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The terms of the naval debate have shifted markedly in the last few years. The introduction of the concept that the Navy calls its “maritime strategy” was a significant step forward, focusing attention on the often-neglected subject of strategy itself. The controversy it aroused shed light on defense alternatives and led to more and better writing and thinking by naval officers and civilians about defense questions.
However, the only way to ensure that the Navy’s new strategy is good strategy is to subject it to full and rigorous discussion. Unfortunately, the current debate has pitted the Navy’s view of maritime strategy primarily against the extreme continentalist school—those who would subordinate most other strategic considerations to the land defense of Western Europe. Extreme continentalists such as former Ambassador Robert Komer, now a consultant to the RAND Corporation, never question whether the Navy’s concept is, in fact, good maritime strategy. They claim that any use of the Navy beyond convoy escort is sufficient to constitute a maritime strategy, and they condemn it as such.
There is another viewpoint—the historical perspective of seminal maritime strategists Alfred Thayer Mahan and Sir Julian S. Corbett. The question it raises is not whether the Navy’s version of maritime strategy is superior to extreme continentalism, but whether the Navy’s maritime strategy is real maritime strategy by historical standards.
Just what does the Navy mean by “maritime strategy”? The pages of Proceedings show that there is disagreement on this question. To some writers, maritime strategy appears to mean a headlong charge of the carrier fleet against the Soviet Kola Peninsula. To others, it means horizontal escalation: responding to a Soviet attack on Western Europe by immediately opening hostilities in other theaters. A third group appears to believe that maritime strategy means a general offensive orientation, but implies no specific actions because those would be left to the discretion of the various unified and specified commanders.
However, virtually all of the writing on the subject agrees on two central themes. First, maritime strategy means a forward strategy: meeting the enemy as far from our own shores as possible. Second, maritime strategy demands an early offensive.
In his definitive article “The Maritime Strategy,” former U. S. Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral James D. Watkins wrote that “the option some ad-
or Global Deterrent?
Grand strategy and military strategy are not prominent among the long suits of U. S. defense preparation—a fact that may account for the confused nature of the current debate about the U. S. Navy’s maritime strategy and its 600-ship force structure. Many people do not understand the crisis (or wartime) utility of U. S. naval power in a nuclear age, especially when the prospective enemy is the world’s greatest continental land power. Edward Luttwak advises that “the ground-forces divisions are the basic currency of East-West strategy.” 1 For almost 400 years, Britain’s continental allies made the same point. In turn, France and Germany (and now the Soviet Union) could be defeated only on land—not at sea.
By way of healthy contrast to at least some of the strategically undisciplined navalist tracts that have appeared in the past 100 years, the U. S. Navy today fully recognizes the limitations, as well as the value, of sea power. History tells us that although Britain enjoyed unchallenged command of the sea, in 1802 it was moved to make a peace very much on Napoleon’s terms after the collapse of the Second Coalition. Subsequently, the military collapse of the Third Coalition left Napoleon master of most of Europe, notwithstanding the defeat of French (and French-allied) fighting power at sea. It so happens that Napoleon’s demise and the defeat of German land power in both 20th century world wars are all traceable in large part, though not exclusively, to the sea power of Britain (or of Britain and the United States).
“The effect of sea-power upon land cam paigns is in the main strategical. Its influence over the progress of military operations, however decisive this may be, is often only very indirect.”2
To appreciate the “strategical” effect of sea power, one must turn from the operational art of war on land and consider how anti-hegemonic coalitions of states are knit together diplomatically, financially, and militarily. Also, one must consider the factors that produce grand-strategic choices (for example, Napoleon’s and Hitler’s fatal decisions to invade Russia), and the log‘s' tical realities that can frustrate even the most agile of operational artists.
On this last point, the oceans’ physical-geographic
By William S. Lind
v°cate, of holding our maritime power near home wa- ‘ers, would inevitably lead to abandoning our allies.
