No of References to Sea Control
3.4 Mutually Constitutive Practice and Thought Key Developments in Summary
What the analysis has so far revealed are developments in maritime strategic thought, which have, to varying extents, been operationalised in practice. In some practical instances, there does not seem to be an affirmation of developments outlined in thought. This does not mean, however, that in reality thought and practice cannot be mutually constitutive. Operational experiences have arguably had as much of an impact on strategic thought as well as the other way around.
What should always be remembered is that strategic thought is driven in large part by the study of history, both distant and more recent. Whether one is reading Corbett or Mahan’s justification of historical study’s value or the discussion of the value of theory and its historical basis by writers such as Till, this is a fact that has remained fairly constant over time384.
Looking over certain, more recent strategic documentation from around the world, the kind of developments in the maritime strategic principles revealed by operational practice have certainly come to be written about by subsequent strategic thinkers. In Naval Warfare: Naval Doctrine Publication 1, for example, US strategists make frequent references to historical examples of maritime operations to show how operational experiences have influenced the adoption of certain concepts385. In this
384 Mahan, A. T., The Influence of Sea Power, p 2; Mahan, A. T., ‘The Value of Historical Study’ in
Mahan on Naval Warfare, ed. by Westcott, A., Dover edn, pp. 3-7 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1941; Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc., 1999), p. 4; Corbett, J. S., Principles of Maritime Strategy, p. 6; Till, G., Seapower, pp. 39-40.
385 Zalaskus, R. et al, ‘Naval Warfare: Naval Doctrine Publication 1’ in Hattendorf, J. B., US Naval
particular instance, most of the operational cases referred to predate the information RMA despite the document being published in 1994, during the period of the RMA.
However, subsequent American documents would certainly come to at least implicitly acknowledge the impacts of more recent operational experiences on strategic thought. Navy Strategic Planning Guidance is one example that illustrates this. An acknowledgement of the “emerging trends that make it imperative for our Navy to focus on the littorals and the land beyond” clearly suggests that strategists were looking back on the US Navy’s operational experiences and identifying a pattern that involved a focus on the littoral environment386. Given that this particular
document was published in 2000, its writers had plenty of cases to consider: there had been a range of past operations where naval forces undertook multidimensional actions in littoral environments. The 1991 Gulf War was one example, where networked, forward positioned naval forces, assisted by space and surveillance capabilities, undertook force projection with air and strike assets against targets on land. The role of similarly networked, forward positioned naval forces in the Yugoslav Wars of the mid and late 1990s was also an example of a multidimensional operational experience. Given that Navy Strategic Planning Guidance discusses the notion of the multidimensional battlespace as the hallmark of future operations, it is clear that this concept was born out of the trend identified by the document’s writers.
To take a far more recent, up-to-date example, consider the latest, 2015 release of A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower. In its introduction, this
document is quite clear that its ideas and recommendations have been driven by changing security and fiscal realities since 2007. In reference to security realities, the document lists matters such as the continued fielding of anti-access and area denial capabilities, threats to maritime commerce (in particular energy shipments) and the evolution and expansion of terrorist and criminal networks387. Looking over the 2007-
2015 timeframe, it is not difficult to identify the sort of operational experiences that drive the thought underlying the document. US Navy vessels on station in the Indo- Pacific region have faced the increasing challenge of an assertive PRC, which has been seeking to deny access through territorial claims at the political level and development of area denial capabilities at the military-technological level. The US Navy has also been involved in the struggle against Islamist militants in Syria, and in 386 Sestak, J. et al, ‘“Navy Strategic Planning Guidance”’, p. 181.
387 US Department of the Navy, A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower: Forward, Engaged,
counter-piracy at the Horn of Africa. In 2011, US Navy ships in the Strait of Hormuz had to maintain presence following Iranian area denial threats. In this example, it once again clear to see how operational experience has influenced strategic thought.
For a few examples from outside the US experience, consider India’s Freedom to use the Seas (which contains a very detailed discussion of past Indian Navy operational experiences as well as the operational environment it currently operates in, thus displaying how practice can very much drive thought), Australia’s Future Maritime Operating Concept – 2025 (which features an examination of the security environment, which, though it does not explicitly identify any particular operational experience, can still have lines drawn between it and particular cases388), or the UK’s
Royal Navy: A Global Force 2011/12 vision389.
The key point to take from this mutually constitutive reality is that, over time, there has been a form of reinforcing cycle. Strategic thought and operational experience have each revealed the evolution of existing maritime strategic principles, and in doing so had an effect upon the other. What this is contributing to is a gradual shift in the way certain maritime strategic principles are understood.
Since approximately the onset of the information RMA period, two key developments in the principles of maritime strategy can be discerned, which have been explained throughout this chapter. With sea control and denial evolving into battlespace control and area denial, there has been a growing acknowledgement of a blurring and/or increasing fusion of the different domains of military operations, part of which includes a greater emphasis on the information domain. At the same time, the way in which strategists think of forward positioning has evolved over time, adding flesh to the principle’s conceptual bones (to use such an analogy). Whereas writers such as Mahan once wrote of the colony principle in purely physical terms (for example, forward positioning as a means of extending a navy’s operational range by providing long-distance refuelling and maintenance capabilities390), over time
strategists have increasingly come to realise that forward positioning serves other, 388 For instance, the document identifies the potential for non-state actors to use failed, failing or rogue states as bases for operations against Western interests. Examples of such non-state actors can include Islamist militants in Middle Eastern states such as Iraq and Syria – both of which Australian military forces (including naval) have intervened in as part of an international coalition over the last decade or so.
389 Indian Navy, Freedom to use the Seas; Australian Defence Force, Future Maritime Operating
Concept; Royal Navy, Royal Navy: A Global Force 2011/12 (London: Newsdesk Communications Ltd, 2012).
non-physical purposes as well (namely, information acquisition and influencing perceptions).
In reference to visibility, both of these evolved conceptions of traditional maritime strategic principles can sometimes (depending on the circumstances) display a reciprocal relationship. Visibility control and/or requirements can be a driver of such principles, whilst also being something that those principles can seek to attain/fulfil.
What this means is that there is, undeniably, a degree of overlap between visibility control/denial and the existing, traditional principles of maritime strategy. More will be said on this in Chapter 4, but the immediate question arising from this is what added value a separate principle concerned with visibility might bring to maritime strategic thought. The added value is twofold. Firstly, having a principle specifically based around the notion of visibility can show recognition of the fact that the matter is (and always has been) of strategic importance (a reality which various strategic documents from around the world have acknowledged391). Secondly, having
a principle of visibility control and denial can make up for something of a deficiency in the writings of previous scholars, who lived in very different political, strategic and technological contexts to the present and who thus did not examine visibility-related matters in any great depth (as shown in Section 2.3). Chapter 4 will use the findings from Chapter 3 to assess the extent to which this new principle is intellectually viable, and whether it can account for current realities and practice.
391 Sandy, D. et al, Maritime Information Warfare Concept of Operations, p. 1; Indian Navy, Ensuring
Secure Seas, p. 165; Maritime Doctrines and Concepts Centre, Indian Maritime Doctrine, p. 149; Prime Minister of the Republic of France, National Strategy for the Security of Maritime Areas (Paris: French Government, 2015), p. 4; Royal Netherlands Navy, Fundamentals of Maritime Operations, pp. 76-8.