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Education

Sustaining an Intellectual Overmatch: Management Education for Our Naval Warfighters

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By Dr. Mie Augier, Major Sean F. X. Barrett, Dr. Nick Dew, and Dr. Gail Fann Thomas

“The 21st Century demands American officers be far better educated and more capable of directing and integrating the Nation’s military instrument.” –Developing Today’s Joint Officer for Tomorrow’s Ways of War1

“The challenges of the twenty first century require holistic approaches to the changing character of conflict.” –Education for Seapower2

Introduction

The Joint Chiefs of Staff’s May 2020 vision and guidance for Professional Military Education (PME) and talent management states, “There is more to sustaining a competitive advantage than acquiring hardware; we must gain and sustain an intellectual overmatch as well.”3 Developing flexible, agile minds was also a major theme a century ago in the Knox-King-Pye report, which helped the Navy steer away from an earlier technical education focus and toward broader skills that helped produce the ideas and leaders that proved critical in WWII.

Fast forward 100 years, and we have reached another inflection point. Numerous studies point to a geostrategic environment that has shifted radically in the past decade toward a future that is filled with uncertainty. The Navy and Marine Corps have realized that key aspects of our institutions, war planning, training, education, and resource management are inadequate to deter and, if necessary, win against our adversaries when the situation arises.

We should look at how management education, with its interdisciplinary and integrative focus, is an essential tool for developing future naval warfighters who have the skills to draw out peak performance from personnel and maximize the effectiveness of a wide range of naval organizations.4 Most people know from personal experience the difference that excellent management makes to organizational performance. A recent study shows that workers who moved from an average boss to a high-quality boss improved their productivity by 50 percent.5 Leaders with high-quality management skills can really make an impact. And while the context of management varies, the practice of management across a broad range of situations fundamentally requires a similar set of core skills.6 Given the need for the Navy team to perform at its peak under challenging circumstances, the Navy would be well-served by incorporating more management education into PME for both officers and enlisted sailors.

The Human Element in High-Performance Organizations

Our naval forces do not operate in a vacuum and are oftentimes nudged by larger economic and societal trends. Therefore, it is worth looking briefly at some general trends in U.S. management before turning to what specifically might be relevant to defense management.

Industries throughout the U.S. have been grappling with issues similar to those facing the naval services. Technology is changing faster and faster. Attracting, engaging, and retaining top talent is an unrelenting task. In response to these challenges, corporations have recognized the need to create learning organizations that support high performance. Evidence of these issues in the Navy is apparent in recently retired Vice Admiral Luke McCollum’s 2018 report in response to the 2017 U.S. Navy ship collisions. The report, Industry Best Practices & Learning Culture – The Competitive Advantage of a Learning Culture, provided a series of findings after surveying 30 Navy-relevant corporations to learn how they build and sustain high-performing organizations. Human factors topped the list. 

The most important component of building a learning culture is inculcating these “human factors” into the organization. High-performance and mission effectiveness are dependent on the humanistic aspects of employees, teams, and leaders. This people-centric perspective dominates high-performing organizations.7

This human-oriented theme has long been recognized by our naval leaders. Admiral Arleigh Burke clearly understood the importance of developing the Navy’s leaders:

“There is one element in the profession of arms that transcends all others in importance; this is the human element. No matter what the weapons of the future may be, no matter how they are to be employed in war or international diplomacy, man will still be the most important factor in naval operations.”8

More recently, the Joint Chiefs emphasized the human factor in their May 2020 report:

“All graduates must possess critical and creative thinking skills, emotional intelligence, and effective written, verbal and visual communication skills to support the development and implementation of strategies and complex operations.”9

Given the centrality of the human element to our naval success, we must understand how to manage it well. This involves a shift in the kinds of skills, capabilities, attitudes, and values at the center of PME. Two central issues stand out.