^his is unacceptable, morally, legally, and strategically, ^"ied strategy must be prepared to fight in forward areas.” 1 Indeed, “if war comes, ... the Navy will 5.e,Ze the initiative as far forward as possible. . . and f*8ht our way toward Soviet home waters.”2 Admiral Watkins called for “early forward movement of carrier attle forces” and added that “forward deployment must be global as well as early.”3 Other authoritative naval writers reinforce the idea hat early, forward offensive operations are the essence °‘ the Navy’s maritime strategy. Former Commandant ?, (he Marine Corps General P. X. Kelley noted that at the first sign of deepening tension or possible preparation for a Soviet general attack, U. S. and allied |javal forces would surge from their home ports and UcP|oy as far forward as possible.”4 Former Navy Secretary John F. Lehman, Jr., wrote that “to suggest that ?aval support of Norway or Turkey is too dangerous ecause it must be done close to the Soviet Union is defeatist. ”5
Of particular importance are statements that suggest at the bulk of the U. S. Navy’s attack submarine
force would be deployed forward for an early offensive. In hearings before the House Armed Services Committee, Vice Admiral Nils R. Thunman, U. S. Navy, approvingly quoted John Lehman’s statement: “Particularly in submarine warfare, unless a forward strategy is employed at once to force the Soviet submarines to protect their strategic missile forces and the approaches to their home waters, Soviet superiority in numbers could well determine the outcome of the war.”6 Deputy CNO (Submarine Warfare) Admiral Thunman stated that an early offensive by U. S. submarines is “the most important function of our attack submarine forces.”7 Vice Admiral Bruce DeMars,
U. S. Navy, testified that “If [U. S.] submarines don’t go up there in the Soviets’ backyard and clean up on the Soviet submarines early in a war, then our current view of the maritime strategy is invalid.”8
How does the Navy’s view of maritime strategy compare with the historic maritime strategy practiced by Britain from the early ^1700s to the end of the 19th century? More specifically, how does it compare to that strategy as explained and generalized by Mahan and Corbett?9 Both writers emphasized that a maritime nation with a true maritime strategy relies on command of
By Colin Gray
L^tinuity distinguish them from the land (with its Vsical and political barriers). Maritime command has I 'v'nner-take-all quality that has no close parallel on ar>d. The sea, though no longer the most rapid means ( ^°gistic movement; remains competitive with land ^arisport over great distances and, for sea lines of complication (SLOCs), the only practicable route for the p>sport of bulk cargoes on a large scale in peace or
a plies of the Reagan administration’s 600-ship Navy . Maritime strategy have made sophomoric errors in a p strategic and military analyses. The most basic serious error is the one pointed out by Carl von sausewitz in what is probably the most important pas- a§e of his book On War:
‘The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish by that test [of the policy of two-sides] the kind of war on which they are embarking; neither mistaking it for, nor trying to pu it into, something that is alien to its nature.
*uis is the first of all strategic questions and the most comprehensive.”3
Those who believe that the U. S. Navy should at-
tempt no more than the essentially passive protection of the trans-Atlantic SLOCs assume that a future East- West conflict would be: short, “about” the control of Western Europe, and, to put those two points together, would either be decided on the ground in Central-Western Europe in a matter of weeks or would escalate rapidly to a nuclear exchange.
Allegedly, the U. S. Navy could facilitate NATO’s uninhibited use of the trans-Atlantic SLOC (though today it is orthodox to believe that the Soviet Navy would not sortie out on to the high seas at the beginning of hostilities) and might help deny Soviet gains in Norway (though these could not really matter, given the short-war assumption). However, if NATO’s overriding strategic problem is to wage a three-week war on land on its Central Front, it is easy to comprehend why one might be more than a little skeptical of the wartime value of a U. S. Navy that is buying a force structure to enable it to take the fight to the enemy—at sea and from the sea.
If the United States is content with a design for deterrence that promises the Soviet Union a very bloody three-week war in Europe, followed very rapidly by a U. S. attempt at strategic nuclear coercion, then the forward offensive cast of the maritime strategy is in- the sea for its ultimate security. Only by losing command of the sea can it expose itself to total defeat by invasion or blockade.
