CIMSEC’s DC chapter will be heading to The Saloon, near the U Street metro stop, for our informal September meet-up on Thursday the 26th. We hope you’ll join us to meet some interesting people and discuss all things maritime.
Time: Thursday, 26 Sep 5:30-9pm
Place: The Saloon
1205 U St NW, Washington, DC
All are welcome and no RSVP is required, but if you’re planning on coming please drop me a line so we have an idea of how many seats to reserve: director@cimsec.org
Tuning into the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on September 3, something Secretary Kerry said struck me as very interesting. In response to a question, the Secretary of State said:
“We don’t want to go to war in Syria either. It is not what we are here to ask. The president is not asking you to go to war.”
This statement has received some harsh criticism. See here and here. How we label our involvement directly affects the political perception of what that involvement will be. I think what Secretary Kerry was trying to say was that we are not “putting boots on the ground.” But is there a difference between war and a TLAM strike into Syria?
Under international humanitarian law, or what is more commonly referred to as the law of armed conflict, there are two classifications of conflict: international armed conflict (IAC) and non-international armed conflict (NIAC). An IAC is a conflict between two or more nations. A NIAC is a conflict that only involves one nation and takes place within its own territory. A great example of a NIAC is a civil war, which sufficiently describes the conflict in Syria at the moment. But what happens when the United States uses military force? Does the civil war (a NIAC) evolve into an IAC? Maybe not.
It is possible, under international law, that a TLAM strike into Syria would not be considered a trigger causing an IAC. In the case Nicaragua v. United States, the International Court of Justice determined whether an armed attack had occurred by examining the “scale and effects” of the force used. So what are the “scale and effects” of a TLAM strike? To help determine this, it’s important to understand why the U.S. would launch the strike in the first place.
As heavily reported, the Syrian government used chemical weapons. This is a violation of an international norm and an absence of action would undermine this important norm (notice the difference between “norm” and “law” – a topic for another discussion). The purpose of the TLAM strike then would be to enforce the norm – not to intervene in the civil war or to topple the Assad regime. The “scale and effects” of such a limited strike would be minimal and not likely rise to the level of “armed attack” that would trigger and armed conflict between Syria and the United States. And so long as Syria does not counterstrike, the U.S. would not be moving the conflict in Syria from a NIAC to an IAC. Hence, a “war” between the United States and Syria would still be avoided.
LT Dennis Harbin is a qualified surface warfare officer and is currently enrolled at Penn State Law in the Navy’s Law Education Program. The opinions and views expressed in this post are his alone and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not necessarily represent the views of U.S. Department of Defense or the U.S. Navy.
Looking back at Corbett’s writings, he talks a great deal about the need for cruisers, but technology and terminology have moved on and the cruisers of Corbett’s days are not what we think of as cruisers today. Corbett’s “Some Principles of Maritime Strategy” was published in 1911. There were some truly large cruisers built in the years leading up to World War I, but Corbett decried these in that their cost was in conflict with the cruiser’s “essential attribute of numbers.”
A typical cruiser that came out of the thinking of the day was the Active Class (1912). 3,440 tons, 26 knots, and ten 4″ guns. Many of the cruisers of the day were even smaller, many under 3,000 tons.
Corbett often referred back to the Nelsonian period. His idea of a cruiser was the smallest warship that could undertake prolonged independent operations, frigates, sloops of war, and brigs, even schooners. Their missions were:
Of these he seemed to consider scouting for and screening the battlefleet, unfortunate, if necessary distractions from their primary duty of exercising control over maritime communications and commerce.
In the hundred plus years since Corbett’s writing, the number and types of naval platforms have proliferated and the roles once the exclusive domain of these relatively small surface ships have been assumed by other systems.
Radio replaced the dispatch carrying function of Nelson’s cruisers and improvements continually reduced the importance of the role for 20th century cruisers.
The torpedo boat destroyers first grew from what we would now call FACs into cruiser roles and cruiser size and now emerged as major strategic assets in their own right.
Submarines, which were little understood in Corbett’s time, quickly emerged as the premier commerce raider. Later they took on the role of countering their own kind, just as cruisers once did. They have scouted for and screened surface ships. They also grew into additional roles that make them in some respects inheritor of the battleship mantle as well as that of the cruiser.
Airplanes, also a recent innovation when Corbett wrote his classic, quickly became effective and essential scouts. They began to screen the fleet against the opposing “flotillas” including the enemies own planes. Flying from escort carriers or in the form of long-range maritime patrol aircraft that took on the cruisers role of protecting commerce. During WWII they replaced the battleships’ guns.
More recently satellites also assume roles in scouting and communications.
Small surface ships can still do the missions Corbett identified, but it seems other systems may be able to do them as well or better. Are their still roles for the smallest warships that can undertake prolonged independent operations?
There are still some things only surface ships can do. What is enemy commerce is not always obvious. In many cases only a visit and search can determine if a vessel is innocent.
While aircraft and even submarines may protect our own commerce, when ships are attacked far from shore, only surface ships (and their embarked aircraft), can save the crews or bring damage control assistance.
These are certainly not jobs for Burke class destroyers, which are now, with BMD and land attack roles, essentially Capital Ships. We need some minimum number of ships to do these tasks which are essential to the exercise of sea control. Once we establish how many we need, we can consider if the marginal cost of adding MCM, ASW, ASuW, and/or AAW capability is worthwhile. Frigates once filled this role, in addition to others, LCS are the only ships the Navy is currently building that might do these jobs. Some Coast Guard Cutters may also be appropriate. Somehow, I doubt we have enough, and I have doubts that they are adequately armed to deal with even medium sized merchant vessels without assistance.
Essentially we have a fleet of battleships of several types, CVNs, SSBNs, SSNS, DDGs, Amphibs. Simple and numerous “cruisers,” the smallest ships that can undertake prolonged independent operations, are almost non-existent.
“In no case can we exercise control by battleships alone. Their specialization has rendered them unfit for the work, and has made them too costly ever to be numerous enough. Even, therefore, if our enemy had no battle-fleet we could not make control effective with battleships alone. We should still require cruisers specialized for the work and in sufficient numbers to cover the necessary ground.”
Ref: “Some Principles of Maritime Strategy,” by Julian Stafford Corbett: http://eremita.di.uminho.pt/gutenberg/1/5/0/7/15076/15076-h/15076-h.htm
Chuck Hill is a retired Commander in the U.S. Coast Guard. He writes at Chuck Hill’s CG Blog, with the objective of looking, over the longer term, at the budgets, policies, tactics, roles, missions, and their physical expression – the platforms – that allow the Coast Guard to do its job.
A naval engagement off the southern port city Zamboanga, Philippines, is once again showing the utility of maritime transport for non-state actors.
A navy patrol encountered and fought with “about 100 suspected Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) rebels, who were on board a large motorboat and eight smaller vessels off Rio Hondo, a crowded Muslim community in the port city of Zamboanga, military spokesman Lt. Col. Ramon Zagala said.” The clash left 1 member of the navy special forces dead and 6 injured, while at least a further 5 died as the fight moved inland. Estimates of hostages taken by the MNLF number between 20 and 300 hundred.
As reported by the AP: “The 11,000-strong Moro Islamic Liberation Front has engaged the Philippine government in Malaysian-brokered peace talks, which have progressed recently toward a new Muslim autonomy deal. But a Moro National Liberation Front guerrilla faction led by Nur Misuari felt left out and has issued new threats.”
In February, followers of the nominal ‘Sultan of Sulu’ also took to the sea for an invasion of Malaysian Borneo in what was seen as an attempt to gain a stronger bargaining position in the peace talks.