The Russian Understanding of War: Blurring the Lines between War and Peace

Oscar Jonsson, The Russian Understanding of War: Blurring the Lines between War and Peace, Georgetown University Press, 2019, $32.95/paperback.

By McLean Panter

Russia, and before it the Soviet Union, has vexed Western strategists and military leaders for decades, in large part due to a lack of understanding of Russian military thought. Oscar Jonsson seeks to change that with his book The Russian Understanding of War: Blurring the Lines between War and Peace. Using primary Russian national strategy documents and excerpts from senior Russian military leaders’ speeches and writings, Jonsson dives into how Soviet and Russian military thinkers evolved their understanding of the nature of war from Soviet-era foundations to the present day, giving Western readers an insight into the Russian perspective on war and conflict.

Jonsson begins with two background chapters that give an overview of Soviet and post-Cold War Russian perspectives of war and military conflict. When describing Soviet military science, he notes that the Soviet understanding of war is based almost entirely on Lenin’s own perspectives and his view that all conflict should be viewed as an economic struggle between social classes. A knowledge of dialectic materialism will serve the reader well here, as Jonsson’s descriptions sometimes veer into the arcane, perhaps saying more about Soviet military views vis-à-vis economic and social conflict than about Jonsson’s research approach. The Soviets in many ways viewed war as inevitable and critical to furthering the global reach of communism, with peace simply an interlude between armed conflicts. Interestingly, however, Soviet military science was unique in its holistic focus, treating economic, political, and social, as well as military factors, as equal contributors to and tools in support of armed conflict.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union left the new Russian Federation in disarray, and that was reflected in Russian military thought in the 1990s and early 2000s. While many Russian theorists continued to view war primarily through an economic lens, the wars of the 1990s made many question their assumptions on military strategy. The Gulf War, in particular, shocked many Russian military officers and theorists, as a smaller but technologically superior American force quickly and easily defeated the larger Iraqi army. The shock and confusion were exacerbated by the advent of the information age, after which the Russian military increasingly saw the use of information as a weapon. This shaped the emerging view that conflict is continuous and ongoing, and that the only change is between violent and non-violent means of waging war.

Jonsson then examines modern Russian perspectives of conflict, specifically touching on the blurred lines between peace and war when considering information operations as non-kinetic military operations. He notes that the current struggle between Russia and the West is principally in the information domain, emphasizing that Russia’s approach is two-pronged: the “information-technical,” primarily concerned with information systems, architecture, and means of transmission (i.e. physical infrastructure and spectrum access); and the “information-psychological,” primarily concerned with influencing opinions of adversary populations via traditional and social media, including disinformation and misinformation campaigns.

The Russian military views U.S. success in the Gulf War in large part due to their specific targeting of Iraqi command and control infrastructure, showing the importance of the “information-technical” aspect of information warfare. Their view of the “information-psychological” aspect comes from their own experiences in the Chechen Wars of the 1990s and early 2000s. During the First Chechen War, the Chechen separatists used traditional media to shape public opinion of the war both in Russia and internationally, whereas Russian forces essentially declined to use the media in any capacity, finally realizing their mistake too late to change public opinion. Russia was caught flat-footed again in the Second Chechen War, during which Chechen forces took advantage of greater public access to the Internet to broadcast their narrative around the world and rally support to their cause.  

Perhaps Jonsson’s most interesting insight is in the final chapter of the book, in which he examines the Russian view of so-called color revolutions (e.g. the 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia, the 2005 Orange Revolution in Ukraine, and the 2011 Arab Spring). Whereas in the West such events are seen as admirable expressions of popular desires for democratic governments, in Russia they are viewed as U.S.-backed influence operations designed to sow domestic dissent and effect regime change. Western media, in simply reporting such events in conjunction with praise by Western leaders, creates an appearance of Western information operations in the Russian military view.

This highlights one of Jonsson’s primary insights in the book, which is that the Russian political-military apparatus views its own domestic public support as a critical weakness and color revolutions as Western (i.e. U.S.) attempts to destabilize Russia domestically and possibly prompt regime change. Senior Russian military officers and political leaders view color revolutions as a form of information warfare against Russia, and they conduct information operations in kind against the perceived perpetrators in the West.

