Maritime Strategy and Sea Control

Theory and Practice

Milan Vego

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317439837
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

This book focuses on the key naval strategic objectives of obtaining and maintaining sea control.

During times of war, sea control, or the ability of combatants to enjoy naval dominance, plays a crucial role in that side's ability to attain overall victory. This book explains and analyzes in much greater detail sea control in all its complexities, and describes the main methods of obtaining and maintaining it. Building on the views of naval classical thinkers, this book utilizes historical examples to illustrate the main methods of sea control. Each chapter focuses on a particular method, including destroying the enemy forces by a decisive action, destroying enemy forces over time-attrition, containing enemy fleet, choke point control, and capturing important enemy's positions/basing area, The aim is to provide a comprehensive theory and practice of the struggle for sea control at the operational level. It should therefore provide a guide to practitioners on how to plan and conduct operational warfare at sea.

The book will be of much interest to students of naval strategy, defence studies and security studies.

1 Strategic framework

In the modern era, war at sea has not been conducted in isolation from the war on land and in the air. The navies and air forces have a significant but invariably supporting role because the outcome in a war is ultimately decided where humans live – on land. At the same time, the experience in the modern era shows that a war cannot be ultimately won without control of the sea and the air. No navy, regardless of its numerical strength and the quality of its personnel, can possess the optimum capabilities in all warfare areas. The task of obtaining, maintaining, and exercising sea control – sometimes arbitrarily called the “struggle for sea control” – is conducted by the stronger side at sea in time of war. Although one’s naval forces have the most important role, the services of the country’s armed forces and often the navies and other services of allies/coalition partners also participate in such a struggle.

Policy and strategy provide the framework for the employment of the armed forces in a high-intensity conventional war and in operations short of war. Policy should always dominate strategy. At the same time, they should not be in conflict with each other.¹ Among other things, the domain of policy includes decisions to enter or not to enter a war and whether a war will be offensive or defensive. Policy also determines the political, diplomatic, legal, and other limitations on the employment of one’s military forces.

In its simplest terms, strategy can be defined broadly as the process of interrelating and harmonizing the ends with the means. The articulation of national interests, objectives, and commitments with the use of the instruments of national power (political, diplomatic, military, economic, informational, scientific, technological, and so on) is called national security strategy (or grand strategy) – the art and science of using the instruments of national power to attain the political ends articulated by the national or alliance/coalition’s political leadership. For each instrument of national or alliance/coalition power, there is also a corresponding supporting strategy. The importance of each supporting strategy depends, among other things, on whether a particular instrument is applied in a time of peace or war and on what policy determines the objectives to be. In a war, national strategy is principally concerned with determining national or coalition/alliance political objectives and providing strategic guidance to subordinate operational commanders, with determining the desired strategic end state, and with determining conditions for and the timing of war termination.

The boundaries between policy and strategy are often blurred or even indistinguishable. The upper part of strategy is closely linked to policy, a domain of statesmanship. It is there that the entire war effort is coordinated.² Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831) made it clear that strategy depends on policy because war is the continuation of policy by other means. Normally, the military can act only within the framework determined by national or alliance/coalition strategy. Generally, the greater the limitations on the military leadership’s freedom of action, the greater the military resources that are required to accomplish the given strategic ends. In practice, measures taken by the military leadership are often compromises between purely military needs and political realities. One of the major responsibilities of the highest military leadership is to point out to the political decision makers the critical need to determine and articulate clear and militarily achievable strategic objectives. Therefore, policy should never demand what is militarily impossible.³ At the same time, the political leadership should not unnecessarily limit the military leadership’s freedom of action.⁴

One of the most difficult problems in developing and executing strategy is balancing one’s ends and means. This process is very difficult. It is more an art than a science. A lack of balance can result in a mismatch (inadequate means to achieve the stated ends) or a disconnect (sufficient means but an unwillingness to use them to achieve the stated ends). Clearly, a sound strategy should not have a serious mismatch or disconnect; otherwise, regardless of performance at the operational and tactical levels, the entire effort will end in failure and could even be fatal.

A mismatch between one’s ends and means creates a certain degree of risk. The level of risk is largely a matter of one’s judgment. Risks can occur due to many factors, such as overrating one’s capabilities and/or underestimating the enemy’s. They also can be the result of making willful or unintended faulty strategic assumptions. Calculated risks are incurred deliberately.⁵ The degree of risk can be greatly reduced by scaling down one’s ends or increasing one’s means modifying, altering, or even abandoning one’s ends. Another solution for resolving mismatch is to find a novel way of using one’s sources of military and/or nonmilitary power.

Military strategy is the art and science of using or threatening to use military instruments of power to accomplish the political objectives of national or alliance/coalition strategy.⁶ It is principally concerned with converting political strategic objectives into military strategic objectives, improving the country’s or alliance/coalition’s geostrategic position, providing a vision of the character and duration of the future war, and determining the theater of primary and secondary efforts and the distribution of forces among several theaters.

