The following was originally published by the Leidos Chair of Future Warfare Studies of the Naval War College under the title Crafting Naval Strategy: Observations and Recommendations for the Development of Future Strategies. Read it in its original form here. It is republished here with permission and several excerpts will be featured.

Read Part One. 

By Bruce Stubbs

Observation 13

As previously noted, the term theory of victory can be somewhat confusing. There is no formal DoD definition for it, but broadly it is a hypothesis of how a nation intends to achieve strategic objectives during a conflict. It articulates how and why we think our actions will work. Ultimately, we use military force to change other nations’ will or wills. A theory of victory describes how we think our tactical- and operational-level actions will lead to achieving our strategic-political objectives.

The United States was supreme at the tactical and operational levels in Vietnam, but that dominance did not lead to a strategic or political victory. We had no successful theory of victory to link tactical- and operational-level successes to political victory.

A theory of victory is the conceptual means of establishing clear ends in the ends-ways-means equation. “Defining strategy in this manner gives us a tool for identifying a strategy, analyzing the conceptual clarity and logic of the strategy, and assessing the quality of the strategy. It provides a broad foundation from which all types of strategy can be defined, analyzed, and assessed, including corporate strategy, grand strategy, and military strategy.”²¹

Observation 14

In addition (or perhaps as an alternative) to beginning with a theory of victory, drafters of strategy should identify the central idea around which the document is to revolve. A very valuable treatise on strategy issued by the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence states as follows:

• “The innovative and compelling ‘big idea’ is often the basis of a new strategy.”
• “A strategy which has no unifying idea is not a strategy.”
• The central idea must bind the ends, ways, and means—and inspire others to support it.
• “In practice, the intent of all good strategies can be summed up in a page if not even better—in a paragraph.”²²

This is the most concise summary I have found concerning the need for a central idea in any drafting of strategy.

Hollywood movies provide outstanding examples of how an entire production can be built around a concisely stated central idea. The movie industry refers to a statement of the central idea as a log line, as in the example below.

This log line for the movie Jaws is one of the greatest of all time. It depicts the overarching storyline in an interesting, straightforward way, rather than focusing on details that might seem meaningless without the context of the bigger picture. It captures the entirety of the plot—and thus the essence of what the audience will experience—in a single sentence.

In communications, the human brain craves meaning before details. If the core message of a strategy can be captured in a single sentence, there is a higher probability the strategy will be effective. As noted in one of the endnotes to the introduction, the overarching American strategy during the Cold War can be summarized in one sentence: “to contain the expansion of the Soviet Union (and its influence) until the internal contradictions within communism bring about its own demise.” And that was what was achieved.

Observation 18

According to Samuel Huntington, the strategy—or, in Huntington’s words, the strategic concept—must explain the Navy’s role in implementing national security. It must describe how, when, and where the Navy expects to protect the nation. Without a strategy or a strategic concept of the Navy’s role, the public and political leaders will be (1) confused about the role of the Navy—uncertain whether its existence is necessary— and (2) apathetic to Navy requests for additional resources.

Note again Huntington’s use of the term strategic concept, not strategy. As Huntington uses it, strategic concept is similar to the term value proposition, and relates to what the introduction describes as the strategic vision. Again, this is much different from what the Joint Staff considers to be a concept.

What follows below is an expanded description of the Navy’s value proposition.

U.S. naval forces can be visible or invisible, large or small, provocative or peaceful, depending on what serves American interests best. The sight of a single U.S. warship in the harbor of a friend can serve as tangible evidence of close relations between the United States and that country or their commitment to each other. American naval forces can modulate their presence to exert the kind and degree of influence best suited to resolve the situation, whatever it is, in a manner compatible with U.S. interests. In a crisis in which force might be required to protect U.S. interests or evacuate U.S. nationals, but where visibility could provoke the outbreak of hostilities, American naval forces can remain out of sight, over the horizon, but ready to respond in a matter of minutes.

U.S. naval forces do not have to rely on prior international agreements before taking a position beyond a coastal state’s territorial sea in an area of potential crisis; U.S. naval forces do not have to request overflight authorization or diplomatic clearance. By remaining on station in international waters, for indefinite periods, naval forces communicate a capability for action that ground or air forces can duplicate only by landing or entering sovereign airspace. U.S. naval forces can be positioned near potential trouble spots without the political entanglement associated with the employment of land-based forces.

Although bases on foreign soil can be valuable, U.S. naval forces do not require them in the way that land-based ground and air forces do. Ships are integral units that carry with them much of their own support, and through mobile logistics support they can be maintained on forward stations for long durations. U.S. naval forces, moreover, are relatively immune to the politics of host-nation governments, whereas those governments can constrain operations by land-based forces significantly. As the U.S. military base structure overseas has diminished over recent decades, the ability of naval forces to arrive in an area fully prepared to conduct sustained combat operations has taken on added importance.

Observation 20

The essence of strategy is the making of hard choices. Unfortunately, most strategies, especially at the unclassified level, studiously avoid making hard choices; however, the reality of finite resources forces us to make these choices.

Listed below are several classic choices that strategists face that you should address early in your production process:

• State which objectives are not going to be pursued
• Describe how and where risk will be accepted
• Establish a pecking order for resources to achieve objectives

Observation 25

Almost every book on strategy insists that the crafters need to meet with the top leadership/chief executive officer (CEO) to ensure that guidance is direct and clear. As discussed earlier, this often is difficult. Yet it is imperative that the strategists have some degree of direct access if their efforts are to yield an approved, effective result that the leadership is committed to executing. An initial meeting should be held at the beginning of the project. Frequent and unimpeded access is needed to accomplish the following:

• Implement CNO guidance—not guidance altered by the agendas of the OPNAV directorates
• Provide unfiltered advice to the CNO, especially alternative views
• Proceed quickly and with a minimum of interference from others
• Ensure linkage between the strategy and the program objective memorandum
(known as a POM), other elements of the resource-development, force-capabilities, and force-development processes, all of which the CNO directs (the strategists/crafters need to remind the CNO of this necessary linkage)
• Ensure that the CNO receives Navy strategy products that reflect a consistent and aligned set of principles, concepts, and tenets regarding the Navy’s fundamental role in implementing national policy.

