Cover

The Naval War College campus on

Coasters Harbor Island—a view from the

south. The buildings are, from left to

right, Pringle Hall, Luce Hall, McCarty

Little Hall, and Founders Hall (the original home of the College, now containing

the Museum and offices of the Maritime

History Department and of the Naval

War College Press). Above Luce Hall, to

the right of the cupola, is a portion of

Conolly Hall. In the foreground is Dewey

Field, site of June graduation exercises

and summer Navy Band concerts.
Naval Power in the Twenty-first Ce

A Naval War College Review Reader

NAVAL WAR COLLEGE PRESS

Newport, Rhode Island

Peter Dombrowski, Editor
Naval War College

Newport, Rhode Island

Center for Naval Warfare Studies

Newport Paper Twenty-four

July 2005

President, Naval War College

Rear Admiral Jacob L. Shuford, U.S. Navy

Provost/Dean of Academics

Professor James F. Giblin, Jr.

Dean of Naval Warfare Studies

Dr. Kenneth H. Watman

Naval War College Press

Editor: Dr. Peter Dombrowski

Managing Editor: Pelham G. Boyer

Telephone: 401.841.2236

Fax: 401.841.1071

DSN exchange: 948

E-mail: press@nwc.navy.mil

Web: www.nwc.navy.mil/press

Printed in the United States of America

The Newport Papers are extended research projects that the

Editor, the Dean of Naval Warfare Studies, and the

President of the Naval War College consider of particular

interest to policy makers, scholars, and analysts.

The views expressed in the Newport Papers are those of the

authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the

Naval War College or the Department of the Navy.

Correspondence concerning the Newport Papers may be

addressed to the Editor of the Naval War College Press. To

request additional copies, back copies, or subscriptions to

the series, please either write the President (Code 32S),

Naval War College, 686 Cushing Road, Newport, RI

02841-1207, or contact the Press staff at the telephone, fax,

or e-mail addresses given.

ISSN 1544-6824
Contents

Foreword, by Peter Dombrowski 

U.S. Naval Strategy in the Twenty-first Century

A Brief Introduction, by Peter Dombrowski 

THE CHANGING NATIONAL SECURITY ENVIRONMENT

CHAPTER ONE The Challenges of American

Imperial Power 

by Michael Ignatieff

CHAPTER TWO American Primacy:

Its Prospects and Pitfalls 

by Stephen M. Walt

CHAPTER THREE Has It Worked? The Goldwater-Nicho

Reorganization Act 

by James R. Locher III

CHAPTER FOUR The Erosion of Civilian Control of the

Military in the United States Today 

by Richard H. Kohn

CHAPTER FIVE “9/11” and After: A British View 

by Sir Michael Howard

NAVAL STRATEGY

CHAPTER SIX Fighting at and from the Sea: A Secon

Opinion 

Addendum

by Frank Uhlig, Jr.

CHAPTER SEVEN “. . . From the Sea” and Back Again: N

Power in the Second American Centur

by Edward Rhodes

CHAPTER EIGHT The Tyranny of Forward Presence 

by Daniel Gouré

CHAPTER NINE Naval Power for a New American

Century 

by Roger W. Barnett
CHAPTER TEN Transforming the U.S. Armed Forces:

Rhetoric or Reality? 

by Thomas G. Mahnken

CHAPTER ELEVEN Network-centric Warfare:

What’s the Point? 

by Edward A. Smith, Jr.

CHAPTER TWELVE Transforming the Navy:

Punching a Feather Bed? 

by Peter J. Dombrowski and Andrew L. 

CHAPTER THIRTEEN Building the Future Fleet:

Show Us the Analysis! 

by Eric J. Labs

CHAPTER FOURTEEN Transformation and the Navy’s Tough

Choices Ahead: What Are the Options

for Policy Makers? 

by Ronald O’Rourke

Conclusion, by Peter Dombrowski 

About the Authors 

The Newport Papers 
Foreword

Two ideas motivated this anthology of articles published in our quarterly, the Na

War College Review. First, the U.S. Navy is today at a critical point in its history. A

time when the nation is at war—with campaigns in two countries and engageme

across the globe as part of the war on terror—the roles and missions traditionall

signed to the Navy have been called into question. Budget pressures have forced t

service to reevaluate shipbuilding plans for several ships, including the DD(X) fa

Second, it has been nearly ten years since selections from the Review have been c

piled in a single, easily accessible volume; in that time there have appeared a num

articles that particularly deserve a second or third look by those who study and p

national security and naval affairs.

The articles in this volume speak directly to the Navy’s evolving role in the nation

military strategies. The collection should serve as a handy reference for scholars, 

lysts, practitioners, and general readers interested in naval issues, and also that it 

useful for adoption as a reading by national security courses both in the United S

and abroad. While the articles here certainly do not exhaust the range of views an

portant issues involving naval operations, strategy, or tactics, they do form a foun

tion for those interested in learning more. Moreover, they have enduring value; t

perspectives and analyses they offer will not go out of fashion.

The articles are reprinted exactly as they originally appeared, except that: proofre

errors noticed since original publication have been silently corrected; biographic

notes have been updated; copyrighted art has been omitted; citation format (whi

evolved over the years) has been standardized in certain respects; and one author 

appended a brief commentary.

The volume is divided into three sections. The first introduces the changing secu

environment facing the United States and, by extension, the U.S. Navy. The articl

amine both the external position of the nation and the emerging internal politic

institutional contexts that constrain military and naval policies and decision mak

The second part looks specifically at the roles and missions of the Navy at the be

ning of the twenty-first century. Its articles cover both long-standing issues, such 

forward presence, and the new missions the Navy has assumed in recent years—f

projecting power far inland to providing theater and national missile defense, esp

cially against opponents armed with nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons. Th
this section provide some perspective on, perhaps even ballast for, the claims of proponents of the revolution in military affairs. Finally, I supply a conclusion reviewing the

main themes of the articles and the avenues to which they point.

