A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower


A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower is the United States' maritime strategy. It was originally presented by the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations and the Commandants of the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Coast Guard at the International Seapower Symposium at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island on October 17, 2007. The new maritime strategy explains the comprehensive role of the sea services in an era marked by globalization, and uncertainty.
The development of a new strategy began in June 2006 at the direction of former Chief of Naval Operations and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen. The previous maritime strategy was published at the height of the Cold War in 1986 and needed to be updated to reflect the challenges of the 21st century. This was the first maritime strategy to be signed by the leaders of all three U.S. sea services, the Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard.
A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower is not infused with typical military-focused language. The strategy makes a case for the value of seapower in preserving the American way of life by maintaining safe, global commerce operations across the seas. It acknowledges that there is a global system of connected economies which depends on the freedom of movement across the maritime commons; the principal means for the transit of 90% of the world's commerce by weight and volume. With such a global interconnection of economies, shocks to the system caused by regional conflicts, terrorist attacks, natural disasters, and war all have potential global impact. The strategy states that U.S. vital interests are best served by having forward positioned maritime forces around the globe, postured in a way to prevent, deter, limit, and localize conflicts, wars, and disruptions to the global system that all rely upon. International from beginning to end, the strategy describes the necessity to forge global partnerships to establish a resilient peace.
During testimony before the House Armed Services Committee on December 13, 2007, General James T. Conway, Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps said:

The basic premise of our newly published maritime strategy is that the United States is a force for good in the world-that while we are capable of launching a clenched fist when we must- offering the hand of friendship is also an essential and prominent tool in our kit. That premise flows from the belief that preventing wars is as important as winning wars.

Expanding naval core capabilities

A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower articulates that U.S. maritime forces be able to operate across the full spectrum of operations, raising the prevention of war to a level equal to the conduct of war. The strategy delineates the following six expanded core capabilities for U.S. Seapower to achieve a balance of peacetime engagement and major combat operations capabilities:
  1. Forward presence
  2. Deterrence
  3. Sea control
  4. Power projection
  5. Maritime security
  6. Humanitarian assistance/disaster response
The first four core elements listed have always been fundamental to U.S. maritime forces and were essential elements to the United States and its allies and partners during the Cold War. The last two, Maritime Security and Humanitarian Assistance/Disaster Response, were elevated to core elements by the new maritime strategy. The U.S. sea services have traditionally done these types of missions but they will seek to be more proactive and purposeful in training, missions, and resourcing the missions and capabilities associated with them.
The new maritime strategy reaffirms the need for regionally concentrated, forward deployed combat power; but also places emphasis on globally distributed, mission-tailored maritime forces. Specifically the new maritime strategy states that:
  1. Regionally concentrated, credible combat power: The U.S. sea services will maintain credible combat power forward "in the Western Pacific and the Arabian Gulf/Indian Ocean to protect vital interests, assure friends and allies of the continuing U.S. commitment to regional security, and deter and dissuade potential adversaries and peer competitors." The maritime strategy states that the U.S. does not seek adversaries, nor single out any one nation, but will be best postured to maintain security and freedom of movement across the maritime domain.
  2. Globally distributed, mission-tailored maritime forces: The U.S. sea services will establish a persistent global presence using distributed forces that are organized by mission, comprising integrated U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard capabilities. Aircraft carrier and Expeditionary Strike Groups will continue to deploy much as they do now, but they will also use smaller groups or units to provide this presence across the globe, such as the Global Fleet Station.
In signing a cooperative strategy, the U.S. sea services also raise the importance of cooperative relationships as the basis for global maritime security – a common goal of all maritime nations regardless of political differences. Maritime nations have always shared common interests on the sea and even land-locked nations rely on the safety of those seas to maintain and enhance their way of life. The challenge for the United States is how to apply seapower in a manner that protects U.S. vital and domestic interests, even as it promotes greater collective security, stability, and trust across the globe.
During the presentation of the new strategy to nearly 100 chiefs of navies and coast guards from around the world at the Naval War College on October 17, 2007, Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Gary Roughead, the Navy's top uniformed officer, said humanitarian and disaster aid is built on, "peace-time relationships to help mitigate human suffering by working together with other agencies and other nations responding to crises".
While presenting the U.S. Coast Guard perspective on the new U.S. maritime strategy at the same symposium, Admiral Thad Allen, Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, said the new maritime strategy reinforced the time-honored missions his service carried out in this U.S. since 1790. He said:

