Many people, among them even some of our leading thinkers, take almost as an article of faith the assertion that the day of sea power is over and that sea power will never again play a decisive role in war. In most cases this misconception is due to an uncritical acceptance of statements which sound convincing or stir the imagination, but which often cannot stand the test of critical examination.
To a great extent this belittlement of sea power derives, of course, from the layman’s lack of understanding of its real nature and function. Considering “sea power” as synonymous with “naval strength,” or even equivalent to battleships and spectacular fights between fleets composed of them, the public is easily misled into discounting its value as a whole. For, it is argued, why spend tremendous sums for keeping up the largest navy in the world if battleships are rapidly superseded, if our prospective enemies have far inferior naval forces, and if the money is needed badly for other things? The argument sounds logical, but, being based on wrong premises, it is faulty and dangerous. Our need for sea power and for a navy is not predicated on the maritime strength of our opponent—except in a very general way— but on the function they have to perform.
Before entering into a discussion of that function we must, therefore, define the meaning of sea power. Reduced to its simplest terms, sea power may be defined as the ability of one nation to make use of the sea lanes for the transportation of its goods and men, while denying them to its enemy. This ability requires certain composite elements, of which a navy is only one, its chief purpose being the safeguarding of sea lanes; it must gain and maintain the control of the seas. Another essential element of sea power is a merchant marine, which makes use of the water ways; without it, sea power would have no real meaning. The third element is bases, including not only places where ships and their crews can find shelter, facilities for repair, recreation, and refueling, but also harbors by means of which ships can communicate with the land, and in which sea power and land power meet, to exchange goods, men, and—in case of war—hostilities. Naturally, there are other factors needed to maintain sea power on a high level, such as industrial capacity or a sea-minded population; but for our purposes here it will suffice to consider only the first-named three in detail.
Defined in this way, the problems of sea power will exist as long as a single ship is left to ply the ocean, and as far as anyone can foresee, that means for a long time to come. To speculate about a distant time when the seas will be empty of ships is perhaps an interesting but certainly an idle pastime, or, to paraphrase the German general Moltke, a dream and not even a beautiful one.
Sea power played an exceedingly important part in the last war; we never could have won without it. For while land and air forces made vital contributions to the final victory, they could not even have started to function without the aid of sea power, which transported them to the scene of action, prepared bases or landing places for them, and kept them supplied with the necessary equipment and supplies. In fact, considering the almost unbelievable problems that had to be solved, the tremendous obstacles that had to be overcome, the enormous populations, distances, quantities of supplies, and number of ships involved, it might well be Called the war of sea power par excellence, the highest development in a long evolution.
Does that also mean that it represents the last link of the chain, the ultimate phase beyond which there is no further development?
To find a satisfactory answer to this question and determine the role of sea power in a future war, we must begin by analyzing and deciding three preliminary issues which, while basic to our problem, are subject to much popular misconception. The first is this: will the near future see a new type of warfare, radically different from that of the past, replacing the traditional reliance on the cooperation of all forms of national energy, of which sea power is an essential part? The second concerns the various forms of modern transportation which have, or will have, a determining influence on the conduct of a future war. The third issue is that of geographic location and its effect on warfare.
One of the most widely accepted erroneous ideas concerning the waging of the war of tomorrow is that air power alone can win it. Being comparatively economical in the number of combatants it exposes to enemy action, and appealing strongly to the “mechanical-progress-mindedness” of the American people, the air power war seems to offer great advantages over the older forms of armed conflict. Its basic assumption is, of course, that an early aerial attack on the enemy, destroying his industrial capacity and terrorizing his population, will quickly break his ability and his will to fight and thus assure a speedy and cheap victory for us.
But even if such a campaign of destruction could remain a one-sided undertaking—for which there are no indications—the question is, would it have the desired effect? At least three arguments suggest that it might not.
First of all, destruction, though a necessary ingredient of war and of victory, does not in itself guarantee or constitute victory. Moreover, it leaves such scars on the land of the enemy—and possibly also on his soul—that he may never recover from the experience. That, however, may mean that victory, even if it does come, has created more problems than it solved, jeopardizing everything that it is supposed to gain. In other words, such a victory may win the war but will certainly lose the peace. Continued too long, and carried on too intensively, the air war against Germany actually undermined some of the Allied political and economic objectives for post-war Europe.
