An Unaffordable Peacetime Capability

Professor Derek Reveron has an article up at the Atlantic Council's New Atlanticist blog titled Beyond Piracy: Maritime Security and Safety Challenges.

The rise of piracy and the limits of naval power underscore that maritime challenges often begin ashore where security deficits exist. Yet, this should not lead to underlying condition paralysis when thinking about transnational challenges like piracy. As discussed during a joint maritime security workshop between the Atlantic Council and the Naval War College, the international community can generate local maritime forces through capacity building; encourage more prosecutions in Europe and the United States; support judicial systems in Kenya, the Seychelles, and Yemen; reduce the financial flows making piracy profitable; and support stabilizing efforts in Somalia.

Can someone show me what it looks like to "generate local maritime forces" in a weak or failed state? What is the example, Iraq? Doesn't Rhode Island have a longer Coast Guard than Iraq, and aren't we still building that countries Coast Guard capacity?

Standing up a Coast Guards is a great idea, particularly in Somalia - so much so that Somalia claims to have recently stood a Coast Guard up. Ironically, the Somali Coast Guard operate from trucks, not boats; and they are limited to operating in Mogadishu despite suggestions they will actually operate in other places (supposedly including Somaliland and Puntland btw, which is politically not going to happen).

Fishing, piracy, environmental issues... these are problems that Coast Guards deal with every day. Should the US have the capability to stand up a Coast Guard in failed states like Somalia? Sure, it would be nice, but who pays for it? The Navy can barely afford to do the work asked of it by our government, and now they need to be able to build capacity of others? The idea of maritime cooperation is excellent, but it only works where cooperation already exists. It does not work where it is non-existent, and it never will until it is funded properly and elevated significantly in priority.

As it happens, we really have very little to offer failed states like Somalia looking towards the future. If you checked out the Atlantic Council conference, you'll see the problem. The US Navy's primary focus is on Maritime Domain Awareness as an information sharing mechanism towards building a better understanding of regional security problems. How exactly does MDA help the Coast Guard of a failed state that is likely to have massive corruption? Are we likely to share MDA information, even basic ship location information, with the Coast Guard of Somalia? Uhm, not without the shipping industry giving the US Navy the vocal middle finger objection.

Here is the bottom line. When it comes to strategic theory of naval soft power and diplomacy, the US Navy is really good at coming up with operational concepts for engaging existing partners. Global Fleet Stations, 1000-Ship Navy, Maritime Domain Awareness, etc... begin with a starting point of sharing responsibilities and pooling resources with existing, responsible states to achieve the same objectives. What we don't see are strategic theories that address building capacity where capacity doesn't exist, nor do we see strategic theories that address building partnership with countries that we lack partnership agreements with.

The US Navy has just as many "cooperative" options with the PLA Navy in the South China Sea as they do with the Somali Coast Guard in the Indian Ocean. Should the Chinese significantly contribute to a US/Japan sponsored East Asian MDA network with ship tracking information in the Yellow Sea and South China Sea, I'll stand corrected.

I do not believe the US Navy will be worth a darn building capacity with failed states or even cooperation with competitors without leadership supporting completely new strategic theories that focus on peacetime activity. Even then, we can't afford it anyway, because the Navy also needs completely new strategic theories that focus on wartime activity given the trend lines for money and resources. If the new administration wants to prevent war, then they need to add funding towards a fleet suited to meet the demands of a peacetime engagement. Based on the budget numbers I have seen for the future Navy under this administration, the future US Navy will be built solely to fight because there is not enough money to build anything else and meet the obligations that are being shifted to the US Navy. That is the political choice this administration is making, and only people who unrealistically believe that $2 billion, 9,000 ton warships can both be everywhere and do everything all the time will suggest otherwise. In the real world, it doesn't work like that.