The Russian Understanding of War is an excellent work for anyone looking to understand Russian perspectives on the nature of conflict. Although at times it can be esoteric for the lay reader, anyone with a basic background in Russian military thought will appreciate the insight Jonsson provides. Historically, the United States has struggled to understand both Soviet and Russian geopolitical maneuvers. Jonsson’s work will help change that, giving an inside view of current debates within Russian military circles via Russian strategic documents and the writings and speeches of Russian military leaders. It provides valuable context on Russian strategic messaging and decision-making, and anyone working on European or Russian affairs would do well to pick it up.

McLean Panter is a U.S. Navy Foreign Area Officer currently serving in the Security Cooperation Office at the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá, Colombia. He is a graduate of the Command and Staff Course at the Colombian Joint War College, and he previously served in the Theater Security Cooperation Officer at the U.S. Fifth Fleet headquarters in Manama, Bahrain.

Featured Image: Russian Army Tanks (Photo via Russian Ministry of Defense)

The Legacy of Admiral Thomas B. Hayward, USN, 1924-2022: An Intellectual Remembrance

By Sebastian Bruns

Admiral Thomas B. Hayward, United States Navy, passed away on March 3, 2022, just two months shy of his 98th 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 21st 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 7th 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.

February 16, 1982 — ADM Thomas B. Hayward, center, chief of naval operations, talks to a Spanish admiral and a government official during a visit. (Photo via U.S. National Archives)

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)

The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict

By CDR Robert “Jake” Bebber, USN

Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict (Elbridge A. Colby, Yale University Press, 2021)

An emerging consensus has developed in both foreign policy/national security circles and among the American public that Communist China represents a clear threat not only to U.S. security, but also to a liberal rule-based order that has existed since the end of the Cold War. This is a rather remarkable turn from just a few short years ago. Today, one would have little problem finding books, podcasts, think tank reports, and other media that highlight the threat China poses.

No doubt the few professionals who sought to raise awareness to what China was doing and were subsequently derided as “alarmist” prior to 2015 – Michael Pillsbury, Gordon Chang, Anders Corr, and David Shambaugh, among others, come to mind – perhaps feel a sense of vindication. However, much time has been lost for U.S. policy makers to shift our strategic resources in a meaningful way, time that cannot be regained.

Despite this emerging consensus, few have put forward meaningful strategies to secure American interests while realistically meeting the challenge China poses head on. Fortunately, Dr. Elbridge Colby, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy and Force Development, has risen to the challenge, putting forward a provocative and perhaps controversial recommendation: a strategy of denial

The logic of Dr. Colby’s strategy can be summarized thus: To ensure America’s freedom, security and prosperity, the United States must maintain a favorable military-economic balance of power with respect to key regions of the world. Asia’s demographic and economic weight clearly place that region as the most important to American interests, and therefore the cornerstone of American policy must ensure that Asia is not subjected to regional hegemony. To maintain a favorable balance of power, the U.S., along with allies, friends, and partners (the anti-hegemonic coalition), must be capable of prevailing in a regional war initiated by an aspiring hegemon. 

China’s own pronouncements and aggressive behavior clearly point to its desire to dominate Asia first, likely followed by the rest of the world. Naturally, China’s desire for regional hegemony will create a backlash, and states with common interests may band together. This anti-hegemonic coalition would effectively be defensive in nature. It would not seek regime change in China, but merely to prevent it from becoming dominant.

As the most important external balancer in an anti-hegemonic coalition, it is critical that the United States preserve its differentiated credibility related to denying China regional hegemony.1 Doing so requires U.S. policy makers to structure its military forces in such a way that preserves and ideally enhances its differentiated credibility. This demands that force structure and capabilities be prioritized around identifying and defeating China’s best strategy to achieve regional hegemony.

Colby walks through the strategies China might pursue before identifying what he evaluates as its best strategy to assume regional hegemony: utilize a focused and sequential strategy to effectively isolate and pick off members of the anti-hegemonic coalition, creating a fait accompli of regional dominance. For both ideological and military reasons, Taiwan is the prime target of China’s focused and sequential strategy, followed by the Philippines, then Vietnam. China’s conditions of victory are met when it seizes and holds territory, while the best strategy for the anti-hegemonic coalition to pursue is a denial strategy, where the core strategic purpose is met by keeping Taiwan on the side of the coalition.