An increasing need for generalist skills in an uncertain world. In his book, Range, David Epstein claims that cognitive flexibility is increasingly important in today’s world. Training in specific tools and techniques is efficient for mastering repetitive, well-structured problems. However, a world full of uncertainty, ambiguity, and ill-structured problems requires more diverse skills and knowledge (i.e., range and flexibility). Cognitive flexibility manifests in the ability to transfer knowledge between domains and apply knowledge to new situations, which is increasingly important in today’s specialized world. Teaching broad concepts rather than specific information is more advantageous to developing this ability, as well as instilling a broad intellectual preparedness and the ability for ongoing learning. Warfighters need to learn how to think rather than what to think about. As the Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon cautioned, “What we must avoid above all is designing technologically sophisticated hammers and then wandering around to find nails that we can hit with them.”10 An ability to think abstractly can be capitalized on across a range of problems as opposed to specific skills that are limited to particular types of problems. Thus, instruction focused on helping students make connections is more conducive to learning and later achievement than focusing on formulas and procedures.11 Such skills are very relevant to warfighters where there is a high need for flexibility and taking initiative in executing operational orders.

An explicit focus on soft skills. Operating effectively in a world in which technology has connected individuals and organizations more than ever requires warfighters with sophisticated soft skills in addition to technological expertise. The President of the Naval Postgraduate School, Vice Admiral Ann E. Rondeau, USN (ret.), explains, “Employers today require the whole package when looking for people to hire and join their teams… They want individuals who have developed intangible skills not necessarily listed as part of a certificate or degree.”12 Today’s reality requires warfighters to have the soft skills necessary to manage organizational ecosystems where leaders do not necessarily wield formal authority but instead must build mutually aligned communities. As Richard Straub writes in the June 2019 Harvard Business Review, “To succeed in the era of platforms and partnerships, managers will need to change practice on many levels…Both practitioners and scholars can begin by dispensing with mechanistic, industrial-age models of inputs, processes, and outputs. They will have to take a more dynamic, organic, and evolutionary view of how organizations’ capacities grow and can be cultivated.”13 Soft skills have thus emerged as a key requirement for managing the performance of ecosystems of organizations.”14

By identifying the Navy’s requirements for high-quality management skills among its warfighters, we can invest in PME that equips naval warfighters with the skills they really need to lead a wide range of naval organizations to high performance.

Management Education for Seapower

Given the need for superior generalist and soft skills to match the challenges of the strategic environment the Navy faces, management education provides many key opportunities for warfighters to develop the right intellectual abilities. Some of the most relevant themes and approaches include the following:

Educating minds to be prepared for the unexpected. Retired Admiral Mike Mullen, who spoke at the Naval Postgraduate School’s first virtual SECNAV Guest Lecture, stated, “We live now in a tremendous time of great uncertainty and even greater ambiguity. We’re facing and will face a completely new, and in many ways unknown, reality where nothing will be the same in the future.”15 Management approaches and education can help in this instance. Management education is centrally concerned with anticipating and adapting to change. It develops proactive problem-solving skills. While the ability to analyze known problems using optimizing techniques has a place, it is important for the Navy also to focus on developing warfighters with skills in thinking through ambiguous and changing situations.16

Leading warfighting organizations to become more agile through change and transformation. In their May 2020 report, the Joint Chiefs observed, “We cannot simply rely upon mass or the best technology…Our job is to learn how to apply our capabilities better and more creatively.”17 Admiral Mullen similarly emphasized the importance of leading change.18 However, change is not easy. For example, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates noted in his memoir, Duty, that the greatest challenge he faced was changing organizations. Any change, to be effective, must be understood and communicated by people to be implemented in our organizations. In the DoD, this becomes even more complicated because it involves government civilians, military personnel, and contractors, and requires leading across generational divides and a diverse workforce. Given these complexities, warfighters need to use evidence-based approaches on how to best lead change.19

Excelling in communication skills. An intelligent workforce knows how to communicate clearly. Kline’s “Owl Speaks to Lion” humorously describes the detrimental results when an analyst does not know how to translate his findings adequately for the vice admiral who requires the results to make an important decision. Such skills are taught and honed over time and experience. One critical communication skill that must be fostered is writing. The writing process hones one’s thinking and helps one discover the real problem, define the root causes of the problem, and describe the costs and benefits of various courses of action.20

