A Cooperative Strategy For 21st Century Seapower - Expanding Naval Core Capabilities

Expanding Naval Core Capabilities

A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower articulates that U.S. maritime forces be able to operate across the full spectrum of operations, raising the prevention of war to a level equal to the conduct of war. The strategy delineates the following six expanded core capabilities for U.S. Seapower to achieve a balance of peacetime engagement and major combat operations capabilities:

1. Forward presence
2. Deterrence
3. Sea control
4. Power projection
5. Maritime security
6. Humanitarian assistance/disaster response

The first four core elements listed have always been fundamental to U.S. maritime forces and were essential elements to the United States and its allies and partners during the Cold War. The last two, Maritime Security and Humanitarian Assistance/Disaster Response, were elevated to core elements by the new maritime strategy. The U.S. sea services have traditionally done these types of missions but they will seek to be more proactive and purposeful in training, missions, and resourcing the missions and capabilities associated with them.

The new maritime strategy reaffirms the need for regionally concentrated, forward deployed combat power; but also places emphasis on globally distributed, mission-tailored maritime forces. Specifically the new maritime strategy states that:

1. Regionally concentrated, credible combat power: The U.S.sea services will maintain credible combat power forward "in the Western Pacific and the Persian Gulf /Indian Ocean to protect vital interests, assure friends and allies of the continuing U.S. commitment to regional security, and deter and dissuade potential adversaries and peer competitors." The maritime strategy states that the U.S. does not seek adversaries, nor single out any one nation, but will be best postured to maintain security and freedom of movement across the maritime domain.
2. Globally distributed, mission-tailored maritime forces: The U.S. sea services will establish a persistent global presence using distributed forces that are organized by mission, comprising integrated U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard capabilities. Aircraft Carrier and Expeditionary Strike Groups will continue to deploy much as they do now, but they will also use smaller groups or units to provide this presence across the globe, such as the Global Fleet Station.

In signing a cooperative strategy, the U.S. sea services also raise the importance of cooperative relationships as the basis for global maritime security – a common goal of all maritime nations regardless of political differences. Maritime nations have always shared common interests on the sea and even land-locked nations rely on the safety of those seas to maintain and enhance their way of life. The challenge for the United States is how to apply seapower in a manner that protects U.S. vital and domestic interests, even as it promotes greater collective security, stability, and trust across the globe.

During the presentation of the new strategy to nearly 100 chiefs of navies and coast guards from around the world at the Naval War College on October 17, 2007, Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Gary Roughead, the Navy’s top uniformed officer, said humanitarian and disaster aid is built on, “peace-time relationships to help mitigate human suffering by working together with other agencies and other nations responding to crises.”

While presenting the U.S. Coast Guard perspective on the new U.S. maritime strategy at the same symposium, Admiral Thad Allen, Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, said the new maritime strategy reinforced the time-honored missions his service carried out in this U.S. since 1790. He said:

It reinforces the Coast Guard maritime strategy of safety, security and stewardship, and it reflects not only the global reach of our maritime services but the need to integrate and synchronize and act with our coalition and international partners to not only win wars ... but to prevent wars .

The new strategy is viewed as a welcome makeover from the Soviet-centric document developed in 1986, but has drawn some criticism from military analysts who say it is too broad-based and lacked a fourth, “implementation” stage. Former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman hailed its tenets but pointed out it was lacking information on the actual hardware needed to carry out the policy. In the November 2007 issue of Proceedings magazine, he explained, “we (need) a clear and well-articulated statement of what we need to implement that strategy – tightly bound to the strategy itself.” He concedes however, that the most important attribute of the updated strategy is, “that it exists at all … and that its development was taken so seriously.”