An effective denial strategy is one which prevents China from seizing territory in Taiwan, or if that cannot be prevented, then from holding on to such territory. This requires that the coalition, led by the United States, be prepared to fight a longer, broader but still limited war and be able to end that war on favorable terms. Keeping a limited war limited will be paramount, as the risk of horizontal and vertical escalation will be great. Therefore the coalition should layer cost imposition on top of effective denial to persuade China to accept the defenders’ preferred rule sets for limited war as well as inducing China to agree to terminate the war on favorable terms. 

The challenge of doing so cannot be overstated. China can bring immense military and economic power to bear, and it will be an exceptionally determined foe. The resolve of the American people and the people of allied nations and coalition partners will be sorely tested to bear the costs of adapting and optimizing military forces for effective denial defense and prosecute a potential long, limited war. There is a good probability that denial defenses might fail in part or completely, requiring the coalition to adapt and seek to recapture Taiwan or the other allied and partner nations.

Therefore, considerations must be given on how to influence and shape the resolve of the people and bind them to the outcome of the war. A component of strategy must be to force China to fight in ways that change or reinforce the coalition’s threat perception. China will be made to reveal its aggressiveness, ambition, cruelty, unreliability, power, and disrespect for the honor of other states, which in turn strengthens the resolve of coalition members. The premise of the binding strategy is that military and other material power is employed to create “political, perceptual effects that matter in war.” Thus, military planning must sometimes serve political purposes that shape the war to unfold in such a way that key decision makers and populations “increase their valuation of the stakes at hand.”

The implications of this strategy are clear and come with hard choices and trade-offs. Preventing China’s regional hegemony in Asia must receive top priority in U.S. defense planning and resources. Denial defense must become the preferred standard. In concrete terms, the U.S. and partners must focus first on the effective defense of Taiwan, followed next by the Philippines. The coalition must be prepared to integrate the binding strategy described above with denial defense so that if the war broadens or intensifies, it does so in ways that catalyze popular resolve. These strategies form the “bounding constraints” which inform military-operational planning and budgeting, technological policy, and diplomatic efforts. 

As expected, Dr. Colby’s denial strategy has stirred both discussion and controversy. David P. Goldman, economist and former advisor to the Reagan Administration (as well as the Asia Times columnist formerly writing under the pseudonym “Spengler”) finds the strategy not only a “disappointment” but “a dangerous amalgam of dodges that points down the slippery slope towards war.” Any attempt by the United States and the anti-hegemonic coalition to adopt a strategy that openly postures forces to defend Taiwan is akin to setting in motion the events that led to World War I. Taiwan is “an existential issue” for the Chinese Communist Party, and the eventual integration of Taiwan into CCP control is simply a forgone conclusion he asserts.

For Goldman, any military conflict with China – especially close to its shores – would result in defeat anyway. The American military (and its allies in the coalition one presumes) are so hopelessly outmatched after two decades of “colonial wars,” and China can bring immense destructive power to bear on the American homeland without even having to escalate to nuclear weapons, that defeat is all but certain. Besides, Taiwan “has no intention of offering serious resistance” anyway, so why should American fighting forces die for them? (Or Japanese or Australian or anyone else one assumes.) Given that it would take “a trillion dollars of high-tech R&D funding and several years to counter China’s missile, cyberwar, and other offensive capabilities,” along with strong leaders – a President “with an evangelical fervor for national renewal” – it is best not to provoke a powerful adversary like China, at least not until you are prepared. (And with a maximalist approach such as Goldman’s, one doubts we are ever truly prepared.)

On the other hand, Dan Blumenthal of the American Enterprise Institute, writes in the Wall Street Journal that Dr. Colby’s “book presents a needed path forward.” He is “forcing readers to think concretely about the unthinkable” as he argues that it is indeed possible for the U.S. and coalition members to keep the war limited in scope so long as the burden of escalation remains on China. A denial strategy will “define the basis for future debate about U.S. defense strategy in Asia,” and would serve as the organizing principle around which all elements of national power need to be employed. And yet Blumenthal takes issue with Colby’s core assumptions of the strategy, which he believes are based on mere “political realism.”