Building exemplary people skills. As the Department of the Navy’s Education for Seapower report explains, “[N]aval leaders must be just as ready to…solve a social problem below decks or in the platoon” as they are “to move against the enemy.”21 Research shows that emotional intelligence, coaching, and feedback upward, downward, and horizontally are key to high performing organizations. And these skills are not “one and done.” Each level of leadership presents new challenges concerning the types and complexity of the problems encountered and the number of people one leads. Social skills are developmental and change over the life of the leader. Additionally, there is evidence that leaders’ skills are directly related to retention. Most have heard the adage, “Employees don’t leave their organization; they leave their managers.”22 Good bosses not only contribute to the high performance of their employees but also increase employee retention because workers quit bad bosses.23

Understanding the influence of cultures. Complementary to (but different from) traditional international relations approaches, management and leadership education emphasize understanding how culture influences decision-making and how it affects collaboration. This is increasingly important to warfighters in an era featuring more and more “shared responsibility for security with other nations,” wherein “[s]trong global relationships and defense partnerships help mitigate the risks of…unpredictability.”24 Greater mutual understanding and mutual trust has enormous practical value in operational environments.

Developing meaningful organizational leadership skills. Vice Admiral Rondeau notes the essential connection between leaders and their organizations: “Leaders set the tone for the culture of their organizations. Meaning of the community, no matter how defined, becomes essential for interconnectedness, for bonding, and for understanding. It all has to do with the relationship between the organization and the individual.”25 The Navy’s PME institutions are uniquely positioned to develop warfighter skills in how to communicate and build essential interconnections using best practices from both civilian and military approaches to leadership development.

Building historical understanding to be decisive in the future. In an operational environment featuring a lack of combat deployments, we must increasingly turn to history to learn vicariously through others. The first President of Marine Corps University, Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper, USMC (ret.), reflected, “I wanted to impart a simple lesson: a properly schooled officer never arrives on a battlefield for the first time, even if he has never actually trod the ground, if that officer has read wisely to acquire the wisdom of those who have experienced war in times past.”26 A champion of PME throughout his career in Congress, Representative Ike Skelton also recognized the importance of an appreciation for history: “I cannot stress this enough because a solid foundation in history gives perspective to the problems of the present. And a solid appreciation of history…will prepare students for the future.”27 Management education has long championed these kinds of vicarious learning through the extensive use of case studies. The case study approach heightens students’ sensitivity to history, context, and the particulars of a wide variety of situations. It gives warfighters a reservoir of examples to draw on as they face an unpredictable future.28

These elements of management education can help naval warfighters improve their personal performance and create a higher-performing Navy team that is better positioned to cope with the unpredictability of the future operating environment. In an era when investment dollars are at a premium, these management skills should be emphasized to a greater extent in PME because they provide high return on the Navy’s investments. Management skills can be applied across a wide range of situations and roles, and they typically stay relevant longer than technical skills. Management skills are particularly valuable for warfighters that advance into higher-level positions that usually involve more complex organizational and leadership challenges, and less technical know-how.29 A recent study by Harvard economists David Deming and Kadeem Noray puts it this way:

“[High]-ability workers choose STEM careers initially, but exit them over time…[This] is explained by differences across fields in the relative return to on-the-job learning. High ability workers are faster learners in all jobs. However, the relative return to ability is higher in careers that change less because learning gains accumulate”(emphasis added).30

Return on investment explains why management degrees (principally MBAs) dominate lists of the most popular graduate degrees, since individuals know that as their careers advance, the returns on graduate education favor developing strong management skills.31 Investing in management know-how is also less risky than investing in technical knowledge because the general applicability of management skills means they never abruptly go out of fashion.

Conclusion

“Whoever can make and implement his decisions consistently faster gains a tremendous, often decisive advantage. Decision making thus becomes a time-competitive process, and timeliness of decisions becomes essential to generating tempo. Timely decisions demand rapid thinking, with consideration limited to essential factors. We should spare no effort to accelerate our decision-making ability.” –FMFM 132

The changing geostrategic landscape demands changes in the skillsets of our naval leaders. Because of rapid advancements in technology, the human element will play an increasingly important factor in future operating environments. While tactical naval warfighters need to be technically savvy, operational-level warfighters must excel in the managerial skills needed to get peak performance out of the human element. Fundamentally, this is a general management challenge that applies across a wide range of Navy organizations. The Education for Seapower study and strategy, and the remarks of our naval leaders highlight that this entails a paradigm shift in our approach to PME. The Navy should invest more in management education to develop the intellectual and practical competencies required for excellence in naval warfighting.

