Vietnam’s Vice Defense Minister Nguyen Chi Vinh told Reuters on Monday at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore that the country expects to receive patrol boats from Japan early next year.
This is the first timeline provided by either side, where as recently as Friday at the same conference Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said only that Japan was “moving forward with the necessary survey to enable us to provide such vessels to Vietnam.”
Japan’s assistance comes as both nations engage with China in high-stakes territorial rows over disputed islands and their attendant Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) – Japan over the Senkakus/Diaoyus in the East China Sea, and Vietnam over the Paracels/Xishas in the South China Sea.
Vietnam’s lack of capacity to defend its claimed EEZ was highlighted when it unsuccessfully tried to disrupt the operations of a Chinese oil rig moved into waters off of Zhongjian Island in the Paracels last month, sparking water cannon battles, collisions, and the sinking of a fishing vessel.
Patrol-boat aid for Vietnam has been on Japan’s agenda since at least late 2013. Vietnam reportedly sought 10 Japanese patrol boats as early as April last year, and Abe confirmed in December that the two nations were in talks over a deal. The exact number of patrol boats, their specifications, and whether they would be procured through a Japanese-secured soft loan have not been confirmed.
Last week, Abe told the Japanese Diet that Japan would be unable to provide Vietnam with used, likely more-capable coast guard vessels in the near term due to its own need for maritime capabilities in the current environment. Abe at the time made no mention of the provision of new vessels for Vietnam, although he had agreed in March to send a survey team to the country to research the possibility of a donation.
While it is unclear which maritime departments within Vietnam would receive the vessels, Hanoi took the step in October of transferring the Vietnam Marine Police from the Navy to the Coast Guard to make it eligible for the vessels under Japan’s Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) rules which prohibit aid from use for military purposes.
Japan has in recent years agreed to other patrol boat “gifts” to Southeast Asian nations. In 2007, it provided three new 27 meter patrol vessels to Indonesia and agreed last July to provide ten 40-meter vessels to the Philippines, slated to begin arriving in the Philippines in the third quarter of 2015. While the Philippines deal is also called a donation, the vessels are being procured through a $184 million soft loan announced in December.
In addition to patrol boats, Japan has over the past decade engaged in a variety of programs aimed at boosting the maritime capabilities of Southeast Asian nations, including counter-piracy, search and rescue, and maritime domain awareness training and assets.
Maritime capacity building aid for Vietnam has been forthcoming from the United States as well. In December U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the U.S. would give Vietnam $18 million to develop its maritime capacity, including funds earmarked for five fast patrol boats, and the U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard have increased training engagements with the nation since 2010.
In April, Abe and President Obama released a joint statement affirming their joint commitment to, “assist Southeast Asian littoral states in building maritime domain awareness and other capacities for maritime safety and security so that they can better enforce law, combat illicit trafficking and weapons proliferation, and protect marine resources.
Seen as a dual-purpose effort to maintain regional stability by enhancing sea lanes defenses against maritime crime and boosting the deterrence capabilities of those in territorial disputes with China, the partnership is likely to manifest itself in future coordination in the region.
LT Scott Cheney-Peters is a surface warfare officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve and the former editor of Surface Warfare magazine. He is the founder and vice president of the Center for International Maritime Security (CIMSEC), a graduate of Georgetown University and the U.S. Naval War College, and a member of the Truman National Security Project’s Defense Council.
This essay is part of the Personal Theories of Power series, a joint Bridge–CIMSEC project which asked a group of national security professionals to provide their theory of power and its application. We hope this launches a long and insightful debate that may one day shape policy.
Matthew Hallex and Bruce Sugden are defense analysts in Northern Virginia. Their opinions are their own and do not represent those of their employer or clients.
Harold Winton suggests “strategic theory has one foot in reality and another in concepts.”[1] Strategic thinking about nuclear weapons, as practiced in the United States, certainly has one foot in concepts, but its grounding in reality is much shakier. Nuclear thinkers had no data-rich nuclear history to work from and so they built their theory upon deductive models. The result is a body of thought that reflects less an understanding of the worth of nuclear weapons for military practitioners than a collection of elegant models and American preferences that are confused with universal truths. In addressing the topic of nuclear weapons and strategy, we attempt to offer not a novel construct for thinking about nuclear weapons, but to highlight some of the shortcomings of the dominant approach to thinking about strategy and nuclear weapons and to suggest some guideposts to improve strategic thinking.
