Few words are more frequently heard in the Pentagon than “strategy.” In the Navy corridors, this becomes “maritime strategy.” However, it is arguable that the United States has had only three effective maritime strategies in its history.
The Anaconda Plan
The first was the Anaconda Plan, conceived in May 1861 by the Commanding General of the U.S. Army, Winfield Scott. This strategy proved effective, but only after a navy had been built to carry it out. Three main concerns predominated.
First and most important was to man the crews of the new ships that had to be built. This was possible because of two primary sources of new manpower: the flood of immigrants to the United States, primarily from northern Europe, and free African Americans.
Second was the need to build enough seagoing warships to establish an effective blockade of Southern coastal ports. This challenged the Navy, which had to confront more than 2,000 miles of coastline, approximately a dozen major seaports, and innumerable creeks, marshes, and small ports that could hide blockade runners. The U.S. seagoing fleet grew from 42 to more 670 vessels between 1861 and 1865.
Third was the requirement to design, build, and operate riverine craft. Ships and smaller craft were needed to patrol and do battle on inland waterways, ranging from the Mississippi and other major rivers to creeks and the Louisiana bayous. These craft had to be well-armored, shallow-drafted, and maneuverable—not an easy design triptych.
These three issues were not addressed effectively until 1863, approximately halfway through the Civil War. Once resolved, they contributed mightily to the North’s victory over the South.
The Rainbow War Plans
The second effective U.S. maritime strategy came with the Rainbow War Plans, written during the first part of the 20th century and featuring War Plan Orange. The Rainbow portfolio identified color plans in the event of a U.S. military conflict with any one of several nations. Japan was designated “Orange.”
War Plan Orange envisioned a maritime contest, based to a significant degree on the theories of Alfred Thayer Mahan—particularly his assumption that a war between maritime powers would culminate in a great fleet battle, like the Royal Navy’s 1805 victory at Trafalgar. Plan Orange was correct in its assumption of a war with Japan being maritime, but its success included two other important facets.
First were the technical developments unforeseen by Mahan or the plan’s earliest advocates. Most important was airpower, inadequately accounted for until the fleet exercises of the 1930s and not finally adduced until forced by the loss of battleships at Pearl Harbor. Secondly, Mahan did not account for the growth of submarine capabilities.
The Maritime Strategy
The third effective U.S. maritime strategy was called just that—“the Maritime Strategy,” developed in the 1980s to confront the Soviet Union’s new navy. It embraced new geopolitical concepts, such as using the Norwegian fjords, as well as aggressive airpower and submarine warfighting. Increased funding for ship and aircraft development and construction was key.
Two common factors characterized and enabled these three successful maritime strategies.
First was that the United States faced an existential threat: The Anaconda Plan helped preserve the Union against Southern secession; War Plan Orange was the basis for the U.S. defeat of Japan at sea during a global conflict; the Maritime Strategy provided an important platform for the U.S. victory in the Cold War against the Soviet Union and international communism.
Second was the leadership of three remarkable Secretaries of the Navy. Gideon Welles understood the importance of the Anaconda Plan and had the confidence of President Abraham Lincoln, the political ability to gain congressional support, and the skill to dramatically increase the size and capability of the Navy required to guide the plan to success.
Frank Knox similarly held the confidence of the President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the political savvy to garner necessary congressional and industrial support to rebuild the Navy after Pearl Harbor, and the ability to oversee the remarkable expansion of the Navy that defeated Japan in the Pacific, while scoring equally remarkable victories in the Atlantic
John Lehman held President Ronald Reagan’s confidence and rapidly gathered a coterie of civilian and uniformed supporters to formulate, codify, and carry out the maritime strategy demanded by the Soviet challenge at the height of the Cold War. Lehman was also perhaps uniquely able to gain the necessary congressional and administrative support required to fund the “600-ship Navy,” a goal that served as much as a rallying cry and a political signal as it did a final accomplishment.
Today’s Navy
If “strategy” is the most frequently heard word in the Pentagon, the most common plaint is “strategy must drive budget,” acknowledging and criticizing the fact that the reverse typically is true—except in times of hot or cold war confronting an existential threat.
In the absence of such an overt threat, the Navy has shrunk from almost 600 ships in 1986 to just under 300 in 2023. What has not shrunk, however, are the Navy’s global commitments, which are much the same as at the height of the Cold War.
The regional geographic commanders—Atlantic, European, Central, Africa, Southern, Northern—all have naval requirements based on perceived threats. These requirements are based on careful analyses but add up to more than the Navy can provide. And no commanders ever think they have sufficient forces to carry out all their missions.
No matter how much more technologically advanced a 2024 Burke-class destroyer may be than a 1986 Adams-class, it can still be in only one place at one time.