Indeed, CCP behavior toward Taiwan remains a “legacy of the Chinese civil war” and is not merely a geopolitical steppingstone toward regional hegemony but is “an imperial idea” and a matter of national honor. The existence of a democratic Taiwan is an existential threat to the CCP in their eyes, and the CCP is currently “intoxicated by notions of reuniting a dismembered Volk,” perhaps prepared to start a world war to settle the matter. This follows the contours of part of Goldman’s critique but does not share his pessimism in the ability of the U.S. and coalition to marshal the forces and resolve.

But this does call into question the efficacy of relying solely on a strategy of denial to counter China’s best strategy, a focused and sequential strategy, to become the regional hegemon in Asia. It requires that the leadership of the CCP – principally one man, Xi Jinping – reach the conclusion that Taiwan cannot be taken, and hence the entire project of reunification, and perhaps global supremacy, must be abandoned. The strategic end state for the anti-hegemonic coalition becomes “winning by not losing,” but it is effectively asking that the American public (as well as the publics of our partners) indefinitely fund and politically support a military force posture designed around defense and maintenance of the status quo.

At some point, political leadership will be asked the same question President Reagan was at the 1988 Moscow summit, what is the strategy for ending the Cold War? Reagan famously stated, “Here’s my strategy on the Cold War: we win, they lose.” He did not hold to the Communist Party in the Soviet Union maintaining its grip on power forever, and upon taking office embarked on a strategy to defeat them. Playing on the defensive is necessary, but not sufficient, to achieve victory.

If China invades Taiwan, and the coalition can beat it back in a war limited in scope and aims as described by Dr. Colby, well then what? An immense amount of blood and treasure will have been spilt, and Taiwan will almost certainly have suffered significant damage. Even though they are a rich country, rebuilding will be expensive, and they will need substantial help. Potentially thousands of American lives will have been lost, perhaps more. Will the American people be willing to accept the status quo ante as the outcome, akin to the end of the Korean War in 1953? Or will the people demand more, such as reparations or perhaps even a change in leadership of China? Can a President and Congress who ask the American people to support the defense of Taiwan easily and readily explain to those people at the end of the war that the Communist regime that started the war needs to remain in place? Or, as Dr. Colby alludes to, what if the failure of China to take Taiwan results in a collapse of the Chinese Communist Party’s monopoly on power, something which I address here. Have we considered what an alternative political structure in China might be, and how might the U.S. shape that outcome?

Strategy of Denial is a well-structured, logically coherent argument for a particular strategic approach, one based largely on conventional forces. Dr. Colby explains as much when in his preface he states his intent is not to articulate a larger grand strategy but rather to “lay out a single, coherent framework that provides clear guidance on what the nation’s defense strategy should be …” It rests on the assumptions that the “unipolar moment” is over, and that primacy is not possible for the U.S. maintain (and was probably illusory to begin with). He articulates how Communist China represents the gravest threat to American security, and why reducing the confidence of China’s leadership in the success of a focused and sequential strategy to achieve regional hegemony decreases the probability of an attempt by China to use military force. At its heart, he is arguing that conventional forces should be organized and employed to conduct denial defense to achieve deterrence.

An alternative, perhaps complimentary, strategic approach toward U.S. security is employing cyber-enabled and other information-based capabilities to alter China’s trajectory altogether. A geoinformational approach that leverages American and allied comparative advantages across all spectrums of power could better shape the Chinese Communist Party leadership’s understanding of its own comparative national power, forcing it into harder resource allocation dilemmas and perhaps even challenge its monopoly on power. Long before the point of a potential invasion of Taiwan or the Philippines, the conflict can be transformed. It opens the door to alternative victory conditions for the U.S. in protecting its security as well as a larger liberal world order.