In his guidance to the drafters of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, then-SECDEF James N. Mattis (2017–18) stated, “As a practical matter, strategy cannot be built by a large group process. [OSD and the JS will lead a small team reporting directly to me.] . . . I will be personally involved in this effort. . . . The team will provide interim products. . . . These products may be provocative, as any good strategy requires hard choices. I expect you to review these as a means to genuine debate.”³⁰

Almost every defense official has expressed and expresses similar sentiments, but that does not mean they are translated into direct meetings with their strategists. Given the time constraints the senior leader (in this case, the CNO) faces, as previously discussed, the “front office” (which manages time and appointments) is unlikely to initiate an invitation. So the initiative to meet with the CNO must come from the crafters themselves (or their immediate boss), and they figuratively may have to “fight for it.” However, such fighting is necessary if the crafters are to do their work efficiently and avoid becoming overwhelmed by frustration and cynicism.

Observation 29

A strategy that cannot be communicated effectively is an ineffective strategy. The crafters of strategy not only bear a responsibility to make it understandable but must take the lead in building a strategic communications plan. You never can rely wholly on outside specialists (such as public affairs officers) to come up with a strategic communications plan. They simply do not know the strategy as intimately as the crafters do; thus they may not be able to capitalize on the nuances and internal messaging.

Build your strategic communications plan around the central idea. Have a clear core message. Your rollout plan must engage across multiple media venues. Have a scalable message suitable for any size venue. Understand that every action is a message—a strategic communication. Synchronize the message inside and coming from OPNAV and echelon components.

Observation 30

Whether or not one agreed with President Ronald W. Reagan’s policies or decisions, no one can deny that he was a great communicator who made his goals for his presidency simple and clear. He incorporated this core message into almost all his speeches, relating specific decisions to his general goal. Through this approach, the core message became a guiding philosophy, generating corresponding lines of effort for problem solving.

The single-core-message approach makes for a tight, internally consistent strategy and a subsequent network of supporting plans. Notice, too, that President Reagan’s message confined itself to three points.

This approach deserves emulation in any crafting of strategy. Unfortunately, the recent Navy attempts at strategy have not emulated this approach, particularly in 2019.

With so many different lists of priorities, themes, core messages, and lines of effort (LOEs) in 2019, it was difficult for the Navy to communicate its strategic policy goals with a single voice, so it could stay on message and be understood. There never was a real agreement on the Navy’s mission and desired end state.

The mission:

• From the Secretary of the Navy (SECNAV): “The Department of the Navy will recruit, train, equip, and organize to deliver combat-ready naval forces to win conflicts and wars while maintaining security and deterrence through sustained forward presence.”

• From the CNO: “The United States Navy will be ready to conduct prompt and sustained combat incident to operations at sea. Our Navy will protect America from attack, promote American prosperity, and preserve America’s strategic influence.” (Note that this is just the first two sentences of the four-sentence mission statement in the CNO’s Design 2.0 directive.)

The vision (or end state):

 • From the SECNAV: “A combat-credible Navy and Marine Corps Team focused on rebuilding military readiness, strengthening alliances, and reforming business practices in support of the National Defense Strategy.”

• From the CNO: “A Naval Force that produces leaders and teams, armed with the best equipment, who learn and adapt faster than our rivals to achieve maximum possible performance and is ready for decisive combat operations.”

Given that these lists, missions, and end states all reflect SECNAV and CNO direction, not much could have been done to align and simplify the Navy’s overall strategic message. There simply was too much divergence in language.

Observation 31

Authors Peter W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking write the following about the importance of narrative in today’s world:

“Narratives are the building blocks that explain both how humans see the world and how they exist in large groups. They provide the lens through which we perceive ourselves, others, and the environment around us. They are the stories that bind the small to the large, connecting personal experience to some bigger notion of how the world works. The stronger a narrative is, the more likely it is to be retained and remembered.

The power of a narrative depends on a confluence of factors, but the most important is consistency—the way that one event links logically to the next. . . . As narratives generate attention and interest, they necessarily abandon some of their complexity. . . . 

By simplifying complex realities, good narratives can slot into other people’s preexisting comprehension. . . . The most effective narratives can thus be shared among entire communities, peoples, or nations, because they tap into our most elemental notions. . . .

These three traits—simplicity, resonance, and novelty—determine which narratives stick and which fall flat. It’s no coincidence that everyone from far-right political leaders to women’s rights activists to the Kardashian clan speaks constantly of “controlling the narrative.” To control the narrative is to dictate to an audience who the heroes and villains are; what is right and what is wrong; what’s real and what’s not. As jihadist Omar Hammami, a leader of the Somali-based terror group Al-Shabaab, put it, “The war of narratives has become even more important than the war of navies, napalm, and knives.”

The big losers in this narrative battle are those people or institutions that are too big, too slow, or too hesitant to weave such stories. These are not the kinds of battles that a plodding, uninventive bureaucracy can win. As a U.S. Army officer lamented to us about what happens when the military deploys to fight this generation’s web-enabled insurgents and terrorists, “Today we go in with the assumption that we’ll lose the battle of the narrative.”³⁵

Since we do not want to “lose the battle of the narrative,” it is imperative that we apply a narrative approach to the crafting of naval strategy, as in the example below.