The Navy’s can-do attitude may be a factor, but recent statements by the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) have stated forthrightly the obvious costs and capabilities of a Navy limited in size and budget. This is also true of former Commandant of the Marine Corps General David H. Berger, whose efforts modernize his Corps’ missions and capabilities implicitly acknowledge the imbalance of U.S. military force and commitments.
To paraphrase former Admiral Michael Gilday, today’s Navy is not capable of fighting a two-enemy war. He also noted that funding spare parts is being limited in favor of the funding required for increased platform numbers.
Former Commandant Burger, similarly highlighted sacrificing a degree of readiness in prioritizing future capability. He listed his priorities when he wrote, “We cannot afford to retain outdated policies, doctrine, organizations or force development strategies.” This may be the most forward-looking statement for the Corps since Commandant, John A. Lejeune in 1922 initiated the “advanced base” concept as the Marine Corps mission to “the maintenance, equipping and training of its expeditionary force.”
The CNO’s first statement is undebatable; the second may be debated but cannot be dismissed, representing a sensible choice among limited options to ensure the nation has a navy capable of defending its vital interests.
And there lies the rub. Are those interests sensibly defined by the national command authority—t he President and, in theory, the Congress? That question was easy to answer 50 years ago, as the United States was confronted by an unabashedly expansionist Soviet Union.
Answers are far more problematic since the end of the Cold War. First, Congress has been mostly silent as a decision-maker in using military force. Instead, the military has been used by Presidents of both political parties as an instrument of first choice to attempt to resolve perceived threats, be they revenge for 9/11 or alleviating humanitarian abuses that are horrific but historically common, and impossible to resolve by military means. Mission creep and unintended consequences have become common.
Furthermore, the most notable of these conflicts have been primarily land-centric, in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and Southwest Asia. At one point during Admiral Gary Roughead’s tenure as CNO, he noted the Navy had more personnel ashore in those regions than it did afloat.
The bottom line for the size, capability, and ability to employ the Navy is the budget, talk about “strategy” notwithstanding. The periodic announcements on the halls of the Pentagon and other offices concerned with delineating a new “strategy” are usually made by newly appointed office holders, both civilian and uniformed, but founder on the issue of “show me the money!”
The focus in the Operations Analysis Community (N81), Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation Office (CAPE), Government Accountability Office (GAO), and other budget offices is on money, not strategy—except in the face of an existential threat to the nation as defined by the President and shared by the Congress. That is not an everyday phenomenon, to say the least.
What President Dwight Eisenhower described as “the military-industrial complex” is another factor driving the development of national, including naval, “strategy.” Eisenhower’s warning has had no apparent effects on instituting the oft-stated aim to have strategy drive the budget.
The frequent refrain calling for audits of Pentagon programs merely highlight the chicken-and-egg problem of the Navy’s understandable demand for better and the industry’s equally understandable demand for sales and profits. No one is to blame in this warfighting-money waltz, but neither has anyone been able to figure out a way to rationalize the dance to at least reduce the wastage to a manageable level. Eisenhower’s condemnation of the system remains valid.
Looking Forward
The conditions that spawned the maritime strategies in 1861, 1941, and 1985, and the remarkable Secretaries of the Navy to carry them out, are not present in 2024. The current Middle East crises are land-based; the Houthi attacks are relatively minor.
First, China poses a serious challenge to the United States but is not an existential threat. China’s communist regime is troubling but is not solely responsible for its international policies.
The unification of Taiwan with the mainland would be demanded by any government in Beijing, democratic or autocratic. That is a Chinese issue, not a communist one. The same is true for Beijing’s territorial complaints and claims in general, such as the dispute with Japan over the Diaoyu-Senkaku Islands, which dates at least to the late 19th century, when Tokyo annexed Okinawa from the Ryukyu Kingdom. Another example is the South China Sea, where the first formal Chinese claim to that sea’s land features was made in 1947, by Chiang Kai-shek’s Republic of China government.
Russia does possess the nuclear weapons to pose an existential threat, with President Valdimir Putin already threatening their tactical use against Ukraine, but otherwise is a single-crop economy with an increasingly weak social fabric, including a declining population, and an unpopular war.
Second, the succession of Navy Secretaries since John Lehman left office in 1987 has seen a series of political appointees, none of whom have left a distinctive mark. That is to be expected, given the lack of either an existential threat to the nation and absence of the maritime strategy that might have emerged as a result. Instead, the post–Cold War period has seen a succession of “strategic” documents, beginning with “From the Sea . . . ,” that have been both unremarkable and short-lived.
An existential threat to the United States is never to be wished for, while an effective Navy secretary of the Welles-Knox-Lehman type is always to be welcome. Is one of the latter on the horizon?