Corbett in particular stressed that while a maritime strategy may involve some commitments on the European mainland, those commitments must remain limited. The maritime nation, though it may be injured by a defeat on the continent, must always be able to withdraw and continue to resist, as Britain did more than once after being driven from continental Europe. A nation that follows a maritime strategy never commits its continued existence in a battle on or for the continent.
Unlimited commitment to the continent is the opposite of a maritime strategy; it is the essence of a continental strategy. A maritime power that risks its continued national survival in a continental showdown has adopted a continental strategy and voluntarily surrendered the benefit of its overseas position. In effect, it relegates itself to being another European land power.
In the light of this classical definition of maritime strategy, it is clear that what the U. S. Navy has been calling its maritime strategy is, indeed, no such thing.
It is merely the naval component of the continental strategy that the United States has followed since the end of World War II. Through NATO, the United States has made an unlimited commitment on the European continent. We have put our continued national existence (our physical existence as well as our existence as an independent, sovereign state) on the line in a European land battle by means of our nuclear guarantee to NATO. We have pledged that if NATO is losing in a conventional war against the Warsaw Pact, we will initiate a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union. If tactical or theater nuclear warfare within Europe is not sufficient to stem the attack, we have pledged to escalate to strategic nuclear warfare.
The Navy’s maritime strategy is part of this national continental strategy. Admiral Watkins defined the Navy’s maritime strategy as “the maritime component of the National Military Strategy . . . firmly set in the context of national strategy, emphasizing coalition warfare and the criticality of allies. . . .”10 This is, of course, directly contrary to the traditional meaning of the term “maritime strategy.” Admiral Watkins made it very clear: “the Maritime Strategy is designed to support campaigns in ground theaters of operations both directly and indirectly.” 11 In other words, it is designed to support the continental commitment and be part of it.
Some will undoubtedly ask: So what if we invert the meaning of “maritime strategy”? Should anyone but fussy old antiquarians care?
Gray
deed difficult to justify. But what if NATO’s ground and tactical forces do not come unraveled in Central- Western Europe in a three-week war? Or what if NATO suffers a total or very large-scale defeat in peninsular Europe, but the U. S. president discerns no prospective advantage in a (necessarily bilateral) theater or general nuclear war?
Continental despots have learned time after time in the past 400 years that a truly insular power cannot be beaten on European soil. For a continental land power to choose to wage war against a sea power—the maritime command of which cannot, or is most unlikely to be, broken—is, in effect, a decision to wage global war under highly unfavorable geostrategic conditions.
In theory, long-range, nuclear-armed air and missile power gives Soviet leaders short-war options that were denied Louis XIV, Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and Adolf Hitler. But, in practice, strategic nuclear counterdeterrence is likely to hold for the most obvious and convincing of reasons—a prudent self-regard.
In short, whether Warsaw Pact armies are stalemated, rebuffed, or even victorious in a campaign in continental Europe, Moscow would face the same dilemma that in previous eras wrought the destruction of imperial designs in Paris and Berlin: what to do next
against an enemy whose home base cannot be reached by sea and, for the modem complication, dare not be assaulted by nuclear weapons?
Setting aside the short-war/long-war question, the U. S. Navy’s maritime strategy has been criticized vehemently for its offensive character. If NATO is a ft31' itime alliance requiring sufficient maritime command for the tolerable security of its crucial trans-Atlantic SLOC, why is it important to seek early battle with Soviet naval assets of all kinds (but particularly with Soviet attack submarines and shore-based, long-range aircraft)? Surely, whether the Soviet Navy is in home waters or is lying on the bottom of the Norwegian Sea is a matter of practical indifference to NATO. In either case, the Soviet Navy cannot harass NATO’s logistic lifeline across the Atlantic. The argument proceeds as follows: Because SLOCs are vital to NATO, but not to the Soviet Union, what the U. S. Navy proposes to attempt would hazard its alliance-crucial and irreplaceable assets in an unnecessary offensive campaign. Winning would merely confirm the working maritime control that NATO enjoys anyway; losing could cost NATO ,|ie war.