Dr. Mie Augier is a professor in the Graduate School of Defense Management at the Naval Postgraduate School and a Founding Member of the Naval Warfare Studies Institute (NWSI). She is interested in strategy, organizations, innovation, leadership, and how to educate strategic and innovative thinkers.

Major Sean F. X. Barrett is an active duty Marine Corps intelligence officer. He is currently the operations officer for the Headquarters Marine Corps Directorate of Analytics & Performance Optimization.

Dr. Nick Dew is a professor at the Graduate School of Defense Management at the Naval Postgraduate School. His research is focused on entrepreneurial thinking and innovation in defense organizations.

Dr. Gail Fann Thomas is an associate professor in the Graduate School of Defense Management at the Naval Postgraduate School. Her research focus is strategic communication and interorganizational collaboration.

References

1. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Developing Today’s Joint Officers for Tomorrow’s Ways of War: The Joint Chiefs of Staff Vision and Guidance for Professional Military Education & Talent Management, (Washington, DC: 2020), 2.

2. Department of the Navy, Education for Seapower (Washington, DC: 2019), 37.

3. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Developing Today’s Joint Officers, 2.

4. We acknowledge the difference between management and leadership. Both can be learned and contribute to peak performance for naval officers. See, for example, Bernard Bass, The Bass Handbook of Leadership:  Theory, Research, and Managerial Applications (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010); John Kotter, “What Leaders Really Do,” Harvard Business Review (Dec. 2001): 2; Abraham Zaleznik, “Managers and Leaders: Are They Different?” Harvard Business Review (Jan. 2004): 1.

5. Kathryn L. Shaw, Bosses Matter: The Effects of Managers on Workers’ Performance: What Evidence Exists on Whether Bad Bosses Damage Workers’ Performance, Issue 456 (Bonn, Germany: IZA World of Labor, 2019).

6. Shaw, Bosses Matter.

7. Luke M. McCollum, Chief of Naval Reserve, Report on Engagement With Industry and the Competitive Advantage of Learning Culture, submitted to Secretary of the Navy, December 26, 2018.

8. As quoted in Rear Admiral P. Gardner Howe III, “Professionalism, Leader Development Key to Future,” Navy News Service, May 26, 2015, https://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=87319.

9. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Developing Today’s Joint Officers, 4.

10. Herbert A. Simon, “What We Know About Learning,” Journal of Engineering Education 87, no. 4 (Oct. 1998): 346.

11. David Epstein, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World (New York: Riverhead Books, 2019).

12. Anne Rondeau, “Gen Eds – Are They Worth It?” HuffPost, March 29, 2017, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gen-eds-are-they-worth-it_b_58dbc980e4b0f087a3041ea4.

13. Richard Straub, “What Management Needs to Become in an Era of Ecosystems,” Harvard Business Review, June 5, 2019, https://hbr.org/2019/06/what-management-needs-to-become-in-an-era-of-ecosystems.

14. Such soft skills include communication, teamwork and interpersonal skills, critical thinking, and problem-solving capability in complex, multidisciplinary situations. Casciaro, Edmondson, and Jang note that “the vast majority of innovation and business development opportunities lie in the interfaces between functions, offices, or organizations.” Similarly, Hagel and Brown observe the “productive friction” that results from transactions between companies. Strong interpersonal skills are needed for these results to manifest themselves. See Tiziana Casciaro, Amy C. Edmondson, and Sujin Jang, “Cross-Silo Leadership: How to Create More Value by Connecting Experts from Inside and Outside the Organization,” Harvard Business Review (May-June 2019): 132; John Hagel III and John Seely Brown, “Difficult Business Partnerships Can Accelerate Innovation,” Harvard Business Review (Feb. 2005), https://hbr.org/2005/02/productive-friction-how-difficult-business-partnerships-can-accelerate-innovation.

15. Admiral Mike Mullen, USN(ret.), “SECNAV Guest Lecture” (lecture, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, May 19, 2020).

