Naval strength is often determined by kinetic employment and the service’s ability to wage war. Scenes of battle in movies or books convey strong personal courage, daring engagements, and battles overflowing with excitement. These sights are depictions of hard power, which is the tangible means of engaging enemies in battle to determine the outcome of a war; but what posturing takes place before shots are fired? The speed with which information travels around the globe and the impact world politics has in the average household has changed the way war is fought. Modern-day naval power is less about military conquest and more about influence—soft power diplomacy such as humanitarian assistance, disaster relief efforts, and shows of force. Guns and missiles are essential in battle, but the United States’ greatest weapon system is naval diplomacy.
Soft power has long been employed to help determine favorable outcomes in hostile conflict, but the term was not coined until the end of the cold war. Joseph Nye Jr., a political scientist and former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, wrote in 1990 that hard and soft power can be combined into a successful strategy and “not to abandon the traditional concern for the military balance of power, but to accept its limitations and to supplement it with insights.” In relation to naval power, those insights can be categorized into some key disciplines.
U.S. Relief Efforts: Saving Lives, Expanding Partnerships
Humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HA/DR) operations are the core of naval soft power. Helping nations stricken by natural disasters, disease outbreaks, and general human suffering goes a long way in improving U.S. relations with other countries. In December of 2004, a 9.1 magnitude earthquake struck Indonesia, killing almost 228,000 people and displacing 1.7 million more in 14 countries. The United States responded with Operation Unified Assistance, and within days, 20 U.S. Navy ships sped to the devastated country. Over the next 80 days, this force delivered more than 24 million tons of supplies and relief aid to East Asian shores in one of the largest disaster relief operations in modern history. At the conclusion of operations, Pew reported that Indonesian public opinion of the United States had risen from 15 percent favorable to 38 percent, while perceptions about whether the United States considered the interests of other nations rose from 25 percent to 53 percent. Furthermore, the U.S. Navy started the “Pacific Partnership” to continue HA/DR operations and training to reinforce the U.S. public image.
In 2011, an earthquake off the Japanese coast and the subsequent floods caused the collapse of the Fukushima nuclear power plant. The U.S. Navy was largely in charge of relief efforts, Operation Tomodachi, with 24 ships and three air wings. It delivered aid, conducted damage surveys, and ferried workers to relief sites. A 2011 Pew poll regarding Japanese public opinion of the United States increased from 66 percent to 85 percent following the conclusion of disaster relief operations. The Pew report also found that 51 percent of Japanese people believed the United States takes into account the interests of other nations, up from 31 percent the year prior.
These events and polling reports show quantifiable evidence on how important the application of HA/DR efforts are in exercising soft power. More significantly, they also show how much the nation that leads these efforts benefits in future cooperation and has a greater impact in the international community.
Chinese and Russian Aid: A Different Approach
Other nations allow political considerations to hamper the humanitarian spirit of relief operations. China, and specifically its People’s Liberation Army (PLA), has participated in 20 different HA/DR operations since 2002, and there are some notable instances where Beijing performed in a supervisory role and hindered relief efforts.
In 2015, Nepal suffered an earthquake creating landslides and avalanches in the Himalayan Mountains, killing nearly 9,000 people and affecting a third of the population. The PLA responded with a force of 500 personnel and 11 transport aircraft as a show of good will, but hampered efforts by refusing to work with other militaries and potentially contributed to the loss of life.1 Concerns over its image as a leader of the relief efforts caused Beijing to coordinate only with the Nepalese Army, bypassing assisting nations and going against international best practices for coordinated disaster relief.
China and the PLA also dragged their political feet in response to Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, which devastated the Philippines. China’s response to aid the 615,000 displaced people was a feeble initial pledge of $100,000 USD, a stark contrast to the nearly $60 million in aid provided by the United States, Japan, Australia, and United Kingdom combined. The Chinese narrative was that domestic criticism from the Philippines resulted in their decision to offer a small amount of assistance, but reliable sources indicate the delay was due to tensions with Manila regarding erroneous South China Sea territorial claims. International pressure eventually coerced Beijing to pledge more aid and offer the use of its hospital ship, Peace Ark, but this occurred nearly two weeks after the initial destruction, far too long a delay to have an immediate impact. China’s placing of political considerations before humanitarian decisions was further demonstrated in the 2018 African Swine flu epidemic in Taiwan and other occurrences.15
China is not the only great power to fail to capitalize on the potential gains of utilizing soft power. Russia also seems to have little involvement in HA/DR activities. Russian President Vladimir Putin stated his intentions to align with the U.N. Millennium Development Goals, including disaster relief, but fails to follow aid reporting standards. This makes determining their impact a difficult task. Russian soft power initiatives have been noticed in places like Kyrgyzstan and Syria, but most aid goes into infrastructure development contracts and debt relief. With not much else to go by, Pew research polls show just 34 percent globally express a favorable view of Russia and 63 percent claim to have no confidence in Moscow performing fairly in world affairs. Although these figures are not a direct correlation for Russia’s lack of transparency in its soft power initiatives, soft power operations favorably impact public opinion.