Applying this theory to the conflict of the future, and assuming Soviet Russia to be our chief antagonist, we can visualize what might happen if we had only so-called “strategic air power” to throw against the enemy. The more we destroyed the industries of the U.S.S.R. the more we would force the Soviet armies to overrun the countries of Western Europe, where they could find replacements for their shattered productive equipment and thus continue to sustain their military power. We would then be faced with the necessity of bombing the cities and industrial plants of the invaded countries until nothing should be left to support the Communist war machine. Even if we could win the war that way, we would have laid the whole of Europe in ruins; its sad remnants would have been won over to Russian Communism, and few friends would be left for this country or for a democracy that permitted such destruction. Even early liberation could not heal the wounds; it might never be able to restore liberty and human dignity in the countries that once were our allies and the leaders of Western Civilization. To kill people is bad; to kill whole nations in infinitely worse. And that might happen if we annihilated their productive capacity to a point where destruction would become militarily effective.
If today some of the countries exposed to that fate do not seem enthusiastic about defending themselves against threatening aggression, this is chiefly due to the fact that until recently we could hold out no hope to them except that of liberating them by bombing them out of existence. It is obvious that such a prospect is neither pleasing nor reassuring to our friends and potential allies. What they really need and want is a demonstration that we are not only willing but able to help them prevent an invasion and the destruction attendant on it. Only then will they make the effort required of them to prepare their own defenses and take the risk that is implied in rearmament.
The only way we can give such a demonstration is to strengthen their own powers of resistance by sending to them large numbers of our own troops and enormous quantities of weapons and supplies, and that, as will be shown later, can only be done by the help of sea power. Even then, of course, destruction cannot be entirely avoided; but it can be minimized, and it will not leave the bitter taste of having been inflicted by a friend.
Another reason why it is doubtful that air power alone can win a war with Soviet Russia is the distance involved. If we have to bomb that country solely from bases in the United States, it will at best be a very inefficient and probably ineffective process. To fly from any point in this country to Moscow, for instance, and return, even if a Great Circle route across Arctic regions is chosen, planes need a range of some 10,000 miles, while carrying a heavy load of bombs. Besides, at such a distance they cannot be accompanied by a fighter escort, with the result that few will arrive at their destination; fewer still will be able to bring their crews back alive. The only way to maintain that kind of warfare over a period of time would be to rely on suicide tactics, a procedure which seems peculiarly alien to the American mind
There is a natural law which states that power is effective in the inverse ratio to the distance from its source; accuracy as well as the weight of bombs dropped over the target depend to a great extent on distance. If we have to carry on our aerial warfare from this country, only a small portion of the effort expended on it will be effective.
If, on the other hand, we can launch our bombing missions from intermediary bases, points closer to the target than our own shores, we can use smaller planes of which we have many more; we can support the bombers by fighters and thus minimize losses. By flying from Iceland, for instance, the one-way distance could be cut down to 2000 miles; from Spitzbergen it would be only 1600 miles; Great Britain, France, Germany, Turkey, Japan—any one of these countries would offer favorable bases for an aerial war with Soviet Russia.
That means that allies on the European and Asiatic continents are essential to us if we wish to carry on an effective bombing campaign. But to win and maintain those countries as our allies, we must be able to keep them free and alive, a task which can only be accomplished by sea power. If, however, we do possess such a ring of intermediary bases surrounding our potential opponent, we gain a double advantage, for in addition to serving purposes of offense, they are also needed to detect and intercept the enemy’s planes and missiles before they reach our shores, giving us time for proper counter measures. The closer to his territory, and the farther away from ours we can find such points, the better we shall be able to reduce the effect of strategic bombing on our own land. In that case we can say that we are closer to the U.S.S.R. than the U.S.S.R. is to us—a basic condition for success in aerial warfare.
A third argument against exclusive reliance on air power is that we have no particular advantage in that form of fighting over the Communists. We don’t seem to have a decisive superiority in either the number of planes or their quality; we may be even more vulnerable to aerial bombing than Soviet Russia is, because of the greater concentration of our population in certain regions. Whatever we can do to Soviet Russia, she can also do to us, and we may in the end receive more damage than we give.
Recognizing these limitations on the ability of air power to win a war single-handed does not mean a lack of appreciation of the essential role it would play in any future conflict. Eventually, that role may easily prove decisive, but only if we cease to regard air power as a prima donna who can carry the show all by herself.
Among other popular favorites for winning a war quickly and with minimum cost to us is the so-called push-button warfare, in connection with the use of modern weapons of mass destruction, such as the atomic bomb and biological or chemical agents. With regard to reliance on push-button warfare in general, it may suffice here to refer to a recent statement made by Secretary of Defense Robert A. Lovett, in which he warns that there is “no new, inexpensive or magic way to win wars in the near future.”1
Moreover, as far as any of the superweapons are concerned, it is doubtful if they will ever be used in a major war. Most probably they will be employed only if one side thinks it has a great advantage in such weapons over the other and is safe from retaliation. But that is something hard to foresee. The Germans used poison gas in World War I, because they thought they had a monopoly of its production, but they did not use it in World War II, because in the meantime the other countries had caught up with them. That was also true of aerial bombing, in which at first the Germans had the start; but it soon turned against them and they got more than they had given.