16. In the context of business, Jeff Bezos notes, “For every leader in the company, not just for me, there are decisions that can be made by analysis…These are the best kinds of decisions! They’re fact-based decisions. The great thing about fact-based decisions is that they overrule the hierarchy. The most junior person in the company can win an argument with the most senior person with a fact-based decision. Unfortunately, there’s this whole other set of decisions that you can’t ultimately boil down to a math problem.” As quoted in Bernard Girard, The Google Way: how One Company Is Revolutionizing Management As We Know It (San Francisco, CA: No Starch Press, Inc., 2009), 118.

17. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Developing Today’s Joint Officers, 3.

18. Michael Mullen, “Admiral Michael Mullen: Wharton Leadership Lecture,” October 27, 2008, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OD7AfDQhZbw.

19. Jeroen Stouten, Denise M. Rousseau, and David De Cremer, “Successful Organizational Change: Integrating the Management Practices and Scholarly Literatures,” Academy of Management Annals 12, no. 2 (2018): 752-788.

20. Carol Bekenkotter, “Writing and Problem Solving,” in Language Connections: Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum, eds. T. Fulwiler and A. Young (Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1982), 33-44.

21. Education for Seapower, 15.

22. Lori Goler, Janelle Gale, Brynn Harrington, and Adam Grant, “Why People Really Quit Their Jobs,” Harvard Business Review, January 11, 2018, https://hbr.org/2018/01/why-people-really-quit-their-jobs.

23. Shaw, Bosses Matter.

24. Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas B. Modly, “SECNAV VECTOR 8,” January 24, 2020.

25. Ann E. Rondeau, “Identity in the Profession of Arms,” Joint Force Quarterly, no. 62 (3rd Quarter 2011): 11.

26. Paul K. Van Riper, “The Relevance of History to the Military Profession: An American Marine’s View,” in The Past As Prologue: The Importance of History to the Military Profession, eds. Williamson Murray and Richard Hart Sinnreich (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 53.

27. Ike Skelton, “JPME: Are We There Yet?” Military Review 72, no. 5 (May 1992): 2-9.

28. This is complementary to a pure war college perspective in that it blends history with organizations and a strategic lens and is thus more broadly applicable and provides greater understanding for students who can learn from the process of developing and applying analogies to different contexts.

29. See, for example, a survey of Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni, in National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, The Integration of the Humanities and Arts with Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in Higher Education: Branches from the Same Tree (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2018), 44-45.

30. David J. Deming and Kadeem Noray, “STEM Careers and the Changing Skill Requirements of Work,” Working Paper (June 2019), 3, https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/ddeming/files/dn_stem_june2019.pdf.

31. For example, see “Most Popular Graduate Degrees,” Master’s Programs Guide, accessed May 26, 2020, https://www.mastersprogramsguide.com/rankings/popular-masters-degrees/.

32. U.S. Marine Corps, FMFM 1: Warfighting (Washington, DC: 1989), 69.

Featured Image: Facilities of the U.S. Naval War College (U.S. Navy Photo by Jaima Fogg/Released)

Podcast

Sea Control 205 – Women in Maritime Security with Dr. Ruxandra Bosilca and Dr. Jessica Larsen

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By Ruxandra Bosilca

This episode kicks off a special Sea Control podcast series focusing on women in maritime security. Dr. Jessica Larsen joins the program to discuss the importance of gender equality in the maritime sector, the main gender stereotypes that women face at sea, a number of initiatives addressing equality and inclusion in maritime professions, and more.

Download Sea Control 205 – Women in Maritime Security with Dr. Ruxandra Bosilca and Dr. Jessica Larsen

Links

1. Women in Maritime, IMO’s Gender Programme.

2. “Empowering Women in the Maritime Community,” Kitada, M., Carballo Piñeiro, L. & Mejia, M.Q, WMU J Marit Affairs 18, 525–530, 2019. 

3. “How to get more women seafarers on board,“ Liezelle Kumalo and Denys Reva, Institute for Security Studies (ISS), July 7, 2020.

4. “Barriers to work highlighted by female seafarers at European Shipping Week,“ Nautilus International, February 24, 2020.

Ruxandra Bosilca is a Research Fellow at the Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences and the Social Media Coordinator for CIMSEC.

