain that no group of professionals from any discipline will entirely escape the prevailing predilections of their profession or of particular subgroups within it. That fact was recognized and accepted from the start in the work of the NFCPE, but it was balanced by two factors. First, the participants were all military officers who pursued their profession as a vocation not a business, and who saw their task in terms of their country’s ability to respond to future threats and in terms of lives that might be lost if their judgments proved false—a shared sense of responsibility which, like Samuel Johnson’s aphorism about how being hanged in the morning “concentrates one’s mind” focused the debates on something higher than the immediate bureaucratic goals. Second, within this context, there was a concerted effort to balance differing community viewpoints and to seek out rather than exclude vocal proponents to represent those viewpoints in the working group and in the Quantico discussions.

Overall, there was a conviction that the answers sought needed to spring from those most familiar with the capabilities and limitations of naval power—experienced naval officers—and that a failure to deal adequately with the challenge sooner or later would result in a far less satisfactory solution imposed from outside the Navy. As one participant noted, “We can do this and get it right now, or have it forced upon us by others later—and probably get it wrong.” When the issue of the credibility of the effort arose, it was answered with the observation that the logic of the debate rather than the credentials of the debaters was the key and that the final white paper would stand or fall on its own merits.

Unfortunately the full force and logic of the debates was only indirectly reflected in the final white paper. Nonetheless, the basic structure was clear. The NFCPE’s review of crisis response and the use of military force across the spectrum of conflict indicated that the central functions of naval force had not altered substantially as a result of the “sea changes” at the end of the Cold War, a fact that eased acceptance by the Naval Service as a whole. What was different, rather, was the effort needed to exert effective military force at various levels of conflict. It was obvious that considerably less military force would be required to avoid a global thermonuclear war. ₁₁ Less obvious, and much debated, was the rise in the magnitude of effort required to deal with major regional opponents, either to provide credible presence and reaction forces or to act decisively in conflicts, particularly in the two or three regions where long-term, large-scale, and well equipped opposition was likely. That shift in relative scale of effort was the result of a narrowing of the margin of superiority over regional powers that the United States and its allies had enjoyed during the Cold War. That convergence, in turn, reflected both the deep cutbacks in Western defense spending and the continued or expanded outlays of some regional powers. The NFCPE observed that much of the current American margin of superiority had been built on the technological fruits of Cold War and was, therefore, vulnerable not only to post-Cold War budget cuts but also to the sale of critical dual-use technologies on the world market. Compounding the effect of this problem was that, in adopting a littoral strategy, the U.S. Naval Service was committing itself “to go in harm’s way” where regional powers would be strongest—and that, in the wake of Desert Storm successes, it would be expected to do so with few or no losses. In each case, the NFCPE analysis tended to be much broader than the later “Bottom-Up-Review” and, therefore, more enduring.

It was clearly in littoral warfare that the NFCPE had made its most revolutionary change. The Navy had been put in the position of a man whose fondest wish has been granted. Since the days of Mahan, it had sought “sea control.” The end of the Cold War had granted this wish, and the Navy was confronted with the question: “Now that we have sea control, what can we do with it?” The NFCPE began to respond to that question by recognizing that sea control was no longer an end in itself, but a means to an end and declared that that “end” was the projection of power and influence ashore... from the sea. Indeed, the final From The Sea white paper carefully noted that continued control of the sea was the prerequisite to such power projection. Nonetheless, the notion of a landward focus for naval power represented a sharp departure both from the U.S. Navy’s Mahanian tradition and from the historic role of navies in general. Instead of indirectly influencing “history” through the use of seapower at sea, as Mahan had proposed, the NFCPE implied that, with sea control won, naval forces could now project sufficient power from the sea—short of the use of nuclear weapons—to have a decisive direct strategic impact on events ashore. But, such a capacity had never before existed in any navy. Historically, the ability of a fleet to directly influence events ashore had been limited to the range of its guns—about 2 miles in Napoleonic times and about 10 miles by the end of World War I. The U.S. Naval Service had pioneered the use of carrier aircraft and amphibious forces in a power projection role in World War II and the advent of ballistic missile submarines had permitted navies an extensive use of naval forces in a strategic nuclear role. But the direction taken by From The Sea was to suggest naval forces could play a decisive role in something more than an island campaign and without resort to nuclear weapons. Such a role depended on capabilities and an approach to warfare that neither the U.S. Naval Service nor any other navy had developed at the time of the NFCPE deliberations. What was discernible in 1992 was rather a promise that precision munitions in general and Tomahawk cruise missiles in particular could be used to strike very specific targets from well off shore and that light unit tactics could transform amphibious operations.