My own awareness of the power of the narrative approach started with an e-mail from Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., a retired U.S. Army colonel, author, and CEO of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, in February 2016. Krepinevich suggested that we not use the core attributes or characteristics of the Navy in isolation as the foundation of our message. Instead, he recommended that we attach a relevant, understandable purpose to each attribute by answering the question “To do what?” He gave an example from a conversation he had with a congressman, who stated, “I kinda get a 30-slide, high density, small font brief when it’s presented, but a week later, I can’t give you the logic train behind the brief.”

So Krepinevich suggested using the text shown here. The kernel of his suggested narrative is crystal clear and easy to remember: “China is building a big navy that is changing the strategic balance in the western Pacific.”³⁶ In contrast, the bureaucratic staff approach simply does not grab the reader’s attention; it lacks specificity and real-world logic, and generally is too abstract—which is fairly representative of military staff writing.

Read Part Three.

Bruce B. Stubbs, SES, is Director of Navy Strategy, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (OPNAV N7).

Featured Image: PACIFIC OCEAN (Nov. 17, 2021) Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Gridley (DDG 101) transits the Pacific Ocean during a navigation exercise. Gridley is underway conducting routine operations in U.S. 3rd Fleet. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Colby A. Mothershead)

The following was originally published by the Leidos Chair of Future Warfare Studies of the Naval War College under the title Crafting Naval Strategy: Observations and Recommendations for the Development of Future Strategies. Read it in its original form here. It is republished here with permission and several excerpts will be featured.

By Bruce Stubbs

Observation 1

All my comments flow from personal observations, but that is appropriate. The genesis of all effective strategies occurs within the minds of individuals. The drafting of a strategy may involve a team of researchers, thinkers, and writers, but the truly innovative ideas come out of group discussions only rarely. The group may develop, reinforce, and strengthen those ideas further through conversation and debate; however, the principal or fundamental idea guiding any strategic concept inevitably is the product of the personal study, education, contemplation, and experience of an individual strategist. Thought leader is a term used frequently to describe such a person, particularly in laudatory introductions and résumés. To some it is a grandiose term, but it is appropriately descriptive.

The standard caveat applies to this publication: these are my personal observations and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Department of Defense (DoD) or the Department of the Navy. Yet that caveat also applies to the generating thought of any strategy; the final, official document, signed or released by the proper authority, represents an official view, whereas a strategy in the process of development does not. I have been by position a thought leader in the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) and the Department of the Navy, as well as a student of strategy and history by avocation and passion. In providing these observations, I rely on over thirty years of experience in the development of strategic documents, including five years as the deputy director of strategy and policy on the staff of the Chief of Naval Operations (OPNAV) and then five more years as the director, during both stints as a member of the Senior Executive Service. Throughout this period, my position title, division designator, and relevant organizational chart have been adjusted, but the job has remained: to lead the drafting of plans and policies that direct service-wide decision-making and outline the objectives of the organization in a particular time and situation.

Time and situations change, and that is why effective strategy changes. These observations focus on the construction and production of naval strategies, not on the merits of a particular maritime or sea power strategy. During my ten years at OPNAV, I have served four Chiefs of Naval Operations (CNOs) and have had active and direct participation in the production of the following three capstone Navy service strategies (or strategic visions, as the introduction calls them):

• A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower: Forward, Engaged, Ready (2015)—an unclassified, tri–Sea Service document
• The Navy Strategy (2018)—a classified, U.S. Navy–only strategy
• The Naval Strategy (2020)—a classified and unclassified, tri–Sea Service document

Each of these strategic visions was designed for a particular situation—a problem set, one might call it—in which the U.S. Navy needed first to determine and then to explain how it could contribute most effectively and efficiently to the national security of the United States, identifying Navy objectives and the manner in which they would be achieved. Sometimes, of course, those objectives are not achieved before the situation changes. In this monograph, I will not debate the merits of the strategic visions to which crafting naval strategy I have contributed, but will outline elements of the craft applicable to the process of determining and explaining how the U.S. Navy could contribute most effectively and efficiently to the national security of the United States.

Within OPNAV, this process includes the development of Navy input for the production of U.S. national security strategy documents, such as the National Defense Strategy and National Military Strategy, as well as the drafting of other internal Navy strategic documents such as the U.S. Navy Arctic Roadmap 2014–2030, the Navy Strategic Plan series, the Navy’s “Strategic Laydown and Dispersal Plan,” and the first USN-USCG National Fleet Plan.

Prior to this assignment, in another life, I was one of the five principal authors of the first National Strategy for Maritime Security (2005), signed by President George W. Bush, as well as the principal author of the U.S. Coast Guard’s Maritime Strategy for Homeland Security, the Coast Guard’s first National Plan to Achieve Maritime Domain Awareness, the U.S. Coast Guard Strategy for Maritime Safety, Security, and Stewardship, and the first edition of Coast Guard Publication 1, U.S. Coast Guard: America’s Maritime Guardian. The common element in all these experiences is the knowledge and skillsets that the individual participants brought to the process.

Since my goal is to pass along the accumulated knowledge and experience in the crafting of strategy to those who will perform this task in the future, it is appropriate to acknowledge the importance and intellectual independence of the individual strategist.

