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By Derek Boothby
On Christmas Day 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned, and the Soviet flag was hauled down from where it flew above the Kremlin. On 27 December, the flags outside United Nations headquarters in New York were rearranged. The red flag of the Soviet Union, with its yellow hammer and sickle, was removed from the colorful display—and the red, blue, and white banner of Russia was raised.
Thus, to the astonishment of the West, the Soviet Union slipped without ceremony into the history books.
Earlier in December, a conference called “Multinational Naval Cooperation in a Changing World” was held at the Royal Naval College at Greenwich, London. It was attended by about 80 senior and middle-level naval officers, politicians, and academics—mostly from industrialized countries. All the major maritime states except China were represented.
As one of the participants, I was struck by the amount of straw-clutching that went on. One could almost hear the naval hardware rushing around in circles, looking for a mission before politicians could move in to mothball it in the next round of defense cuts.
What brought this about was obvious: the end of the Cold War. The Soviet Union suddenly was no longer the enemy. By ceasing to exist, the Soviet Union seemed to have taken the raison d’etre of Western navies with it.
There was, of course, much talk of financial retrenchment, force reductions, and, for the United States, the end of the dream of a 600-ship navy. For smaller navies, such as the Royal Navy, the prospects could be even more devastating. The financial depredations of congressional and parliamentary actions threaten naval reductions far beyond any possible effects of negotiated naval arms control.
Despite such gloomy prospects, navies need not fear the future if they are prepared to change. Rather than there being no naval mission, the main problem is that there are several. The primary challenge of the future will be to identify them and to achieve a satisfactory balance of tasks, assets, and expenditures. The secondary challenge will be to come to terms with a more diverse, less clear-cut future. Some missions will be neither as sharply defined nor as operationally satisfying as in the past.
Political Factors
It has been estimated that since 1945 there have been some 170 conflicts, both between and within nation states—but only a few have involved the use of naval force. The vast majority of those 170 conflicts took place in the developing world, and there seems little reason to believe that the next 45 years will be much different. If we are fortunate, future conflicts will not grow from tensions among developed countries. There are more and more reasons to believe that they will be increasingly resource-based. In the maritime domain, there will be disputes over fishing rights, access to the sea, artificial borders, and access to sea lines of communication for oil and other commodities.
World population is rising inexorably. When the United Nations was established in 1945, global population stood at 2.5 billion. It is already more than 5 billion, and there is a net total increase per year of more than 90 million— equivalent to adding a new Mexico each and every year. In the next hundred years, almost all the increase will take place in developing countries, where people already are learning that governments are unable to satisfy their economic and social demands. These demands will lead to insistent political pressures and, in turn, often to regional and subregional instabilities.
The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, adopted in 1982, will enter into force one year after ratification or accession by 60 members. The climb toward that number has been slow—as of 1 January 1992 the count stood at 51, of which, all except one are develop' ing countries. Even so, the Law of the Sea already has had great impact. Many countries, including the United States, have asserted their sovereign rights over their exclusive economic zones, which the U.N. law says extend 200 miles from the baseline from which territorial sea is measured. More and more coastal states are developing
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Proceedings/July 19&
embryonic maritime organizations and small naval/coast guard forces to protect those rights.
There will always be rising actors on the world scene who, for one reason or another, will seek to acquire and exert regional power and take actions that will threaten international peace and security.
“New World Order”
The Charter of the United Nations calls for the Peaceful settlement of disputes.
Although the organization has grown in stature during the past few years, the United Nations cannot and should n°t be the vehicle for resolving all disputes—whether °y peaceful means
by the use of force permitted Ur*der Chapter VII °f the Charter. For instance, the U.N. js very hesitant to e drawn into any country’s internal c°nflicts; separately, the circumstances that led to me coalition ac- hon against Iraq in y9l are not likely to be a pattern of the future.
. Nevertheless, the United Nations has become increasIngly active in transnational and transregional issues. It Provides a useful forum for discussion and cooperation Without excluding the possibility of countries cooperating regionally or subregionally on their own. Moreover, when aPPropriate, the U.N. can be a focus for cooperative se- ourity action. Why should multinational naval coopera- n°n be any different?
^^ings/july 1992
Developed states must tread carefully, however. Buzz phrases such as “New World
Order” do not sit well with many developing countries. To a growing number, the vague phrase smacks of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council cooking up solutions and interpretations among themselves, then presenting a jointly agreed upon piece of paper to the rest of the Council with the invitation to “sign and rubber stamp here, please.”
Once aroused, such suspicions are difficult to dispel. Sovereignty is an extremely sensitive issue at the United Nations, and no country takes kindly to having solutions imposed upon it. Even when the intentions are innocent and honorable, there are many developing countries that see the “New World Order” as little
. _ less than a set of
political interpretations and a security agenda dictated by the principal military powers.