Another possible form of waging a modern war may be found in psychological warfare, which tries to undermine the enemy’s will to fight. The employment of a “Fifth Column,” the stirring up of dissatisfaction and unrest among the populations of the enemy country or of conquered territory, the organization of underground movements and sabotage from within, the use of propaganda combined with modern means of communication—all these may prove formidable weapons indeed. But while they may contribute to the enemy’s downfall in the final stages of the war, when other means have already weakened him and prepared his defeat, such methods will scarcely be decisive by themselves, and cannot be relied on to win a war. Besides, they may easily prove two-edged swords and turn out to be as harmful to our side as to the enemy.
While naturally every available and promising weapon must be considered and while we must be prepared for their use, offensively and defensively, weapons cannot be made the sole basis of the strategic plan. That which alone will win the war is—as it always was and always will be—the proper combination and coordination of all aspects of national energy, such as diplomacy, economic power, industrial capacity, the sciences, psychology, plus the full employment of a “balanced force,” i.e., the team of all Services used according to their inherent capability in common and comprehensive strategy.
In order to come closer to an understanding of the capabilities inherent in each of the Armed Services, we must take a look at the one factor which, more than anything else, distinguishes them from each other: the particular mode of transportation which is basic to each one of them. For in the last analysis it is transportation which differentiates land power, sea power, and air power.
It is a matter of course that air transport—by plane or by missile—is the fastest form of locomotion so far developed. It has the added advantage of being comparatively independent of terrain; planes can fly anywhere and everywhere, over land and over sea, without the need of tracks or roads. But they have one great drawback: because of their speed and their intricacy, they are enormously demanding of fuel and manpower.
Sea transport, on the other hand, being carried on in large units and at slow speeds, is the most economical mode of transportation. It is, of course, limited by the existence of water, and although it is true that there is more than twice as much water as land on the globe, the fact remains that ships are stopped when they reach land, while planes can go right on over it.
|
Number |
Crews |
Fuel |
Tankers |
“Surface vessels” (E C Types) |
44 |
3,200 (including gun crews) |
165,000 bbls. |
none |
Cargo Planes (4-Engine C-87 Type) |
10,022 |
120,765 (flight crews only) |
8,999,614 bbls. (Overseas requirement) |
85 (large size)2 |
As an illustration of the comparative merits of the two systems, let us consider an example given by Secretary Lovett in 1944, when he was Assistant Secretary of War for Air. Because of this position, he cannot very well be accused of ignorance of the subject, or of any anti-air bias. The intervening seven or eight years have not changed the truth of his statements in the least, nor will there be any such change in the near future.
He stated,
For some time to come, transport planes cannot, and will not, take the place of ships. There is, in fact, no good reason why they should. . . .
Let us suppose that our problem is to move 100,000 long tons of supplies per month, under present wartime conditions, from San Francisco to Australia, a distance of approximately6,500 nautical miles. How many planes of existing 4-engine cargo type will it take? How many cargo vessels will it take? How much personnel? Will we need tankers? And so forth. The following simple comparison will give the answers.
Lovett continues: “I believe a study of this comparison will indicate some of the absurdities of the recent ‘air cargo as a cure-all’ excitement in the midst of a war in which we will need all the supplies we can get by land, by sea, and by air.”3
If we consider that a major war will pose dozens of similar problems, only of much greater magnitude, involving many millions of tons, we realize that no country, not even the richest one, could afford such expenditures in fuel and man power for air transportation alone. It is, therefore, quite clear that the great bulk of all goods and men moved across land or across the sea will have to be moved by either land carriers or by ship. Air transport will, of course, play a most important role in all those cases where high speed is essential, or in places that are inaccessible to ships and railroads; one thinks of the Burma Road in World War II or the Berlin Airlift of more recent times. But it will, for a long time to come, constitute a supplementary express service, not a substitute freight service.
The best way, for military purposes, to combine the advantages of air and sea transport and to minimize their respective weaknesses, is the aircraft carrier. Enabling us to use the economical transportation of ships wherever it can be done, it also permits us to make full use of the great superiority of the plane when it is needed. Eventually the aircraft carrier—as well as planes themselves— may be superseded by guided missiles and other new forms of locomotion. But till then, the carrier represents the best compromise between sea and air transport, and gives the maritime powers a definite advantage over those nations which can fly planes from land bases only.