Observation 2

What follows are the realities that need to be kept in mind always:

All strategy statements are political documents. Whatever their form, all strategy statements are political documents that reflect accommodations, compromises, agendas both overt and hidden, and prejudices. As the introduction refers to them, these factors are the expedients. Kori N. Schake, a scholar and former government official, writes that “[s]trategy divorced from politics leads either to irrelevance, because the strategy will not be employed, or disaster, when political leaders are confronted with the unexpected costs and consequences.”¹

Decision makers are subject to huge time demands. Senior leaders are caught up in pressing matters of the day and have limited time to reflect on weighty, long-term issues. This results in what might be called the difference between strategic thinking and strategy
thinking. Many senior leaders engage in strategy thinking, in that they contemplate plans to solve the pressing matters, which may range from putting together a service’s budget for the coming fiscal year to determining how to counter current gray-zone activity. Few have the time or inclination to engage in the type of long-range, service defining, “every assumption on the table” strategic thinking that is necessary for the craft of drafting a (reasonably) enduring strategic vision.

Everyone is a strategist. Col. Jobie S. Turner, USAF, expounds on this theme, noting the reality that “[i]n the Pentagon everyone fancies themselves a strategist. Every graduate of professional military education, every contractor with a new weapon system, every think-tank or consultancy pundit: all feel that if they were only given the chance, they could impose order with the right ‘big idea.’ Meanwhile, . . . ‘the programmers’ smile, content in their view that the budgets they build are the real strategy.”²

The staffing process dulls all strategies. This reality is in keeping with observation 1. Although innovative ideas start with the individual strategist, the addition of others during the staffing process necessarily affects those ideas. At best, the staffing process knocks off the rough edges and protects the interests of the decision makers from dangerous currents, ensuring that the strategy is more in keeping with their objectives; at worst, the tumbling and polishing of the ideas wear them down to almost nothing. As much as the individual strategic thinker might bewail the staffing process, this is the reality for many such projects.

Many of what pass for service strategies are really plans. Owing to the Goldwater-Nichols Act defense reforms (1986), the Naval Services no longer produce strategies such as the famous Maritime Strategy of the 1980s, which drove war and operations planning.³ Here I must confess that I disagree with the author of the introduction, who believes that such production is still possible. Yes, the services still must articulate how they intend to fight their service, but that articulation is more for force-development purposes than for actual crafting naval strategy force-employment purposes. Consequently, what passes today for Naval Service strategies are more in keeping with strategic plans or strategic concepts than pure military strategies that define the required military conditions for achieving national objectives.

Observation 3

Before you immediately plunge into drafting a strategy, you need to spend your time answering the five basic W questions of journalism: who, what, where, when, and why. This will ensure a solid foundation as you go forward. “[D]efining the 5Ws first [will open]
more avenues to talk about the ideas and concepts and also [result] in more buy-in from the [staffs]. . . . It sounds simple, but Simon Sinek is right: start with why.”⁴ Analyzing the who, what, where, when, and why allows for identifying the problems that create the need for a strategy, the knowledge of which is the starting point for framing the strategy’s objectives and determining the best way to craft it.

Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, USA (2011–15), drove home this point at his 2011 confirmation hearing with his reference to a quote attributed to Einstein. “[I]f you have an hour to save the world, spend 55 minutes of it understanding the problem and five minutes of it trying to solve it. And I think sometimes, in particular as a military culture, we don’t have that ratio right. We tend to spend 55 minutes trying to [figure out] how to solve the problem and five minutes understanding it.”⁵

I advise all teams of crafters to start their project with an inclusive session to hammer out agreement on the five Ws. The dividend on this investment will pay out in almost every later phase of the project. It is a very effective means of building an initial framework.

Observation 5

It has been my personal experience that the best approach in starting to draft any strategy is to use the ends-ways-means formula (others alter the order to ways-means-ends to reflect a bottom-up approach). For the purposes of developing naval strategy, it is “ultimately best understood as the interaction of three things, all within the context of risk assessment.”⁸ These are as follows:

• Ends—the goals or objectives that the strategic actor seeks to achieve
• Ways—the strategic actor’s plan of action for using the means available
• Means—the resources available to the strategic actor

Constructing a strategy with ends, ways, and means provides a clear, easy-to-follow train of logic.

The risk-assessment context includes an honest assessment of the assumptions the strategists are using to initiate the ends-ways-means construct. As Colin S. Gray advises, “To this fundamental triptych of ends, ways and means, it is advisable to insist upon adding the vital ingredient of ASSUMPTIONS. This fourth element is always important and typically reigns unchallenged as the greatest source of mischief for entire strategic enterprises.”⁹

The ends-ways-means formulation has become the semiofficial approach of DoD, reflected in joint documents and echoed in professional and policy journals. It is logical; it is easy to understand; it is not dependent on the elegance of the narrative; and it makes decision makers feel they are in charge of the effort (since, presumably, they have set the ends). “[A]ny strategy worth the name should articulate a clear set of achievable goals; identify concrete threats to those goals; and then, given available resources, recommend the employment of specific instruments to meet and overcome those threats.”¹⁰ As then-CJCS Adm. Michael G. Mullen, USN (2007–11), wrote in the foreword of the public National Military Strategy of the United States 2011, “The purpose of this document is to provide the ways and means by which our military will advance our enduring national interests as articulated in the 2010 National Security Strategy and to accomplish the defense objectives [ends] in the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review.”¹¹

Some critics question the ends-ways-means formula because the development of the means—in this case, defense acquisition—appears disconnected from the identification of the ends. A dismissive saying in DoD is that “amateurs discuss strategy; professionals discuss resources.” Arguably, defense acquisition programs do tend to take on lives of their own, seemingly regardless of changes in strategy. However, the largest defense programs take up to a decade to produce a system, making it logical that they survive incremental changes in strategy. Despite changes in presidential administrations and Congresses, American objectives do not swing wildly enough that most of these programs become irrelevant during their period of initial development.

Other critics charge that changes in technology drive strategy, not the other way around. Indeed, emerging technology would seem to be another factor that would influence the crafting of strategy, along with changes in the nature of the threat and the overall security environment (which would include diffusion of emerging technologies). Technology is thereby a driver in the same sense that all other geopolitical or geoeconomic factors are drivers.