It reinforces the Coast Guard maritime strategy of safety, security and stewardship, and it reflects not only the global reach of our maritime services but the need to integrate and synchronize and act with our coalition and international partners to not only win wars... but to prevent wars.

The new strategy is viewed as a welcome makeover from the Soviet-centric document developed in 1986, but has drawn some criticism from military analysts who say it is too broad-based and lacked a fourth, "implementation" stage. Former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman hailed its tenets but pointed out it was lacking information on the actual hardware needed to carry out the policy. In the November 2007 issue of Proceedings magazine, he explained, "we a clear and well-articulated statement of what we need to implement that strategy – tightly bound to the strategy itself." He concedes however, that the most important attribute of the updated strategy is, "that it exists at all... and that its development was taken so seriously."

Development of the new maritime strategy

The new maritime strategy included many voices during its development. Input was sought from individuals and organizations such as the United States Department of Defense, the Joint Staff, Unified Combatant Commands, business and academia and other U.S. interagency partners.
During development of the new strategy, military planners sought to address the changing 21st century world and anticipate key uncertainties such as what the United States' grand military strategy and foreign policy will be in the next few decades. Planners considered a range of maritime strategy options: primacy, cooperative security, selective engagement and offshore balance. These paradigms commonly are used by military planners to measure the quality of strategic components against hypothetical challenges. A series of war games conducted by the Naval War College helped determine which options were the best to focus upon.
From six hypothetical paradigms, planners drafted five possible maritime strategies, which were later whittled down to three. With three strategies in hand, teams of senior leaders and military planners from the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard traveled to locations around the United States to present the strategy options to American citizens as part of a program called the "Conversation with the Country" to elicit their feedback and input on potential strategies.
The Conversation with the Country program is discussed in the preface of the new strategy:

Our citizens were deeply involved in development of this strategy through a series of public forums known as the "Conversations with the Country." Three themes dominated these discussions: our people want us to remain strong; they want us to protect them and our homeland; and they want us to work with partners around the world to prevent war. This message, coupled with rigorous academic research, analysis and debate, led to a comprehensive strategy designed to meet the expectations and needs of the American people.

The sea services hosted "Conversations with the Country" in the following cities during the development of the maritime strategy:
  1. Phoenix – January 24, 2007
  2. Atlanta – February 9, 2007
  3. Seattle – March 9, 2007
  4. San Francisco – March 12, 2007
  5. Chicago – April 9, 2007
  6. New York – April 16, 2007
Feedback from the participants in the first round of the Conversations with the Country program helped shape the final maritime strategy, which was unveiled October 17, 2007. Another round of Conversations began following the launch of the new maritime strategy that brought senior officers from the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard to more U.S. cities, where they presented the new strategy to business and civic leaders and discussed future roles of the three sea services in protecting the homeland and working with global partners to prevent war. American cities visited since the new strategy was unveiled were:
  1. Miami – November 15, 2007
  2. Houston – January 24, 2008
  3. Portland – February 21. 2008
  4. Denver – March 27, 2008
  5. Los Angeles – April 17, 2008
In addition to the city symposia, Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard leaders met with local universities and faculty in a program called "Campus Conversations." Sea service leadership felt it was important to present the strategy to future leaders and listen to feedback. Campus Conversations took place at the following universities:
  1. University of Miami – November 16, 2007
  2. Rice University – January 23, 2008
  3. Oregon State University – February 20, 2008
  4. University of Denver – March 26, 2008
  5. University of Southern California – April 15, 2008