Contact the CIMSEC podcast team at [email protected].

Podcast

Bilge Pumps 18: Alex and Drach Unsupervised

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By Alex Clarke

Today it’s just two naval history geeks, and so it is a two-parter as Alex and Drach wrestle with RapidRazorback’s question: what bits of history do we think have been forgotten that need to be remembered?

We’ve made it to Episode 18 and this will be the first time a crewmate is missing from the  Bilge Pumps crew. So be prepared to be very afraid because this could be long, this could go down rabbit holes, we could start out discussing history and end up debating sci-fi…Honestly, the only people more scared than you of what this could be is Drach and Alex themselves. But still, for you, they did it! 

So after all that what is Episode 18 about? Well, the #Bilgepumps team after being so topical for so many weeks, is continuing this by asking what history has been forgotten that shouldn’t be. Come listen and see how long Alex manages to contain himself from discussing HMS Unicorn! 

#Bilgepumps is a still newish series and new avenue, although it may no longer have the new car smell, in fact more of pineapple/irn bru smell, with the faint whiff of cork– but we’re getting the impression it’s liked, so we’d very much like any comments, topic suggestions or ideas for artwork to be tweeted to us, the #Bilgepump Crew (with #Bilgepump) at Alex (@AC_NavalHistory), Drach (@Drachinifel), and Jamie (@Armouredcarrier). Or you can comment on our Youtube channels (listed down below).

Download Bilge Pumps 18: Alex and Drach Unsupervised, Part 1


Download Bilge Pumps 18: Alex and Drach Unsupervised, Part 2

Links

Alex Clarke is the producer of The Bilge Pumps podcast.

Contact the CIMSEC podcast team at [email protected].

Africa

Crippled Capacity: How Weak Maritime Enforcement Emboldened Ansar al-Sunna

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By Kelly Moss

Two months ago, the insurgent group Ahlu Sunna Wal Jamaa (“Ansar al-Sunna”) attacked the strategic port of Mocímboa da Praia in Mozambique for the second time in six months. Unlike the day-long siege on March 23rd, Ansar al-Sunna has occupied Mocímboa da Praia since August 13th, indicating a significant escalation in insurgent capabilities.

Ansar al-Sunna was established in Mozambique in 2015 and became increasingly violent beginning in October 2017. Attacks have centered on the Cabo Delgado province, where the group originated, particularly the coastal town of Mocímboa da Praia. Despite having a formal affiliation to the Islamic State’s Central Africa Province, the insurgency finds deeper roots in local socio-economic and political grievances stemming from an emerging and exploitative regional liquified natural gas industry, and perceived and actual political marginalization by the state, amongst other things. However, the insurgency has reportedly seen incoming recruits from other East African countries, raising concerns over the potential regionalization of this primarily local conflict.

Regardless, the Mozambican government’s repressive response, eerily similar to tactics used in Nigeria’s counterterrorism campaign against Boko Haram, has only served to stoke domestic tensions and fuel anti-state propaganda in support of Ansar al-Sunna. In terms of maritime capabilities, Stable Seas’ new report, Violence at Sea: How Terrorists, Insurgents, and Other Extremists Exploit the Maritime Domain, demonstrates that since March, Ansar al-Sunna has increasingly used the sea for operational and financial purposes, including moving supplies and fighters for tactical support, targeting ports and coastal communities, and exploiting pre-existing maritime-enabled illicit trafficking networks for funding.

This story is much bigger than Ansar al-Sunna’s most recent attacks. Speculation over Mozambique’s response to the group, particularly discussions of regional engagement by the Southern African Development Community and South African Navy, raises questions about the role of the maritime domain in countering Ansar al-Sunna, highlighting the importance of strong national maritime enforcement capacity and its pivotal role in countering violent non-state actors (VNSAs) globally.

The Criticality of Maritime Enforcement Capacity

Maritime Enforcement Capacity (MEC) can be broadly defined as the ability of a state to effectively monitor its territorial waters and exclusive economic zones, and enforce maritime legislation, including those targeting trafficking networks and illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing. States with high MEC can successfully interdict transnational criminal actors, conduct operations, and patrol their waters to defend against intra- and inter-regional threats, and respond in real time to maritime-based threats. Absent strong MEC, even the most well-developed maritime security legislation is rendered effectively useless – a fact willingly and aggressively exploited by nefarious actors.