The Naval War College Review remains one of the premier journals dedicated to publishing articles and essays with a naval and maritime focus. The chapters in the volume

provide many of the intellectual building blocks for a maritime strategy designed to

maintain American primacy and, if mandated by political leaderships, support a libera

empire that helps protect and spread the ideals of democracy and markets. The Navy’s

role will be arduous, and the need for continuous adjustments to the prevailing international security environment great. By reading or rereading the chapters that follow,

specialists and nonspecialists alike can gain greater insights into the challenges ahead.

I would like to end with thanks to my predecessors as editor of the Naval War College

Press—Dr. Catherine McArdle Kelleher, Dr. Thomas B. Grassey, and Professor Frank

Uhlig, Jr.—under whose tutelage these and so many other excellent articles were published. It is a fine legacy to bequeath to my successor in this position, Dr. Carnes Lord.

PETER DOMBROWSKI

Editor, Naval War College Press

Newport, Rhode Island
U.S. Naval Strategy in the Twenty-first Cent

A Brief Introduction

In this volume, Congressional Budget Office analyst Eric Labs issues a provocativ

lenge to the U.S Navy—he argues that while the Navy has done a fine job justifyi

existence of a navy, it has been much less successful in defining just what type of 

the American taxpayer deserves.1

Deciding what roles and missions the U.S. Navy

should be responsible for within the overall context of the national security strat

essential to determining what equipment the Navy buys, how many officers and 

it requires, what types of skills, education, and training they need, where naval fo

should be based, and, not the least, what doctrine and tactics it needs to develop 

coming decades. After all, rationalist approaches to defense planning usually atte

determine the roles and missions of a nation’s military services by means of top-

reviews, starting from the nation’s interests and the grand strategy that is used to 

sue them.2

Military strategy, doctrine, tactics, force structure, weapons systems, a

basing, among other essentials, are then organized around the ends of grand stra

This is exactly what the formal planning processes of the Defense Department an

U.S. Navy are supposed to accomplish.

The perceived absence of a clear definition of the Navy’s role in U.S. military stra

unsurprising, however. The global threat of the Soviet Union disappeared nearly 

years ago, but the American military has adjusted only fitfully to the subsequent 

national security environment. The Navy in particular has changed only gradual

Most ships, aircraft, and other major weapons systems last decades or more; the 

curement decisions and even purchases of the Ronald Reagan–era buildup in the 

remain with the fleet today. This will remain true far into the future. The V-22, fo

ample, was conceived in the 1970s but is not yet operational, even though it prom

to expand the ability of the U.S. Marines to project power ashore. Most general o

today had their formative professional experiences during the Cold War. More to 

point, at the strategic level the Navy has gone through a number of, for the absen

better term, “vision statements,” including “ . . . From the Sea”; Forward . . . from 
lasting hold on the Navy or the U.S. national security community in general.

Few efforts to redirect Navy strategy have endured beyond a particular set of naval

leaders or their political masters in the Defense Department and the White House.

Chief of Naval Operation Vernon Clarke’s contribution, Sea Power 21, had the twin

virtues of the apparent blessing of the civilian defense leadership and CNO’s strong

personal support, but it remains to be seen whether that view will prevail.6

Critics have

charged that it does not provide adequate justification for maintaining the current flee

and existing acquisition programs, let alone the most prominent programs, such as the

DD(X), LPD-17, and future submarine programs in economically justifiable numbers.

Recent cuts to naval programs appear to validate these concerns. Further, viewed as a

window on the Navy’s future, Sea Power 21 does not offer sufficient specifics to guide

to transformation, at least by the model held by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld

and the most strenuous proponents of transformation.7

While Sea Power 21 may be

another rethinking of the Navy’s role in promoting national security, it does less well a

advertisement for supporting the wider joint military strategy guiding the other services (e.g., the rhetorical approach of adding the word “sea” to standard missions—thus

“Sea Strike,” “Sea Shield,” “Sea Warrior” and so forth—appears parochial to some).

Finally, at this point in time, in the second term of George W. Bush, the administration’s approach to national security beginning with the 2001 Quadrennial Defense

Review and the National Security Strategy of 2002 may be undergoing a substantial

reorientation.

Grand Strategy and Naval Power

Outsiders trying to influence the internal debates about the United States often look to

history to determine either what choices were made at similar points in a nation’s history or what other nations have done in similar strategic environments. So, for example, proponents of American military innovation have studied the interwar period,

the years between World Wars I and II, to help understand how the United States

should seek to preserve its current military superiority in the lull, or strategic pause,

between the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of another peer or nearpeer competitor. Over the last decade, innovation studies have examined the origins of

a number of interwar innovations that influenced the course of World War II, including carrier operations and amphibious warfare. Unfortunately, there is no period in