Today’s land transport system, including railroads and motor vehicles traveling on paved highways, is often superior in speed to transportation by ship. This is quite in contrast to conditions a hundred years ago, when land transport was slow and cumbersome as compared to maritime transport, especially if it involved the moving of heavy goods. Given an interior position, a Land Power, taking advantage of this new superiority of land transportation, can usually reach places within a certain distance from its center quicker than a Sea Power which must rely on slow ships and may have long ocean lanes to traverse.
It was this consideration which led the German geopoliticians to the conception of the so-called “Round-the-Seas-Plan” that was to help them to neutralize the threat of British sea power in World War II. Not possessing a navy powerful enough to challenge British command of the sea directly, the Germans had to try to find a way to prevent British sea power from becoming fully effective, as it had been in World War I. Since the surest and quickest method of reducing the enemy’s sea power—the destruction or elimination of his naval forces—was denied to them, they devised a scheme that would produce similar results but would concentrate on the other two essential elements of sea power, shipping and bases.
Consequently, the direct attack on Allied shipping, chiefly by U-boats, was revived from World War I, but another method, not previously tried by the Germans, was added: the capture of all continental ports and harbors through which British sea power might make itself felt, by which sea-borne aid might reach continental allies to reinforce their resistance and put pressure on the German conqueror.
In World War II, therefore, the German High Command, instead of aiming at the quick capture of Paris—the main goal of German strategy in the preceding conflict— systematically went about capturing the European coast, from northern Norway all the way down to southern France, and through most of the Mediterranean. In addition to minimizing the effect of British naval superiority, this move also gave the Germans the advantage of better bases for their submarine offensive.
For a while it looked as if the plan might work only too well. Enjoying the advantage of interior lines and superior land power, the Germans could strike with lightning speed in any direction. Within a radius of some 1000 miles, which includes all of central, western, and southern Europe, they proved themselves supreme; all countries within the magic circle either fell quickly to the conquering German armies, or allied themselves with the victor, leaving him in control not only of their resources but also of their harbors. Thereafter, neither British military reinforcements nor supplies could reach the continent, precluding any hope that the victims of German aggression could reorganize their own forces for a counter-offensive. Only a forceful invasion could reopen the continent and carry the war to Germany herself, but for such an undertaking British power by itself was entirely inadequate.
If the “Round-the-Seas-Plan” did not, in the end, succeed, three factors were chiefly responsible: First, the Italians were unable to accomplish their part of the plan, which consisted of taking the Suez Canal and Malta, or defeating the British Mediterranean fleets; nor did Spain do her share, which was the capture of Gibraltar, needed in order to close the Middle Sea to Allied sea power.
The second factor was the addition of United States power to that of Great Britain, which tipped the balance in favor of the Allies and eventually made possible the invasion of the European continent.
The third reason for the failure of the German plan has to do with the problem of transportation and hence must be elaborated here. It is, of course, quite true that land transport nowadays has certain advantages over maritime transport. But this is true only within definite limits. For instance, the superiority holds only in a region which, like Western Europe, possesses a highly developed system of railroads and highways. Besides, land transportation quickly bogs down if it meets natural obstacles, such as high mountain ranges, deserts, or large bodies of water. Furthermore, it has a range limit beyond which it tends to deteriorate, even under the most favorable conditions. This range may be assumed to be somewhere between 1000 and 1500 miles, when the law of diminishing returns begins to operate and to call a halt to major operations. The Germans felt keenly the effect of that law in the vast expanse of Russia and in North Africa, in both of which theaters they had overextended their lines of communication. This proved to be one of the main reasons for their eventual defeat in those areas.
In contrast to this, ship transportation, slow to begin with, has no such narrow limitation of range. A modern merchant ship can go 10,000 miles almost as easily as 1000 miles; it only takes longer. Therefore, British sea power, even though it had to operate partly along the detour around Africa to reach Egypt, slowly but inexorably built up resistance and strength, until these more than equalled German power in the desert which, lacking contact with Germany herself, faced an almost insurmountable problem in logistics. Even good generalship cannot entirely overcome such a handicap. Hence the eventual German collapse after an initially brilliant campaign.
The mistake of the geopoliticians has been to generalize conditions found within the comparatively limited confines of Europe. But these conditions, which favor land transportation over its maritime counterpart, are rarely found outside of that small continent and the United States. In a war of global proportions, ship transportation—or sea power—would still afford a degree of mobility superior in many ways to that of a large Land Power.4
If factual proof is wanted to back the logic of these deductions, we need only look at the situation in Korea. First of all, the Korean campaign has demonstrated beyond doubt that wars cannot as yet be won by air power alone, even if one side has a decided superiority in it over the other. Second, without a base nearby—in this case Japan—from which troops could be thrown into the fight quickly, Korea could never have been held against the assault of Communist forces which had only to cross an imaginary border behind which they had carefully prepared for the invasion. Third, however, as soon as the situation was somewhat stabilized, the logistics problem—primarily one of transportation—became of primary importance. Despite short overland communication lines, the Communists have no particular advantage in this respect, because their land transportation system is not highly developed and because a part of their equipment, coming from European Russia, must cover long distances before it reaches the front lines. Even though our ships have to go more than 6000 miles to keep our armies in Korea supplied, we seem to have suffered no adversity on that account. Finally, anyone looking at the grim spectacle presented by the liberated parts of Korea can understand that people will not put their whole heart into measures of defense unless they see a reasonable chance of preventing invasion rather than merely assuring “liberation.”