Enter Mozambique. With a Stable Seas Maritime Security Index MEC score of 31, the fourth lowest in East and Southern Africa, Mozambique’s control over its territorial waters and related activities is severely limited. This is largely due to an underdeveloped navy with limited operational capacity to enforce maritime security along the Mozambican coast, the fourth longest in Africa. According to multiple sources, domestic naval operations are slim due to a lack of serviceable assets (12 patrol and coastal combatant vessels), exacerbated by a lack of available fuel for training missions. Furthermore, naval personnel estimates are small compared to the rest of the Mozambique Defense Armed Forces (FADM), with 2020 estimates suggesting 200 active naval officers out of 11,200 FADM troops.

A map of jihadist attacks along Mozambique’s coastline (Graphic via The Economist)

To attempt to boost this low MEC, the Mozambican government has taken steps toward improvement, including asset procurement, regional exercise participation, and bilateral maritime cooperation agreements. Regarding assets, Mozambique purchased three HSI 32 Interceptor naval patrol vessels from France in early 2016 and was donated 10 speedboats and two other fast interceptor boats, along with military training, from Portugal and India in 2018 and 2019. Mozambique also routinely participates in regionally-led trainings with other East African Djibouti Code of Conduct signatories, as well as maritime security trainings by the International Maritime Organization and Cutlass Express, a maritime training exercise for East African countries that is supported by U.S. Africa Command and U.S. Naval Forces Africa. Additionally, Mozambique has recently pursued bilateral maritime cooperation agreements with Italy, India, and Seychelles. Despite these laudable efforts, MEC remains limited, as demonstrated by the recent inability of the FADM to defend and reclaim control of Mocímboa da Praia’s port from Ansar al-Sunna.

Weak Maritime Enforcement Capacity Emboldens VNSAs

So what does MEC have to do with VNSAs like Ansar al-Sunna? Weak MEC emboldens VNSAs both directly and indirectly, thereby allowing them to exploit diminished interdiction capabilities, limited operational assets, and strategic confusion.

Weak Interdiction Capacity

Weak interdiction capabilities facilitate illicit trades, contributing to the sustainability and longevity of VNSAs. A key dimension of MEC is the ability of states to apprehend illicit products that are trafficked to ports (via containerized shipments) and offshore landing sites (via small dhows). Due to Ansar al-Sunna’s elusive nature, speculation abounds as to where the group’s funding streams lie, but it is believed that illicit trades play at least some role. This is reinforced by the fact that Mocímboa da Praia is a longstanding hub for these types of trades. Of the numerous illicit trafficking networks in the region (timber, rubies, wildlife, gold, etc.), narcotics are the most likely industry for Ansar al-Sunna engagement, according to the Global Initiative for Transnational Crime. Indeed, one of the world’s largest heroin trafficking routes spans Africa’s east coast from Pakistan to South Africa. Mozambique is a key transit point on that route, one that has been increasing in recent years, per the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. While it is unlikely that Ansar al-Sunna has been able to fully infiltrate these markets, the group likely has control over some coastal landing sites in the area, allowing them to levy taxes on heroin, as well as other illicit products. These funds can then be used to procure arms, recruit individuals, and finance operations. Should Ansar al-Sunna retain control of Mocímboa’s port in the long-term, these funding streams could increase.

To increase interdiction capabilities, and by extension MEC, Mozambique and other states should focus on strengthening port inspection processes and training relevant authorities, addressing domestic corruption that allows illicit goods to flow through major ports, and modernizing port technology to minimize vessel wait times that can result in insufficient inspections.

Limited Operational Assets

Limited operational assets and other domestic response capabilities make deterring and responding to maritime-based VNSA attacks difficult, leaving coastal areas vulnerable to attack. Responding in real-time to VNSA attacks requires the state to have adequate force numbers, weapons, and other assets. For attacks committed in the maritime domain, this means having serviceable vessels and a robust naval force, both of which are lacking in Mozambique. Without these, the state cannot thwart active attacks or deter VNSAs from exploiting the maritime domain for operational purposes. Even more concerning is when assets do exist, but training and institutional knowledge on how to actually use them is limited, hindering the utility of these vessels.

