Acentury ago, on 16 December 1907, 16 battleships and a flotilla of torpedo boats and auxiliaries of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet steamed out of Hampton Roads, Virginia, on an unprecedented world cruise. Although the newspaper editorials at the time decried the voyage of the so-called "Great White Fleet" as "bombastic" and a shameful example of mere gunboat diplomacy, President Theodore Roosevelt's gambit of showing the flag of the United States without firing a shot proved a resounding success.
Roosevelt, himself a former Assistant Secretary of the Navy and a tireless promoter of sea power, later exclaimed the virtue of peaceful power projection:
In my own judgment, the most important service that I rendered to peace was the voyage of the battle fleet . . . At that time, as I happen to know, neither the English nor the German authorities believed it was possible to take a fleet of great battleships 1
round the world. They did not believe that their own fleets could perform the feat, still less did they believe that the American fleet could.The United States had arrived as a global naval power and the Fleet's triumph put an exclamation mark on the "Big Stick Diplomacy" concept.
More than half a century earlier, the United States employed its Navy as a fulcrum of statecraft and diplomacy when Commodore Matthew C. Perry steamed his squadron into Uraga Harbor near Edo (present-day Tokyo Bay) with orders to return with a U.S.-Japanese trade treaty. Based on a study of Japan's previous contacts with Western ships and intelligence about the hierarchical structure of the Tokugawa Shogunate, Perry intended his black ships to intimidate the Japanese by displaying his squadron's technologically advanced weapons. He refused to comply with Japanese directions to proceed to Nagasaki, the only Japanese port in the country then open to foreigners. Perry demanded permission to present a letter from President Millard Fillmore and threatened force if his request was denied. With their military no match for Perry's modern guns, the Japanese acquiesced, allowing the commodore and his party to go ashore to prevent a devastating naval bombardment.
History is replete with examples of maritime nations using their navies as the instrument of choice for expressing a threat of force. A report by the Brookings Institution concluded that naval forces participated in 177 of 215 recorded instances of U.S. military diplomacy between 1946 and 1975. "Naval units participated in more than four out of every five incidents. Land-based forces were used in fewer incidents, and rarely without simultaneous participation of naval units."2
Maintain the Vision
It is easy to lose sight of the importance of a well-developed maritime strategy and the value of sea power while our nation is engaged in what are perceived to be primarily land conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan against terrorists and insurgents. One, however, does so at one's peril. Former Secretary of the Navy Donald C. Winter noted:
Our nation's maritime strategy reaffirms the use of sea power to influence actions and activities at sea and ashore, including the need for our naval forces to support humanitarian operations, counter piracy, and assist in capacity building and training of partner nations. The requirement to support these missions moves us to adopt persistent global presence as a key tenet of our strategy.3
Notably, the stratagems proposed by Secretary Winter do not reflect the traditional understandings of gunboat diplomacy defined by Sir James Cable in his seminal work on the subject:
Gunboat diplomacy is the use or threat of limited naval force, otherwise than as an act of war, in order to secure advantage, or to avert loss, either in the furtherance of an international dispute or else against foreign nationals within the territory or the jurisdiction of their own state.4
When examining the praxis of gunboat diplomacy, we must not confuse the concept with the far more common practice of "showing the flag." As in the examples cited by Secretary Winter, showing-the-flag operations may be nothing more than a gentle reminder of the presence of the naval forces in question. This clearly is the intent behind his call for a persistent global presence, as it was for Roosevelt regarding the Great White Fleet. Showing the flag may involve a friendly visit to reassure a threatened regime of foreign support, or an unfriendly display to underscore a particular point in the diplomatic discourse. The diplomatic expectation for the country showing its flag is typically the presentation of a symbolic gesture. A modern navy, however, needs to be prepared for such missions to escalate. The display becomes gunboat diplomacy with the expectation of a risk of encountering armed resistance.
Is Gunboat Diplomacy Obsolete?
Some maritime strategists dismiss gunboat diplomacy as a mere relic of a bygone era of colonialism and empire, concluding that it is an obsolete concept that claims no legitimate place in today's diplomacy. Among the naysayers is the late British historian Peter Nailor, who argued that gunboat diplomacy was useful when the world community consisted of a few sovereign states dominating larger spheres of influence and many dependent nations. But the world today, he asserts, is smaller with a far greater degree of global interdependence. It has faster-nearly instantaneous-and more accurate modes of communication, with more developed and less complex international organizations, and with more sophisticated intelligence networks. According to Nailor, these developments have relegated traditional means of expressing national power to an era in which "the use, or the threat of use, of force was a practical and legitimate tool of statecraft in a world where no one state was so powerful that its pretensions were incontestable."5
This argument may have held sway in the bipolarity of the Cold War, but the global community of the post-Cold War era is, in fact, more complex. Asymmetric threats, such as transnational terrorism and international piracy, have made the world a very dangerous place.
