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History, Interviews

Bow to the Hegemon – Dr. Kori Schake on a Peaceful Transition of Global Power

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By Christopher Nelson

Recently I had the chance to talk to Dr. Kori Schake about her new book, Safe Passage: From British to American Hegemony. Her book describes the only case of a peaceful hegemonic transition between two nations. In this instance, it was the gradual transition from British to American hegemony beginning in the 19th century and ending at the end of World War II with America firmly situated as the global leader.

We spoke for over an hour about her book, history, the great Tom Schelling, and of course, what she’s reading these days. It was a fun and fascinating discussion. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. 

Christopher Nelson: Professor Schake, thank you so much for taking the time to chat. Before we get into details of the book, I want to start by asking you about the book’s cover. It’s a fabulous picture and I got to say, it stands out in the sea of books on international relations and national security. Having listened to you speak on a panel before – full of energy and jazz –  I’ll admit that the picture reminds me of a 19th century Kori Schake. Did you discover it? Your editor? Where’s it from?

Kori Schake: [Laughter] Yes! It’s a 19th century portrait of me! You are exactly right. I did pick it. I found it when I was doing the research for the book. And I love the way it’s what we look like to Britain when America was a rising power: she’s confidently assessing her appearance in the mirror, adjusting a battleship hat, and the accoutrements of war are literally hanging off her purse strings.

Nelson: I’m a big believer that a book’s dedication is important. Quickly skipped by many, but important. You dedicated this book to Tom Schelling. Many readers will recognize his name and have read his work, some have not. I discovered Arms and Influence much too late in my naval career. It’s fantastic. Who was he, but more important, how did he mentor you as an academic, as a thinker, as a student?

Schake: I was so lucky to have the privilege of learning from Tom. He was not at the University of Maryland when I went there to do my graduate work. But he came there and he was such a warm, fostering, generous soul. It was such a privilege to learn from him. But I have to tell you, Tom Schelling gave me some of the best advice about life.

He rushed me through my PhD dissertation because I had been A.D.D for six years. I was a year into my dissertation research when I got a posh fellowship to go work as a civilian in General Powell’s Joint Staff in the summer of 1990. This was two weeks after Iraq invaded Kuwait. I went off to work with General Powell for a year and stayed in the Pentagon for six years. And Tom, bless his heart, kept writing letters to the chancellor of the university who was understandably trying to clear me off the rolls of the PhD program because it was so obvious I was never going to finish. Tom kept writing these beautiful letters saying, “She’s not working in a shoe store, she’s doing the kind of jobs we would want someone who held a PhD from this institution to be doing.” So he kept them from throwing me out.

When I left the Pentagon I wrote my PhD dissertation in six months. It’s terrible. What Tom kept saying was, “Get the dissertation done and make the book perfect.” He understood what a flight risk I was. And so I am living proof that if the minimum wasn’t good enough it would not be the minimum. I got my dissertation done and went on doing work that I liked and wanted to do.

Tom eventually brought me back to Maryland for my first teaching job. There is never going to be a better day in my professional life than the day of my PhD defense. At the end of it Tom thanked me for teaching him something about strategy.

Nelson: What did you teach him?

Schake: I didn’t teach him anything. It’s proof of what a gentleman he was. I wrote my dissertation on strategy and the Berlin Crisis in 1958 and 1961. I did not realize when I chose the topic that Tom had been an advisor to the Kennedy administration in 1961. The conclusion of my dissertation was that the Kennedy administration had actually made a delicate situation much worse by treating the crisis as a problem about the risk of war with the Soviet Union rather than treating it as a problem of how to keep Germany voluntarily allied with the West. So I ended up being very critical of the policy choices the administration he was advising had come to. He could not have been happier [Laughter]. He said it was wonderful that I thought for myself on the subject and agreed with me in retrospect. The frame of reference that the Kennedy administration put on the problem led to worse solutions than the policies the Eisenhower administration had taken.

Nelson: How did the idea come about to write the book? What is it about the transition between British and U.S. global hegemony that interests you?

Schake: The idea was germinating for a long time. With all of the talk of the rise of China and whether it can happen peacefully and what it means for the U.S., I kept wondering: What are the precedents?  What worked last time and what didn’t? I didn’t even know enough about the subject when I started writing to realize that there was only one peaceful hegemonic transition in history. I thought I was going to be looking at whole bunch of case studies. And when I started doing the research for the book I realized I couldn’t write it as a political science book because there are no case studies. There is a single case study if you’re looking at peaceful transition.

Nelson: So what would a statistician say?

Schake: If N=1 you can never draw a conclusion, that’s what a statistician would say. But history does not give us the luxury of an N sufficiently large to draw a robust conclusion. History gives us what it gives us.

If, for example, you read Graham Allison’s book on the rise of China, what Graham tries to do was force the problem into a political science framework by expanding the definition of hegemonic transition to get more than one case of a peaceful transfer. And I think that is much more problematic. For example, one case of hegemonic transition he uses is the shift of power from Britain and France after World War II towards Germany. But of course all three of those countries have the same security guarantor.

So first of all, it’s not a hegemonic transition. There was a hegemon setting the rules. And second of all, it wasn’t a hegemonic transition because we imposed the rules on our three close allies because we were worried about an entirely different problem.

I thought about the question of hegemonic transition a long time – years in fact. I kept worrying that somebody smarter than me was going to write this book before I got to it. I watched the book review section with enormous trepidation that someone like Aaron Friedberg would have turned his attention to this or anyone of the dozens and dozens of people who could do a better job than I did in the writing of this. But nobody got to it before I got to it!

Punch cartoon after the conclusion of the Tribunal of Arbitration that sought to settle the Venezuelan crisis of 1895. PEACE AND PLENTY. Lord Salisbury (chuckling). “I like arbitration — In the PROPER PLACE!” (Wikimedia Commons)

As you know, Chris, I’m not a historian of the 19th century. But I got obsessed with this question of peaceful hegemonic transition and I had to learn the history of the 19th century in order to answer the question I was interested in. My other big worry was that historians were going to point out that I wasn’t part of the tribe. You know, the thirty-seven things I ought to have understood about this period of time that anybody knowledgeable on the subject would know but I didn’t’ know – I kept waiting in agony that that would be the verdict. I feel like I got away with the jailbreak of the century, but so far the reviews have been good.