American history comparable to the position in which the country finds itself at the

beginning of the twenty-first century; Michael Ignatieff argues that “we live in a world

that has no precedents since the age of the later Roman emperors.”8
pire in search of lessons for the United States.9It has also become almost commo

to laud the role of the Royal Navy in creating and maintaining the British overse

pire over more than three centuries.10 Although some have claimed the British ac

its empire by accident, it is clear that over time the pursuit of global maritime su

ority and an overseas empire became a conscious strategy, pursued by many gene

tions of British political leaders.11 It was not until the failure of Winston Churchi

efforts to maintain the remnants of empire that the conscious policy waned; of c

Margaret Thatcher reminded us how potent the symbol of the overseas territorie

main when she roused the British military and public to defend the Falkland Isla

against Argentina in 1981. Interestingly, as Jeremy Black points out, the imperial 

overs controlled by London today are larger than the territories controlled in 150

the very beginning of Great Britain’s global shopping spree.12

What is less often recognized, at least by nonspecialists, is that the British navy’s 

supporting the imperial strategy changed more than a few times in the course of 

several hundred years. In the early years of Britain’s nascent empire the Royal Na

hardly a navy at all. It was a motley collection of gifted pirates, privateers, and on

a-kind Crown-sponsored expeditions intended largely to harass Britain’s more su

ful imperial rivals and earn profits for those courageous or foolhardy enough to 

forth. Later the Royal Navy qua navy emerged, growing to provide a bulwark of 

fense against efforts, like the Spanish Armada, to invade the home islands or, la

major colonies like India. British naval forces were deployed and redeployed acro

globe to meet, contain, and combat various geopolitical challengers and maintain 

ain’s commercial trade routes and lifelines to its colonies. In the final European c

flicts that sealed Great Britain’s fate as a world power, the Royal Navy largely retu

to its home waters to deter a German invasion.

The expense of maintaining its imperial commitments and in particular its globa

may ultimately have weakened Great Britain’s ability to resist the imperial challen

from Germany to Japan in the first half of the twentieth century.13 This happened 

spite the widespread discussion and acknowledgement of the resourcing problem 

the highest levels of the British government and political class. Caught between t

rock of imperial commitments and the hard place of an economy in relative declin

Great Britain tried for as long as possible to have it both ways.

Great Britain itself was a liberal empire that practiced both the “imperialism of f

trade” and the acquisition of a more traditional territorial empire, given its relen

accrual of colonies, protectorates, and spheres of influence during and througho

nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.14 In Great Britain’s version of liberal em
up new markets (by force if necessary), and maintain the military infrastructure and

network of bases necessary for the first two objectives.

The lessons of all this for the United States vis-à-vis the roles and missions of the U.S.

Navy, military expenditures in general, and the Navy’s budget in particular are highly

contested. The two most recent American administrations, but most prominently the

presidency of George W. Bush, have self-consciously chosen a path toward primacy, if

not empire. In President Bush’s first term many pundits and neoconservatives on both

sides of the Atlantic clearly became increasingly comfortable with the notion that the

United States already had and should strive to maintain, and perhaps expand, its libera

empire. The later stages of the president’s first term and now the second term suggest

that critics may have been correct in observing that primacy and running an empire,

liberal or not, is harder than it looks.15

The implications of primacy, or perhaps a liberal empire, for the U.S. Navy are only

now being explored. The issues of nonterritorial empire in the early stages of the

twenty-first century facing the American navy are similar to those faced by the British

navy in many ways but in the last analysis are decidedly different. The U.S. Navy, like

the Royal Navy, pledges to maintain sea-lanes and protect freedom of navigation for all

commercial vessels using the high seas. It has not, generally speaking, however, been

asked to use force to impose its economic will on other countries and regions (although critics of U.S. foreign and national security policies claim, with some truth,

that most American interventions and even wars have had a key commercial element).

More recently, the Bush administration has argued its right to impose on the world

American political values, including democracy and free markets. The invasion of Iraq

has helped make the case; once the various rationales initially used to justify the war

fell to pieces, what was left was the self-interest of the United States in controlling the

second largest oil-producing state and offering the Iraqi people an opportunity to

practice democracy and capitalism.

On the economic implications of maintaining a military and, specifically, a global navy

capable of maintaining American primacy, the jury remains out. After several years of

discussion of the Paul Kennedy’s concept of “imperial overstretch” in the early 1990s,

the consensus seems to be that the United States is not currently in danger of such

overextension. U.S. military expenditures remain quite low, given its global missions

and relative to the health and size of the American economy. Moreover, the nation

manages to maintain its potent military with expenditures larger than those of any

conceivable combination of potential competitors and allies, while spending roughly 4

percent of its gross domestic product in doing so.16 The growing unpopularity of the
ing measures are less relevant than public perceptions.

The U.S. Navy and Primacy

The centrality of navies to the lives of great nations has long been proclaimed by

navalists, culminating in the United States with Alfred Thayer Mahan and Theod

Roosevelt. Indeed there, in Germany, and other nations as well, “navalism” repre

“the dedication to the creation of an imperial navy—among people in position o

power.”17 American navalists won the day in the 1890s, thereby helping bring the U

States to international prominence and power, though it was to take the First Wo

War to demonstrate truly America’s not-so-latent military strength. After a brief 

the post–World War II period, when some theorists argued that the advent of the

atomic age might mean the end of navies, the U.S. Navy found its métier in the C

War. The Navy’s emergence as the keeper of the third, sea-based leg of the nuclea

ensured that later, as the strategists and politicians gradually decided that a conv

tional defense of Europe was possible and even desirable, if only to postpone a n

confrontation, the Navy’s role would expand to fighting the growing Soviet fleet, 

was thought to endanger the water bridge across the Atlantic that would be nece

to fight a war in the European theaters. Then as the Soviet Navy expanded its blue-

reach to include most of the world’s seas and oceans, the impetus for a large and 

ble U.S. Navy was assured. It may be that an emerging power like China that beco

near-peer competitor will play a similar role in the future.