Dr. Colby concludes his book by acknowledging that at best, deterrence by denial might create “a decent peace” – an uneasy Cold War-like environment. However, Dr. Colby, more than most, was in a position to see how geoinformational approaches could create more than just peace, but victory. That approach deserved more attention. Even so, Dr. Colby has done an immense service by moving the strategic debate beyond platitudes and forcing hard conversations about the resource decisions which must be made. Policy makers must reckon with his analysis and prescriptions, and we are better off because of it.

CDR Robert “Jake” Bebber is the Executive Officer of Information Warfare Training Command Corry Station in Pensacola, Florida. He is a frequent contributor to CIMSEC and his writing has appeared in Orbis, Proceedings, Parameters, the Journal of Comparative Strategy, the Journal of Political Risk, the Journal of Information Warfare, and elsewhere. He welcomes your comments at [email protected]

Endnote

1 Colby defines “differentiated credibility” as how allies, friends, and partners will view U.S. commitment guarantees that are similar in nature to their own. “They will look at how [the U.S.] has treated that particular commitment or those similarly situated in the past.” If America has risked and sacrificed much to uphold similar commitments in the past, then it likely views “this kind of commitment” as worth a great deal to its security. Therefore, as the U.S. begins to deprioritize commitments in regions outside of Asia, it is not necessarily true that allies in Asia will question U.S. commitment in Asia, so long as America is following through on those commitments. (p. 60-62).

Featured Image: BAY OF BENGAL (Oct. 17, 2021) – An F-35C Lightning II, assigned to the “Argonauts” of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 147, flies over the Bay of Bengal as part of Maritime Partnership Exercise (MPX) 2021, Oct. 17, 2021. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Haydn N. Smith)

Admiral Tom Hayward on Challenging War Plans and Revamping Strategy

CIMSEC regrets the passing of Admiral Thomas B. Hayward, who passed away on March 3 at 97. Adm. Hayward served in the U.S. Navy for nearly 40 years and finished his career as Chief of Naval Operations during a pivotal time in the Cold War and U.S. Navy history. In honor of his memory, we are republishing his interview with CIMSEC that featured in last year’s maritime strategy series.

1980s Maritime Strategy Series

By Dmitry Filipoff

CIMSEC discussed the 1980s Maritime Strategy with Admiral Tom Hayward (ret.), who initiated much of the Navy’s efforts toward changing war plans and adopting a more offensive role that would later be embodied in the Maritime Strategy. In this conversation, Admiral Hayward discusses how he came to learn of the Swing Strategy, how he initiated efforts to revise war plans, and how he advocated for these changes as commander of the Pacific Fleet and as the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO).

How did you learn about the Swing Strategy as a senior commander and begin to change the war plans for the Navy?

It’s helpful to begin by providing some context. You have to put yourself back in the position of being an operator, and I myself was an operator when the Vietnam War was coming to an end. I’m no academic, I’m a tactician, and you try to get the immediate job done. So I commanded an aircraft carrier in Vietnam, focused on running strikes 24/7. In the context of global warfare, throughout that whole period of time, the Russians and their Pacific Fleet modernized a lot and clearly got to be bigger and better than our Pacific Fleet. But I didn’t focus on that at the time. I’m just the skipper of a carrier and my job is to get the guys over the beach and back safely.

We had a requirement to stand down every now and then to simulate the war plan launching of nuclear weapons, and this went on all over the fleet, as I far as I know. In the context of how the Seventh Fleet and the carriers would respond, our job was to launch nuclear weapons when so ordered. So we would exercise that. I’d pay some attention to it, but not in great detail, and made sure the exercise was taking place and got what we wanted out of it. Just a standard requirement of running the ship.

I got promoted to Rear Admiral and was eventually sent back to Washington. In all of my jobs for the next 10 or so years, I was trying to help get the Navy back on its feet post-Vietnam. When I went out later to command Seventh Fleet, I was dealing with plenty of logistics problems and getting the Navy back into rhythm again, with all the ships being way behind on maintenance. The primary responsibility of me as Seventh Fleet commander and later at PACFLT and so on was getting things back in shape, sorting things out, and getting our readiness back. We had major, major upkeep issues, retention, all those kinds of issues.