Nelson: Fascinating. How does this fit with the idea that there’s a list of smart, well-read, popular writers out there that are writing about topics as non-professionals, in the sense they may not have an advanced degree in the specific subject – and here I’m thinking of people like Malcolm Gladwell, Nicholas Taleb, David McCullough and many more – but they are able to connect different ideas, sometimes across different disciplines, and convey them very well.

Schake: I hate reading history where somebody avalanches everything they know on a subject at me; historians are curators, that’s what they do. I want someone to tell me what is relevant and interesting about a particular problem. As General Powell used to tease me all the time when I worked at the Joint Staff that there were lots of reasons to fire me but there were two reasons not to. The first reason not to fire me was that it was kind of funny to watch me do my job. And the second was because I was the only NATO expert he ever met that when he asked what time it was, I would just tell him what time it was [Laughter]. Yes. I wouldn’t start with first the earth cooled, and then sun-dials, and then clocks…

But back to your question, they ask interesting questions and then they tell a story. They’re engaging storytellers which is what every good teacher is.

Nelson: How do you research and write? For instance, are you a longhand writer that finds a few hours every morning to write and then transcribe it to a computer? What’s your process?

Schake: I basically break it down into three stages.

The first stage is just thinking about what’s the right question. What’s the right question that unlocks understanding about an important subject?  Many books that I’m bored reading are books that are about a subject, not about a question. I try to always discipline myself to think about issues in terms of what is the right question because then I can figure out what does it take to answer the question.

For me the second stage is trying to figure out what would prove the answer right and what would prove it wrong? What is the discriminating data that would help me figure out if I have the right answer or not. I’m extremely Germanic in my approach to writing. The architecture actually matters to me because I find that I’m a poor editor of my own work. Once I write it it’s hard for me to throw it all away, so unless I’m disciplined enough to structure it in ways that are not just driving down a rabbit hole, I need to understand this to explain this, and here’s the place to talk about this, that sort of thing. Unless I force myself into the discipline of structure I just walk around the house in my pajamas talking to myself and it doesn’t end up being something that is valuable to anyone.

The last third of it is the actual writing of it.

Nelson: So you’re the person who has to do the outline with pen and paper?

Schake: Yes. When I’m researching I start building blocks of research. As I look at flows of bits of information I am trying to figure out how to tell the story. I outline the book, the details are outlined, the research is plugged into the outline, and then I write to stitch the pieces together. It’s unimaginative and Germanic. But unless I do that I’m way too self-indulgent and I end up with a lot of stuff that will end up on the editing floor.

Nelson: Throughout the book you introduce different international relation perspectives when you outline how historians, political scientists, and others have tried to describe the relationship between the U.S. and Britain during this period of transition. In the international relations field, what do you consider yourself? Simply, what’s your worldview? Are you a Realist?

Schake:  I am badly trained in several disciplines.

Nelson: [Laughter]

Schake: No, that is the honest to god truth, Chris. My degrees are in political science, yet I write history and I was trained by an economist.

Nelson: [Laugh] That’s a lovely dodge. But seriously, I’m curious, what’s Kori Schake’s worldview?

Schake: I had the privilege of being with an extraordinary group of people a few months ago in something called the Civic Collaboratory. It’s run by an outstanding American by the name of Eric Liu who is dedicated to rebuilding the bonds of affection and cooperation among Americans.

The Collaboratory is something where everybody who goes is the head of an organization in the public sphere, for example, one person is the head of the 92nd Street Y in New York City. Eric uses a diverse group of people, some of whom will pitch the next idea for what they are working on. Everybody else in the group tries to come up with ways to help. It can be big, it can be little, but the point is to try to help each other.

One of the most inspiring people I met in this amazing group of people was a woman who was teaching history. She told me the motto of her organization. It is now the motto of my worldview, which is this: people make choices, and choices make history. For me that really is how I think about it. I don’t believe in immutable forces of history like the crushing burden of economic determinism, or religious determinism, or political determinism. I think we have wide latitude to craft our fate and so I think the only thing that the Realists have right when talking about American foreign policy is that they were incredibly smart to choose the best name. Because if you’re the realist everybody else is unrealistic.

Also, the Realist description of how governments make choices don’t correlate with what I think of America in the 20th century. For me, the most powerful thing I learned when writing Safe Passage was that as the United States grew more powerful it grew more liberal. We reversed the trend that governed every other powerful state, which is as other countries became more powerful they bent the rules to their advantage. In contrast, when we became more powerful we gave wider latitude to others to affect our choices and legitimatize our power. That really does make America in the time of its hegemony unique. As an American I found it incredibly touching.

Nelson: Your book details nine historic moments between the U.S. and Britain, from 1823 to 1923, that you use to illustrate as pivotal points towards hegemonic transition – but it wasn’t smooth. What were some of the more significant points of friction between the U.S. and Britain during this time that could have led to conflict?

Schake: I love that question, especially because the answer is so obscure. The moment at which things were likely to result in war between Great Britain and the U.S. was the 1895 Venezuelan debt crisis – which nobody knows anything about, it’s lost to history. It’s the moment when war was likeliest, when a rising U.S. was breathtakingly reckless.

U.S. President Cleveland twists the tail of the lion (Britain). (Puck cartoon 1880s via Wikimedia Commons)

The basic story goes like this: Venezuela and Great Britain had been disputing the boundary line along the Orinoco river (which is in Venezuela) for 45 years or so. It becomes a crisis because the British get greedy, the Venezuelan cadillo defaults on loans that for British companies build infrastructure. As an aside it is important to understand that in judging the Venezuelan choices in this, they are only rudimentarily a state at this point. The quality of government is very poor. The British get predatory and they want the mouths of the Orinoco river in return for Venezuela defaulting on their debt. And again, none of this matters to us, except for the fact that the Monroe Doctrine had been American policy for over 70 years and the Venezuelan government had an American lobbyist working for them that wrote op-eds in newspapers all over the U.S. drawing attention to this issue.