What’s the use of strategic theory?
Strategic theory should assist the strategist in formulating an effective strategy and should shed light on the proper use of force.[2] The primary take-away a strategic theory should offer the military practitioner is not a collection of lessons that will lead to victory, but, as Frans Osinga stated in his study of John Boyd’s strategic thinking, an illumination of guideposts or “things that need thinking about. It must provide insight and questions, not answers.”[3] This echoes Clausewitz’s observation that theory is a guide to self-education.[4] It is about creating the proper cast of mind to think about the use of force in a particular strategic environment and to consider the relationships between ends, ways, and means within that context.
What is wrong with the dominant U.S. approach to thinking strategically about nuclear weapons?
Lawrence Freedman makes a useful distinction between strategists and the group of “nuclear specialists” who arose in the early days of the Cold War when the insights of classical strategy seemed inadequate to the challenge posed by nuclear weapons.[5] These specialists developed nuclear thought into a technical discipline that relied on deductions and models and grew insensitive to the operational and political challenges of nuclear use — the challenges that a strategic theory must address if it is to be useful for practitioners.
The escalation ladder is one example of the work of nuclear specialists. While the 44 rungs of Herman Kahn’s ladder, covering all states of conflict from peace to Armageddon, has value as an analytical heuristic, its value for military practitioners is less clear. As Colin Gray points out “because one can conceive of thresholds for thought, it does not follow that those thresholds in fact exist. An escalation ladder, in the minds of a harassed policy maker, may offer an illusion of control…that is likely to be negated by the systemic nature of conflict. In the mind of the adversary, some of the rungs may be missing.”[6]
To wit, the ladder metaphor has never fit well with the Russians’ view of escalation. While the American approach to escalation, which often times is incremental and gradual, was reflected in the linear concept of the escalation ladder, Russian strategic thought has seemed to have at its core the idea of “rapid, large-scale escalation.” In the 1960s, Russian strategists expected intercontinental nuclear strikes between the United States and the Soviet Union to occur at the same time as, or precede, major combat in the theaters bordering the Soviet Union.[7] Furthermore, as Stephen Meyer showed in his study of Soviet doctrinal writings, the “destruction of military-industrial targets in the strategic rear (i.e., in the US and Britain) would have taken place during the initial stages of the conflict.”[8] In the 1990s, former Soviet military officers and defense officials revealed to DOD contractors that in the 1970s the Soviets did not think of “managing a nuclear war by climbing a ladder of escalation . . . .”[9]
Since 2000, in the wake of U.S.-NATO military operations against Serbia, Russian strategists have been speaking of “de-escalation of military operations” with an eye on deterring the intervention of the West into conflicts within Russia’s “Near Abroad.” In other words, they are thinking about employing nuclear weapons to compel a strong opponent to de-escalate and lower tensions on terms favorable to Russia.[10] Russian military exercises and simulations have included “limited” nuclear strikes against military targets in Europe, the Asia-Pacific region, and in the continental United States using long-range air-launched cruise missiles.[11]
Contemporary American strategic dialogue has done little to address the inadequacies of “golden age” nuclear thinking. Rather, it has abandoned serious thinking about the role of nuclear weapons in strategy. A tremendous amount of ink is spilled discussing the characteristics and strategies of a conflict between China and the United States, for example, with almost no thinking about the role of nuclear weapons aside from a generalized desire to “control escalation” and remove the prospect of nuclear use from consideration in that envisioned great power war. The discussion of the role of nuclear weapons in the national security of the United States is reduced to determining the smallest number targets to be serviced rather than engaging with the strategies and doctrines embraced by our potential adversaries.[12]
These decades-spanning problems with the U.S. approach to thinking strategically about nuclear weapons have a common problem: they confuse U.S. preferences and experiences with universal insights into the nature of nuclear weapons. For the early nuclear thinkers it was a product of lacking insight into what Russia and other nuclear states thought about nuclear weapons and how they developed their strategies and doctrines. In the face of incomplete information, the early thinkers extrapolated from U.S. nuclear thought. Contemporary U.S. thinkers, broadly speaking, have decided that nuclear use is impossible or at least serves no military ends, and therefore it is simply unnecessary to engage as seriously with nuclear weapons as their Russian and Chinese counterparts continue to do.