To be sure, some of the proponents of air power or of push-button warfare will point out that the Korean war does not represent a typical theater for the proper display of their capabilities. But, can we ever be sure that the next war will offer these particular conditions of which the air enthusiasts are thinking? There is, of course, always the danger that we prepare for the war of yesterday which will never be repeated. There is, however, an equal danger that we now prepare for a war that is too far in the future and are caught unprepared for the struggle of tomorrow and the day after. To be safe, we must prepare for a wide range of types of warfare, for war always seems to turn out to be different from what it was expected to be. Or, as the President’s Advisory Commission on Universal Military Training so aptly expresses it: “The peace-loving nation has no choice except to prepare for every type of attack that might be launched against it and from any possible source. If it leaves any avenue unguarded, it must expect an alert and skillful aggressor to take advantage of that blind spot in its defenses. The omission could prove fatal.”
The third issue that must be settled before we can come to a proper appreciation of sea power’s future role is the relative geographic position of the potential antagonists. A glance at the map shows that Russia and her satellites enjoy a more or less central position within the vast double continent called Eurasia. This location, similar to that of Germany within the narrower confines of Europe alone, gives Soviet Russia a great ostensible advantage. Coupling the partial superiority of land transportation with a strong military striking power, the Soviet Union can reach out in almost every direction and overrun the coastal regions of the continent in a comparatively short time— if it finds no resistance. Quickly and efficiently executed, such a “Round-the-Seas-Plan” on a larger scale would place the greater part of the world’s population, highly developed industries, and rich sources of raw materials, under Russian domination.
This favorable position inspired the British geographer Mackinder to his now famous statement that whoever controlled the “Heartland” (the central part of Eurasia) would soon also dominate the “World Island,” meaning the land mass of Europe, Asia, and Africa. And whoever utilized the enormous resources of this vast territory, could build up his sea power and general strength to a point where he could successfully reach out for world domination by conquering the remaining continents, the insular Americas and Australia.
The theory sounds ominous and there is, unfortunately, much truth in it. Actually, however, things are not quite so simple. Position is always relative; if it can be said that central location has certain advantages, it can be maintained with equal justification that peripheral location offers definite benefits, because it allows concentrated and coordinated attacks on the country in the middle. Germany, despite her interior lines, was defeated when the Allies, encircling her, became strong enough to open a second and third front, thus pressing her from all sides. Every advantage inherently contains a weakness, one turning into the other according to the combination .of circumstances.
For instance, one of Russia’s greatest assets from a military point of view is her great size, which enables her to trade space for time and cause the attacker to over-extend his lines of communication. But this very size, which saved Russia from an invader twice within the last 150 years, has its defects. One is difficulty of transportation, among the worst bottlenecks in Russia’s war potential; the other is the inability adequately to protect all of her enormous frontier lines. If Russia were attacked simultaneously from more than one direction, weak spots could be found in her armor, and the ability of her armies to withdraw into the interior would be definitely limited. But only with the help of sea power could the France of 1812 or the Germany of 1941 launch such centripetal attacks, and neither had it in sufficient measure.
Moreover, for all of the enormous importance of natural conditions, one must not fall into the error of assuming that they are decisive in themselves. Mackinder himself rejected geographic determinism, as indicated by his statement that “man and not nature initiates.” Despite the fundamental influence of geography on the conduct of war, we must still realize that it only determines conditions, not outcomes, which depend primarily on our actions. Being aware of geographic reality, we can either take full advantage of any benefits it offers or prepare to overcome the obstacles which it puts into our way. But we do not need to accept those conditions as final and unalterable. If geographic conditions alone decided the issue, the United States could never have won the war with Japan, in which practically all geographic circumstances were unfavorable to us.
However, the study of geography can still teach us most valuable lessons. Among others it shows that Soviet Russia, the pivotal state of Eurasia, can reach virtually all her primary objectives—assuming them to be the domination of the whole of Eurasia— by expansion over land alone. Merely by spreading out into neighboring regions, she can extend her control until she engulfs the entire “Rimland” of the double continent. Because of central position and the predominance of short land communications, the U.S.S.R. can achieve this without the need of sea power.