Grover Cleveland who was the President at the time was so opposed to imperialism that he refused to proceed with the accession of Hawaii as an American territory. He considered the Monroe Doctrine troublesome. Yet this American lobbyist working for the Venezuelans forced it onto the political agenda by challenging that Cleveland was failing to enforce the Monroe Doctrine. Grover Cleveland, who runs a cabinet-style presidency where he exercised loose control, allows the American Secretary of State to write a 12,000 word demarche to the British that concludes that American law is fiat on this continent. The British don’t even respond to such a ridiculous proposition. Grover Cleveland is then offended that we aren’t being treated more respectfully because we’re a rising power. So he starts to get more engaged and he defends the Secretary of State.

The British reply after another round of this, and they say that they control more territory on the North American Continent than we do – which adds insult to injury. Cleveland then does what every good American President does in foreign policy: he appeals to the recklessness of the American Congress. He gets an unanimous endorsement from Congress to go to war with Great Britain!

Great Britain was the dominant military force in the world at that time. The American Navy’s Caribbean squadron was six ships – and yet we were ready to fight the hegemon of the international order. The British flipped on the issue. In the space of six months they go from derision to Prime Minister Salisbury being cheered in the House of Commons when he announced that there is no greater supporter of the Monroe Doctrine than her majesty’s government. It’s a wonderful case study because why did it change? I found it a very poignant story because civil society in these two democracies is what changed their positions. The United States was an illiberal democracy in the 19th century. Britain wasn’t a democracy but had a more liberal government than most in the international order at the time.

What happens is civil societies reach across cultures. 354 members of the British Parliament write an open letter to the U.S. Congress encouraging peaceful arbitration to resolve the dispute between their countries. American newspapers initiate a write in campaign. The Prince of Wales – the husband of Queen Victoria – writes one of the letters suggesting that war between our two countries is fratricide. That sentimental connection, the sense of being the same, creates space for political compromise that avoids the war.

Nelson: Along that point, when you studied this through an entire century, when was there, as a culture, a sense of collective self-consciousness about the transition? Did the leaders or the populations sense this hegemonic shift?

Schake: I love where you are going with this. Nobody’s ever asked me that question. Yes – when did they know? One of the interesting things I learned when doing the research is that Britain was never a comfortable hegemon in the way the United States wears its power with ease. I think because the successes that made Britain the ruler and enforcer of the international order were all coalition victories. Britain had to work with Spain and Portugal in the fight against Napoleon, and they had to bring the Prussians into the fight. All of their defining victories are coalition victories. So they never think of themselves with the ease of power that the U.S. does after World War II. They always worry that it is too expensive, that it is not worth it. There’s never a moment that they aren’t thinking it is slipping away from them – they are always worried it will.

That’s the biggest difference in my perspective from Aaron Friedberg’s brilliant book Weary Titan. He looks at a tight timeframe of about ten years when the transition actually occurs and he ascribes characteristics to the British in the twilight of their hegemony that were actually true of them in the entirety of it.

Nelson: Moving to contemporary issues and themes. Your book is timely, because in one way it is juxtaposed to Graham Allison’s recent book on the Thucydides trap, that we’ve already briefly touched on. So two questions regarding that: What are your thoughts on the concept of a Thucydides trap? And second, what do you want readers to take from your book, namely, if peaceful transition is possible, but rare, how do see the future of great power conflict?

Schake: Sir Lawrence Freedman wrote a review of Graham Allison’s book, that if anyone writes a review like that of my book, you can find my body floating in the river – way down [Laughter]. It’s devastating.

My view is that Graham should be laughing all the way to the bank because whether you agree with his argument or not, he defines Thucydides in a really interesting and important way. He and I are firing salvos at each other on the Cato Institute website right now. I wrote an essay on how to think about the rise of China that Graham and several other people critiqued. So now I’m getting ready to fire my second salvo at them. It’s really fun. I’m learning a whole bunch from other people’s perspective on the problem.

My sense of the Thucydides story is different than what comes across in Graham’s book. Having talked to him about it several times and debated it with him several times, he doesn’t think that’s all that Thucydides says . There’s so much you can take from Thucydides. The way it comes through Graham’s telling of the book is a more narrow reading of Thucydides than I think is fair to Thucydides – which is a big beautiful canvas of a story, and I think Graham agrees with that.

I don’t think it is a trap because, again, people make choices. The Athenians make choices, Pericles is playing a dangerous game, there’s a lot going on there that makes it interesting. I also don’t think it describes the United States, which after all has encouraged the rise of the rest of the world. We have encouraged an international order where our power is constrained by rules and institutions, and patterns of cooperation that are mutually beneficial.

John Ikenberry gets America in the time of its primacy exactly right. We shape the international order as a microcosm of our domestic political order. That’s why we face so few challenges to our dominance. That’s because most other countries think the current international order is better than they would get any other way. And that’s what we see playing out with China right now. Everyone wants the American order.

Nelson: This gets to your conclusion in your book. If peaceful transition is rare but possible, what do think happens in the next decade?

Schake: I think the way to bet your money is that hegemonic transitions will be violent. The only exception is the Britain-to-American transition. Because of the U.S.’ westward expansion, the consolidation of the American continent, after fighting the Indian Wars, we become an empire in our own minds. We come to have imperial reflexes because of our conquest of the West. So during this 20th century transition, Britain has become a democracy while we are becoming an empire. So we look similar to each other but different to everybody else. That sense of sameness created space for policy comprise. Political scientists hate squishy stuff like this – and they’re right, it’s not rigorous, it’s impressionistic. But what I learned trying to understand this one transition in great detail is that that was what mattered. That sense of sameness, that sense we were like each other and different from everybody else allowed for compromise.