How to improve strategic thought
How then should we think strategically about nuclear weapons? Strategic thinking needs to be liberated from dense prose and a fondness for systems analysis and game theory (as useful as they are in their own right) in looking at particular military problems and made accessible to practitioners. Nuclear thought that would be useful for military practitioners will have three features:
1. Placing nuclear weapons in the broader strategic context. “Nuclear strategy” is not a separate beast from “strategy.” While the technical implications of nuclear weapons were significant they did not truly change the nature of war, nor did they change the ways by which we should think about it. Strategic designs and campaign plans ultimately act upon human minds to shape decision-making, but because we cannot know with certainty how adversary decision makers will develop their own strategies and react to our strategy and threats, even a strategy of deterrence has to have at its core war-making capabilities.[13] Plain and simple: a strategy designed to deter nuclear weapons use might fail, and so the United States might have to employ nuclear weapons to achieve its war aims. If nuclear strategy is to be useful it must be grounded in the broader strategic discussion focused on human psychology, decisions, and action. Thucydides and Clausewitz are no less useful in the nuclear age, and nuclear weapons and operations should be integrated into this deeper conversation about the ways U.S. means could be employed to achieve political ends.
2. Nuclear thought has national character. U.S. thinking about nuclear weapons must be responsive to foreign ideas about nuclear use if it is to be relevant to military practitioners. Furthermore, most bodies of military theory reflect the contributions of thinkers from different national and strategic contexts, addressing different geopolitical and military challenges and different technical environments. Mahan and Corbett offer different and often contradictory approaches to addressing seapower but make the discussion richer for it. In the contributions of the U.S. thinkers of the Cold War, we may have our nuclear Mahan. Now we need to be on the lookout for a nuclear Corbett among the thinkers of Russia, China, and other nuclear powers.
3. Thinking about nuclear weapons and strategy should be military minded. Nuclear weapons are not an abstraction; they are weapons. If strategy is to be serious it must grapple with this fact directly. Taking a lesson from Russian strategic thinking and nuclear war planning, we need to think about how countries might employ nuclear weapons in conjunction with other means to achieve their ends, and how the United States might have to threaten to use or actually employ nuclear weapons to achieve its war aims, especially if preferred conventional military means turn out to be inadequate to the military tasks at hand.[14] U.S. policies can change quickly in a crisis or a conflict when the president determines that vital U.S. interests are at stake, and U.S. military practitioners need to be ready to apply all the military tools at the disposal of the president.
This essay by Nick Prime is part of the Personal Theories of Powerseries, a joint Bridge–CIMSEC project which asked a group of national security professionals to provide their theory of power and its application. We hope this launches a long and insightful debate that may one day shape policy.
“The primary aim of the strategist in the conduct of war is some selected degree of control of the enemy for the strategist’s own purpose; this is achieved by control of the patterns of war; and this control of the pattern of war is had by manipulation of the center of gravity of war to the advantage of the strategist and the disadvantage of the opponent.”[i]
This theory of control, whereby the aim of war is some measure of control over the enemy, and the achievement of this degree of control is the purpose of strategy, was most cogently expressed by Admiral J.C. Wylie. Its origins however date back to the early 1950s. When Wylie, along with Admiral Henry Eccles and German-American historian Dr. Herbert Rosinski, developed a general theory of strategy around this central concept of ‘control’. While each of the three men’s conceptions of this theory reflected variances in nuance and expression. All three sought to understand the interplay between politics, power, and control. The focus herein will be on the value of this theory as a means to understand strategy as something which exists and is practiced both in the physical and cognitive domains.
Understanding the Terms
A half century ago Wylie remarked that the study of strategy lacked a clear and consistent vocabulary, a statement that is as true today as it was then.[ii] In addition to the many definitions of strategy itself, there are as yet no established definitions for the terms and concepts which serve as the foundational elements for our understanding of strategy. It is important then to provide, in brief, a working conception of these terms so that their interplay can be shown in each domain.
Perhaps the most simple and practical definition of politics is that provided by Harold Lasswell who defined it as “the way people decide who gets what, when, where, how, and why”.[iii] Here we see the first unstated but unmistakable emphasis on choice as critical to understanding the concept. Another unstated but clear emphasis is on the role of authority, a crucial element in the practice of politics. As Lawrence Freedman has noted there is a critical interplay between power and authority, with a great deal of debate being had as to whether the two concepts are exclusive or extensions of each other.[iv] Freedman’s discussion of power in a strategic sense (what he dubs ‘strategic power’) also emphasizes a duality between physical and cognitive. Though he makes clear distinctions between the physical expression as force (or the capability to use force) and the cognitive expression, what he sees as its perception in the mind of the ‘target’ or ‘beholder’. While his focus on strategic power is largely on ‘coercive capacity’ the important term there is capacity.