As a global economic, political, and cultural power, the United States should cho

play a critical role in maintaining the global commons—from the surface to the 

surface, to airspace over international waters, to space. As Barry Posen has articu

most clearly, U.S. command of the commons—including both the ocean surface

undersea—has allowed it to pursue a strategy of primacy in recent years.18 In a b

sense the United States should pursue this option in order to facilitate the cross-

movement of goods for all commercial nations. In a more self-interested sense, i

to ensure that its exports and imports reach their ultimate destinations, especiall

given that 95 percent of America’s imports and exports from outside North Ame

arrive by ship. Moreover many of the tasks of the U.S. Navy discussed in the follo

chapters—from sea control to the defeating anti-access efforts of adversaries—al

contribute to the command of the global commons. The issue, then, is calibratin

U.S. Navy’s strategic vision to the fluid international system and the dynamics of 

mestic politics.
1. Eric J. Labs, “Building the Future Fleet: Show

Us the Analysis!” Naval War College Review

57, nos. 3/4 (Summer/Autumn 2004), pp.

138–46. “First, while Navy officials may be

doing an excellent job explaining why the

United States needs a navy, they are not doing

a good job explaining why it needs the navy

they say it needs” (p. 138).

2. John Hattendorf provides an especially clear

description of a rationalistic approach to naval

strategy and planning in John B. Hattendorf,

“Recent Thinking on the Theory of Naval

Strategy,” in Maritime Strategy and the Balance

of Power: Britain and American in the Twentieth

Century, ed. John B. Hattendorf and Robert S.

Jordan (New York: St. Martin’s, 1989), pp.

136–61. For a sophisticated argument that

“navy budgets, procurement, and force mix”

are “idea driven” and not the product of socalled rational actors, organizational or

bureaucratic models of decision making, see

Edward Rhodes, “Do Bureaucratic Politics

Matter? Some Disconfirming Findings from

the Case of the U.S. Navy,” World Politics 47,

no. 1 (October 1994), pp. 1–41.

3. Edward Rhodes, “‘. . . From the Sea’ and Back

Again: Naval Power in the Second American

Century,” Naval War College Review 52, no. 2

(Spring 1999), pp. 13–54.

4. E. D. Smith, Jr., “Network-centric Warfare:

What’s the Point?” Naval War College Review

54, no. 1 (Winter 2001), pp. 59–75.

5. Of course, these iterations have been blessed

to various degrees by the Chief of Naval Operations and the Defense Department, but they

represent distinct evolutions in naval thinking

since the end of the Cold War. For specifics

see Rhodes, “‘. . . From the Sea’ and Back

Again,” and Peter J. Dombrowski and Andrew

Ross, “Transforming the Navy: Punching a

Feather Bed?” Naval War College Review 56,

no. 3 (Summer 2003).

6. Early reports suggested it will. See “Mullen to

‘remain true’ to Sea Power 21 Vision,” Aerospace Daily & Defense Report, 25 April 2005,

p. 2.

7. See Dombrowski and Ross, “Transforming

the Navy.”

8. Michael Ignatieff, “The Challenges of American Imperial Power,” Naval War College Review 56, no. 2 (Spring 2003), pp. 53–63.

9. For one example, see Patrick Karl O’Brien an

Armand Clesse, Two Hegemonies: Britain

1846–1914 and the United States 1941–2002

(Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2002).

10. Arthur Herman, To Rule the Waves: How the

British Navy Shaped the Modern World (New

York: HarperCollins, 2004).

11. A phrase and sentiment originally attributed

to nineteenth-century historian John Robert

Seeley, in his The Expansion of England (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, repr. 1971).

12. Jeremy Black, The British Seaborne Empire

(New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 2004),

pp. 355–56.

13. Aaron L. Friedberg, The Weary Titan: Britain

and the Experience of Relative Decline, 1895–

1905 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press

1989).

14. John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson, “The

Imperialism of Free Trade,” Economic History

Review 6, second series, no. 1 (1953).

15. Stephen M. Walt, “American Primacy: Its

Prospects and Pitfalls,” Naval War College Re

view 55, no. 2 (Spring 2002), pp. 9–28.

16. For a well informed and reasoned analysis of

U.S. defense spending with some key international comparisons see Michael O’Hanlon,

“U.S. Defense Strategy after Saddam,”

(Carlisle, Penna.: Army War College, July

2005), available at www.Carlisle.army.mil/ssi.

17. Mark Russell Shulman, Navalism and the

Emergence of American Seapower, 1882–1893

(Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1995)

p. 2.

18. Barry Posen, “Command of the Commons:

The Military Foundation of U.S. Hegemony,”

International Security 28, no. 1 (Summer

2003), pp. 5–46.
Addendum

Professor Uhlig offers this later commentary on the concept of the “fleet-in-being,

plied to him by Captain Wayne Hughes (USN, Ret.), of the Naval Postgraduate Sch

You could without missing a beat strengthen the case, because there was a middl

ground between (1) the evidence you offer of the beginning of the end of a fleet

being with the Grand Fleet’s distant blockade, and (2) the present circumstances 

satellites and other advanced systems will pinpoint a fleet in a harbor and make i

nerable. . . . The middle ground occurred in World War II when carrier aircraft s

prised supposedly safe fleets and did so much harm that [the fleets] were driven 

or reduced to impotence. Examples: Taranto 1940, resulting in the Italians’ withd

ing to La Spezia; Pearl Harbor 1941, which eliminated the U.S. battleships’ viabil

over a year; Rabaul in 1943, when a U.S. carrier attack did so much harm to the J

nese cruisers that the Imperial Japanese Navy recognized the base was useless; an

1944, when in the expectation of a U.S. carrier air attack the Japanese fleet fled fr

strongest bastion east of the Philippines. There are other examples in the Pacific, 

Atlantic face of Europe, and in the Mediterranean—and with instruments other 

carriers, such as full-sized and mini-submarines, as well as land-based aircraft.

Technically, in none of these instances did the suffering fleet think of itself as a fl

being, in port merely to forestall or tie down the attacker’s fleet. It is interesting t

each case the fleet was the target, and command of the seas the objective. In no c

was the attack connected with an invasion somewhere nearby.

