Bryan Clark of CSBA and I have a piece up at War on the Rocks analyzing the new Maritime Strategy, a document we both like but which we felt could have been stronger in a few areas. I'm proud of the thinking in our piece, but in the interests of space and readability, there were a few things I left out that I'll share with readers here at ID. Here is a link to the new strategy.
First, reviewing a document which has as a consequence of its issuance, the impact of relegating the Maritime Strategy of 2007 to the dustbin of history, is a dicey proposition given my connection with the previous document. The very existence of the new work means that "my baby was ugly", and no one likes that. Well, almost no one, given the fact that I have been publicly calling for the 2007 document to be replaced since 2009. That said, my offering criticism on the new strategy offers those unfamiliar with my position on the previous one a fine opportunity to take the low road.
Next, while to the general public, the release of the new strategy is timed perfectly, having had no expectation of its release, for the rest of us, it has taken an awful long time to come out. CNO Greenert came into office in the Fall of 2011 and made revising (or refreshing, as I think the term of art then was) the 2007 Strategy a priority. I honestly don't know why it took as long as it did for the release of the new strategy, but having worked closely with the office of the CNO before (not this one), if the CNO had wanted it out earlier, it would have come out earlier. My uninformed guess is that with all of the tumult of his term, he had bigger fish to fry, and this project simply didn't capture his attention in the midst of everything else he was dealing with. Now--in the finishing holes of the back nine of his term, CNO really had to put more of an emphasis on getting it out.
Now lets talk about the "ends, ways, means" thing. Anyone familiar with my writing on strategy knows that I bristle at this construct as incredibly limiting. When Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work was a lowly think tank vice president and I was a lowly strategy writer on the OPNAV Staff, he and I were having lunch when he brought up the lack of such a linkage in the document that I had just been a part of producing. My answer to him there was "Beat Germany First". I offered that this was the strategy that won WWII, and while academic strategists can focus on angels on pin heads, good strategy sometimes takes forms other than the classic ends, ways, means approach. I have written elsewhere that where grand strategy is concerned, ends-ways-means is inappropriate, as a true grand strategy has the benefit of being able to define its own means. That I would collaborate on a piece that seizes on the ends-ways-means debate is hypocritical, and I completely own up to that. My defense is this: one of the virtues of this strategy is its less "grand" approach. It is harder edged and more of a focused military strategy. The more focused and narrow a strategy, the more the ends-ways-means construct applies. Additionally, given the degree to which the previous document was criticized for the lack of such a linkage, I would have thought there would be a stronger link here.
Throughout the elongated process of putting this new document together, I was asked by the various and changing personalities associated with it to come to the Pentagon and talk with them, or read what they had so far. I gave them honest and tough feedback, as I remembered how important that was from others during the time I was writing strategy. I made a number of suggestions along the way, but I made three consistently, none of which were incorporated into the final draft, which proves the value of my input. The first was that the new strategy did not adequately address the role of American Seapower in what clearly (to me) appears to be the re-emergence of great power dynamics. China and Russia are treated in it, but as regional threats rather than as systemic threats. Next, at every opportunity, I advocated for a strong argument for maintaining a robust naval industrial base, to ensure excess capacity would be available for wartime. This is exactly the kind of thing that should go in a document of strategy, and it is one of the great regrets that I have about the 2007 version that we did not address it.
My third consistently stated objection was the inclusion of "All Domain Access" as one of the "five essential functions of seapower", along with deterrence, sea control, power projection, and maritime security. I think this one had to be a CNO red line, as all through the process of putting this document together, there were a chorus of reviewers who said essentially the same thing, that All Domain Access was a condition, or a quality, or the result--of essential functions, rather than a function unto itself. Don't get me wrong--I think all domain access is an important enabler of operations, I simply didn't agree with its inclusion in with the other "functions". My suspicion is that the CNO really wanted to hammer this one hard, and that the elevation of the provision and sustenance of "access" was one of the foot stompers he wanted readers to take from this.
One final thought, and this one comes a bit from the "my baby is ugly" department. The 2007 Strategy had a lot of warts and was subject to a lot of justified criticism. But it had a central idea animating it, and it was a powerful one--what Barney Rubel from the Naval War College like to refer to as the "defense of the global system" argument. I don't see such a central argument in the new version, and worse, it sorta walks away from the entire defense of the global system meme altogether. The chance was here to stake one (I would have recommended "the role of Seapower in emerging great power competition), but it wasn't taken.
All of these words should not take away from the fact that I think the new strategy is a great piece of work that very thoughtfully updates the sea services' thinking in a new strategic era. Congratulations are in order to everyone associated with it; I know how good it feels to finally be done with it.
No comments:
Post a Comment