Wylie saw politics as “the allocation, use, transfer of power” a conception which echoes both the interplay between power and authority, while also reflecting an emphasis on capacity.[v] Power then could perhaps best be thought of as energy, capable of existing in various forms such as watts of electrical charge or calories of food. Politics then is the means by which the power of a group, institution, or nation state is marshalled, allotted, and/or directed. Strategy then should be viewed as the mechanism by which the capacity (power) created through politics, is applied towards the aim of a given policy. The assertion of authority or more appropriately, control. Herein lies the subtle but distinct difference between Freedman’s conception of strategy and that of Wylie, Eccles and Rosinski. Freedman defines strategy as “the art of creating power to obtain maximum political objectives using available military means.”
Rosinski, whose understanding of strategy resembles that previously quoted by Wylie, defined strategy as the comprehensive direction of (military) power, applied through tactics, for the purpose of control.[vi] The difference between Freedman’s theory and the control theory is subtle but significant. By placing the emphasis on strategy’s purpose as being (some measure of) control, they are focusing on the application of power, in contrast to Freedman’s focus on the creation of power.
Control as Cognitive & Physical
In developing their theories of strategy both Wylie and Rosinski placed the bulk of their emphasis on control in the physical domain or ‘field of action’. As the intention was to establish control as a general theory of strategy, it was critical that theory bear equal relevance to each of the commonly identified ‘domains’ of conflict (land, sea, and air). In each of the respective domains the relevance and contribution towards control was measured when contrasted against destruction. The importance of this distinction is simple but significant. Destruction serves strategy only insofar as it contributes towards the achievement of control.
Implied in this emphasis on control, as opposed to an emphasis on destruction, is the focus on economy of force. By limiting the destruction and focusing it towards asserting a ‘selected degree’ of control over ‘key centers of gravity’ and/or ‘lines of communication’, control seeks to solve the challenge posed by strategy in the most economical means possible.[vii] Many theories of strategy lack this critical balancing. Favouring an emphasis on destruction, which can and often does become counterproductive. Strategies premised first on destruction emphasize as the primary means the use of (or through coercion, the threat to use) force. These strategies fail to account for the myriad of other means through which some measure of control, or contributions toward it, can be achieved. Such as political or economic pressures which can contribute towards control, adding to coercion, while curbing destruction only to that which is necessary. As Lukas Milevski noted, “control and coercion run along a single set of tracks: only the living can be threatened and consequently controlled, but they can only be so if, due to the expected cost or due to fear, the choice of continuing is less palatable than that of accommodating.”[viii]
Wylie and Eccles also provide valuable and insightful observations on the cognitive aspects of control. For Wylie, the manipulation of the physical centers of gravity would, through its effect on the “equilibrium” of the conflict, effect the “critical decisions” of the adversary.[ix] According to Rosinski, strategy became a means of control by taking “into account the multitude of possible enemy counteractions.”[x] Eccles, in expanding on the point made by Rosinski, stressed the importance of a clear understanding of both the strategist’s own objectives and those of his adversary. He viewed this as crucial to the holistic formation of sound strategic action. Understanding that objectives (both the strategist’s own, and those of his adversary) were a critical expression of both the actions and choices, which one had to control through strategy.[xi]
This emphasis on choice is critical, as Wylie noted, with respect to deterrence-based strategies predicated on the threat to use force. As the coercive effect of this threat to use force is itself a degree of control.[xii] The ability to control by dictating, limiting, or removing the choices of the opponent, is then implicit in the cognitive side of the control theory.
Why It Matters
There is a great deal of value to be derived from understanding this control theory of strategy. This understanding of the control theory allows the strategist to perceive, under the same conceptual framework. Both those physical strategies which utilize and rely on the direct application of force and destruction, to achieve the desired political ends. As well as those strategies of coercion and deterrence, reliant upon other measures to achieve that selected degree of control required for the desired ends of policy. Violence is inherent in the nature of war, but not in the nature of strategy (broadly defined), and certainly not in the nature of conflict.
