President's forum: a Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower

Naval War College Review,  Wntr, 2008  by J.L. Shuford

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AS MOST OF YOU ARE WELL AWARE, for over a century the College has played a unique role in the analysis and formulation of national maritime strategy and policy as well as national grand strategy. Over the past two years, the Naval War College has found itself once again in a key position to support the leadership of our maritime forces, and of those of our global partners, in thinking through the implications of a new set of global security challenges and opportunities (see the "President's Forum" in the Autumn 2006 issue of the Review). The current effort finds its roots in the discussions of the 17th International Seapower Symposium (ISS), held in the fall of 2005.

At that conference, fifty-five chiefs of navies and coast guards, along with twenty-seven war college presidents from around the world, gathered in Newport to share perspectives on a broad range of issues important to our navies, coast guards, and countries through the mechanism of regionally oriented seminars (eight of them). The two days produced from each region comprehensive lists of key concerns, the similarity of which was remarkable. As the symposium drew to a close, a consensus was articulated that maritime security was fundamental to address these concerns, that the scope of security challenges reached beyond the waters of individual nations, and most importantly, that responsibility for the maritime domain--the great "commons" of the world--was shared. Moreover, the need was expressed for regional and global mechanisms that would allow maritime nations to bring more routinely and effectively their particular capabilities together to ensure a free and secure maritime domain.

The host of that ISS, Admiral Mike Mullen, summarized the key proposition of the symposium: "Because today's challenges are global in nature, we must be collective in our response. We are bound together in our dependence on the seas and in our need for security for the vast commons. This is a requisite for national security, global stability, and economic prosperity." Acknowledging that "the United States Navy cannot, by itself, preserve the freedom and security of the entire maritime domain," Admiral Mullen said that "it must count on assistance from like-minded nations interested in using the sea for lawful purposes and precluding its use by others that threaten national, regional, or global security." So too must each nation count on contributions from other nations.

Then began a very productive period, when the College--aligned with the fundamental notions of the 17th International Seapower Symposium--was tasked to work on a new maritime strategy "of and for its time." Critical to our effort to rethink maritime strategy has been an extensive scenario analysis and war-gaming effort and a series of high-level conferences, symposia, and other professional exchanges with maritime partners here in Newport and other venues around the world. This collaborative effort has produced great insight and has brought into focus the diverse perspectives necessary to make this strategy robust across multiple challenges and useful both for Navy leadership and national policy makers in understanding the key role maritime forces must play in the evolving international system.

We see some powerful ideas in this strategy: the preeminent value of maritime forces to underwrite stability for the global system, and an emphasis on the unique capabilities inherent in maritime forces to prevent global shocks and to limit and localize regional conflict. Over and above the long-standing naval commitment to provide high-end military capability, there are clear new demands related to sustaining the global system--demands that are peculiar to the maritime domain. The new maritime strategy also recognizes that we must rely increasingly, across the range of military operations, on an expanded set of more robust, global maritime relationships--in effect, partnerships that engender trust, contribute to war prevention, and yield more effective maritime security.

At the 18th International Seapower Symposium, hosted here at the College in October 2007, General James Conway, Commandant of the Marine Corps; Admiral Thad Allen, Commandant of the Coast Guard; and Admiral Gary Roughead, our new Chief of Naval Operations, presented before the largest gathering of high-ranking naval leadership ever assembled in the world the results of the work of the last two years. Present in Spruance Auditorium were sixty-nine chiefs of naval operations, twenty-one commandants of coast guards, sixteen war college presidents, and many senior uniformed and civilian leaders from the United States. (I should note that nearly a quarter of our foreign guests were graduates of the College!) In all, ninety-eight countries were represented, and the event--with the three service chiefs presiding--was televised to the national security press corps in the Pentagon.

The strategy they presented (printed in its entirety in this issue) provides a long-needed, overarching logic that links the vital contribution of the nation's maritime services to global security and prosperity.