However, many of these critics of the Navy’s maritime strategy have been as casual in their reading of
fact, confusing the Navy’s maritime strategy with lrue maritime strategy has a serious consequence. It Prevents a debate between proponents of a continental strategy and a rea] maritime strategy. Such a debate is °ng overdue. The United States correctly committed '•self to a continental strategy when NATO was °rmed. Europe had been devastated by war and was enable to defend itself. The United States held unchained nuclear supremacy over the Soviet Union. The oviet Union’s ability to inflict damage on the United totes with its strategic nuclear forces was considerably ess than it is today.
Today, Europe has the wealth and the technology to efend itself. France and Britain have independent nu- c ear forces. At the same time, the escalation of a Eu- r°Pean conflict to the strategic nuclear level probably ^°uld result in the complete devastation of the U. S. 0rneland. Yet we continue to subsidize European de- ®nse to the tune of at least $100 billion annually and P edge that we will commit national suicide on the pyre 0 a burning Europe.
ft is time to reconsider this continental strategy. A rUe maritime strategy, a la Mahan and Corbett, is a P ausible alternative. A maritime strategy could include ^■mited commitment to Western Europe, perhaps in- ftng defense of sea lanes, ground and air reinforcements in the event of a major war, and possibly even a limited peacetime commitment of ground troops and tactical air units. However, a true maritime strategy would not include a promise to commit nuclear suicide on behalf of continental allies, and its goal would be to hold Europe responsible for its own defense.
The confusion caused by the Navy’s misunderstanding of the term “maritime strategy” also encourages misuses of naval power that tend to undermine our real strategic interests. For example, the Navy’s maritime strategy appears to include plans to attack Soviet nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) during the conventional phase of a conflict. Admiral Watkins stated that “as the battle groups move forward, we will wage an aggressive campaign against all Soviet submarines, including ballistic missile submarines.”12 Secretary Lehman reportedly said that Soviet SSBNs would be attacked “in the first five minutes of the war.” 13
This component of the Navy’s maritime strategy ignores what must be the United States’s central strategic goal in any conflict with the Soviet Union: preventing escalation to the strategic nuclear level. All other strategic considerations necessarily receive a lower priority, because strategic nuclear warfare means the devastation of the U. S. homeland. No purely naval consideration
that strategy as they have in their education in the history of warfare. The maritime strategy is not a latter- day sea variant of the Schlieffen Plan, with detailed timetables. Rather, it is a global grand design intended to indicate, in general, how U. S. naval power could best support alliance-wide endeavors on land in Eurasia in a war that probably would be protracted and nonnuclear. Detailed operational plans are the responsibility of theater and fleet commanders, and would be implemented not rigidly a la “Plan,” but as political and military circumstances suggested to be appropriate.
Critics appear not to understand that war at sea is fundamentally different from war on land. Clausewitz’s principle, that “defense is the stronger form of waging war,” is not, and has never been, true of war at sea.4 For both strategic offensive (to influence events on land
If NATO and Warsaw Pact armored divisions are slugging it out in Germany, will the forward-deployed U. S. Navy force the Soviets to exercise the nuclear option, or force them to see that they cannot win a global war—whatever the outcome in Central Europe—and resist the nuclear option out of “a prudent self-regard”?
Lind _______________________________
should lead us to take a substantial—or unknown—risk of such escalation.
The risk that attacks on Soviet SSBNs could initiate a strategic nuclear exchange is necessarily unknown. According to one view, the principle of preserving the Soviet motherland at all costs would lead Soviet leaders to accept virtually any setback at sea rather than escalate to nuclear warfare. Another school argues that the Soviet SSBN force is the Soviet Union’s strategic reserve, and that the supposed vulnerability of land-based missiles to a disarming first strike, coupled with strong emphasis in Soviet doctrine on the decisive importance of the reserve, could easily lead the Soviets to initiate a strategic nuclear exchange.