In Mozambique, this asset vulnerability has allowed Ansar al-Sunna to target coastal communities and military assets with little consequence, including the port in Mocímboa da Praia. In the August 13th attack, preliminary reports suggested that the group resupplied itself with weapons, fighters, and supplies via dhows, contributing to Ansar al-Sunna’s resilience. This tactical exploitation of the maritime domain has continued, resulting in attacks on numerous surrounding islands, including the September 9th attacks on Ilha Vamizi and Ilha Metundo. At this point, it is important to note that naval forces are not inherently necessary to disrupt attacks on ports, or on other land-based maritime assets, but that they are a useful deterrent mechanism, and in some cases, an integral response mechanism to VNSA attacks at sea.

While acquiring assets is the easiest way to improve the operational dimension of MEC, this is not feasible for certain states. Even when vessel acquisition is part of foreign maritime capacity-building efforts, this does not always translate to assistance with the operating costs of acquired vessels. In these situations of financial constraint, there is still room for improvement, including training land-based forces in amphibious warfare and basic port operations, providing robust technical training to armed forces on available and serviceable naval assets, and leveraging intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities to track VNSA activity before attacks happen. For Mozambique, this could involve leveraging the Regional Maritime Information Fusion Center in Madagascar.

Strategic Confusion 

Domestic operational limitations make coordinating a strategic response to maritime-based VNSAs difficult, delaying response times, stoking regional tensions, and elevating group notoriety. When VNSAs execute significant attacks via the maritime domain and the targeted country is unable to adequately respond because of low MEC, uncertainty abounds as to what happens next. If the recipient country decides that it wants maritime assistance and support from other regional actors, independently or through a unified response, questions then arise as to whose responsibility this becomes.

Food aid is seen at a World Food Programme (WFP) site for people displaced in Cabo Delgado province, in Pemba, Mozambique, August 25, 2020. (WFP/Falume Bachir/Handout via Reuters/File Photo)

For Mozambique, does the onus fall on regional actors with the strongest navies and coast guards, such as South Africa? As Leighton Luke raises, will the South African Development Community activate Articles 6 and 9 of their Mutual Defence Pact? Or will recent discussions about European Union involvement come to fruition? If so, will these forces be amphibious or primarily land-based? Who is ultimately responsible in countering VNSAs when the host country cannot? As this confusion and ambiguity abounds, drawing the attention of regional and international actors, VNSAs reap benefits. In the case of Ansar al-Sunna, regional discussions since May and the onslaught of international attention amidst a continuing occupation since August 13th has lent the previously little-known group from northern Mozambique international legitimacy and notoriety.

To mitigate the political and strategic uncertainty that can result from low MEC, it is important for regional security institutions to have maritime security strategies in place that broadly delineate responsibilities in the case of maritime VNSA attacks against an operationally-limited country. In these resource-constrained countries, it is also important to incorporate the maritime domain into national counterinsurgency and counterterrorism strategies. This would be a useful mitigative action and allow for a more holistic response to the maritime capabilities of VNSAs, should the need arise.

Conclusion

Taking a more expansive view, Ansar al-Sunna’s most recent campaign serves as a warning for other states with low MEC. Whether or not maritime-capable VNSAs are currently present in a state should not deter states from taking action now. The threat is too real. In a mere five months, Ansar al-Sunna became one of the most active maritime-oriented VNSAs on the African continent, highlighting the importance of closing domestic maritime security gaps. Ultimately, investing in MEC is a holistic mitigative and response measure to the myriad threats posed by VNSAs, one that will reward proactive states best and better position them to successfully counter future threats.

Kelly Moss is an African Maritime Security Researcher at Stable Seas, a program of One Earth Future. Her research and publication background focuses on terrorism and substate violence in sub-Saharan Africa. Kelly graduated from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, where she received her master’s degree in Security Studies, and has worked at three U.S. federal government agencies, including the Bureau of African Affairs at the Department of State.

Featured Image: The sun rises as fishermen seek clams and bait in Pemba, Mozambique, July 12, 2018.(Reuters/Mike Hutchings/File Photo)