Robert D. Kaplan Expands His Elegant Decline Narrative

Shortly after the release of the US Navy's maritime strategy, the Navy was blindsided by an article printed in The Atlantic by Robert D. Kaplan titled The Navy's Flat Earth Strategy. The narrative of that article was expanded a month later when Kaplan ran another article in The Atlantic titled America's Elegant Decline. In both articles Kaplan is supportive of A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower (PDF), but the analysis hit the Navy like a backhanded slap across the face, and in my opinion the Navy has had a difficult time promoting their own maritime strategy.

The fundamental idea of conceding dominance of the maritime domain does not sit well with a Navy that has only known dominance of the oceans with seapower. I got the impression Kaplan picked up on that with his latest expansion of the Navy's elegant decline titled Center Stage for the Twenty-first Century where Kaplan concludes indispensability, rather than dominance, must be its goal. Kaplan's article is simply too rich with content to blog in a single post, indeed there are several important ideas being promoted, but in keeping with the strategic intent of the article I think highlighting this point is where to begin the discussion.

In other words, more than just a geographic feature, the Indian Ocean is also an idea. It combines the centrality of Islam with global energy politics and the rise of India and China to reveal a multilayered, multipolar world. The dramatic economic growth of India and China has been duly noted, but the equally dramatic military ramifications of this development have not. India's and China's great-power aspirations, as well as their quests for energy security, have compelled the two countries "to redirect their gazes from land to the seas," according to James Holmes and Toshi Yoshihara, associate professors of strategy at the U.S. Naval War College. And the very fact that they are focusing on their sea power indicates how much more self-confident they feel on land. And so a map of the Indian Ocean exposes the contours of power politics in the twenty-first century.

Yet this is still an environment in which the United States will have to keep the peace and help guard the global commons -- interdicting terrorists, pirates, and smugglers; providing humanitarian assistance; managing the competition between India and China. It will have to do so not, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, as a land-based, in-your-face meddler, leaning on far-flung army divisions at risk of getting caught up in sectarian conflict, but as a sea-based balancer lurking just over the horizon. Sea power has always been less threatening than land power: as the cliché goes, navies make port visits, and armies invade. Ships take a long time to get to a war zone, allowing diplomacy to work its magic. And as the U.S. response to the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean showed, with most sailors and marines returning to their ships each night, navies can exert great influence on shore while leaving a small footprint. The more the United States becomes a maritime hegemon, as opposed to a land-based one, the less threatening it will seem to others.

Moreover, precisely because India and China are emphasizing their sea power, the job of managing their peaceful rise will fall on the U.S. Navy to a significant extent.

The image of the Indian Ocean (see above) is from page 32 of the Joint Operating Environment 2008 report (JOE 2008 PDF), and I believe represents better than any the Navy's New Map. Included in this map with the label "String of Pearls" are the critical maritime regions extending from the mouth of the Red Sea across the Indian Ocean into the South China Sea and north into the East China Sea. It is this stretch of maritime commerce where the Navy finds itself addressing every level of the threat environment from the skiffs off Somalia to the rising Chinese and Indian Navies. This vast sea lane represents where the Navy will be called to be the most in the first half of the 21st century.

The region includes concentrations of both state and non-state threats, and while the small boat threats off Somalia and Sri Lanka get the headlines; the largest concentration of submarine expansion in the world is taking place among the countries noted on the map. No less than sixteen nations on the map are increasing the size of their Air Force, while the nations on this map also include the top importers of military equipment from Russia, France, and the United States.

As the number of US Navy ships continues to decline in numbers, keep in mind this area is the furthest region from the United States and land bases in this region are scarce. This area is one of the most expensive locations for the United States to project military power. What passes as Grand Strategy of the United States (essentially everything left from the Bush administration) today currently includes an expansion of the US Army. Which country on the map will the US Army be asked to invade in the future?

Given the populations of the countries on the map, the answer is very likely, none. The Obama administration is essentially being handed a blank slate when it comes to the future military forces of the United States. It will be interesting what decisions the new administration makes as it shapes the US military force structure looking into the future, a future that almost certainly will unfold in the regions depicted on this map.

If you haven't read Robert D. Kaplan's new article in Foreign Affairs, you are missing a good one. I can't say I agree with it all, but I appreciate the way Kaplan encourages critical thinking with his analysis.