Naval Presence through Freedom of Navigation Operations
The U.S. Navy has a long history of being a versatile instrument of influence and utilizing non-kinetic means long before the term soft power was coined. President Theodore Roosevelt was a champion of naval supremacy and understood how influential a Navy can be without ever having to prime its batteries. In his second annual message to Congress, the staunch Manhattan native proclaimed that “A good Navy is not a provocation to war. It is the surest guaranty of peace.” During the Venezuelan crises of 1902–03, a rough bout of civil wars in the country caused some of its European residents to incur debts. The United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy had demanded reparations for their citizens and when Venezuela declined, they each sent naval contingencies to enforce a blockade on the country. When the blockade showed signs of violating the Monroe Doctrine, President Roosevelt announced that 50 U.S. ships would be taking time to port at nearby Trinidad.2 This caused the blockading countries to eventually cease their aggressive actions and allowed peaceable negotiations to commence, all without any hostile action.
Today, the United States practices naval presence by conducting freedom-of-navigation operations (FonOps). FonOps are unbiased operations necessary to challenge excessive maritime claims. The U.S. Navy challenges friends and foes alike, conducting FonOps against 26 nations in 2018 including China, Japan, Thailand, and the Philippines, some of whom are security allies in the Asia-Pacific region. Challenging these imprudent claims is not tantamount to sabre rattling. The show of force allows for freedom of navigation on the high seas and fair access for all nations to maritime interests, ports, and goods. By acquiescing to foreign countries, the United States would allow unlawful claims to transition from speculation to sovereign.
Coastal nations with excessive claims sometimes require more than a simple challenge to bring them back in line with international law. In 1973, Libya declared that the Gulf of Sidra was a part of its territorial waters. This is an area of about 60–100 nautical miles extending past its coast, far from the understood 12-nautical-mile coastal limit. The Navy would later conduct FonOps in the contested area with the aircraft carriers USS Nimitz (CVN-68) and Forrestal (CVN-59), together with 14 other combatants. Eventually, two Libyan pilots tried to defend the unlawful claims and fired on Navy F-14 Tomcats in international waters. The result was both Libyan SU-22s destroyed and one Libyan pilot killed. Afterward, Libya decided to limit its losses and not seek a continuation of hostilities. Soft power is the olive branch of naval diplomacy, but if and when that option fails, the spear must be drawn.
FonOps have been much more peaceable in recent history, but no less necessary. The most contested claims today involve the People’s Republic of China and the nine-dash line surrounding the South China Sea and involving the Spratley Islands, Paracel Islands, and other features. This line extends some 2,000 km away from the Chinese mainland and violates the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Other countries in the region politically condemn PRC’s claims, but a physical U.S. naval presence must happen to properly contest these declarations. Without the show-of-force measures and freedom-of-navigation efforts in areas such as the nine-dash line and Gulf of Sidra, offending countries would establish de facto rights by the acquiescence of other nations.
Naval diplomacy options also extend to innocuous port visits. Just having a ship enter a port of another country demonstrates cooperation between the two nations. Port visits also can establish solidarity against neighboring countries in the region. Regional tensions with the Russian Federation in the Black Sea have exceeded the tipping point in recent history. In 2008, Russia invaded Georgia over separatist ties with nationals in South Ossetia under the guise of peace enforcement. In 2014, Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula after the predominately ethnic Russians in the region called for an intervention when demonstrations escalated against the Ukrainian government. Following both actions, the U.S. Navy conducted port visits in the defending countries as a demonstration against the aggressive Russian Federation and continues to support them to this day.
Traditional military power has its limitations and is just one tool in a well-equipped arsenal. Soft power is not an end in itself. It is the deterrence to aggression that, when exhausted, justifies hostile actions. The diplomatic narrative weighs heavier than ordnance, and no force can dictate it like the U.S. Navy. Unlike other nations, the United States refuses to let political considerations get in the way of the humanitarian spirit of the mission. Customary international law must be upheld, even when others lack the capability or disregard it entirely. Presence and show of force are powerful elements of soft power and cannot be overlooked. The nation that only invests in its hard power will enter the battle with one arm behind its back. True power does not lie purely in destructive capacity, but in the ability to win the war when no battle was fought.
1. Former official in U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense, interview with Commission staff, 4 December 2018.
2. Alan McPherson, A Short History of U.S. Interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean (Somerset, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2016).