So what to look for in future hegemonic transitions is that squishy intellectually unsatisfying definition of sameness, which takes us to Hegel and Frank Fukuyama, because China doesn’t feel similar to the U.S. right now. And if you think China can continue to rise without playing by the rules of the American order, and if you think as has been the case for the last 40 years that China can continue to rise without liberalizing, then it is very likely to be a violent transition.

I’m skeptical China can continue to rise without liberalizing because I think the law of gravity applies to them as well. It seems to me that, like Maslow’s pyramid, as people’s basic needs are met they become more demanding political consumers. So the challenge to China will be things like moms demanding safe baby milk, and parents infuriated that corruption meant building codes weren’t followed so schools collapse in earthquakes and kids get killed. You see an awareness of that risk in the anti-corruption campaign in China. I don’t think authoritarian societies get honest enough feedback to stay ahead of problems. In free societies you are always having to answer the question, for example, if you want to confiscate somebody’s property to run a high-speed train through it, you have to win the argument; in authoritarian societies where you don’t have to win the argument, I don’t see how they stay honest. I think the question is less about a hegemonic transition with a rising China, but rather: can China be successful in light of what its own citizens want?

Nelson: What would you recommend others read about this topic after they’ve finished your book? Specifically, what would you recommend someone read on this topic that takes a contrarian view?

Schake: There’s so much good material on this subject. Walter Russell Mead’s God and Gold is a great book that has a very different take than I do. He’s much more of the belief that British and Americans considered themselves similar. I think it is a late-developing consciousness. Walter treats it as having the model right and passing it from one to another with a certain inevitability of its success.

But when I read World War II history it makes me derisive when contemporary policy makers say today is way more complicated than it ever was and nobody has had challenges as difficult as we do. Man, a lot of American leaders back then would trade their problems with some of our challenges. Fighting Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany simultaneously is a lot harder than what we’ve been called to do today. This is a long circuitous route to tell you where Walter and I disagree: Walter gives a sense of inevitability. I think the story is so much more interesting when you realize how fearful the leadership was in the 20th century that they would lose.

We think of World War II in broad, heroic terms because we know the outcome. But the people who had to make decisions at the time – for instance, whether you go to Europe first or fight the Asian campaign first – was a question of enormous consequence and the continuation of the Republic hung in the balance.

Bob Kagan’s work on America and the liberal order and Walter Russell Mead’s work – I admire them both so much – but in both cases I think they failed to embrace how close-run American successes have been. I also think, including John Ikenberry, who writes so beautifully about America in the 20th century, they don’t get their arms around the brutality of the U.S. in the 19th century. We were a democracy, but Britain was right, we were an illustration of what was to be feared about a democracy because we were profoundly illiberal. And not just on the slavery issues. The Indian Wars go on for 50 years after the abolition of slavery and almost nobody blanched about the barbarity of that. In the great state of California, it was legal up into the 1920s to take Native American children away from their parents.

One of the questions that animated me to want to understand this American history better was trying to understand how a political culture so proud of our Republican values could live the history we lived in the 19th century and still become what we are in the 20th century. That animates a lot about how I try to tell the story in the book.

Nelson: Professor, to close on a lighter note, and not related to your book, what have you been reading lately – fiction, non-fiction – that you’ve particularly enjoyed? Articles, books? Longform journalism?

Schake: As it happens, I have six books on my nightstand at the moment that I am reading. The first is Emily Wilson’s splendid, sparkling new translation of The Odyssey. I think about Odysseus and his story differently because of her translation. If you think about the opening lines of Fagel’s translation of The Odyssey: “Tell me Muse of the man of twists and turns.” Emily Wilson’s translation of that line is, “Tell me Muse of a complicated man.” She conjures a completely different approach. I am just reveling in how differently to think about a book I know well because of a translation. It’s wonderful.

The next book on my nightstand is The War that Killed Achilles. It’s about the lessons from the Trojan War.

The third book on my nightstand is Emily Fridlund’s novel The History of Wolves. I haven’t started it yet, but my sister read it and thought it was brilliant.

The fourth is Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad – it won the Pulitzer Prize. I love her writing.

Next on the list is Czeslaw Milosz’s The Captive Mind. I believe Phil Klay, the great short story writer and novelist, said this was a book that was important to him.

Finally, Cardinal Robert Sarah’s The Power of Silence. The good and great Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson recommended this book to me.

Nelson: And websites that you like to visit from time -to-time?

Shacke: You know where I’m going to start. I really enjoy War on the Rocks. I also really like The Strategy Bridge, Divergent Options, and I read everything Mira Rapp-Hooper and Tamara Cofman Wittes write because I always learn from them.

Nelson: This was wonderful. Thanks again for taking the time to chat.

Schake: Thank you, Chris. I really enjoyed this.

Dr. Kori Schake is the Deputy Director-General of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. She is the author of Safe Passage: the Transition from British to American Hegemony (Harvard, 2017) and editor with Jim Mattis of Warriors and Citizens: American Views of Our Military (Hoover Institution, 2016). She has worked for the National Security Council staff, the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, and both the military and civilian staffs in the Pentagon. In 2008 she was senior policy advisor on the McCain presidential campaign. She taught Thinking About War at Stanford University, and also in the faculties of the United States Military Academy, the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and the University of Maryland. 

Christopher Nelson is a U.S. naval officer stationed at the U.S. Pacific Fleet Headquarters in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval War College and the Maritime Advanced Warfighting School in Newport, RI. He is a regular contributor to CIMSEC. The questions above are his own and do not reflect those of the U.S. Department of Defense or the U.S. Navy.

Featured Image: Cover of Puck magazine, 6 April 1901. (Columbia’s Easter bonnet / Ehrhart after sketch by Dalrymple.)