By 1945 all naval officers saw that what had been a sanctuary was now more likel

a death trap. What was bad enough with conventional bombs was going to be mu

worse with the coming of atomic (fission) bombs.
Conclusion

The U.S. Navy will continue to evolve as it has throughout most of its long histor

changes in the American political landscape and the evolving strategic consensus

set of drivers in this evolution comprises information technology and the desire 

advantage of the opportunities provided by improved data processing, advances 

communications, the increasing use of robotics, and advanced materials for buil

naval platforms, among many others. Notwithstanding the long life-cycles of airc

carriers, ships and aircraft generally have finite and knowable life spans. Standard 

placement and modernization patterns will ensure that the instruments of naval 

improve over time. With the Navy’s increasing emphasis on naval transformation

pace of change promises to be even more rapid in the next two decades. Even if m

expensive costs and lower procurement budgets allow for fewer new platforms, a

vanced technologies will change naval capabilities. For example, more accurate a

deadly precision-guided munitions for aircraft and extended-range munitions fo

val guns will increase the deep-strike capacity of naval forces even if the platform

themselves age and new, more capable platforms are procured in smaller numbe

originally envisioned.

Another source of the Navy’s ongoing evolution is the desire of the service itself 

demonstrate its viability as an instrument of national policy. After all, and despit

Navy’s long and storied tradition, respected national security analysts continue t

questions like, “Will Globalization Sink the Navy?”1

Even the absence of a domin

grand strategy will not inhibit the U.S. Navy from injecting its own “visions” of a 

egy that supports the national military strategy. Indeed, George Baer has conclud

about the Navy’s advocacy of “The Maritime Strategy” of the 1980s that “its cent

failure lay in the fact that the maritime strategy was not fully accepted as the basi

national policy of sea power. This did not mean all was lost. The Navy had hoped 

it could justify major acquisitions for an offensive carrier-and-submarine fleet, a

that it did.”2
for example, have rarely been optimized for single missions; rather, they house weapons and systems capable of carrying out a wide range of roles.3

Although some types of

ships have dwindled in number, the Navy has rarely given up missions. Instead it prefers to keep available ships, aircraft, and other assets with a range of capabilities. This

general principle is illustrated by the evolution of the submarine force. Nuclear-powered “boomers” armed with ballistic missiles and attack submarines designed to hunt

and kill enemy submarines are less in demand now that the Soviet submarine fleet lies

rusting on the shores of the Barents Sea. Instead, several SSBN hulls are being converted to SSGNs, capable of striking targets far inland or of inserting special operation

personnel to conduct a wide variety of missions ashore.

The U.S. Navy has often been left to its own devices in devising a maritime strategy

that supports the national security and military strategies of the United States. Several

times since 1945 the service has sought and failed to “gain recognition for the concept

[of a maritime strategy] a discrete element of national strategy” or even as the centerpiece of American strategy.4

By some accounts this is an almost inevitable outgrowth o

the natural evolution of U.S. national security concerns from a “continental,” to an

“oceanic,” to what Samuel P. Huntington called a “transoceanic” outlook—“a clearly

stated, offensive, strategic concept for applying power against nonnaval, nonmaritime

state.”5

The Navy has been less than successful in promoting the maritime view versus

continentalist opponents. Why?

In major conflicts against land powers navies are often unable to act decisively ashore

without the participation of the other military services. Despite the claims of the Maritime Strategy of the 1980s, which sought to take the offensive against the Soviet Union

and the efforts of the U.S. Navy to conceptualize its role in the post–Cold War world

with documents like “Forward . . . from the Sea,” the Navy is still struggling to acquire

the weapons, platforms, doctrine, and tactics necessary to influence events ashore in

any but the smallest contingencies.6

In fact, technology today actually limits the Navy’s

impact: naval guns, even with extended-range guided munitions, reach only so far

inland; limited numbers of cruise missiles preclude extended engagements; naval aircraft, even with air refueling, remain as yet limited to relatively brief sorties against

land targets; and naval task forces can only linger so long in one locale without refueling, refitting, and resting their crews. Innovations have undoubtedly extended this

range—concepts like Sea Swap crewing, home porting ships closer to the battle space,

and more capable tenders and perhaps sea bases for the fleet, and dockyards abroad—

but still limits remain. For all the importance of the Navy’s contributions to recent

conflicts like the Persian Gulf War, the various Balkans conflicts, the Afghanistan campaign, and the invasion of Iraq, they were ultimately supporting.7

For these reasons and
equivalent of the Maritime Strategy, or even a new version relying on “naval forc

rapid power projection” and “more leverage over events ashore than has been po

from the sea in the past” as the key component of national strategy appears unlik

succeed.8

In the future, the Navy will not be free to set its own course without reference to 

roles and missions of the other services as it did during the nation’s first great na

buildup in the 1890s. Unlike much of American history, when the Navy and War 

partments operated as separate fiefdoms, the norm at least since the National Sec

Act of 1947 and reinforced by the Goldwater-Nichols defense reforms, has been t

joint and combined operations.9

The Navy itself has recognized this in its rhetoric, 

always in its budget decisions, by emphasizing “jointness” in everything from t

network-centric vision of warfare to renewed efforts to qualify more naval office

joint command through professional military education. Even coalition operatio

with allies and temporary friends remain a key part of American naval thought. W

through formal alliances like NATO or informal coalitions of the willing, whethe

the Indian Ocean as part of maritime operations in support of the Global War 

Terror or in deep-strike missions against Serbia from the Adriatic, the U.S. Navy 

always sails with other navies.

