Maritime Strategy and Global Order

Markets, Resources, Security

Daniel Moran, James A. Russell, Daniel Moran, James A. Russell

• Publisher: Georgetown University Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781626160729, 9781626163003
• eBook ISBN: 9781626163010
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Taken for granted as the natural order of things, peace at sea is in fact an immense and recent achievement—but also an enormous strategic challenge if it is to be maintained in the future. In Maritime Strategy and Global Order, an international roster of top scholars offers historical perspectives and contemporary analysis to explore the role of naval power and maritime trade in creating the international system.

The book begins in the early days of the industrial revolution with the foundational role of maritime strategy in building the British Empire. It continues into the era of naval disorder surrounding the two world wars, through the passing of the Pax Britannica and the rise of the Pax Americana, and then examines present-day regional security in hot spots like the South China Sea and Arctic Ocean. Additional chapters engage with important related topics such as maritime law, resource competition, warship evolution since the end of the Cold War, and naval intelligence.

A first-of-its-kind collection, Maritime Strategy and Global Order offers scholars, practitioners, students, and others with an interest in maritime history and strategic issues an absorbing long view of the role of the sea in creating the world we know.

Part I

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Long War—Long Peace

CHAPTER 1

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The Pax Britannica and the Advent of Globalization

ANDREW LAMBERT

Between the downfall of Napoleon and the outbreak of World War I, Britain sustained and exploited unequaled naval and economic power that enabled it to build a world empire of profit. This last great maritime empire, like those that went before, was built on money and communications. As one contemporary observed, Britain had become “a world Venice.”¹ The British expanded trade and provided ever-faster communications across secure oceans—entirely in their own interest, it should be stressed—creating the modern, globalized world in the process. Although other states profited from British activity, entering new markets without the costs of control, and expanding their economic horizons, few adopted the model. Without sea power to dominate the oceans, it would have been unwise to invest heavily in global economic activity when the outbreak of war would allow the British to seize those investments. Similarly, few understood the subtle, elegant way in which Britain harmonized public and private interests, employing critical assets for commerce and war, to keep down costs.

Yet this elegant construction disguised profound weaknesses and critical vulnerabilities. The primary threat to this unique, highly advantageous global position came from the one part of the world that Britain could not control: the continent of Europe. If Britain exerted significant influence in Europe, it was because its aims were essentially negative: the maintenance of an approximate equilibrium in which no hegemonic power dominated the western continent, while ensuring that the key invasion staging posts of the Rhine and the Schelde rivers remained in the hands of minor powers. Threats to this situation in 1815, 1830, and 1870 saw the British act quickly and effectively.

The Pax Britannica

Although Britain’s bombastic self-justification in the late nineteenth century made a conscious connection with the Roman imperium, the reality of British power was strikingly different from the classical model. The British did not rule the known world, they were not a military power, and they avoided, whenever possible, the need to rule peoples and collect taxes. Yet there remains an element of truth; both the Romans and the British imposed peace for a purpose. The British Pax was a highly fluid system of global control that evolved to provide cheap security and expanding trade, to ensure low taxes and high employment at home, both to satisfy the increasingly powerful middle-class voters and to defuse domestic instability. Whatever late Victorian apologists might have implied, the British worked to sustain peace because peace was better for business, and they had no ambitions that required them to attack another major power. They did not so much impose peace as work to sustain it in defense of their interests.

The purpose of Pax Britannica was to avoid international activity that threatened British interests, European or imperial. Stability and peace were good for business, for capital exports, and for the vital flow of food and raw materials into the British Isles. And they could only be sustained by a maritime strategy that relied on industrial and technological leadership, and sustained economic commitment to secure long-term dominance. This required constant, sophisticated monitoring and low-level interventions, with occasional bursts of intense activity, deterrence, arms races, and colonial seizures in response to the most blatant threats.

In contrast to the detailed operational-level planning that underlay the emergence of the Prusso-German strategic concept for land warfare in the mid–nineteenth century, the British Pax evolved a more diversified, flexible, and responsive approach, the first recognizably modern grand strategy, relying on the integration of civil and military leadership. Not having the luxury of planning for predictable wars against its continental neighbors, Britain emphasized higher-level preparation based on intelligence gathering, information dominance, and technological superiority, while planning to mobilize reserves of seaman and ships from the private sector, along with industry and finance.

In the first half of the nineteenth century, strategy was determined by the cabinet, which included statesmen with experience giving higher direction to war between 1803 and 1815. In addition, the cabinet could call on the advice of senior officers and outside experts as required. After the death of Henry Palmerston in 1865, the cabinets gradually compensated for their lack of military expertise by evolving a formal civil–military coordinating body, which became the Committee of Imperial Defense in 1904, ensuring that Britain went to war in 1914 with a uniquely capable system for the higher direction of global conflict. The civilians retained control of the higher direction of war and the military planned strategy and operations, while commercial and industrial expertise could be co-opted to win the conflict. In 1914 Britain thought and fought on a global scale. Its rivals, which included its allies, did not. This outlook reflected the fact that British policymakers operated at the junction between commerce, capital, and strategy.

One of the key strengths of the British system was that it remained open to new, often informal, inputs. Connections between the state, commerce, shipping, engineering, banking, insurance, science, and geography were extensive, and often personal. Key individuals linked information, power, and application; for instance, John Barrow, for forty years permanent secretary to the Admiralty, was an expert on China, and a founder of the Royal Geographical Society—the informal strategic intelligence organization that served the Admiralty, the War Office and Foreign Office, and Indian and other colonial governments. Barrow’s advice, and that of the opium merchants Jardine Matheson Company, provided Britain with an effective strategy to fight China in 1842. Steamships and hydrographers turned this intelligence into effectual action, enabling a small amphibious task force to seize the southern end of the Grand Canal. With London thus having denied Beijing its rice supply, China made peace the next day.²

Sea Power

If sea power provided the core of the Pax Britannica, it must be understood as far more than the armed might of the Royal Navy. The sea was central to Britain’s security, prosperity, and stability. Sea power was not a strategic option; it was an existential necessity that dominated every sphere of British life, from political calculation to popular culture. The Royal Navy may have been Britannia’s right arm, but it was organically connected to every other sinew of the British body politic. Such total engagement between nation and ocean was not unique, but Britain would be the last maritime great power. Although the British chose a Roman metaphor to express their power, they understood that their sea-based economy and culture owed far more to Athens and Venice, empires that owed their very existence to the sea. Like those classical precursors, Britain’s sea power reflected weakness, not strength. Its sea power enabled it to overcome its geographical limitations and lacks of natural resources through external trade, colonies, and an alternative strategy based on economic warfare. The English consciously chose to become a sea power in the early sixteenth century, and long before 1815 they had evolved a distinctive state that depended on the ocean. If Britain lost the ability to use the sea, it would be utterly destroyed. As Admiral John Fisher observed, “It’s not invasion we have to fear, but starvation!” British sea power provided strategic defense for a maritime empire. By contrast, modern usage treats sea power as a power projection asse...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: Long War—Long Peace
• Part II: Regional Security
• Part III: Architecture
• Conclusion: Maritime Strategy and the Next World Order
• Contributors
• Index