Another criticism centers on the observation that “the United States goes to war with the forces it has, not the forces it would like.” The implication is that changes in a strategy rarely leave decision makers time to tailor the forces for its execution. However, that assumes that strategic visions last only for the short term; this mistakes the words crafting naval strategy of (new) strategy documents for the strategies themselves. The United States produced many strategic documents during the Cold War period, but the overall strategy rarely swerved.

My view is that these criticisms do not invalidate ends-ways-means as an initial approach. The strategy must connect available means to desired outcomes in creative ways, and reduce the sought-after outcomes if ways cannot be found. A good strategy avoids mismatches among the ends, ways, and means. For instance, if the means required to implement a strategy cannot be funded, then strategy must be revised by changing the ends or the ways to reduce the risk by managing the mismatches and ensuring alignment. As Colin Gray notes: “Even though strategists and those they sought to advise have been capable of adopting almost awesomely improbable assumptions, the game has always had to be about ends, ways, and means.”¹²

Observation 6

We tend to conflate strategy and planning. The essence of strategy is about making choices and setting priorities, such as the famous Allied strategy of “Germany first” in the Second World War. Strategy is what you want to do; your plan is how you actually will do it.¹³ As U.S. Army War College professor Harry R. Yarger notes,

“[t]he purpose of planning is to create certainty so that people and organizations can act. The purpose of strategy formulation is to clarify, influence, manage, or resolve the [volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity] of the strategic environment through the identification and creation of strategic effects in support of policy goals. Strategy lays down what is important and to be achieved, sets the parameters for the necessary actions, and prescribes what the state is willing to allocate in terms of resources. Thus, strategy, through its hierarchal nature, identifies the objectives to be achieved and defines the box in which detailed planning can be accomplished—it bounds planning.”¹⁴

Columbia Business School professor William G. Pietersen cautions, “To be clear, planning is also important. But it is not a substitute for strategy. We don’t create a strategy with a plan. We execute it with a plan. For example, your budget should be the financial expression of your strategy, not the reverse. The right sequence is essential: strategy first, planning afterwards.”¹⁵ As noted in observation 5, however, there are those involved in DoD resource planning who might dispute that “your budget should be the financial expression of your strategy, not the reverse.” They would be wrong, of course.

This is why I raise what might seem to others merely an “issue of semantics.” There will be those outside the strategy-crafting process who will want to ensure that their “plan” (such as an acquisition proposal to solve a particular warfighting problem) is incorporated into the strategy. A firm insistence on the difference between strategies and plans might help mitigate such assaults.

Observation 7

In their analysis of past Navy strategies, Capt. Peter M. Swartz, USN (Ret.), and Karin Duggan of CNA maintain that “there are a range of reasons why strategies are written.” (Some of them are listed on the slide above.) Historically, we have written Navy strategies for the three overarching purposes: to explain the need for the Navy, how the Navy meets that need, and where the Navy is heading.¹⁶ The “other purposes” actually are subsets of the big three; however, they can be examined individually to ascertain the quality of a draft strategy. In fact, they collectively constitute an informal checklist that crafters should use to analyze potential support for the draft strategy.

There is nothing nefarious about any of the individual other purposes. A naval strategy (like all military strategies) must conform in its basics to the guidance of civilian authorities, as exemplified by the National Security Strategy (NSS). As I argue later, the CNO is the Navy’s chief strategist, so advocating for his (or, eventually, her) ideas and priorities clearly is part of the process leading to implantation of the strategy. This requires the ideas to be translated into budget decisions.

Notably, one of the other purposes—signaling to potential competitors—has not been prominent in recent years, yet it was one of the more significant purposes of the public version of the Maritime Strategy of the 1980s. Arguably, the very existence of that particular strategy played a role in deterring the Soviet Union.

Observation 9

The paramount importance of understanding the dominant strategic problem is underscored by the following statement by Carl von Clausewitz: “The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is
to establish by that test [i.e., the fit with policy goals] the kind of war on which they are embarking, neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something that is alien to its nature.”¹⁷

Professor Turner of the U.S. Air War College offers some very useful insights on the value of a problem-based approach to strategy.

• A key to developing a strategy is to focus on the dominant military problem.
• “A problem-based approach to strategy offers several advantages.” A properly defined military problem forces the Navy to decide what is important in the future warfighting environment. “In the absence of a clear problem to solve, the future environment can become unwieldy.”
• First, a “well-thought-out military problem constrains . . . intellectual wandering,” keeping the Navy focused on what is important. “With a clear problem, it’s easier to decide how the [Navy] orients itself.” In short, the military problem keeps the Navy “grounded in reality, preventing bureaucratic inertia from overwhelming [it].”
• “Second, while aspirations are important, they must be backed by more[-]concrete, specific objectives” and coherent solutions “to win public and congressional support in the form of budgets.”
• “Third, military problems force technological solutions into a supporting role. . . . [A]s Colin Gray notes . . . , ‘Weaponry does not equal strategy.’ . . . When the problem comes first, however, the technology can come second.”
• “Fourth, solving military problems harnesses the talent already on staff and their recent operational experience. . . . With a clearly defined problem the inputs from recent warfighting are much easier to capture or, when necessary, discard.”¹⁸

Two related but distinct problems on which strategies may focus are (1) force employment (such as in war plans) and (2) force development (such as resource decisions, training, and acquisition).

The slides above and below (examples 1 and 2) illustrate force-employment problems. If China decides to use force against Taiwan or Russia assaults its Baltic neighbors, American forces likely would find themselves attempting to defend exposed territories on the adversary’s doorstep. The United States would have to project decisive power over thousands of miles, into areas where China and Russia can bring to bear capabilities more rapidly. Joint forces must be ready to fight large-scale combat operations in a joint, multinational, multidomain environment, under the most demanding conditions. Maritime formations must be capable of fighting through layers of enemy anti-access systems while operating in a degraded communications environment and under constant surveillance.