If, on the other hand, the United States wishes to put a stop to Communist expansion and conquest, if we want to aid our allies and properly defend this country from attacks, we must cross the ocean to reach the Eurasian continent and carry the war against the aggressor. Whatever we do, unless we give up entirely, we must cover long distances by water—and that clearly and unequivocally implies the use of sea power. No other conclusion is possible. Without the smooth operation of sea power, our land power cannot begin to function, and even our air power will be seriously reduced in its effectiveness. This condition has not changed greatly since the last war, after all.
The real basic difference between the two antagonists is, therefore, that the Communists can win the war essentially without the help of sea power, while we cannot. This is a fundamental condition which exists regardless of numerical strength, industrial capacity, or wealth in natural resources. We can then define the Soviet Union as being principally a Land Power, irrespective of her naval strength, while the United States is— and must be—basically a Sea Power. To be realistic and successful, our strategic plan must be built on this foundation, must take full advantage of whatever benefits this bestows upon us, and prepare beforehand to overcome whatever handicaps it involves. And since sea power is of such enormous importance to us, our plan must also provide for the best measures to protect it and assure its unremitting functioning.
Before drawing further conclusions from these preliminary considerations, we may now recapitulate our findings:
(1) It is more than doubtful that air power alone, a push-button type of warfare, the atomic bomb, or any other single factor which we can envisage at present, can win a war in the near future. The only safe way of preparing for all eventualities is to continue the development of all constituents or national power, and to gain allies and help them strengthen their own powers of resistance. This can only be done with the help of sea power.
(2) The immense logistic problem which would confront us in case of a major war can only be solved with the help of sea power.
(3) Geographic conditions demonstrate unmistakably that, while Soviet Russia can dispense with sea power on a large scale— except negatively, by attacking ours—this country is absolutely dependent on sea power and cannot win a war with the U.S.S.R. without its help.
The first conclusion that we may draw from these premises is that we can distinguish three natural belts or spheres of defense, each of which poses different security problems and requires different defensive measures. The first belt is composed of the direct neighbors of Russia or her satellites, such as Finland, Sweden, northern Norway, West Germany, Austria, Italy, Yugoslavia, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, northern India, Indo-China, and Korea. With regard to this ring of countries, Soviet land power has a pronounced lead over us, especially in view of the fact that it holds not only the interior position, but also the great advantage of unified organization and command.
The answer to this is not, of course, that we must passively accept our inferiority and look on helplessly while one country after another in this belt is drowned in a red deluge; instead, we must see to it that within that sphere preparations to withstand aggression are started early, well in advance of the outbreak of hostilities. Once an actual hot war breaks out, we have little chance of reaching any of these countries before the Reds do— unless their own power of resistance is well enough developed to withstand the first assault and thus gain time. The main defense problem in this first belt of resistance is, therefore, promptly to develop the land power of those countries and to coordinate their efforts, politically and economically as well as militarily, so as to enable them to resist invasion, or, still better, to prevent it entirely. All that sea power can do in this situation is to keep reinforcements and supplies flowing to the threatened regions. That is of utmost importance, but it cannot by itself stop or prevent invasion. And while the loss of any part of this inner rim would constitute a major defeat for the United States, such losses cannot be avoided entirely and would not necessarily be fatal. The main objective would be to keep so large a portion of it out of Communist hands as to provide a sufficiently broad basis for eventual counteroffensives. That is essential, because the next war may not again offer an opportunity for a Normandy invasion or its equivalent.
The second safety belt is composed of the countries of the “outer rim,” or the continental fringe of the Eurasian land mass. This sphere lies outside the immediate grasp of Soviet land power, being protected from it either by high mountain ranges, deserts, the sea, or long distances. It includes, possibly, Spitzbergen, but certainly Iceland, Great Britain, Spain, North Africa, Arabia, southern India, parts of Southeast Asia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Formosa, and Japan. The loss of any part of this second defensive belt might prove fatal to us. But in contrast to the inner rim, this fringe can be held and defended by sea power, that of our allies and our own. Unless we are caught napping and unprepared, we need not lose any of it. It is this region which is our natural staging area, where we can build up stockpiles of weapons and supplies, because here they are safer from capture than in the territory of Soviet Russia’s immediate neighbors. To this region we must withdraw in case we are pushed out of any part of the first belt, to continue the war and prepare our counter-blows.
While early preparation is not quite as important in this area as it is in the inner rim, its essential value to us also calls for prompt precautionary measures at this time. They must include the building of airfields, the enlargement of harbors to handle the increased wartime traffic, the construction of shelters, warning systems, barracks and storage places, anti-air and anti-submarine defenses. The land forces of this outer ring, so far as they are not needed for the repulsion of air-borne attacks, could best be used to reinforce our allies on the continent, as there is almost no chance of any large-scale invasion of these countries—at least during the early stages of the war—as long as our sea power is unimpaired.