After settling down in Seventh Fleet, I said to the staff, “Let’s go through the war plans, what are they? I haven’t paid any attention to them.” And that’s the first time I found out that seriously what we were supposed to do under a certain DEFCON much of Seventh Fleet was to run and hide down among some islands in the South Pacific and pretend they can’t be found. And then they would use nukes when ordered to execute the war plans. And that’s when I started thinking that’s crazy, we’ve got a fleet out here we’ve got a fight, the Russians have a Pacific Fleet here. That was the real start of my working with the staff and my own thinking about other options. Because that was a lousy choice and we needed to start looking at how we should really do this.

How did you work on that while commanding the Pacific Fleet?

Around that time I get promoted to lead PACFLT. So my perspective changes where I’ve got the whole fleet to worry about now and not just Seventh Fleet. In that context, my priorities were still way over on the side of readiness and getting our Navy back to operating again. We had huge problems. We think we have problems now, back then we had horrible budgets, broken down people and platforms, drug problems, all those day-to-day things that affect readiness in a big way. Our readiness was terrible. So my highest priority at the time was readiness.

However, at the same time I had my ops guys start thinking about the war plans. That’s when I became even more familiar with what was in the war plans about the Swing Strategy. That’s around the time when Captain Jim Patton joined my staff and became the action officer for all my thinking on this and did the research and provided the background on these issues. It became very clear to me that the Swing Strategy was the wrong answer.

That’s when I formulated Sea Strike, the staff came up with that name. The idea was that the strategy would take the fight to the Russians and get them to tie down their eastern armies, which they could otherwise have swung to the west in the event of a major conflict. We were going to put them on the defensive. We knew from intelligence the Russians were logically very sensitive to homeland security. It took many months to put together a plan with all the extensive details and then think about how to wargame it, practice it, put it into effect.

But some people would say, ‘You didn’t promote it at the time.’ I said, absolutely not I didn’t promote it. If I had gone to even the CNO, Admiral Jim Holloway, or the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and tell him we wanted to change the war plans, it would surely have been squelched.

Furthermore, I didn’t know yet whether it was a practical thing to do. But I knew that what was already planned was definitely impractical. Send all our fleets to the Atlantic? Crazy idea.

That took place when I was at PACFLT, developing the plan, getting it ready to exercise, work out the obstacles and the hurdles to get through it, and get it to the point where we could be confident about it and then take on the issue of changing the war plans.

It was very clear when I got to be CNO, especially after I got all the debriefings about the way in which DoD was heavily biased toward the Central Front of Europe. Bob Komer, he was Defense Secretary Harold Brown’s loud mouthpiece about why we needed to swing the Navy, and saying the only reason we have a Navy is for getting the Army into Europe. I wasn’t aware of his being too much at the forefront of the issue until I became CNO. Prior to becoming CNO, Harold Brown came out and visited me at PACFLT. Before that, Senator Sam Nunn was out in the area and we briefed him on the whole program. He was very taken by it and it wasn’t too much longer after that when Harold Brown came out. That’s when the seed was planted back in the Washington environment that the Pacific Fleet was looking at alternatives.

When I got to be CNO and all the other issues that go with that, I got a briefing on the war plans for supporting Europe. I saw potential for the same sort of strategic logic I saw in confronting the Soviets in the Pacific and the potential for offensive warfare. This was actually a global issue, and the Navy has a major role to play on the flanks. The flanks being the Mediterranean, the North Sea, the North Atlantic, and elsewhere. We could tie down a lot of Soviet options that might be in their playbook to support the central front, but they wouldn’t be able to execute those options with the Navy and the Marines going after their flanks.

I brought in key flag officers, and folks like Bing West and others, and I started articulating where I wanted to take this. We needed to get buy-in from leadership, because the first reaction would be, “This is a crazy idea.” I gave a talk on a global, forward Navy to every War College in their auditorium. I got the flag officers all together and got their interaction. We got buy-in that there was a new role for the Navy, and it was way beyond escorting the Army to Europe.

When you were PACFLT you said it was risky to change the war plans. Were you in a better position to advocate for that as CNO?

I sure was, of course. Remember, the DOD all had other things on their mind, too. The big obstacle was getting Bob Komer to quiet down. But nobody ever came up and said, ‘You guys can’t do that.’ I don’t know precisely where we got to the point that we rewrote the general war plans, maybe Jim Patton knows that. He was down in the trenches making the details come together. I had brought him back to Washington not long after I was CNO and he kept assisting with the development of the global Navy strategy.