Obviously, force-deployment strategies must be based on the capabilities and employment of joint forces, even if they describe only the naval component. Ultimately such strategies require integration with joint planning and must be designed with that in mind. Additionally, they must be compatible with the projected contributions of allies and partners.

Although the ultimate goal of service strategies is the solution of real-world strategic force-employment problems, they necessarily focus on force-development problems—that is, how to man, train, equip, and prepare the forces necessary for the potential employment. As noted before, the services are creating the means by which force employment problems can be solved—which actually requires a more complex, intricate, nuanced, persuasive, and politically savvy strategy than the employment problem, which assumes that the forces already exist and the decision to carry out
the action already has been made. Crafting a force-development strategy calls for the greatest level of creativity.

Read Part Two.

Bruce B. Stubbs, SES, is Director of Navy Strategy, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (OPNAV N7).

Featured Image: ATLANTIC OCEAN (March 26, 2022) The aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) transits the Atlantic Ocean, March 26, 2022.(U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Jackson Adkins)

By Sebastian Bruns

Admiral Thomas B. Hayward, United States Navy, passed away on March 3, 2022, just two months shy of his 98^th birthday.

A week before and half a world away, on February 24, 2022, Russia began its long-anticipated, brutal, and illegal war against Ukraine, revealing to the whole world its true geopolitical intentions and character. Since the outbreak of the war, one of the trending terms was Zeitenwende, a German word for a sudden 180 degree turn in world history. One community that was less surprised by the eventual escalation is the international defense and foreign policy community. Since 2014, they have warned of the increasing likelihood of a new Cold War due to Vladimir Putin’s revisionist politics, and they saw the U.S. and NATO as woefully unprepared.

A part of that group are those gentlemen who presided over “The Maritime Strategy,” developed and refined in the 1980s to provide a prescription for seapower that helped defeat the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. Many of these individuals were Lt. Commanders, Commanders, and Captains then and had considerable influence on writing, disseminating, exercising, and executing the strategy. Some of them consider “The Maritime Strategy” the gold standard of naval capstone documents, and they have often mentored those from succeeding generations of scholars and naval strategists accordingly. The U.S. Navy inadvertently buttressed that narrative by promulgating numerous strategies and strategy-minded documents instead of just one clearly defined and well-socialized product, which made the Navy’s strategic role confusing, diffuse, and ultimately erratic in the post-Cold War era.

The makers of “The Maritime Strategy” of the 1980s stood of course on the shoulders of giants. Consecutive Chiefs of Naval Operations — Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Admiral James L. Holloway, and Admiral Thomas B. Hayward — walked so that others, namely their CNO successors Admiral James D. Watkins and Admiral Carlisle A.H. Trost and their strategists, could run.

Hayward was a naval aviator who was the 21^st Chief of Naval Operations for the United States Navy from July 1, 1978 until June 30, 1982. Having held command of US Pacific Fleet, US 7^th Fleet, and the carrier USS America (CVA-66) prior to rising to the top of the Navy, Hayward was acutely aware of the shortfalls of the “swing strategy” of the 1970s. Despite the massive Soviet naval buildup at the time, President Jimmy Carter’s administration early on proposed swinging naval forces – which were still quantitatively and qualitatively recovering from the Vietnam War – from the Pacific to the Atlantic or vice versa, when and where a crisis would mandate robust American naval presence. But Hayward had doubts about the viability of the strategy while serving as commander of Pacific Fleet. Hayward helped put into place “Sea Plan 2000” (1978), a classified book-length force planning study, while still on his Pacific tour. Hayward utilized his standing as a strategist which he had gathered in part through a series of briefings called “Sea Strike.” In a reflection last year on those developments, Adm. Hayward remarked:

“It became very clear to me that the Swing Strategy was the wrong answer. That’s when I formulated Sea Strike…The idea was that the strategy would take the fight to the Russians…I knew that what was already planned was definitely impractical. Send all our fleets to the Atlantic? Crazy idea.”

Understanding that a strategy could only be successful if carried out with thoughtful and up-to-date command relationships and sound tactics, he also fostered in the Pacific Fleet the development of the Composite Warfare Concept (CWC) for carrier battle groups and set up a new Tactical Training Group Pacific (TACTRAGRUPAC). Once he succeeded Holloway as CNO, he was therefore well placed to articulate three important capstone documents, all of which were published in 1979. Whereas the CNO Strategic Concepts was classified, the CNO Posture Statement was unclassified. Both were issued in January of 1979. Hayward’s article, “The Future of U.S. Sea Power,” which laid out unclassified fundamental principles, was published in May that year in Proceedings. Hayward therefore helped better position the U.S. Navy as a strategic asset in a year that saw the fall of the Shah, the Teheran Hostage Crisis, the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, superpower détente, and the crumbling of Carter’s military and naval policies.

“The Future of Seapower” argued for maritime supremacy and a global, forward-deployed, and forward-present US Navy against the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. The document called for allied contributions at a time where NATO was consolidating and U.S. allies around the world were in the process of modernizing their fleets. Its forward, global, and offensive posture was a marked departure from the security of the sea lines of communication that previous CNOs and President Carter had articulated. As Adm. Hayward wrote:

“An excellent starting point is a discussion of the U. S. requirement for ‘maritime superiority.’ I wish to emphasize this point of maritime superiority because it is a concept that has been given insufficient recognition in recent years, yet it is one which must form the basis for the planning of all our naval forces. It provides a clear and unambiguous yardstick against which to measure the adequacy of our naval forces—present and prospective. Its opposite is ‘maritime parity,’ or worse, ‘inferiority’—both of which are anathema to me, and which are wholly inconsistent with this country’s most essential national interests…I personally prefer the term ‘maritime supremacy’ to characterize the naval posture which our country’s interests require, as I believe it connotes a margin of superiority substantial enough to leave little doubt as to the likely outcome should U. S. naval forces be challenged.”