The third belt consists, of course, of the insular continents, the Americas and Australia, and southern Africa. Being, for the most part, completely out of reach of Soviet Russia’s land or sea power, defensive measures here can, on the whole, be concentrated on the best available devices against attacks by planes and guided missiles. That, however, is by no means a small or negligible task. For although the frequency and effectiveness of such attacks will not be great on account of the distance involved, the United States is, after all, the most important target in any major war, and will therefore receive primary attention. In Europe, the Russian leaders may be very careful of what they destroy, because they would rather make use of captured productive capacity for their own purposes; there will be no such reluctance about damaging American cities or plants.
On the basis of these reflections, it may now be possible to arrive at an over-all American national policy, which will offer the highest degree of security obtainable for this country at this time. As emphasized throughout the preceding pages, such a policy must take into account the capabilities as well as the essential needs of sea power. It must and can do so without sacrificing similar needs of the other Services, because they are mutually supplementary; neither can succeed without the help of the other, while conditions favorable to one are generally also useful to the others. As a team in which each part performs that task for which it is best suited, they will achieve their purpose; reliance on any one part alone to do the entire work is contrary to logic, disregards lessons of experience, and invites disaster.
The general lines of the national strategy that is needed today, American in inception and motivation, but global in conception and execution, are, of course, well understood and more or less generally accepted. It aims at the strengthening of our own position and that of our allies everywhere and in every respect, politically, economically and militarily. It has led to the successive measures of rearmament and foreign aid, the Marshall Plan, the North Atlantic Pact, the promotion of European unity and a common European army, the generous peace treaty with Japan, and the concomitant mutual aid treaties with our potential Pacific allies. These and similar moves are needed and bring us closer to either of the two aspects of security: security from war, which prevents an armed conflict; and security in war, which tries to create a situation that offers the best chance of victory once the conflict has started.
But here we are concerned primarily with those national policies and actions which bear more directly on the role of sea power within the framework of the defensive team. Or, more specifically, with the question of what needs to be done to make certain that our sea power will be adequate to the tasks awaiting it in the conflict of the future.
Generally speaking, these needs are also rather obvious: strengthen, in every way possible, the individual elements of sea power the Navy as well as the merchant marine, and provide, at the earliest possible moment, the bases necessary to assure the highest degree of efficiency for the other two elements. This involves not only material but also intellectual preparation, public enlightenment as to the role and intrinsic value of sea power, and a careful study of its possibilities as well as its limitations. As emphasized repeatedly in these pages, it naturally requires the cooperation of all other parts of national power, which presupposes a better mutual understanding of the problems involved. As a typical example of such cooperation, let us consider the subject of the defense against submarines in a war with the Soviet Union.
Knowing the advantages which sea power bestows upon us, it is to the vital interest of our potential enemy to keep us from enjoying them. He will try to do so by destroying or capturing our ports of embarkation and debarkation—bases, generally speaking— and by attacking our ships along the sea lanes by means of planes and submarines. To defend ourselves against this latter threat, we can either hunt down each submarine individually all over the world’s oceans, which is the most wasteful and inefficient way of fighting them, or we can try to deny them access to the oceans where they might do damage to our shipping, which is a much more effective method. With regard to Soviet Russia, the three strategic points where that could be done—except in Communist-held ports—are the straits through which their submarines have to pass to reach the ocean: the Kattegat, between Norway and Denmark; the Dardanelles; and Bering Strait. If American diplomacy, backed by economic and military power, will assure us the inclusion of the first two in our peacetime alignment, and their successful defense in time of war, sea power could easily save a thousand submarine chasers of various types and millions of money which could be spent on some more urgently needed projects.
That a strong sea power, on the other hand, tends to strengthen the hands of our diplomats and help our land and air power achieve their respective goals, ought to be evident by now. Without the mobility granted us by our sea power, countries such as Greece and Turkey, Japan and Formosa could not have been kept out of the Communists’ grasp.
Among the more specifically military measures required to prepare our sea power for its role in any future conflict is, as mentioned before, the provision of bases abroad. The magnitude of this task alone becomes apparent from a statement made in 1945 by H. Struve Hensel, then Assistant Secretary of the Navy. According to him the United States, commencing in 1940, built 434 war bases of various dimensions in the three main theaters of war. That this is primarily a function of sea power is indicated by the fact that to construct a single airstrip for the use of the B-36 type bomber, twenty shiploads of cement are required. And that such an enormous undertaking cannot be left entirely until the outbreak of hostilities should be rather evident.