Capability Analysis, Strategy

Three Hard Questions for U.S. Maritime Strategy in a Digital Age

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By Frank T. Goertner

From the White House to the Pentagon, the message is clear. The world of 21st Century great power competition has arrived, and it is distinctly different from the one today’s U.S. national security enterprise was designed to confront. Now is the time for every agency, department, and service in the executive branch to ask itself hard questions and consider decisive change.

Nowhere is the imperative for introspection more acute than in the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and Merchant Marine. They are the sea services responsible for sustaining American sea power; their forces the guarantors of maritime superiority for a maritime nation. Moreover, their leaders are the custodians of the national assets most threatened by the rise of China and Russia as new global rivals in the maritime domain.

With this in mind, it is time to consider whether the emergent norms of this new era of great power competition also warrant a campaign to rethink the functions and missions of these sea services. Is now the time for a new maritime strategy for the United States?

The answer is yes. Three hard questions point to why.

What Will We Do if the Lights Go Out?

The sea services have always been on the nation’s first line of defense against threats to national interests and on the first line of response to disasters at home and abroad. Traditionally this has taken the form of sustaining and guarding physical sea lines of communication (SLOCs) that connect the United States to other maritime nations, while exercising readiness to project military power or render disaster response to physical crises around the globe. 

The current maritime strategy of the United States bins these roles into five enduring functions – deterrence, sea control, power projection, maritime security, all domain access – and promotes seven naval missions – defend the homeland, deter conflict, respond to crises, defeat aggression, protect the maritime commons, strengthen partnership, and provide humanitarian assistance/disaster response. Anyone capable of tracking their way through these lists as they read the document is then offered a tour of U.S. maritime capabilities as they relate to each of these functions and roles. En route, they will find sound justification for everything the sea services are doing today. What they will not find is precise direction on how they should change to confront the future of maritime competition. 

This is a problem. China and Russia are both developing capabilities that could fundamentally change the character of contests at and from the sea.  They are investing in unprecedented capacity for new means of physical and digital coercion. Russia brands it Information Confrontation. For China, it is Low Intensity Coercion and Intelligentized Warfare. Each involves developing sophisticated offensive cyber doctrine, investments in high-end electromagnetic pulse weaponry, and capabilities to disrupt critical communications architecture around and beneath the sea. In early phases of escalation or conflict, it is fully plausible either rival could disrupt civil communications, impair digital infrastructure, and impede electrical services across large swaths of the United States. 

The implications for the future sea services are profound. Each must prepare to defend against digital coercion by maritime rivals and to protect new digital SLOCs for future maritime operations. What are the means by which the sea services could align with other national instruments of power to deter such coercion in peace and in war, and what could each sea service offer the nation in the worst-case that deterrence fails? Could the Navy and Merchant Marine deliver power-generating capacity and internet services from the sea? Could the Coast Guard help reestablish communications between coastal U.S. hubs? Could the Marine Corps help rebuild and defend critical digital nodes and infrastructure? Who would repair the undersea cables and defend them against further attack? In sum, the sea services need a strategy that evolves beyond today’s functions and missions, and toward defining future means to protect America against 21st Century coercion and be ready to respond if the lights go out.  

What if the Oceans Turn Transparent?

One of the tenets of naval strategy has always been the vastness of the world’s oceans. There has traditionally been so much water, with so much activity occurring within and around it, that it was inconceivable any nation could capture and make sense of it all. Any ship at sea was not just the proverbial needle in a haystack. It was a moving needle among hay that was tossing, turning, and even inhabited.

The best navies in history have applied this tenet to their advantage. They developed navigational and communications techniques to maintain the edge over rivals in knowing where their ships were among others in the haystack, along with the fastest ships to traverse the open ocean swiftly or furtively. Maintaining that part has always been hard, demanding continual progress in command, control, and communications technology in platforms built to leverage every boundary of physics they could challenge. On the other hand, hiding has historically been easy. It has been a matter of either knowing where to hide in the ocean’s multi-layered domain or reducing physical signature enough to look like other needles or hay in the stack.   

For the first time in history, there is evidence that this may all be about to change. With the emergence of a globalized sensor-based economy, the world is on track to host more than 50 billion “smart” devices and one trillion digitally connected sensors by the early 2020s. Of course those won’t all be sensing the maritime domain, but many will be. 

They will be mass-manufactured in a host of sizes and configurations and employed on long-endurance drones on and above the ocean’s surface, in nano- and micro-satellites in space, or scattered along the coasts and sea-bed. They will be employed in abundance on military, commercial, and possibly even biological platforms; collecting, deciphering, and transmitting the data of the seas.

For the aggregators of this data, virtually everything in the haystack could be visible – critical portions of the oceans will be effectively transparent. Yet that is only half the problem. Development and operationalization of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and autonomous systems, alongside advances in quantum computing and radar, offer the promise of harnessing machine processors to discern patterns in the data such that nearly every needle can be found, or at least rendered probabilistically present, with greater accuracy than humans have ever achieved. 

The impact on the future sea services will be immense. Postures of passive defense will no longer be enough to protect their assets at sea. Is the United States ready for a fight in which the competition for sensor saturation and AI dominance is a core determinate of victory at and from the sea? Are the sea services prepared for an operating environment in which maneuver among rival maritime forces becomes an active game of confounding the predictive analytics of rivals and finding novel ways to hide in the clutter of the oceans’ dynamics? And perhaps of greatest concern, what if the transparency extends below the sea surface and the Navy’s undersea contribution to the U.S. nuclear triad is someday laid bare? Is it worth a strategic hedge such as diversifying employment of strategic weapons and high-yield tactical missiles onto surface combatants, carrier-launched aircraft, or in extremis even container vessels of the Merchant Marine? In sum, the sea services need a strategy that addresses holistically how to sustain American sea power if the oceans turn transparent.     

How can We Mobilize a Digital Maritime Nation?

Since the War of Independence, America’s leaders have recognized that they are responsible for a maritime nation. Yet how to convey that in policy has not always been self-evident. During the inter-war years of the 1930s, as now, the U.S. Government witnessed an escalation of competition among maritime rivals on a scale that had never been seen before, enabled by technology that was fundamentally changing the character of contests between them. National leaders at the time knew the United States had an edge in industrial production and innovation, but they did not know how to mobilize it for a global fight.