Some of the most revolutionary naval thinking which grew from the white paper has centered on the questions of how the impact of off shore strike forces might be sustained and sufficiently multiplied to have the decisive impact sought. It is this thinking which is at the core of Navy’s current deliberation over how a revolution in military affairs might be implemented. That “revolution” and From The Sea, imply a fleet that could ultimately be very different from the one we have known for the last seventy-five years. But, however different the thought or revolutionary the technology, the change in the nature of the fleet is necessarily evolutionary; ships last a long time—thirty to fifty years—and whole new fleets are far too expensive to build quickly. What can change quickly, and has, is the way in which naval forces are used. Here, the Tomahawk strikes in Bosnia and Iraq provide an indication of the different direction taken and a precursor of things to come.

In From The Sea, the Naval Forces Capabilities Planning Effort provided a new strategic concept—not a force plan, a new maritime strategy, or a new naval doctrine. It defined the post-Cold War need for a flexible littoral strategy, outlined the types of capabilities naval forces would require to implement it in a joint context, and called for development of appropriate naval strategies and tactics. The fact that, in so doing, the NFCPE appears to have accurately defined the parameters of a naval revolution in military affairs and the first steps needed to carry it out, underlines the freedom, logic, and scope of its discussions—and the willingness of Navy’s leadership to risk a leap into the unknown by implementing it. Indeed, the entire process is a testimony to the institutional capacity of military organizations to undertake nonevolutionary and truly innovative strategic adjustment. In contrast to many of the preceding chapters, the Navy’s move to adopt a littoral focus occurred despite the absence of strong domestic political inducements, much less civilian intervention, and despite the absence of an immediate or highly visible strategic vulnerability—indeed, in reaction to changes in the international environment that retained considerable ambiguity. Rather, the development of a new strategic concept reflected a successful effort to employ the resources and expertise within the Navy and Marine Corps to develop a clearer appreciation of the changing challenges to American interests, a common consensual understanding of the tasks the Naval Service was likely to be called upon to undertake, and an optimal approach for dealing with the anticipated roles and missions of the twenty-first century.

Endnotes

Note 1: Originally published in U.S. Naval War College Review, 43 (Winter 1994&-; 1995). Back.

Note 2: The initial draft of this directive was actually provided to the Secretary by the NFCPE and was approved and amended by him. The first meetings of the group, therefore, were focused on questions of how much change might be required and, thus, how broad the Secretary’s charter would need to be. The group’s recommendation was for a very far-reaching review and the Secretary strongly concurred. Back.

Note 3: Secretary of the Navy H. L. Garrett III, memorandum for the Chief of Naval Operations/Commandant of the Marine Corps, November 20, 1991. The senior leadership of the Navy Department fully appreciated just how open- ended this guidance was and, when queried by participants, underlined repeatedly that nothing in either forces or doctrine should be considered “sacred” or beyond question. Back.

Note 4: One visitor familiar with Congress admonished the group that anything over ten pages had no hope of being read on Capitol Hill, much less in wardrooms around the fleet. Back.

Note 5: It was acknowledged that social and demographic changes in the United States itself could have a substantial impact on the composition of the Navy and Marine Corps and on public and Congressional support for the Service. After considerable debate throughout much of the NFCPE, these concerns were set aside as not having an overriding impact on the fundamental character of what the Naval Service did or how it did it. Back.

Note 6: That assumption ignored the fact (clear to the working group) that the basis for the success of the Desert Storm coalition had been built during and because of the Cold War. Cooperation and communication were possible because, in most cases, the partners either were NATO members and continued to use NATO procedures or had established Cold War ties to NATO members. The credibility that made regional states willing to join the coalition had been established by forty years of Cold War operations in the area— such as by the U.S. Middle East Force, which had demonstrated both the nation’s capability to fulfill its promises and the constancy of its commitment. Finally, the basic compatibility of coalition military forces derived from repeated exercises together, the use of NATO doctrine, and the incorporation of alliance standards in the Western military equipment with which most of the forces were armed. Even then, the process of forming and operating the coalition was time-consuming, arduous, and imperfect. Back.

Note 7: This principle seems to be borne out by the repeated use of sanctions, embargoes, and quarantines in post-Cold War international security efforts—not that they had any striking, immediate success. These measures have involved both unilateral and multilateral naval operations, often over protracted periods of time, a portent of future requirements upon the U.S. Navy. Back.

Note 8: Title 10 U.S. Code, Section 5062. Back.

Note 9: The group tended to divide itself into two factions throughout these discussion: the “operators” (Navy) and “warriors” (Marine Corps) on the one hand, and the “Washington political-military ‘wonks’ ” on the other. The latter attempted to expand the treatment of subjects such as “influence” and “deterrence,” while the former insisted any extensive treatment of such roles would jeopardize the white paper’s acceptance in the Fleet. Accordingly, many of the issues raised about peacetime use of naval forces were not revisited until the drafting and publication of Forward...From the Sea in 1994—after ... From the Sea had already been accepted thoroughly within the Naval Service. Back.

Note 10: Barry M. Blechman and Stephen S. Kaplan, Force Without War: U.S. Armed Forces as a Political Instrument (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1978). Back.

Note 11: However, it should be noted that the potential future Russian threat and the spread of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons were by far the greatest points of unease for the working group. Back.