Another essential step in the same direction is, of course, the expansion and rejuvenation of our naval forces. Sometimes the argument is heard that this is unnecessary because our potential opponent does not possess a strong surface fleet. Such reasoning is completely erroneous, as the size of a navy does not depend on that of any prospective enemy alone but on the tasks it has to perform. With duties awaiting it in virtually every nook and corner of the globe, our Navy can never be too strong, regardless of the strength of the Red Fleet.
On the whole, our Navy is probably well equipped for its mission. It will certainly find use for all its ships, planes, weapons, and special skills. Its battleships, aircraft carriers, cruisers, and destroyers will be employed in guarding our convoys, in destroying or softening up hostile shore installations, fighting the enemy’s naval forces, and supplying support for amphibious landings, if they should become necessary. Its mine vessels will be needed in the war of mines, in which the Russians always have shown great proficiency. Its small craft will have a thousand different uses, so that their number never will be sufficient. But there will also be an urgent need for special vessels, such as ships equipped to operate in Arctic waters, coast assault vessels, guided missile ships, new types of submarines and submarine chasers, and many others. The more of this need we can anticipate now, the better will we be prepared later.
A specially pressing need is one for newer and larger aircraft carriers to operate larger and heavier aircraft. These must be provided in addition to land bases, for while such bases have the great advantage of being un- sinkable, they suffer from the fact that they are immovable. Hence they cannot escape attacks by dodging or dispersing, as fast carriers can. Moreover, the location of these land bases being fixed, they cannot vary greatly the routes along which they launch their attacks, with the result that the enemy can concentrate his defenses along these probable routes. Besides, air strips on land can be taken by land forces and then used against us. Finally, having at our disposal a sufficiently large force of aircraft carriers, we can strike our blows in regions where we have no land bases or before they can be made ready there. We can thus add considerably to the striking power of our air force. In some cases, ship-borne planes may be the only means to harass an invader and keep him from consolidating his gains, give tactical support to our troops, or help in ferrying paratroopers to their destination.
In the same way as our Navy, our present merchant marine probably comes close to being adequate to the demands of a war in the near future, that is, as far as over-all tonnage is concerned. But from what has been said about the great value of speed in the race between land and sea transportation that will characterize the next war, it is evident that we must have more fast troop transports, cargo ships, and tankers. And a sufficient number of these must be ready and available to go into action at the shortest notice, to carry troops and supplies anywhere across the seas. But we must not put off the construction of such ships to the outbreak of hostilities, for by then it will be far too late for them to do what they are supposed to do. The need for such fast ships does not, of course, preclude the necessity of having also a force of transport planes to serve as fore-runners whenever and wherever speed is the predominant consideration.
But these ships and planes will be of little use unless we also have available a striking land force of sufficient strength, highly trained and properly equipped, ready to be thrown at a moment’s warning into any of the places that might be threatened by Communist expansion. The chief purpose of this force would be either to brace local military resistance, or occupy and hold endangered spots until regular units could arrive and take over. For it must be remembered that it is better and easier to occupy and defend a place than to dislodge the enemy from it. It seems likely that this force of “minute men” could best be provided by a considerably expanded Marine Corps.
No argument is needed to point out the necessity of having at our disposal a competent, hard-hitting air force, nor an army large enough and equipped with the most effective weapons, to enable them to fulfill their respective vital missions in the war of the future. Nor will anybody doubt that we also must have an industrial production geared to global demands, a firm conviction in the inherent virtue of our ideals, and a bold foreign policy which anticipates needs instead of waiting for the opponent’s moves.
But to assure our success in the next war— if it ever should come—two factors need special emphasis. The first is speed of action in peace-time preparation and war-time execution. If General Forrest’s well-known dictum was ever true, it certainly is in the present situation.
The other is this: in view of our potential enemy’s overwhelming land power and possibly also air power, the only distinctive advantage we have over him lies in our sea power, our ability to use the oceans for our purposes. This advantage we must recognize and press to the utmost in order to overcome our handicaps. It is the proper use of our sea power that gives us the hope of ultimate success and victory.
1. See New York Times, September 26, 1951, p. 19. In the same speech Secretary Lovett cautioned against the “exaggerated impression” that a “quick, easy and inexpensive security” could be had in the near future.
2. Required because planes cannot carry enough fuel for the return trip, while freighters can.
3. Robert A. Lovett, “Airplanes for Men and Freight in Wartime” in Proceedings of the Academy of Political Sciences, Vol. XX, 1942-44.
4. With regard to the limitations of land transportation within Asia, compare the authoritative and interesting article “The Economic War Potential of Asia,” by Lieutenant Commander Joseph Z. Ready, U. S. Naval Reserve, in the U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, Vol. 77, No. 11, November, 1951.