In response, the President and Congress passed the Merchant Marine Act of 1936, establishing a Maritime Commission. It was a federal body directed and authorized to chart the mobilization of an American maritime nation for the level of global competition and contest it saw on the horizon. By the 1940s, when those contests turned to war, the nation had at least thought through what was needed in the months and years ahead.      

America remains a maritime nation but is now a digitally interdependent maritime nation in a digital age. This is something new. Wall Street and the solvency of the Federal Reserve are nearly as reliant on foreign digital market transactions as they are on U.S. investments.  The nation’s most powerful and valuable firms are corporations with legal, digital, and human elements that span the world. And U.S. universities – the engine of digital and industrial ingenuity – are digitized global enterprises unto themselves.       

The significance for the sea services is dramatic. They need to think through how to secure America’s national innovation complex and defend its intellectual edge in a world of commoditized data and information. They merit collective contingencies to mobilize the industrial giants of the Fourth Industrial Revolution for sea power competition on behalf of America and our Allies. What will be the legal and financial terms under which the services of Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Space-X and others are commissioned should today’s contests turn to war? Is it time to reconsider standards and terms of selective service for the Digital Age? Do the sea services need new authorities to explore, resource, and test innovative concepts for burden sharing in the event of mobilization? In sum, there should be a strategy to articulate a national vision and lay the foundation for mobilizing a digitized America for the digitized contests on the horizon.

Time for Answers

These are the first of many questions the U.S. sea services should be asking, but the questions are just the start.  Collectively, the services need answers, and they need them fast in order to beat emergent maritime rivals to the future. Equally important, these answers must align across national maritime authorities – public and private, agencies and services, U.S. and Allied – to ensure they all get there together.

In short, they need a new U.S. maritime strategy for a digital age.

Frank Goertner is a Commander in the U.S. Navy. His most recent assignment was as a Strategic Planner for Future Fleet Design and Architecture in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, Future Strategy Branch. The views and opinions expressed are the author’s alone and do not represent the official position of the U.S. Navy, U.S. Department of Defense, or U.S. Government.

Featured Image: NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. (April 3, 2017) Vice Chief of Naval Operations (VCNO) Adm. William Moran, left, speaks at the 2017 Sea, Air and Space Exposition. Moran was joined by a panel including Assistant Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Glenn Walters, Vice Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard Adm. Charles Michel, and Joel Szabat, executive director of Maritime Transportation, to discuss a “Sea Services Update” regarding today’s maritime environment. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Danian Douglas/Released)

Seamanship and Leadership

How XO/CO Fleet-Up Enhances Operational Competence

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By Capt. Henry Adams

Introduction

Among the many debates occurring across the Navy in the wake of the USS FITZGERALD and USS JOHN S. MCCAIN collision mishaps of last summer is whether or not the Surface Community should continue with the unit-level XO/CO Fleet-Up policy. Strong, considered opinions exist on both sides of the issue as thoughtful professionals seek to settle the question regarding the value and future of the policy. Although many factors should be considered, the first question the Surface community should ask is whether the XO/CO Fleet-Up policy contributes to the imperative of operational competence, which I define as the ability to handle and fight a ship at sea safely and effectively. This is the gold standard by which we measure success and should be the first test for whether the Fleet-Up policy should continue. In my view, unit-level XO/CO Fleet-Up comes with great benefits that contribute to operational competence, with the caveat that certain potential risks must be addressed to ensure the best possible outcomes.

Benefits and Advantages

As someone who has participated in both the “traditional” and Fleet-Up models, in addition to leading a squadron of ARLEIGH BURKE Destroyer (DDG) Commanding Officers (CO) and Executive Officers (XO) through the process, my perspective is that the XO/CO Fleet-Up model works. I was XO in USS PORT ROYAL (CG-73) for 22 months from 2004 – 2006 and screened for O-5 Command during that tour under the traditional command screening process. Following a 27 month shore tour, I received orders to USS STETHEM (DDG-63) as the first XO/CO Fleet-Up in Destroyer Squadron FIFTEEN (CDS-15) forward deployed to Yokosuka, Japan. I spent 12 months as XO in STETHEM then fleeted-up to CO for the next 18 months for a total of 30 months in the command leadership team. More recently, I reported to CDS-21 in March 2015 as Deputy Commodore, fleeted-up in August 2016, and am currently in my 19th month as Commodore. During my time as Commodore, I have worked with, led, and observed as many as eight Fleet-Up XO/CO teams at a time.

Like any policy, XO/CO Fleet-Up has its benefits and risks. The three greatest benefits with regard to operational competence are leadership consistency for the crew, CO’s knowledge of the ship, crew, and mission, and the CO’s readiness to command with confidence on day one. Leadership consistency results from the stability and longevity in the XO/CO team that the notional 36 month Fleet-Up tour provides. Because the XO will presumably one day become the CO, and the CO has to live with the outcomes of decisions made while XO, the leadership “diad” is incentivized to be more thoughtful and consistent in executing shipboard management, including key programs such as training and maintenance that have a direct impact on a ship’s operational effectiveness.

A CO’s knowledge of the ship, crew, and mission benefits greatly from XO/CO Fleet-Up. After having served as XO for 18 months, the new fleet-up CO has intimate knowledge of the ship and crew. Individual strengths and weaknesses, troubled systems, and the myriad other challenges that face a ship CO will be well-known as a result of having spent the previous tour as XO dealing with those issues. This effect of carrying the knowledge of ship, crew, and mission from XO to CO within the same lifelines is particularly helpful given the growing complexity in ship systems and mission areas over the years. Ballistic Missile Defense ships in particular benefit from the Fleet-Up policy because of their technical complexity and unique training requirements.