Hayward had degrees from the Naval War College, the National War College, and George Washington University. He was an experienced individual from the Navy program planning background. With this experience, he began to connect the dots inside and outside the Department of the Navy to not only consolidate and link strategic thinking, but also operational and tactical thought. Among other things, he encouraged the “Global War Game” held at the Naval War College and he created the CNO’s Strategic Studies Group (SSG). According to one research brief, the SSG’s objective was “to turn captains of ships into captains of war.” The SSG would go on to produce cohorts of naval strategists well-versed in the larger operational and strategic questions of major war at sea.

Hayward oversaw the establishment in the Atlantic Fleet of another tactically-focused command, Tactical Training Group Atlantic (TACTRAGRULANT). Moreover, Hayward emphasized material readiness and sailors’ health. Ever the tactician as well as strategist, in retirement he encouraged Captain Wayne Hughes to publish his seminal Fleet Tactics: Theory and Practice, for which he wrote the foreword. In emphasizing the fundamental importance of tactical excellence, in the foreword to Fleet Tactics he wrote:

“…we should guard against the insidious tendency to limit our tactical horizons to peacetime evolutions; we should instead seek to understand the ordeal of tomorrow’s technological war at sea, in all its ramifications. Regrettably, I would contend that we fall prey to the pressures of peacetime priorities, and thus over tactical excellence favor program management, system acquisition and…ship maintenance…it is risky and not in keeping with the lessons of history to permit tactical excellence to play second fiddle to any other needs, however essential. After all, what is the naval profession about, if not tactics, tactics, and more tactics?”

Hayward successfully expanded his Pacific thinking into a truly global outlook for the U.S. Navy – a mindset that seems to have atrophied in some circles of today’s Navy. It is no understatement that he gave the U.S. Navy a renewed sense of purpose that helped pave the way for the naval renaissance of the 1980s under President Ronald Reagan, Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, and their CNOs. Hayward’s roots helped “The Maritime Strategy” bloom, not least through continuity. His successor CNO James D. Watkins had been Hayward’s Vice CNO, and CNO Carlisle Trost had been his Director for Program Planning.

Before “The Maritime Strategy” was made public in 1986, there were numerous drafts and iterations, and Hayward had retired before the first secret version was issued in November of 1982. Notably, at the beginning of the decade, the world descended into what can be characterized as the “Second Cold War,” a dramatic superpower confrontation even under the circumstances of the U.S.-Soviet struggle. Short successions in Soviet leadership, unrest in Poland and the Eastern bloc, a plethora of events in 1983 – “the most dangerous year of the Cold War” – and NATO’s double-track decision demanded U.S. leadership and a global naval mindset.

Nearly four decades later, if war was really ever inevitable, if this is a new Cold War or a continuation of the last, that is for future historians to decide. But strategists should pause to consider the fundamental necessity of seapower, tactical excellence, and a global naval mindset in these trying times. The demand for naval strategy, operational art, tactics, and a strong capable Navy exists, but better managing the supply is critical.

Hayward would likely recommend getting to work now to expand the Navy, focus on combat readiness, and understand it as a truly global, offensive force. Hayward would likely suggest creating strategy, operations, and tactics through documents, strategic studies groups, war games, exercises, and through new operational patterns at sea, ideally complemented by a truly allied framework.

A U.S. Navy that is already extremely hard pressed will be pushed even harder in these coming months and years. For seapower advocates and naval strategists, there is no time to waste, and Adm. Hayward’s example shines a light forward.

Dr. Sebastian Bruns is McCain Fulbright Distinguished Visiting Professor at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. and author of “US Naval Strategy and National Security. The Evolution of American Maritime Power,” (London: Routledge 2018).

Featured Image: ADM Thomas B. Hayward, chief of naval operations, speaks during the commissioning ceremony for the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS CARL VINSON (CVN-60) (Photo via U.S. National Archives)

By James Goldrick and Blake Herzinger

“Non-traditional security” is poorly defined and ahistorical…

It is high time that we remove the term “non-traditional security” from our consideration of maritime affairs, and either abandon it outright or confine it to the debates of sea-blind international relations pundits. A phrase that crept into the strategic lexicon in the long, calm lee of the last Cold War, “non-traditional security” is little more than a dismissive hand-wave relegating human-centric security issues to a nebulous category with no real meaning. As a term, non-traditional security at best adds no value in either the operational realm or in the analytic sphere. At worst, particularly in the maritime domain, it skews thinking and undermines a balanced approach to dealing with the challenges we face.

The idea that history ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union plays a part in both the origin of and the muddled thinking around “non-traditional security.” In a supposedly post-modern world, it was argued that the possibility of nation-state conflict had disappeared, or at least diminished to the point at which navies could instead focus totally on achieving good order at sea. Nation-state rivalries, of course, never did disappear, and great power competition has returned to occupy a large part of the strategic agenda. But it can never occupy the whole, just as, apart from the world wars, it did not occupy it entirely in the past — however heavily armed the time of peace concerned.