The character of contemporary conflicts whether diplomatic or political, as illustrated by recent events in both the South China Sea and the Ukraine, has shown that power can be created and the aims of policy can be achieved through more than the simple application of force. In this regard a framework that applies the same understanding of strategy to achieve a policy through brinkmanship, economic coercion, or the use of military force, is of significant utility.
[i] J.C. Wylie, Military Strategy: A General Theory of Power Control (Annapolis, 1989), 77-78.
[vi] H. Rosinski, ‘The Structures of Military Strategy’ (1956), 18-19
[vii] Wylie, Military Strategy, 77-78; H. Rosinski, ‘New Thoughts on Strategy’ (1955), 2.
[viii] L. Milevski, ‘Revisiting J.C. Wylie’s Dichotomy of Strategy: The Effects of Sequential and Cumulative Patterns of Operations’, Journal of Strategy Studies, 35:2 (2012), 231.
This essay is part of the Personal Theories of Power series, which asked a group of national security professionals to provide their theory of power and its application. We hope this launches a long and insightful debate that may one day shape policy.
The two giants of sea power theory, Alfred Thayer Mahan and Sir Julian Corbett, both touched on amphibious operations but both are properly considered sea power theorists. Mahan disliked amphibious operations, declaring that they were “harder to sustain than to make.” He judged them dangerous to those forces extended ashore and that this danger outweighed their potential benefit. In Mahan’s cost-benefit analysis of amphibious operations, they were a waste of resources. Mahan viewed the sea power side of the equation as decisive.
Corbett, however, was more of a fan. Corbett thought that naval forces could rarely be decisive on their own and thus need the ability to project land forces ashore to achieve a decision. But, amphibious forces are dependent on naval forces for protection from enemy naval forces, supply and sustainment, and fire support. For Corbett, the land power side of the equation is decisive.
A little known theorist came down right in the middle. Lieutenant Colonel Earl “Pete” Ellis, USMC, wrote about naval and amphibious strategy in the early 20th Century, including the Marine Corps’ contribution to War Plan Orange, Advanced Base Operations in Micronesia. Ellis viewed amphibious power as a symbiotic relationship between land and sea power. Expeditionary land forces are dependent on naval forces for the necessary sea control, transport, sustainment, and fire support. Naval forces are dependent on those land forces to secure key littoral terrain for protection and to secure forward supply bases. In the course of this analysis, he identified the need for specialized, task-organized amphibious forces that could fill this niche, especially since amphibious assaults were becoming far more difficult in the face of modern artillery and machine guns. Since the focus of all of his writings was on those amphibious forces and their uses, he is perhaps the only amphibious power theorist in history. For Ellis, the mutually reinforcing symbiosis of land and sea power was decisive. He was proved correct during World War II: the US Navy could not strike at the heart of the Imperial Japan without seizing lodgments across the Pacific and Marine and Army forces could not seize those lodgments without Navy transportation, support, and sea control.
In Colin S. Gray’s Theory of War Taxonomy, this theory of amphibious power falls into a category along with Mahan, Douhet, and Schelling. It is clearly not a general theory nor is it a general theory of a domain as it exists at the confluence of land, sea, and air. It does explain “how a particular kind or use of a military power strategically affects the course of conflict as a whole.” A brief look at history illuminates this point.
The Influence of Amphibious Power on History
A few examples from history suffice to illustrate the timeless nature of amphibious power. The first occurred early in the Peloponnesian War. Sparta began the war dominant on land, while Athens was dominant at sea. While Spartan land power allowed her to ravage the fields before Athens herself, Athenian fleets plied the waters of the Mediterranean. In 425 BC, Thucydides landed a fleet at Pylos in Spartan-controlled territory. The fighting that occurred at Pylos and the offshore island of Sphacteria eventually led to the defeat and capture of about 300 Spartan hoplites by Athenian expeditionary forces. Land power and sea control did not lead directly to strategic effect, but the use of sea power to project land power to defeat and capture Spartan hoplites shocked the Greek world and led directly to the Peace of Nicias. The Athenians subsequently botched the peace and thus squandered the strategic effect garnered, but they would not have had the opportunity at all if not for the use of amphibious power.