The service, in short, will keep searching for a strategic vision that complements 

ican grand strategy, the capabilities of the other military services, and the emergi

tional security environment—characterized today by terrorism, “small wars” and

the horizon, the possibility that a peer or near-peer competitor will arise once ag

The Navy will do so not just to protect the American homeland and key allies bu

maintain control over the global commons, both a necessity for stable internatio

commerce and an enabler for continued American primacy.

Notes

1. James J. Wirtz, “Will Globalization Sink the

Navy?” in Globalization and Maritime Power,

ed. Sam J. Tangredi (Washington, D.C.: National Defense Univ. Press, 2002).

2. George W. Baer, One Hundred Years of Sea

Power: The U.S. Navy, 1890–1990 (Stanford,

Calif.: Stanford Univ. Press, 1994), p. 441.

3. Peter J. Dombrowski, Eugene Gholz, and Andrew L. Ross, Military Transformation and the

Defense Industry after Next: The Defense Industrial Implications of Network-centric Warfare,

Newport Paper 18 (Newport, R.I.: Na

College Press, 2003), esp. pp. 39–40.

4. Michael E. Palmer, Origins of the Mar

Strategy: The Development of American 

Strategy, 1945–1955 (Annapolis, Md.: 

Institute Press, 1988), p. 87.

5. Ibid., p. 5. See also Huntington’s origi

cle: Samuel P. Huntington, “National 

and the Transoceanic Navy,” U.S. Nav

tute Proceedings 80 (May 1954), pp. 48
strategy” see John Hattendorf, The Evolution

of the U.S. Navy’s Maritime Strategy, 1977–

1986, Newport Paper 19 (Newport, R.I.: Naval

War College Press, 2004).

7. For a brief overview see Edward J. Marolda,

“The U.S. Navy and the Persian Gulf,”

www.history.navy.mil/wars/dstorm/

sword-shield.htm/. A more extensive full

treatment can be found in Edward J. Marolda

and Robert J. Schneller, Jr., Shield and Sword:

The U.S. Navy and the Persian Gulf War

(Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2001).

A Defense Budget for a Maritime Strategy,” in

Holding the Line: U.S. Defense Alternatives for

the Early 21st Century, ed. Cindy Williams

(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press 2001), p. 141.

9. On Defense Department organization issues

see James R. Locher III, “Has It Worked? The

Goldwater-Nichols Reorganization Act” Naval War College Review 54, no. 4 (Autumn

2001), pp. 95–116; for a brief summary of the

Navy’s initial position on Goldwater-Nichols

see Baer, One Hundred Years of Sea Power, pp

443–444.
About the Authors

Dr. Roger W. Barnett is professor emeritus at the Naval War College, where until 

tember 2001 he held the Jerry O. Tuttle Military Chair of Information Operation

tired from the U.S. Navy in the grade of captain, Dr. Barnett was a member of th

delegation to the strategic arms talks with the Soviet Union in 1970–71. He is the 

thor of Asymmetrical Warfare, published by Brassey’s (U.S.) in 2003.

Dr. Peter Dombrowski is a professor in the Strategic Research Department and ed

the Naval War College Press at the Naval War College. Dr. Dombrowski is the aut

over thirty journal articles, book chapters, and government reports. He recently c

pleted an edited volume, Guns and Butter: The Political Economy of the New Inter

tional Security Environment (Lynne Reinner, forthcoming 2005) and a book coau

with Eugene Gholz, Buying Transformation: Technological Innovation and the Def

Industry (forthcoming). He received his BA from Williams College and an MA an

PhD from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Dr. Daniel Gouré is vice president of the Lexington Institute, a defense-policy “th

tank.” Prior to joining Lexington, he was the deputy director of the International 

rity Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in Washington

Dr. Gouré earned his PhD at Johns Hopkins University; he has pursued his natio

curity career in government at the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency 

the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Earlier he worked for the Science Applicat

International Corporation and the System Planning Corporation, among other f

A frequent lecturer and the author of numerous articles, Dr. Gouré is a coauthor 

Jeffrey Ranney) of Averting the Defense Train Wreck in the New Millennium (1999

Sir Michael Howard, born in London in 1922, earned bachelor’s and master’s de

in modern history at Oxford before serving in the British army in World War II 

campaign, twice wounded, Military Cross). After the war he taught at King’s Col

University of London, becoming the institution’s first lecturer in war studies, the

fessor in war studies, and founding the International Institute for Strategic Studi

(IISS). In 1968 he became a senior research fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, th

Chichele Professor of the History of War, earning a D.Litt. from Oxford in 1977. 

1980 to 1989 he was Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, and from 19

1993 he held the Robert A. Lovett chair of Military and Naval History at Yale Un

sity. He is today president emeritus of IISS, a fellow of the British Academy, and 
many publications, his most recent books are The First World War: A Very Short Introduction (2002) and The Lessons of History (1991); other especially well known books

are Franco-Prussian War: The German Invasion of France 1870–1871 (1961, 2d rev. ed.

2001), The Causes of Wars (1983), and the now-standard English translation (with Peter

Paret) of Clausewitz’s On War (1976). The reprinted article is adapted from a Raymond A.

Spruance Lecture delivered at the Naval War College on 17 April 2002.

Dr. Michael Ignatieff is Carr Professor of the Practice of Human Rights and the directo

of the Carr Center of Human Rights Policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy

School of Government. Professor Ignatieff earned his doctorate in history from Harvard University and has been a fellow at King’s College, Cambridge; l’École des Hautes

Études, Paris; and S. Antony’s College, Oxford. His recent scholarly books include Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry (2001), The Rights Revolution (2000), Virtual War:

Kosovo and Beyond (2000), The Warrior’s Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscienc

(U.S. edition 1998), Isaiah Berlin: A Life (1998), and Blood and Belonging: Journeys into

the New Nationalism (U.S. edition 1994). The reprinted article was adapted from a lecture delivered at the Naval War College on 12 November 2002.