The ability of navies to affect the global diplomatic calculus as tools of their governments in situations short of war has not entered a period of decline, but rather it is on the rise. Carl von Clausewitz postulated that "war is a continuation of policy by other means."6 His classic dictum of strategy and statecraft still ring true within the limited scope of gunboat diplomacy.
Consider the situation in the Black Sea. The aftermath of the brief invasion of Georgia's two break-away provinces, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, by Russian troops last August said more about Russia's strategic goals in the region than the invasion itself. Several warships from the Black Sea Fleet were stationed off the coast of Abkhazia, shadowing the movements of NATO naval vessels operating in the area, including the USS Mount Whitney (LCC-20), the U.S. Navy's Sixth Fleet command ship. The Mount Whitney and other American warships were deployed to Georgia to provide humanitarian aid. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, however, suggested that these ships were resupplying the defeated Georgian army with military aid.
Cold War military relations between the Soviet Union and NATO were very tense, but the two naval forces were careful not to get too close to each other.7 The operation of the American and Russian ships in such close proximity is a classic example of gunboat diplomacy.
The Black Sea is not the only place where Russian and American gunboat diplomacy is playing out. The Caribbean has regained a mutual interest not seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. In May 2008, the Navy reestablished the U.S. Fourth Fleet, which had been dormant for nearly 60 years, thereby raising the profile of naval operations in the Caribbean and Latin America. The Navy maintains that the Fleet has no permanently assigned naval assets. Its reestablishment is an administrative measure designed to allow U.S. warships and submarines to come under the new Fleet's control as they pass into the Caribbean and the waters off the coasts of Central and South America.
This action, however, is also a high-profile way to assert U.S. naval authority and underscore the strategic, diplomatic, and political importance of Latin America. Likewise, whether inadvertently or by design, it sends a signal that America will not allow Venezuela's recent acquisition of high-performance fighter aircraft, attack helicopters, and diesel submarines (all from Russia) to go unchecked. Moreover, the signal is being sent not only to Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, but also to other leaders in the region who are hostile toward the United States. Russia, too, has resumed naval operations in the Caribbean. At the end of November, four Russian Navy ships-including the nuclear-powered cruiser Peter the Great and 1,000 military personnel-participated in a joint naval exercise hosted by Venezuela.8
Into the 21st Century
The current century will be characterized by multi-polar, global spheres of influence. As Russia seeks to reinvent itself and assert its national interests as a world power (and a potentially reconstituted superpower), the economic and political futures of the former Soviet Bloc are in jeopardy. The Black Sea could well be the flashpoint, considering that of the six countries including Russia that share the sea's coastline, Turkey, Bulgaria, and Romania are NATO members, and the besieged Georgia and vulnerable Ukraine have applied for membership.
Furthermore, Russia is in danger of losing the naval base of Sevastopol, the home port for its Black Sea Fleet for more than 300 years. The base is leased from the Ukrainian government with the contract set to expire in 2017. Given Ukraine's expressed desire to join the NATO alliance and its intention to raise the rent on the naval base, Russia may not wait to act against the Ukraine before NATO offers it membership.
The presence of Russia's fleet on the Crimean peninsula means that nearly 14,000 Russian sailors and naval infantry are living among Sevastopol's 340,000 residents, a third of whom are ethnic Russians. These naval personnel have been known to don civilian clothing and stage demonstrations protesting Ukrainian moves to join NATO or oust the Russian Navy. Bolder still would be a provocation by the Russian nationalists, funded and likely armed by Moscow. Perhaps they would be augmented by Russian special forces, Spetsnaz, posing as irredentists who could help seize control of the area and declare Russian sovereignty. Who said that you have to anchor a ship off a foreign coast to engage in gunboat diplomacy?9
It appears that Putin and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev share the enduring view of the utility of naval persuasion expressed by the chief architect of the Soviet Navy, the late Admiral of the Fleet Sergei Gorshkov, who understood the importance of naval influence when he wrote his classic, The Sea Power of the State:
Demonstrative actions by the navy in many cases have made it possible to achieve political ends without resorting to armed struggle, merely by putting on pressure with one's own potential might and threatening to start military operations. Thus . . . the navy has always been an instrument of policy of states, an important aid to diplomacy in peacetime.10
The early years of this century were marked by Islamic extremism and the inherent instability of the Middle East. The so-called global war on terrorism, however, did not bring about the clash of civilizations on which Osama bin Laden had counted. Al Qaeda is losing popular support in Iraq, and Sunni leaders, once opposed to America's presence there, are now partners with us to root out foreign terrorists. But let us not become too confident.