The U.S. Navy does not have a definition for non-traditional security. There is no applicable framework for determining what issues are encompassed by the term, although it could be said that it is used (incorrectly) to refer to tasks not directly related to naval warfare. Predictably, non-traditional security is then taken to mean any issue outside the core “warfighting” competencies of the sea services. This ignores the majority of naval history and poorly serves the services’ professional development. This schism is accentuated in the United States by the intentional division of labor between the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard, which are in turn governed by separate bureaus of the U.S. government, in the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, respectively. As the U.S. Navy retains no law enforcement authorities, it has intellectually divorced itself from many of the issues that define maritime security for most maritime forces.

Most allied navies do not have the institutional divisions of the United States’ sea services, but many still have the same confused priorities. Britain’s Royal Navy is one example. Although a Fishery Protection Squadron is its oldest formation, the Royal Navy has neglected that national maritime security task in British waters in recent decades, as the under-funded service sought to maintain its high intensity capabilities at the same time as it committed scarce resources — most notably its people — to the largely land-based conflicts in the Middle East. Ironically, the Royal Navy never abandoned its commitment to such work in areas such as the Caribbean in which Britain recognizes continuing responsibilities as the post-colonial power. Despite its endeavors in so many seas and in so many contingencies, the Royal Navy’s absence from its home waters in recent years may well have contributed to a diminished understanding by the British public of its importance to national security and therefore the under-resourcing of its force structure, which has only recently been arrested.

…used to deprioritize a set of serious maritime issues…

This is not an argument for large or medium navies to neglect either force structure or training for high intensity warfare. The truth is that such navies must walk and chew gum at the same time. There are inevitable tensions between providing for and managing the different parts of the spectrum of operations, but they must be acknowledged and properly managed. With many navies facing static or shrinking resources, fierce battles over allocation of those resources are de rigueur. Creating a subset of missions labeled as “non-traditional” allows them to be pushed to the bottom of the pile at the outset, where someone will address them if time, ships, or personnel are left over. If an operations planner has one ship available to deploy but two missions to service, “traditional” mission requirements will be satisfied, and “non-traditional” issues will languish unanswered. The so-called “traditional” security issues then take center stage, focused on high-end combat exercises or mission-oriented activities, such as deterrence patrols or freedom of navigation operations. This ahistorical categorization underwrites a mindset that inhibits the development of naval officers and promotes a cultural tunnel vision that overlooks many critical maritime issues.

…does not reflect reality, particularly for smaller navies…

Many navies, especially those with smaller fleets, are more focused on operational issues than training for high-end warfare. And most of those operations would commonly be labeled as “non-traditional security.” But to these services, such issues are just “security,” whether it be fighting terrorists in the Sulu and Celebes Seas, stopping sea robbers in the Strait of Malacca, or apprehending smugglers in the Gulf of Aden. For coastal communities that rely on the sea for their primary protein sources, fisheries patrols and environmental protection are hardly non-traditional or of secondary importance relative to missile firing exercises. The 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea may have created much more extensive zones subject to national control — most notably the 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone — but this is a change in the scale, not in the nature of the maritime security challenge.

…creates analytic blind spots…

Indeed, applying the label of “non-traditional” to many maritime threats makes it more difficult to determine what is new and what has changed. Piracy, smuggling, slave trading and even illegal fishing are activities that are nearly as old as humanity’s first use of the sea for transport and as a source of food. And navies have been dealing with them for much of their existence as standing forces maintained by nation-states. To use an abused buzzword, good order at sea requires a holistic approach. Most of that work will take place below the threshold of naval combat, primarily focused upon issues that would fall within the nebulous “non-traditional” designator. Drug smuggling, human trafficking, piracy, sea robbery, terrorism, and illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing (IUUF) are persistent and often interlinked issues, while high-end warfare is extraordinarily rare.

Labeling essentially all non-war issues as non-traditional builds an inflexible mindset, ill-equipped to see creative solutions to maritime problems that cannot be solved with a five-inch gun or anti-ship missile. Arguably, it also risks planners missing connections between illicit or criminal activities and nation-states seeking to exploit them to achieve advantage over their rivals in the shadowed areas between real peace and open war. Such tactics are much older than recent analysis of the ‘grey zone’ efforts of China generally acknowledges. Understanding that there are precedents not only in such activities but in the responses to them means that navies can be much better equipped to deal with the ‘grey zone’ with much less risk of either reinventing the wheel or pursuing policies that have already proved ineffective in practice.

…and does not reflect the enduring purpose of navies.

Creating a subset of maritime issues under the title of “non-traditional” reflects a narrow understanding of the fundamental question: “What is a navy for?” Not only does this problematic categorization minimize the issues that are of critical importance to partners and allies, but it also results in our own navies being ill-equipped to engage and assist when conducting security cooperation activities. Most critically, it results in them being intellectually and doctrinally ill-prepared.

Throughout history, from the age of sail to modern nuclear navies, the maintenance of good order at sea has required far more than simply fighting battles on the waves. Ensuring global commerce, protecting and evacuating citizens ashore, enforcing national law, and a myriad of other non-combat tasks have always fallen within the remit of military forces. Even a hero of naval high intensity warfare like Horatio Nelson had to do his share of these types of work as a young captain in the West Indies in the 1780s.

As the U.S. Navy and other navies work to recover the high intensity capabilities that have languished in the last few decades, it will be vital to understand that this renewed focus must be balanced with a recognition that many wider responsibilities of the naval service must also be fulfilled.

RADM (ret.) James Goldrick served in the Royal Australian Navy and has published widely on naval issues. He now has adjunct appointments at UNSW Canberra, the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University, and ANCORS (Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security).

LCDR Blake Herzinger is a Foreign Area Officer (Indo-Pacific) in the U.S. Navy Reserve and a non-resident WSD-Handa Fellow at the Pacific Forum.

Featured image: U.S. Coast Guard cutter USCGC Munro transits the Taiwan Strait with U.S. Navy destroyer USS Kidd in August 2021 (Credit U.S. Navy)