Beyond both positions lies a historical fact: During intense crises, national leaders often make poorly reasoned, even irrational, decisions. We cannot know or safely predict what Soviet leaders (or our own) would do in the midst of a major clash between U. S. and Soviet armed forces. Much would depend on fortune, chance, and the emotional state of key decision makers. The result is unpredictable, which means the risk of escalation is unknowable. In the face of that unknown, is it good strategy to attack Soviet SSBNs during a conventional war? Clearly, the case can be made that it inverts strategic priorities, putting naval priorities
Gray_______________________________
directly) and defensive (to secure vital SLOCs) purposes, a dominant sea power (in this case, U. S.- NATO forces), when faced with a large and capable (if second-class) continental navy, has no prudent choice other than to assume the operational offensive. Because of the raw differences in the physical environments, the ratio of force required for success in the defense on land is greater than 1:3; the ratio for success on the defense at sea typically has greatly exceeded 3:1.
The kind of distant blockade of Soviet naval power that is often advanced as the superior and most prudent alternative to the Norwegian Sea offensive favored by the U. S. Navy (and by the U. S. government and NATO allies) today, in effect would place NATO’s Northern Flank behind the Soviet strategic frontier. Moreover, Britain increasingly would be insecure both as a rearward base (for the continental Central Front) through which trans-Atlantic reinforcements and resupply could flow, and as the platform from which a large fraction of NATO’s air operations would be conducted. In a lengthy conflict, a distant blockade of the Soviet Navy south of the Greenland-Iceland-U.K. (GIUK) “gap” would concede the initiative to a substantially undamaged enemy in a warfare environment in which the side playing defense is uniquely vulnerable to attri- ahead of national priorities, including national survival- Some may argue that the Navy’s maritime strategy lS so advantageous operationally that it justifies taking national strategic risks. However, that strategy is also open to serious question on operational grounds. As stated by most official advocates, it involves an offen-
SlVe that would throw the bulk of our nuclear-powered j*ttack submarine (SSN) force against the enemy in his 0rne waters early in a war. This presents difficulties. First, it attacks the enemy at his strongest point. The 0v'et Union has about a 3:1 numerical superiority in nuclear and diesel attack submarines (including cruise j’j'ssile submarines, but not attack subs in reserve).
tless the Soviets direct a substantial portion of their ^.marine fleet into open waters early in a conflict, ftls ratio is likely to translate into a substantial numeriCal superiority in the bastion areas where we would be stacking.
Attacking when heavily outnumbered is possible, but Nearly involves substantial risks. Soviet submarine length would be supported by surface, air, and intelli- 8ence assets more intensively in Soviet home waters an elsewhere. Soviet diesel submarines could operate Jtiore effectively in these waters than in remote areas aere high-speed, long-distance pursuits might be re- ^ Ired. Soviet defensive mining probably would be °re effective in the bastions. In all, we would be r°wing strength against strength, which generally is ot good operational art. If one wished to be unkind, n.e might suggest that, in view of our numerical inferi- we would be throwing weakness against strength, lch is not even good sense.14
A second problem is that if we lose the initial submarine battle in Soviet home waters, we probably will have lost the naval war. If the bulk of our submarine force is committed to this battle, as the Navy’s maritime strategy calls for, and if it is destroyed there, our battle fleet will be lost at the outset of the conflict.
The submarine fleet, not the carrier fleet, is today’s naval battle fleet. The attack submarine is now the capital ship—the ship that generally determines the outcome of a struggle for control of the sea.15 It was said of Admiral John Jellicoe, commander of the British Grand Fleet in World War I, that he was the only man who could lose the war in the course of an afternoon. The same may be said of our attack submarine force today. If the bulk of the submarine force is destroyed early in a conflict while the Soviets retain a sizable submarine fleet—an outcome that is certainly possible in view of the initial disparity in numbers—we will have lost the naval war, and with it our command of the sea and the war on the continent.