Dr. Richard H. Kohn is professor of history and chairman of the Curriculum in Peace,

War, and Defense at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After undergradu

ate study at Harvard and earning a doctorate at the University of Wisconsin, he taught

at City College, City University of New York; Rutgers University–New Brunswick; and

at the National and U.S. Army War Colleges. He served as chief of Air Force history

and chief historian of the U.S. Air Force, 1981–1991. Most recently he edited (with

Peter Feaver) Soldiers and Civilians: The Civil-Military Gap and American National Security (2001). The reprinted article is an expansion and update of the Harmon Memorial Lecture in Military History delivered in December 1999 at the U.S. Air Force

Academy. Earlier versions were given as lectures at the Army, Air, Naval, Marine Corps,

and National War Colleges, the Marine Corps and Air Command and Staff Colleges,

the U.S. Military Academy, U.S. Central Command, the Duke University Law School

national security law course, the Syracuse University national security management

course, the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, and, at the invitation of the

Chairman, the Joint Staff. When the reprinted article originally appeared, the author

expressed thanks to Andrew J. Bacevich, George A. Billias, Eliot A. Cohen, Peter D.

Feaver, Thomas C. Greenwood, Paul Herbert, Peter Karsten, Lynne H. Kohn, and

Abigail A. Kohn for criticisms and suggestions, and numerous other friends, colleagues

and officers and civilians in audiences who offered questions and comments. Jonathan

Phillips, Erik Riker-Coleman, and Michael Allsep provided indispensable research

assistance.
in 1994. For the past ten years, he has worked at the Congressional Budget Office

(CBO). He is the Principal Analyst for Naval Forces and Weapons and specializes 

procuring, budgeting, and sizing of the forces for the Department of the Navy. H

published several studies under the auspices of the CBO, as well as a number of a

and papers in academic journals and conferences, including the U.S. Naval Instit

Proceedings and Sea Power. His most recent CBO study is The Future of the Navy’

phibious and Maritime Prepositioning Forces (November 2004). He is currently w

on an analysis of the Navy’s total ship force structure. In 2001 and 2003, he receiv

CBO Director’s Award for Exceptional Achievement. The views in the reprinted a

are those of the author and should not be interpreted as those of the Congressio

Budget Office or the U.S. Congress. A shorter version of this essay was first delive

the June 2004 meeting of the Current Strategy Forum.

Mr. James R. Locher III graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1968 and re

an M.B.A. from Harvard University. In 1978 he joined the Senate Committee on A

Services as a professional staff member, leading efforts that resulted in the Goldw

Nichols Defense Reorganization Act of 1986. In October 1989, President George 

Bush appointed him assistant secretary of defense for special operations and 

intensity conflict. Since 1993, he has written, lectured, consulted, and served on c

missions related to the organization of the Defense Department. In 2003–2004, M

Locher served as chairman of the Defense Reform Commission on Bosnia and

Herzegovina. His book Victory on the Potomac: The Goldwater-Nichols Act Unifie

Pentagon was published in 2002.

Dr. Thomas G. Mahnken is a professor in the Department of Strategy and Policy 

Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island. After receiving bachelor’s degrees fro

University of Southern California and a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins Un

sity, he participated in the Gulf War Air Power Survey and served in the U.S. Def

Department’s Office of Net Assessment. In 1995–96, he was a National Security F

at the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University. In 1997 

earned his doctorate from Johns Hopkins. He is a lieutenant in the U.S. Naval Re

He is the author of a forthcoming book on intelligence and military innovation, 

author of volume 5 of the Gulf War Air Power Survey, and has written articles th

have appeared in International Security, Journal of Strategic Studies, Intelligence a

tional Security, and Joint Force Quarterly, among others.

Mr. Ronald O’Rourke is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the Johns Hopkins Univers

from which he received his BA in international studies, and a valedictorian gradu

the university’s Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, where he re
the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress. In that time, Mr.

O’Rourke has written numerous reports for Congress on various issues relating to the

Navy. He regularly briefs members of Congress and congressional staffers, and he has

testified before congressional committees on several occasions. In 1996, Mr. O’Rourke

received a Distinguished Service Award from the Library of Congress for his service to

Congress on naval issues. He is the author of several journal articles on naval issues

and is a past winner of the U.S. Naval Institute’s Arleigh Burke essay contest. Mr.

O’Rourke has given presentations on Navy-related issues to a variety of audiences in

government, industry, and academia.

Dr. Edward Rhodes is dean for the Social and Behavioral Sciences at Rutgers University.

A former International Affairs Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, he has

served in the Strategy and Concepts Branch of the Navy Staff. He is the author of Powe

and MADness: The Logic of Nuclear Coercion (1989), the coauthor (with Jon DiCicco,

Sarah Milburn, and Tom Walker) of Presence, Prevention, and Persuasion: A Historical

Analysis of Military Force and Political Influence (2004), and the coeditor (with Peter

Trubowitz and Emily Goldman) of The Politics and Strategic Adjustment: Ideas, Institutions, and Interests (1998). An earlier version of this article appeared in Strategic Transformation and Naval Power in the 21st Century, ed. Pelham G. Boyer and Robert S.

Wood (Newport, R.I.: Naval War College Press, 1998).

Dr. Andrew L. Ross is a research professor in the Strategic Research Department of the

Naval War College’s Center for Naval Warfare Studies. His work on grand strategy, national security and defense planning, regional security, arms control, weapons proliferation, the international arms market, and defense industries has appeared in numerous

journals and books. He is the editor of The Political Economy of Defense: Issues and Perspectives (1991) and coeditor of three editions of Strategy and Force Planning (1995,

1997, 2000).

