Our naval leadership faces a perplexing dilemma put in the form of two questions. In waging the war against global extremism, U.S. forces must confront terrorists who have no army, navy, marine corps, or air force. Obviously, special forces and relatively discrete uses of military force are relevant. But what role in this war can the bulk of naval forces usefully play? And if the principal danger to our well-being does emanate from these extremist adversaries and the instability that they and other factors provoke, what does this mean for the future of sea power and naval forces?
Answers to these questions can be found by standing Alfred Thayer Mahan's seminal work, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, on its head. Seeing how history has influenced sea power and not the converse provides insights into how naval forces might best serve the nation.
History has challenged Mahan's assumptions. First, Mahan assumed that economic competition would lead to a scramble among the bigger powers for access to overseas markets. Ultimately, that competition would spark wars in which fleet against fleet actions would determine who would control access to these markets. But today's extremist enemy is not driven by economic competition, and does not own naval forces, and technology has erased any notion of geographic borders and control of access.
Second, command of the sea was crucial to winning ashore even when wars were decided long after the oceans were secured. It took Britain a decade to defeat Napoleon after the great victory at Trafalgar in 1805. Today, command of the seas has little relevance to defeating terrorism.
Third, Mahan and most strategists throughout much of the 20th century tacitly assumed that war-fighting missions would be the most dominant and most manpower-intensive. As we have learned from Afghanistan and Iraq, wars can be won with relatively few forces. But winning the peace is crucial. And non-warfighting tasks have become the more manpower-intensive, something we relearned in the Balkans and, of course, in Iraq.
What are the takeaways? In a world in which there are few navies to beat, setting a broader political context for applying military power is essential. The aim of sea power must remain influencing and shaping a wide range of events ashore in an increasing number of places. But counter to what Mahan and his disciples argued about commanding the seas, naval forces, meaning both the Navy and Marines, now must deal with more inherently political (and difficult) missions. These relate to stability, humanitarian, reconstruction, peacekeeping, and nation-building operations. Naval forces also must contribute to economic development and, of course, to the fight against extremism in which ideology and violence have replaced enemy battle wagons and aircraft carriers as ships of the line.
No matter how vital sea power and warfighting capability may he as insurance policies for deterrence and hedging purposes against future threats, whether Iran, North Korea, or elsewhere, keeping the nation safe and dealing with unfolding political-security challenges and dangers must also shape how we use and design these forces. Critics will argue that calls for a smaller, not larger, Navy.
Clearly, preventive and public diplomacy, meaning keeping small events from exploding into crises and advancing U.S. interests short of waging wartime campaigns of "shock and awe," including humanitarian relief, has become a much more important mission. Timely examples are what U.S. naval forces are doing today in the Gulf of Guinea off Africa's west coast in support of local states and the naval response to the deadly tsunami in the western Pacific.
Nor has history ignored the commercial component of sea power. Until the last few decades, a strong commercial shipbuilding base and merchant marine were considered essential to national security. Both are gone and national security has been unaffected. The interesting question is how history will further affect the commercial side of sea power.
In Mahan's day, rating sea power was easy. Capital ships and the size and number of guns were simple metrics. Today, we are dealing with perceptions, ideologies, and ideas. From this excursion on the impact of history, to return to Mahan, our best naval minds need to examine how sea power and naval forces can indeed be used to influence history in a world in which the main threat may no longer be principally military and the maritime commons must embrace the struggle ashore as never before. Otherwise, the proverbial Damoclean sword will descend on what could be an exposed naval neck.
Harlan Ullman's newest book, just out, is America's Promise Restored: Preventing Culture, Crusade and Partisanship from Wrecking Our Country.