The final major benefit of XO/CO Fleet-Up is that COs report for duty ready to lead with confidence on day one in command with a flatter learning curve as they proceed through their tour. As the previous XO, the new CO comes aboard with knowledge of the ship and crew and, thanks to the quality training provided during the approximately three-month PCO period, is immediately prepared to command.

Risk and Reform

Although there are clear benefits to operational competence inherent in the XO/CO Fleet-Up policy, there are also potential risks that must be addressed to better support operational competence. Those risks include CO fatigue, CO quality control, and time between Department Head (DH) and XO sea tours.

The notional Fleet-Up tour length is 36 months. Candidly, this is a long time to shoulder the workload associated with being the XO followed immediately by assuming the inescapable, 24/7 responsibility and accountability inherent in being the CO. I spent 30 months as an XO/CO Fleet-Up, and I was frankly exhausted by the end. I had no chance to rest and reset prior to assuming command. This is the fatigue risk inherent in the Fleet-Up policy: that COs may burn out while in command and, as a result, will be at greater risk of making bad decisions at sea.

Fortunately, this concern has been addressed with recent policy. In 2016 the Surface community implemented the “18-3-18” policy refinement to Fleet-Up, which requires a three month break between XO and CO tours and affords PCOs the opportunity to take up to 30 days of leave. This policy was enacted in part to allow future COs to recharge prior to assuming command. In addition, that three month period ensures that PCOs complete additional required pre-command training at the Surface Warfare Officers School (SWOS) in Newport, RI.

The shift to XO/CO Fleet-Up resulted in the perceived loss of quality control by removing a long-standing checkpoint on the path to command: the traditional XO ride. Before Fleet-Up, COs had the final say on whether their XOs were fit for command. The XO Fitness Report (FITREP) was a “one or a zero” and had tremendous influence on command screening boards, which typically occurred late in an XO’s tour or during the follow-on shore tour. The “bit check” still exists in the Fleet-Up policy. Now, it is designed to occur during the XO tour when, in order to move on to command, the XO must receive positive endorsement from the CO, ISIC, and Type Commander. Additionally, the Fleet-Up selection board uses the same key inputs (Department Head FITREPs), career timing (the first look occurs two years after O-4 selection), and is actually more selective than the traditional process because it screens fewer officers for command rather than creating a larger XO bank that must then be culled to identify future COs.

To further reduce risk from quality concerns, the Surface community has modified the Fleet-Up policy over time. Quality checkpoints now include the requirement to pass the Command Qualification Assessment (CQA) – a rigorous process that takes place at SWOS – as a prerequisite for command screening board eligibility; mandatory Command Qualification Board (CQB) topics to standardize criteria for command endorsement; and a ship handling go/no-go test during the first two days of the Surface Command Course. The go/no-go test is a recent addition to the Fleet-Up quality control process. Notably, PCOs must demonstrate proficiency in ship handling and the Rules-of-the-Road or risk being sent back to their ISIC for remediation or, more likely, loss of command opportunity and administrative reassignment. I currently have three PCOs in CDS-21 preparing to assume command later this year; they all report the go/no-go test is challenging, fair, and provides excellent feedback.

Excessive time between DH and XO tours remains the greatest potential risk to operational competence inherent in the XO/CO Fleet-Up policy. Shortly after implementation of Fleet-Up, the average time command-screened officers spent between the end of their DH tour and reporting aboard as XO spiked to as high as seven years, the result of screening to opportunity and not the Fleet requirement, resulting in a large bank of command-screened officers waiting for orders. This inordinate delay in returning to sea was never part of the original Fleet-Up policy, which anticipated a 5 – 5.5 year pause.

The unintended extended delay between operational tours set officers up to enter the Fleet-Up program with low proficiency and lack of confidence. In contrast to the traditional approach of command selection, which averaged 3.5 – 4 years between XO and CO tours, the Fleet-Up policy sought to accept risk earlier, namely between DH and XO tours, thereby ensuring a direct transition from XO to CO with the attendant benefit to operational proficiency. Today, the average time between DH and XO is down to 5.3 years and trending back to the 4.5 – 4.7 years as originally envisioned. It is clear from attending waterfront briefs that Surface community leadership recognizes the importance of reducing the time between DH and XO and is actively working to shorten it. If the Surface community can get that gap back to a reasonable length of time so that degradation in operational skills is not a major concern, then the risk will have been mitigated.

Controlling for Quality

Among the three risks identified above – CO fatigue, quality control, and time ashore prior to XO – quality control presents the biggest challenge. Managing the potential impact of fatigue is a simple matter of policy (the three months in the “18-3-18” plan) and one that the Surface community has already implemented. The same goes for reducing the time between the end of a DH tour and the start of XO/CO Fleet-Up. Policy can, and I believe will, fix that. Quality control is another matter because it requires the consistent, combined efforts of selection boards, SWOS, unit COs, and ISICs to hold the line on standards and weed out underperformers before they get to command.

Based on my experience as the ISIC for CDS-21, in working with my COs, and observing my peers, I am convinced that the Surface community is on the right track with regard to quality control on the path to command. My fellow ISICs and their COs are not afraid to prevent underperforming DHs or XOs from moving on to command. During my current tour as Commodore, I failed two candidates at their CQBs and I declined to fleet-up one of my XOs. In the case of the XO, the CO and I had the full support of both operational and administrative chains-of-command. My COs have collectively Detached for Cause four DHs, removing them from their assignments and essentially closing the door on any opportunity to screen for command in the future. In short, I see Surface community leadership at all levels moving out on implementing or executing policies to drive higher standards and quality control in the Fleet-Up model. I also see a general commitment to removing underperformers at every stage of the SWO career path.