Over the past eight years the Defense Department has restructured the armed forces into a leaner, more mobile force with an emphasis on special operations and counterinsurgency. We must not neglect the larger, more dangerous, more conventional threat posed by several emerging powers. The next war will not be a clash against cells of Islamic terrorists; it will be a fight between nations and between political and economic ideologies, not religions. China, Russia, and Iran are all pouring capital and resources into their military and naval arsenals. The next war is likely to be naval. Whether conducting amphibious operations in the Black Sea in defense of a NATO ally, interdicting pirates off the coast of Somalia, or engaged in countermining operations in the Strait of Hormuz, gunboat diplomacy will find its utility.
The Right Tool for the Job
In the past, the full weight of sea power was concentrated on the capital ships of the era, be they ships-of-the-line, cruisers, battleships, or aircraft carriers. Today, the fact that a ship-launched cruise missile can fly with precision down the streets of a hostile capital city and strike with surgical accuracy dramatically shows that a single warship, of nearly any class, can exert enormous influence within the diplomatic sphere.
The U.S. Navy's persistent global presence mission can be expected to support allies, influence neutrals, protect friendly interests, deter potential enemies, and support national security interests within the scope of international law and convention.11 The economy of force available through naval forces can allow a state to posture its military might without a significant drain on its national treasury. Other defense components, such as ground and air forces, lack the sustainability and ability to remain on station without the acquiescence of a host nation.
Flexibility to manage the escalation of power application is another critical factor weighing heavily in favor of naval forces. The symbolic and actual show of force depends on the particular naval assets assembled. A wide range of naval options-from sending a small escort ship sailing within sight of a foreign port to parking an entire carrier group off the coast-can provide a multitude of diplomatic options. Gunboat diplomacy thus can prevent or even resolve an international crisis situation.
Cable used the analogy that "gunboat diplomacy is a screwdriver intended to turn a particular screw. It is not a hammer that will bang home any old nail."12 The political and diplomatic application of naval power will continue to play a vital role in the unpredictable and multi-dimensional global calculus of the 21st century. The challenge for military and naval leaders is to design an affordable, flexible force structure capable of exploiting the full diplomatic potential of naval power. Similarly, the challenge for political leaders and the diplomatic community is to employ gunboat diplomacy effectively when and where appropriate. To relegate this important instrument of statecraft to history would be a colossal mistake.
1. Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography, (New York: MacMillan, 1913/Da Capo Press, 1985), pp. 563-4.
2. Barry M. Blechman and Stephen S. Kaplan, The Use of Armed Forces as a Political Instrument, (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1976), p. 4.
3. Donald C. Winter, "An Affordable Global Presence," U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, September 2008, p. 14.
4. Sir James Cable, Gunboat Diplomacy: Political Applications of Limited Naval Force, (New York: Praeger, 1971), p. 21.
5. Peter Nailor, "A New Environment for Navies?" Maritime Strategy in the Nuclear Age, Geoffrey Till, ed., 2nd ed. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984), pp. 163-4.
6. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Michael Howard and Peter Paret eds. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 69.
7. Tom Lasseter, "Kremlin-Watchers Warn of Direct U.S.-Russia Clash," Miami Herald, 6 September 2008.
8. Agence France-Presse, "Russia, Venezuela Wrap Up Joint Naval Exercise," Defense News, 2 December 2008.
9. Leon Aron, "Russia's Next Target Could Be Ukraine," Wall Street Journal, 10 September 2008, p. 15.
10. Sergei G. Gorshkov, The Sea Power of the State, (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1976) pp. 247-8.
11. Charles D. Allen, Jr., The Uses of Navies in Peacetime, (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1980) p. 18.
12. Sir James Cable, "Gunboat Diplomacy's Future," U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, August 1986), p. 39.