As CNO I’m still heavily involved in readiness issues. The drug issue was a huge thing, retention and recruiting was massively difficult. Harold Brown and President Carter were cutting the budget and making it harder and harder. The nation had turned against the military badly at that time. That’s where my attention was, and gradually changing the perception of the Navy’s global role.

About two-thirds of the way through my tour was when John Lehman came onboard. He apparently was having somewhat similar conversations with others on the future Navy posture and strategy. When he took over as SECNAV, he had his own priorities, but in this area, we were in synch. He wanted to raise the visibility of the Navy, increase the size of the Navy, and of course with President Reagan he came in with more money. And a lot of that went to readiness. We got spare parts, got training to where it belongs, more at-sea time and flying time, all those things that get you ready. In the meantime, 2nd fleet out there was getting instructions to do a “Sea Strike” exercise in the Atlantic.

After the Reagan Administration comes in, was there a much more receptive audience, especially with building the readiness needed for that kind of strategy?

The word “strategy” was not the driver necessarily, the Navy and all the services were so worn out and needed to get back into shape. I didn’t sell the budget on the basis of strategy but on the basis of the combat readiness of our units.

There are readiness categories, C1, 2, 3, and 4. C1 means I’ve got everything I need for combat. C2 means I’m short some things but we’re in pretty good shape. C3 means we’re getting kind of shaky, and at C4 you’re real shaky. Our readiness was so bad I created C5. That rattled around the building a lot. I was accused with playing games with the budget, and you’ve got to face that kind of thing all the time. But C5 meant that I am unsafe to steam or fly. Lo and behold, an AOE out of Norfolk was about to depart on deployment when the skipper rang the C5 bell. All hell broke loose, ‘Oh Hayward is playing games,’ and so on. I got in front of Congress and I told them to get down there and see what was going on.

That was the start of a major turnaround. That year I think we got about a 26 percent increase in pay, and many readiness-related things. When the real world finally got their attention, all this typical game playing that goes on between budgeteers and accountants, it got pushed to the side a bit. It was an honest effort to see how bad we were getting. That skipper called it right. He didn’t have enough qualified people onboard that ship to go on deployment. Today you wouldn’t get that far.

In the context of the Swing Strategy, I told staff to basically ignore it and we would build our own strategy, and if we can do our due diligence and do this thing right, then we could change the war plans.

What is the value of having a global Navy that can go on the offensive, rather than a more narrow purpose? What lessons are there for today?

The concept of having the enemy worry about you is a major element in deterrence. That was the overriding, broad strategic thrust of having the Navy play a proper and significant role in presenting the adversary with a meaningful threat. A new strategy would give the Navy a valuable deterrent role. The Navy could be in a position to constrain the Soviet ability to launch nukes and affect their ability to focus on a conventional assault on the central front.

We shouldn’t fight China today, whether it’s nuclear or non-nuclear. We have to posture and work all of our policies, foreign policy, commercial policy, and so on to be oriented toward presenting a deterrent in all its dimensions against what President Xi may be thinking about doing, and which could upset the global balance of power.

The role today in the broad sense remains the same, it is to deter. We can’t fight a land war with China. We have to use maritime power in a very constructive way to present deterrence.

Admiral Tom Hayward entered the naval service in World War II through the V-5 Naval Aviation Cadet Program, then transferred to the Naval Academy, from which he graduated in 1947. He has commanded a fighter squadron, a carrier air wing, and an aircraft carrier. In 1973-1975 he was the Navy’s Director of Program Planning, then served as Commander, Seventh Fleet from 1975-1976. From 1976 to 1978 he was Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet, then finished his career as the 21st Chief of Naval Operations from 1978-1982.

Dmitry Filipoff is CIMSEC’s Director of Online Content. Contact him at [email protected].

Featured Image: November 15, 1985 – An elevated stern view of the aircraft carrier USS SARATOGA (CV 60) underway. (Photo by PH1 P.D. Goodrich via the U.S. National Archives)

Fostering the Discussion on Securing the Seas.