Dr. Edward A. Smith Jr. holds an undergraduate degree from Ohio State University and

a Ph.D. in international relations from The American University. Before retiring as a

captain in the U.S. Navy, he served in combat in Vietnam; on the staffs of CruiserDestroyer Group 8 and the Commander in Chief, Atlantic Command and the Supreme

Allied Commander Atlantic; in the Office of Naval Intelligence; and on the Chief of

Naval Operations Executive Panel. He is now Boeing’s Executive Strategist for EffectsBased Operations. His widely used book Effects-Based Operations, published by the De

partment of Defense in 2001, is now in its third printing. He has just completed a second book, Complexity, Networking, and Effects-Based Operations, forthcoming in 2005.
twenty years he was an editor and senior editor at the U.S. Naval Institute, where 

founded the annual Naval Review. In 1981 Frank Uhlig became the editor of the 

War College Press (which produces this journal); he retired from that post in Sep

ber 1993. When the reprinted article originally appeared, the author expressed th

to Captain Wayne Hughes and Commander Guy Thomas (both cited in the note

also to Professor Milan Vego, of the Naval War College’s faculty; to Captain Peter

Swartz, U.S. Navy (Retired), of the CNA Corporation in Alexandria, Virginia; and 

Mr. Robert J. Cressman, of the Naval Historical Center in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Af

the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Professor Wal

ceived his doctorate in political science from the University of California, Berkele

research fellow at Harvard University, 1981–84, and assistant professor of politic

international affairs at Princeton University from 1984 to 1989, he has also been 

dent associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a guest schola

the Brookings Institution, and a professor of political science at the University of 

cago, where he was master of the Social Science Collegiate Division and deputy d

the Graduate Division of Social Sciences. His The Origins of Alliances (1987) rece

the 1988 Edgar S. Furniss National Security Book Award. Recent publications inc

Keeping the World “Off-Balance”: Self-Restraint and U.S. Foreign Policy (2000) and Re

tion and War (1996). His Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Pr

is forthcoming from W. W. Norton in 2005. He is also the author of articles in Fo

Policy, The National Interest, International Security, and Foreign Affairs.

The Newport Papers

The Atlantic Crises: Britain, Europe, and Parting from the United States, by William

Hopkinson (no. 23, May 2005).

China’s Nuclear Force Modernization, edited by Lyle J. Goldstein with Andrew S.

Erickson (no. 22, April 2005).

Latin American Security Challenges: A Collaborative Inquiry from North and Sou

edited by Paul D. Taylor (no. 21, 2004).

Global War Game: Second Series, 1984–1988, by Robert Gile (no. 20, 2004).

The Evolution of the U.S. Navy’s Maritime Strategy, 1977–1986, by John Hattend

(no. 19, 2004).

Military Transformation and the Defense Industry after Next: The Defense Indus

Implications of Network-Centric Warfare, by Peter J. Dombrowski, Eugene Ghol

Andrew L. Ross (no. 18, 2003).

The Limits of Transformation: Officer Attitudes toward the Revolution in Military A

by Thomas G. Mahnken and James R. FitzSimonds (no. 17, 2003).

The Third Battle: Innovation in the U.S. Navy’s Silent Cold War Struggle with Sovi

marines, by Owen R. Cote, Jr. (no. 16, 2003).

International Law and Naval War: The Effect of Marine Safety and Pollution Con

tions during International Armed Conflict, by Dr. Sonja Ann Jozef Boelaert-Suo

(no. 15, December 2000).

Theater Ballistic Missile Defense from the Sea: Issues for the Maritime Component 

mander, by Commander Charles C. Swicker, U.S. Navy (no. 14, August 1998).

Sailing New Seas, by Admiral J. Paul Reason, U.S. Navy, with David G. Freymann (n

March 1998).

What Color Helmet? Reforming Security Council Peacekeeping Mandates, by Myro

Nordquist (no. 12, August 1997).

The International Legal Ramifications of United States Counter-Proliferation Strat

Problems and Prospects, by Frank Gibson Goldman (no. 11, April 1997).

Chaos Theory: The Essentials for Military Applications, by Major Glenn E. Jam

U.S. Air Force (no. 10, October 1996).
Spain, by James J. Tritten and Vice Admiral Luigi Donolo, Italian Navy (Retired) (no. 9

December 1995).

Physics and Metaphysics of Deterrence: The British Approach, by Myron A. Greenberg

(no. 8, December 1994).

Mission in the East: The Building of an Army in a Democracy in the New German States,

by Colonel Mark E. Victorson, U.S. Army (no. 7, June 1994).

The Burden of Trafalgar: Decisive Battle and Naval Strategic Expectations on the Eve of

the First World War, by Jan S. Breemer (no. 6, October 1993).

Beyond Mahan: A Proposal for a U.S. Naval Strategy in the Twenty-First Century, by

Colonel Gary W. Anderson, U.S. Marine Corps (no. 5, August 1993).

Global War Game: The First Five Years, by Bud Hay and Bob Gile (no. 4, June 1993).

The “New” Law of the Sea and the Law of Armed Conflict at Sea, by Horace B.

Robertson, Jr. (no. 3, October 1992).

Toward a Pax Universalis: A Historical Critique of the National Military Strategy for the

1990s, by Lieutenant Colonel Gary W. Anderson, U.S. Marine Corps (no. 2, April

1992).

“Are We Beasts?” Churchill and the Moral Question of World War II “Area Bombing,” by

Christopher C. Harmon (no. 1, December 1991).

Newport Papers 4, 10, and from 14 on are available online (Acrobat required) at

www.nwc.navy.mil/press/npapers/newpaper.htm.