The second example occurred during the Second Punic War. The sea control of the Mediterranean gained by the Romans after the First Punic War had profound strategic effects: it force Hannibal into a difficult march through the Alps which depleted the combat power he was able to bring to Italy and prevented significant reinforcement once he had gained a lodgment in Italy. His eventual defeat there, however, failed to end the war with Carthage. It was not until Scipio used sea control to project Roman land power across the sea to Carthage itself that decisive effects occurred and Carthage surrendered.
During the American Civil War, Union forces secured sea control early on and held it throughout the war as part of the Anaconda Plan. While the Anaconda Plan certainly produced strategic effects that choked the Confederacy off from reliable and consistent sources of supply, it did not have decisive effects by itself. In this case, amphibious power would not have decisive effects but the tactical level is interesting. Union General Ambrose Burnside was an amphibious visionary. As a Brigadier General, he formed an expeditionary force and developed radically new ship-to-shore tactics which allowed him to seize virtually all of coastal North Carolina for the Union.
Another waypoint in the history of amphibious operations occurred in 1915. During the Gallipoli campaign, British forces attempted to seize control of the Dardanelles from the Turks, allied with Germany. While the attempt failed, it is easy to see what kind of strategic effects victory could have produced. If British and French forces seize the Dardanelles, control of Constantinople could have easily followed, knocking Turkey out of the war entirely. Additionally, control of the Dardanelles would have allowed supplies from the Western allies to flow to the Eastern front, shoring up their Russian allies. The British and French had the sea power and the land power, but using both as amphibious power had great potential, if unrealized.
Lastly, World War II proved to be a high water mark for amphibious operations. In the Western theater, the Allies also largely secured sea control while Germany dominated the continent. That sea control granted the allies the ability to project power ashore in Africa, Italy, and eventually in France. In the Pacific Theater, the entire Allied strategy depended on amphibious power. A measure of sea control was gained by the U.S. after the battle of Midway, but amphibious power was necessary to secure lodgments to allow the U.S. to project force across the Pacific Ocean. That sea control had to be translated into force projection ashore at dozens of islands, producing a credible threat of an amphibious assault on Japan herself and the ability to use air power to strike Japanese soil.
Conclusions from Theory and Praxis
Sea power can enable land power, land power can enable sea power, and the projection of power ashore is now dependent on air power. The fusion of all of these capabilities is amphibious power.
Specialized troops are needed to wield credible and effective amphibious power. Burnside’s pick-up team of amphibious soldiers ran into daunting tactical problems in North Carolina. While U.S. Army troops drew on Marine tactics in the European theater, hard lessons had to be learned in North Africa and at Anzio and Salerno.
Despite the need for specialized troops to effectively conduct amphibious operations, amphibious operations are never solely the interest of marines. Navy forces and air support are essential to success and must train to the unique problems associated with projecting land power ashore. Armies are also concerned with amphibious operations. In a large scale conflict, there will not be enough Marines to conduct every assault. While the U.S. Army famously conducted more amphibious operations than the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II, they did so using doctrine developed by the Marines and capabilities already resident in the Navy.
Strategic Effects
There are numerous tactical lessons that can be learned from history as well. James Wolfe’s campaign in Quebec during the Seven Years War is illustrative as is MacArthur’s master stroke at Inchon in 1950. Both battles achieved far reaching strategic effects. Amphibious power provides options to the side that has it, and the mere threat of amphibious forces the opponent to expend resources to defend against it, constraining his options. During the Gulf War, U.S. Marine forces aboard ship in the Persian Gulf forced Iraqi forces to station seven infantry divisions along the Iraqi coast to prevent a landing, depleting their combat power in Kuwait. Amphibious power, in and of itself, will rarely be directly decisive at the strategic level. It does, however, indirectly contribute to strategic effects because of the options it grants to the joint force. It is usually necessary to establish beachheads through which ground forces can flow, it can extend the range and reach of air forces, and can control littoral chokepoints to ensure the safety of naval forces. Additionally, amphibious power forces the enemy to defend their shores everywhere an amphibious assault is possible, consuming their resources and tying down combat power. Shifting defenders from one shore to another simply opens up another opportunity for a successful assault. Thus, a theory of amphibious power explains how that particular capability can affect the course of conflicts.
Last week, Abe told the Japanese Diet that Japan would be unable to provide Vietnam with used, likely more-capable coast guard vessels in the near term due to its own need for maritime capabilities in the current environment. Abe at the time made no mention of the provision of new vessels for Vietnam, although he had agreed in March to send a survey team to the country to research the possibility of a donation.