The moral is that the phrase “New World Order” should be dropped or used with full sensitivity to the reactions that its use might elicit.
There are those who suggest that the Military Staff Committee of the Security Council—which is composed ot the military representatives of the five permanent members ot the Council—should be reactivated in its existing
49
form, along with a newly established U.N. Standing Naval Force. I disagree.
With the solitary exception of four small Argentinian vessels flying the U.N. flag off Nicaragua in 1989, I am not aware of any U.N. naval peacekeeping forces, specifically designated as such, since Korea in 1950 (which was not a peacekeeping exercise, anyway). That is not to say that there will never be a need for such a force, but there is no point in inventing a solution to a problem that does not exist. This does not mean a U.N. Standing Naval Force should never be developed—just not in the near future.
Tasks for the Future
Where should naval planners look as they design force levels and ship composition for the remainder of this century and the first two decades of the next?
At one end of the spectrum, the experience of Desert Storm is vivid proof of the need to maintain highly capable forces, using the best technology the naval checkbook can afford, for power projection ashore. The instances of use may be few, but as history repeatedly has shown, naval assets allowed to run down in peacetime are not available when needed. Their very absence limits political options and can be an invitation to disaster. On the other hand, with unit costs of modem ships and aircraft being so great, sacrifices will have to be made in numbers and effectiveness to strike an acceptable balance. Resolving these problems will not be easy, but they are problems that naval planners always have faced.
It is at the other end of the spectrum that new approaches are needed. The requirements to police the new 200-mile exclusive economic zones, the pressure on fishing resources, and the need to control pollution, piracy, drug smuggling, and refugee flows will raise problems for many coastal states. Many that did not need warships or coast guard vessels before are now acquiring them.
It should not be forgotten that the prime purpose of navies is not simply to fight battles but to protect a country’s maritime interests. At times, the latter certainly embraces the former, but overall it is a much wider responsibility—one that many naval officers tend to forget. It is instructive to observe how quickly naval officers’ eyes glaze over at the mention of fish, but it is significant that 95% of the world’s fish catch comes from within 200 miles of shore. Furthermore, if countries are ranked in terms of reliance on protein derived from fish, 39 of the first 40 places are occupied by developing countries. It is little wonder that those countries will give this issue closer attention in the years ahead.
It is illuminating to recall the following extracts from a U.N. study:
“With greater interest in the exploitation of marine resources and the introduction of the exclusive economic zone, the number of offshore and other commercial activities will continue to increase . . . [and] the growing complexity of offshore activities will call for much improved national and international management arrangements if marine resources are to be exploited in a rational and orderly manner to the benefit of mankind. . . . New resources, new developments, new responsibilities—all will demand more coordinated maritime policies, administrative machinery, and policing capabilities. . . .
“Within this growing range of activities, there is much that appropriately equipped naval vessels could do. There are also many ways in which the greater experience and capacities of the maritime powers that at present have worldwide and blue-water navies could assist coastal states, if so requested and without interfering in their affairs, in dealing with this entirely new range of problems.”
This 1985 study was commissioned by the U.N. General Assembly at the initiative of Sweden. At the insistence of a number of developing countries, it addressed issues of the naval arms race, and, in the international climate of the time, it immediately became a political casualty. It was not liked by the British government and was vigorously opposed and voted against by the United States. But, in essence, it was calling for the multinational naval cooperation that now seems so necessary.
It is gratifying to see the growing current interest in naval cooperation, for it is certainly much needed. It is needed in the traditional military security area—as the end of the Cold War allows us to focus our attention on other matters—and it is needed in the other areas of maritime activity described previously.
Multinational naval cooperation should be addressed on a regional and subregional basis, preferably in low-key meetings. Established maritime powers should participate with open ears and open minds as they listen to the concerns and interests of smaller nations. Above all, they should not start off by proposing combined naval exercises and should not use the phrase “New World Order.” A useful guide might well be the sensitive approach currently being taken by Australia toward the maritime anxieties of island states in the Southwest Pacific.
For the United States, this will not be easy. Many of these issues will be seen as falling within the purview of the U.S. Coast Guard, which is by itself the world’s fourth largest navy. But it should be borne in mind that multinational naval cooperation also involves the political and security relations between the United States and other countries. As such, it is foreign policy writ large in the naval sphere, and it is entirely appropriate that the U.S. Navy should be the lead agency for the United States.
Multinational cooperation could, in fact, become a powerful justification for naval assets. Carefully and sensitively worked out, it would give a revised, useful, and nonthreatening meaning to the age-old objective of admirals everywhere—a fleet in being.
Derek Boothby left the Royal Navy as a commander in 1978. He has since worked in the United Nations Secretariat on arms control and security issues. Until May 1992, he was the Deputy Director for operations for the U.N. weapons inspections being carried out in Iraq. He is now in charge of monitoring, analysis, and nonproliferation issues in the Office for Disarmament Affairs.
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