The Navy may be able to lose the war early in a conflict, but can it also win it? If the gamble of an early offensive with the bulk of the battle fleet pays off in naval victory, what effect does that have on the European struggle we have taken such risks to support? It appears that the payoff would be small. Such a victory
.'°n *n detail through surprise, and to tactical defeat by n enerny at liberty to choose the places and times of en|a8ement.
s °r a Western alliance critically dependent upon the CUfity of its SLOCs, the only safe locations for the °viet Navy are on the bottom of the ocean or very t()lably besieged in coastal waters. For the U. S. Navy
assume the strategic and tactical offensive— aUrally, with all due prudence—would both represent economy of force and would be the only way in frlch Western sea power, in all its forms, could be it e!? from jailer duty to operate globally with flexibil- 10r the direct support of military operations ashore. e ^ndward reach of naval weapons today, as well as value of Soviet strategic-force assets at sea, is such unlike the enemy sought by British Vice Admiral (J> Nelson in his 22-month blockade of Toulon ■lelp6 ^03-April 1805) or by British Admiral John q lc°e with his very distant blockade of the Imperial nav an Navy in the North Sea (1914-1918), Soviet bati P0Wer would be obliged to “come out” and do pe in the Norwegian Sea.
fen r°Vlcfr(i NATO maintains a respectable, ready de- y .e on the ground in Europe, and provided the 1 ed States maintains a truly first-class strategic- nuclear counterdeterrent, U. S. and U. S.-allied command at sea should guarantee that a war with the West would be a global, potentially multifront war that a landlocked Soviet empire could not plausibly hope to win. Command of the sea—an old-fashioned but still relevant concept—is as critical for successful deterrence, or defense, as are initial success for NATO on land and strategic nuclear dissuasion.
*Maj. C. E. Callwell, The Effect of Maritime Command on Land Campaigns Since Waterloo {Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1897), p. 29. 2Edward Luttwak. The Pentagon and the Art of War {New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), p. 120.
3Carl von Clausewitz, On War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 88.
4lbid, p. 359.
Dr. Gray became a U'. S. citizen in 1981 and is President of the National Institute for Public Policy. His latest book is The Geopolitics of Super Power. Dr. Gray studied at the universities of Manchester and Oxford and has taught at the universities of Lancaster, York, and British Columbia. He was a Ford Foundation Fellow at King’s College, University of London, and an assistant director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. From 1976-81, Dr. Gray was a staff member, then Director of National Security Studies at the Hudson Institute.
might secure Norway (or might not if the land battle for Norway is lost), but Norway is not significant in terms of the battle for most of Europe. Germany seized Norway early in World War II and held it through the end of the war, but that did not delay the Normandy invasion or the subsequent Allied advance in Central Europe. The defense of Norway may be of political significance in peacetime, but it is not so militarily, at least not on the strategic or operational levels.
Some argue that if the initial naval offensive succeeds, our aircraft carriers could contribute the power of their air strikes to the battle for Central Europe. Others have commented that if that is the goal, it might be more effective to remove the aircraft from the carriers and base them on land in Europe. But it is doubtful that the number of strike aircraft the fleet can muster, and their relatively limited capability to provide direct support to ground troops (because of the types of aircraft involved), would be sufficient to halt a major ground offensive.
Finally, it has been argued that a victory in the naval offensive would destroy the Soviets’ ability to disrupt the Atlantic sea lanes on which NATO depends. This is undoubtedly true, but are there not less risky ways to achieve that goal? Defense of the choke points and geographic barriers leading from Soviet bastions into the open sea appears much less risky. Soviet strength diminishes rapidly as distance from the bastions increases because Soviet aircraft, surface ships, minefields, and intelligence collection can no longer play their strong supporting roles. Is it good naval strategy to take a more risky course when one involving less risk would suffice—especially when the risk is destruction of the U. S. battle fleet?