Conclusion

The unit-level XO/CO Fleet-Up policy contributes to operational competence for the reasons discussed, namely consistency in shipboard leadership, the CO’s intimate knowledge of the ship, crew, and mission, and CO’s readiness to command on day one. The combination of these three factors set the conditions for a CO who is ready to operate his or her ship competently and confidently and lead the crew to achieve the combat readiness the Surface community expects and the Navy requires. We will not see these positive outcomes, however, unless we address the risks associated with Fleet-Up. To get after those risks, the Surface community must continue to implement and lock in the various quality control points to ensure we select and train the best available candidates for command-at-sea. An attrition model should be applied at every quality checkpoint, and we should be unapologetic about this. Any competitive system that prizes high performance relies on attrition to screen out underperformers and, equally important, demonstrates a commitment to excellence to our high performers. Finally, the Surface community should continue to screen officers for XO/CO Fleet-Up based on Fleet requirements and return the length of time between DH and XO tours back to the originally envisioned limit. If we continue to invest in the benefits of Fleet-Up and fully commit to mitigating the risks, the Surface community and the Navy will gain COs with greater operational competence, who stand ready to lead their crews and employ their ships with skill and confidence.

Capt. Adams is a career Surface Warfare Officer who has served in a cruiser and multiple destroyers. A former commanding officer of USS Thunderbolt (PC 12) and USS Stethem (DDG 63), he is the Commander of Destroyer Squadron 21. He is a 1991 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and holds a Master of Science from the National War College

Featured Image: YOKOSUKA, Japan (May 3, 2016) Cmdr. Ed Sundberg, off-going commanding officer of the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS McCampbell (DDG 85), returns a salute to Cmdr. Ed Angelinas, the ship’s oncoming commanding officer, during the ship’s change of command ceremony. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Patrick Dionne/Released)

Capability Analysis

Publication Release: Alternative Naval Force Structure

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By Dmitry Filipoff

From October 3 to October  7, 2016 CIMSEC ran a topic week where contributors proposed alternative naval force structures to spur thinking on how the threat environment is evolving, what opportunities for enhancing capability can be seized, and how navies should adapt accordingly. Contributors had the option to write about any nation’s navy across a variety of political contexts, budgetary environments, and time frames. 

Relevant questions include asking what is the right mix of platforms for a next-generation fleet, how should those platforms be employed together, and why will their capabilities endure? All of these decisions reflect a budgetary context that involves competing demands and where strategic imperatives are reflected in the warships a nation builds. These decisions guide the evolution of navies.

In a modern age defined by rapid change and proliferation, we must ask whether choices made decades ago about the structure of fleets remain credible in today’s environment. Navies will be especially challenged to remain relevant in such an unpredictable era. A system where an average of ten years of development precedes the construction of a lead vessel, where ships are expected to serve for decades, and where classes of vessels are expected to serve through most of a century is more challenged than ever before.

Authors:
Steve Wills
Javier Gonzalez
Tom Meyer 
Bob Hein
Eric Beaty
Chuck Hill
Jan Musil
Wayne P. Hughes Jr.

Editors:
Dmitry Filipoff
David Van Dyk
John Stryker

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Articles:

The Perils of Alternative Force Structure by Steve Wills

“Even the best alternative force structure that meets strategic needs, is more affordable than previous capabilities, and outguns the enemy could be subject to obsolescence before most of its units are launched. These case studies in alternative force structure suggest that such efforts are often less than successful in application.”

Unmanned-Centric Force Structure by Javier Gonzalez

“The conundrum and implied assumption, with this or similar future force structure analyses, is that the Navy must have at least a vague understanding of an uncertain future. However, there is a better way to build a superior and more capable fleet—by continuing to build manned ships based on current and available capabilities while also fully embracing optionality (aka flexibility and adaptability) in unmanned systems.”

Proposing A Modern High Speed Transport –  The Long Range Patrol Vessel by Tom Meyer

Is the U.S. Navy moving from an era of exceptional “ships of the line” – including LHA’s & LPD’s, FFG’s, CG’s, DDG’s, SSN’s and CVN’s – to one filled with USV’s, UAV’s, LCS’s, CV’s, SSK’s and perhaps something new – Long Range Patrol Vessels (LRPV’s)? But what in the world is an LRPV? The LRPV represents the 21stcentury version of the WWII APD – High Speed Transports.

No Time To Spare: Drawing on History to Inspire Capability Innovation in Today’s Navy by Bob Hein

“Designing and building new naval platforms takes time we don’t have, and there is still abundant opportunity to make the most of existing force structure. Fortunately for the Navy, histories of previous wars are a good guide for future action.”

Enhancing Existing Force Structure by Optimizing Maritime Service Specialization by Eric Beaty

“Luckily, the United States has three maritime services—the Navy, Coast Guard, and Marine Corps—with different core competencies covering a broad range of naval missions. Current investments in force structure can be maximized by focusing the maritime services on their preferred missions.”

Augment Naval Force Structure By Upgunning The Coast Guard by Chuck Hill

“The Navy should consider investing high-end warfighting capability in the Coast Guard to augment existing force structure and provide a force multiplier in times of conflict. A more capable Coast Guard will also be better able to defend the nation from asymmetrical threats.”

A Fleet Plan for 2045: The Navy the U.S. Ought to be Building by Jan Musil

“2045 is a useful target date, as there will be very few of our Cold War era ships left by then, therefore that fleet will reflect what we are building today and will build in the future. This article proposes several new ship designs and highlights enduring challenges posed by the threat environment.”

Closing Remarks on Changing Naval Force Structure by CAPT Wayne P. Hughes Jr., USN (Ret.)

“The biggest deficiencies in reformulating the U. S. Navy’s force structure are (1) a failure to take the shrinking defense budget into account which (2) allows every critic or proponent to be like the blind men who formulated their description of an elephant by touching only his trunk, tail, leg, or tusk. To get an appreciation of the size of the problem you have to describe the whole beast, and what is even harder, to get him to change direction by hitting him over the head repeatedly.”

Dmitry Filipoff is CIMSEC’s Director of Online Content. Contact him at Nextwar@cimsec.org.

Featured Image: PACIFIC OCEAN (Oct. 27, 2017) Ships from the Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group participate in a replenishment-at-sea with the USNS Guadalupe (hull number). (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Morgan K. Nall/Released)