If a nation-state has vital interests to preserve or defend in several theaters, then strategy should be developed and applied in each theater. Hence, a distinction is made between national military strategy and theater strategy – the art and science of developing integrated strategic concepts and courses of action, directed, within a theater, toward securing the objectives of national and alliance/coalition policy and strategy by the use of force, the threatened use of force, or operations not involving the use of force. National strategic objectives must dominate theater strategic objectives.

Military or theater strategy can be offensive or defensive in its main purpose. In an offensive strategy, the intent can be to seek to drastically change the balance of power, either regionally or globally. The attacker might also attempt to make some modest adjustment to the balance of power. In a defensive strategy, the objective is to preserve the status quo. The ultimate purpose of military (or theater) strategy could be the enemy’s destruction or annihilation or the weakening of his power over time. The first, arbitrarily called strategy of annihilation, aims to overwhelm the enemy and make him unable to resist one’s demands. It is viable only if one’s power is overwhelming; otherwise, the hostilities will be protracted, requiring such a commitment of resources that one or both sides would be exhausted before either was defeated. A strategy of attrition (or erosion), in contrast, is designed to convince the enemy that settling the political dispute will be easier and to make the outcome more attractive than continued hostilities. It is intended to erode, or wear down, the enemy’s strength and thereby weaken his will to fight, rather than destroy his ability to resist.⁷

Military (or theater) strategy can be symmetrical or asymmetrical. In a symmetrical strategy, the aim is to match one's superior strength against the enemy’s similar strength but using innovative methods in the employment of military and nonmilitary sources of power. An asymmetrical strategy aims to offset one’s numerical and qualitative weaknesses and vulnerabilities by applying nonconventional means.

Subordinate to military/theater strategy is naval or maritime strategy. Naval strategy can be defined as the science and art of using all naval sources of power in support of the national military strategy. In contrast, maritime strategy is the science and art of using both naval and non-naval sources of power at sea. Naval classical thinkers did not agree with one another on what constitutes naval or maritime strategy. For instance, the influential British blue-water navalist Sir Julian S. Corbett (1854–1922) defined maritime strategy as the principles that govern a war in which the sea is a substantial factor. For Corbett, the paramount concern of maritime strategy is to determine the mutual relations of the army and navy in a plan of war; once this is done, and not till then, naval strategy can begin to work out the manner in which the fleet can best discharge the function assigned to it.⁸ Yet he confused strategy and operational art by arguing that naval strategy determines the movements of the fleet, while maritime strategy determines what part the fleet must play in relation to the action of the land forces.⁹

French vice admiral and notable theoretician Raoul Castex (1878–1968) differentiated between land and naval strategy on one hand and what he called general strategy (strategie generale), or military strategy, on the other. General strategy unifies the actions of the armies and fleets whenever they have to operate together. In his view, as infantry is the queen of battle, so the army is the queen of general strategy. Everything has to be subordinated to the army because its success means the success of the general strategy. The navy is often to the army what the artillery is to the infantry, an indispensable support that permits it to accomplish its objectives.¹⁰

In generic terms, maritime strategy is principally concerned with determining the naval aspects of the military (or theater) strategic objectives; using or threatening to use one’s sea power; enhancing the country’s or alliance/coalition’s maritime strategic position; providing the vision of the character and duration of the future war at sea; determining (under the guidance of political-military leadership) whether war at sea will be primarily offensive or defensive, or a combination of these two; determining the primary and secondary theaters; and allocation of forces to each theater.

The objectives of naval/maritime strategy must be determined in consonance with the political and military strategic objectives. Policy determines what objectives should be pursued by strategy in case of war.¹¹ Clausewitz, in his On War, wrote that the most essential factor in trying to bend the enemy to one’s will is the political object (or objective) of war. The latter, in turn, determines both the military objective to be accomplished and the amount of effort it requires.¹² Clausewitz also noted that sometimes political and military objectives can be identical. This is usually the case in a war of conquest. In general, when the military objective and the political objective are identical in scale, if the political objective is reduced, the military objective must be reduced proportionately.¹³

The political strategic objective should be expressed clearly and concisely. This would seem to be a relatively easy task for decision makers. Yet, all too often, political objectives are ambiguous, poorly defined and articulated. The reason is that politicians prefer not to be too specific for fear that if the objectives are not accomplished, domestic opponents and foreign leaders will consider the entire effort a failure. Hence, foreign policy objectives are often defined in terms of aims or goals rather than objectives. However, these terms should be used in expressing national or alliance/coalition interests. They are of little or no use to military commanders and their planners.

The intensity of a war is directly related to the importance of the political objective.¹⁴ The lesser the importance of the political objective, the easier it is to abandon it.¹⁵ A war in which the political strategic objectives for both sides are considered vital will be fought to the utmost exertion¹⁶

Political strategic objectives can be limited or unlimited in scope. Limited political objectives range from the threat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Maps
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Strategic framework
• 2 Sea control
• 3 Obtaining and maintaining sea control
• 4 Destroying the enemy’s forces by a decisive action at sea
• 5 Destroying the enemy’s forces by a decisive action at their bases
• 6 Destroying the enemy’s forces over time
• 7 Containing the enemy’s forces
• 8 Choke point control
• 9 Capturing the enemy’s important positions and basing areas
• Select bibliography
• Index