All these objections suggest that the Navy’s maritin^ strategy may not constitute good national or naval strategy. If it does not, what does? The Navy developed >ts maritime strategy at least in part as an alternative to the extreme continentalist strategy favored by the Carter administration, a strategy that relegated the Navy to guarding convoys bound for Europe. But there are other options.
As Corbett noted, one role a navy can play in a true maritime strategy is isolating a theater of operations so that the continental opponent can be defeated in that theater. If the continent is viewed as all of Eurasia rather than just Europe, a possible theater for such an operation presents itself in Soviet Asia. Soviet land lines of communication to its eastern areas are tenuous- two rail lines, both of limited capacity, one of which a* times runs very close to the Chinese border. Much of the materiel Soviet Asia requires must be transported
Nuclear War at Sea
For at least ten years, theater nuclear warfare analysts have largely agreed that the Soviets would use nuclear weapons against NATO ships at sea only after a nuclear first strike occurred ashore. This proposition is based partly on the U. S. perception that the Soviet Navy plays a subordinate role in the military hierarchy, and on the Soviet war plan, which probably calls for a combined-arms smash across West Germany to the Rhine and beyond. This belief—that nuclear war at sea probably will not happen apart from nuclear use ashore—is an important assumption underlying the credibility of former Navy Secretary John Lehman’s maritime strategy: applying full forward pressure on the NATO flanks and the Soviet Navy, first with nuclear attack submarines (SSNs) and then with carrier battle groups (CVBGs).
Perhaps the Soviets will forgo using nuclear weapons against forward- deployed U. S. Navy forces—at least until they have shocked the world by launching nuclear ground weapons in NATO’s Central Region. But what if they do not? Have we consigned thinking about when and how the Soviets would employ nuclear weapons against the U. S. Navy to what Admiral James Stockdale called the “too-hard shelf”?
The first step in the U. S. forward strategy is to send SSNs into the Soviets’ home-water naval bastions. The goal is to lock the Soviets’ general- purpose naval forces into defending their havened strategic-missile submarines, and to destroy as much of the Soviet Navy’s strategic offensive and tactical defensive fighting power as possible. Most analysts envision this opening phase as a grinding undersea attrition campaign, lasting a month or more and taking place, in part, under and around the margin of the polar ice pack. If U. S. submarines succeeded, they would help to secure NATO’s Northern Flank, and pave the way for carrier battle groups to project naval power ashore.
But consider how strong a motivation the Soviets would have to use nuclear antisubmarine (ASW) weapons against U. S. SSNs penetrating Northern Fleet waters. The Soviets would surely perceive the U. S. operations aS tipping the nuclear balance—by jeoP^
dizing the Soviet’s nuclear-powered fleet ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs), and by threatening the K<da Peninsula and other targets in Great Russia with nuclear Tomahawks. The Soviets are a cautious and pessimist people, conditioned by history to distrust the effectiveness of Russian navies. They are unlikely to respond minimal, finely calculated force to incredible threat to their survivable nuclear reserve and their homeland. The Soviets may believe that their convey tional ASW capability is insufficient , neutralize U. S. Navy SSNs. Many d' ferences between Soviet and Western ASW technology and tactics make sense once we accept that the Sovicts intend to use nuclear ASW weapons situations that deeply concern them- Looking at scenarios in which the Soviets might use nuclear ASW wesP ons raises important issues. Consider U. S. ice-hardened Sturgeon (SSN- 637)-class submarine, patrolling olfe”
2»i , * P- 7.
P:n.
v?ld> p. 10.
25en- P. X. Kelley, USMC, “The Amphibious Warfare Strategy,” in ibid, p.
by sea. If the U. S. Navy focused its efforts on sever- lng the sea lanes between Soviet Europe and Soviet ^s'a, it could potentially provide the isolated theater Corbett foresaw.
