BOOK REVIEW: NAVY STRATEGIC CULTURE

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Navy Strategic Culture: Why the Navy Thinks Differently.
By Roger W. Barnett. Annapolis. Naval Institute Press. 2009. 223 pages. Notes, bibliography and index. $28.95

 

Reviewed by Walter Hall

 

“Seapower is our heritage…Seapower is not merely a fleet of ships and planes. Seapower reaches into every phase of our national life.” --Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz

 

April 20, 2010 (San Diego) --San Diego is still a Navy town. Navy is spoken here; Navy values and modes of thought are as ubiquitous as naval memorials and street names. What is it that renders those “that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters” such a special breed?

 

This wise and rewarding book, by a former Naval War College faculty member, provides insight to that life, into the unique culture of those who have gone to sea and then, their service complete, returned to make further contributions to the larger San Diego community.

 

Captain Roger Barnett, USN (Ret) took a gamble with the organization of his material, dividing it into two parts – a series of nine short essays, followed by a large section of quotations. The advantage is not immediately apparent. But as readers move through the chapters, each one enhanced with a matching section of carefully selected quotes, their appreciation will only grow. The combination yields a rich mix of perspectives, along with multiple signposts for further reading.

 

Barnett’s insights will resonate with San Diegans and may be especially useful to some members of our Congressional delegation. Representative Duncan Hunter’s simplistic call for more defense spending, so oddly out of touch with professional military thinking (See Union Tribune, 4 April 2010) is a case in point. With wisdom and judgment, Barnett’s analysis offers a powerful antidote to the empty conventions of op-ed commentary on defense.

A perennial issue for navy thinkers and maritime analysts is how naval forces can make a strategic difference. This is not an idle question. With the launch of the Air Force as a separate service, the Secretary of Defense sincerely felt that there was no longer any reason to maintain a Navy and Marine Corps. “The Navy is on the way out,” declared Secretary Johnson in 1949.

 

More recently, with the heavy commitment of the Marines to ground warfare in Iraq, some observers wondered aloud whether America really needed, or could afford, two land armies. The debate continues; shrinking resources will raise voices and rancor in coming years.

 

Barnett follows scholar Colin Gray in arguing that “Seapower is not about the military effect of fighting ships; rather it is about the use of maritime lines of communication” for multiple purposes in the national interest. Do we need a navy to do that? We do. And this book explains why the U.S. Navy’s strategic culture, not gray hulls, is the vital asset.

 

What then is that culture? Barnett’s distillation is hard to improve on: “An expeditionary, systems-based approach to warfighting in forward areas of the world’s oceans on mobile platforms, offensively oriented, self-reliant, and adaptable to rapidly changing events.” And today it drives a naval force that Secretary Johnson would scarcely recognize, much less propose to mothball.

 

By teasing out the various threads of that culture, Barnett explains why, fully 24 years after the Goldwater-Nichols Act created the imperative for jointness, it is still so difficult. Shaped and tested by the maritime context, the Navy does think differently. And that is, more often than not, a good thing.

 

Rear Admiral J.C. Wylie expressed it best: “These differences of judgment, these clashes of ideas, these almost constant pullings and haulings among the services are the greatest source of military strength the nation has. We do differ, within and among the services, and may Heaven help us if we ever enter into a period of sweetness and light and unanimity.”

 

Barnett charts the evolution of post-war maritime technologies from the early days of the combat information center (CIC) to the original thinking and innovative concepts underlying network-centric operations. And he gives equal time to the evolution of the rules for engaging adversaries at sea. During the Cold War, the Incidents at Sea Agreement with the Soviet Union established a code of conduct for operations on the high seas. The Agreement shaped the culture of the two navies and chilled some of the reckless cowboy behavior on both sides.

 

The story culminates with the recent maritime strategy for the three sea services of the United States: the Navy, the Marine Corps and the Coast Guard. Issued in late 2007 as “A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower” the joint document addresses the “what’s the Navy for?” question head on. (See http://www.navy.mil/maritime/)

 

What seapower means for Americans is made clear in the opening paragraphs of the Strategy. “The maritime domain – the world’s oceans, seas, bays, estuaries, islands, coastal areas, littorals and the airspace above them – supports 90 percent of the world’s trade, carrying the lifeblood of a global system that links every country on earth.” Nimitz was right; seapower does reach into every phase of our national life.

 

The freedom and safety of travel and communications across open seas and skies are still underwritten by the U.S. Navy and her sister sea services. They are guided by a strategy that "…focuses on opportunities - not threats; on optimism - not fear; and on confidence - not doubt. It recognizes the challenges imposed by uncertain conditions in a time of rapid change and makes the case for the necessity of U.S. seapower in the 21st Century." Barnett’s fine volume gives greater texture and meaning to the language of the strategy. Equally, it tells us much about life and living, in maritime San Diego.

 

For a final word on the continued relevance of the sea services, let’s turn to America’s premier nuclear strategist Bernard Brodie: “Regardless of how impregnable our defenses are, and they can never be perfectly so, our security in the world is jeopardized if we can not inflict vital injury on any nation which menaces us, or our legitimate interests. And for this, our Navy is indispensable.” Amen.

Walter Hall is the pseudonym of a La Mesa-based writer and national security analyst. He is a principal at Black Swan Advisors, a communications consultancy.

 


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