As is normally the case with a true maritime strat- ^§y, effective land action in the theater would depend heavily on making alliances with local land powers; our °Wlt ground forces would not be sufficient. Such a strategy also assumes a long war in which initial elects in Europe might have to be accepted. Again, such temporary continental losses are traditionally part of a Maritime strategy.
This is just one option; there are probably others as WeU- But it would be unfortunate if distaste for the bad strategy prevalent under the Carter administration drove Us to adopt another bad strategy. Rigorous examination °f the Navy’s maritime strategy suggests it is at best a clUextionable strategy. Perhaps it is time once again to revive the debate by introducing a new central concept and addressing the issues of a true maritime strategy.
/jini- James D. Watkins, USN, "The Maritime Strategy,” The Maritime rategy Specjaj SUppiement published by the U. S. Naval Institute, January
5John F. Lehman, “The 600-Ship Navy,” in ibid, p. 37.
6HASC hearings, FY 1985, part 3, pp. 128-129, quoted in Strategic Antisubmarine Warfare and Naval Strategy (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1987), by Tom Stefanick.
7HASC hearings, FY 1986, part 3, p. 161, quoted in ibid.
8James O’Shea, “U. S. to Sink Billion into New Attack Sub,” Chicago Tribune, 20 July 1986, p. 1, quoted in ibid.
9Mahan sets forth his view of the essence of maritime strategy vis-a-vis a land power most pointedly in the last chapter of The Influence of Sea Power on the French Revolution and Empire, 1793-1812 (especially pp. 386 and 402, 14th edition, Boston, 1919). Corbett delves more deeply into the philosophical underpinnings of maritime strategy in the First part of Some Principles of Maritime Strategy (London: Conway Maritime Press Ltd., 1972).
10Watkins, p. 4.
"Watkins, p. 5.
12Watkins, p. 11.
,3Melissa Healy, “Lehman: We’ll Sink Their Subs,” Defense Week, 13 May 1985, quoted in Stefanick.
14For example, see Jack Beatty, “In Harm’s Way,” The Atlantic Monthly, May 1987, pp. 37 and following.
l5The fact that the attack submarine has little power-projection capability is not an argument against its being the capital ship. The capital ship generally has not been used for power projection. When the ship of the line was the capital ship, it was seldom used for shore bombardment, and the power-projection ship was the troop transport (as some would argue it still is). The dreadnought only came to play a major power projection role after it yielded its position as capital ship to the aircraft carrier. The fact that the Navy thinks of the aircraft carrier as its principal tool for power projection does not make it the capital ship, at least as capital ship has generally been defined.
Mr. Lind is President of the Military Reform Institute and Director of the Institute for Cultural Conservatism. He is the author of the Manuever Warfare Handbook and co-author, with former Senator Gary Hart (D-CO), of America Can Win: The Case for Military Reform.
' Vely in the Barents Sea south of the arginal ice zone. Her towed passive °hstic array detects a submarine c. er the pack ice—a Soviet Typhoon- ass SSBN. The U. S. submarine loaches
same
$SN
ap-
for a torpedo attack. In the
area, a Soviet Victor Ill-class
slowly patrolling, taking advan- environmentally caused asym- les in acoustic propagation. The
tage of ( metrie
^"geon sub detects the Victor III at rt range and immediately fires two
Mark-48 torpedoes. Almost simultaneously, the Victor III gains contact and fires two straight-running, nuclear- tipped torpedoes. The Sturgeon is sunk. The shock and acoustic effect of the detonating Soviet torpedoes disrupt the terminal homing of the Mark-48s, and they miss their target. The Victor III surfaces, badly damaged by the detonation of its own nuclear torpedoes.
The president of the United States is informed two hours later that two rela-
The maritime strategy presupposes that the Soviets will not use nuclear weapons against U. S. naval forces attempting to destroy Soviet Typhoons (above) and other SSBNs in their bastions.
tively low-yield nuclear weapons have been detonated in the Barents Sea, in an area where U. S. submarines are pursuing the Soviet Northern Fleet.
U. S. submarines are communicating
feedings / February 1988