A Modest Proposal to Help this Generation’s “Boat People”
By John T. Kuehn
First, this article may be too late. What do I mean? I mean that we—as in the global community and the United States in particular—may be too far behind the power curve to do something meaningful about helping the refugees fleeing across the sea from the Syrian Civil War-Islamic Thirty Year’s War raging in the Middle East. This is my way of saying I wish I had written this about six months ago when the problem was manifest to all. So why write at all? Something might be STILL done with forward deployed naval forces of the United States today, perhaps with like-minded maritime allies to help the unfortunate masses of humanity fleeing their homelands from a particularly cruel conflict. Even if it is too late for current policy, the trend of “boat people” fleeing war to a better life elsewhere has many precedents in history, especially the last one hundred years and it will most certainly occur again. This means that ringing the clarion now might contribute to effective humanitarian policy action in the future. So it is worth a try.
First, let us briefly review some relevant history on these sorts of refugee crises as they pertain to migration in unseaworthy craft in search of a better life on distant shores. Case one takes us back to 1975 and the late 1970s when the United States’ lost war in Vietnam resulted in the flight of the boat people of South Vietnam (and Cambodia, too) from the proletarian utopias established by the new Vietnamese government in Hanoi and the Khmer Rouge. The United States was caught napping somewhat on this one, too, but before long had started making efforts with naval assets based in the Western Pacific to help with this crisis. However, years later a particularly unfortunate incident occurred in the 1980s wherein the captain of a U.S. warship (the USS Dubuque) failed to render proper assistance to fleeing “boat people” who later survived to present evidence against him. We will return to this issue since it is a feature of the law of the sea that mariners must render aid to people in danger on the high seas. More recently Americans saw the flight of people from both Cuba and Haiti to the United States in the 1990s, fleeing various natural and man-made disasters in the Caribbean.
Why should the United States use its assets, especially its Navy, to help these people? There are three principle reasons: moral obligation, humanitarian, and practical. The practical value for the United States involves two factors, leadership and what, for lack of a better term, might be called “good press.” If the U.S. is to be a leader it must take the lead in areas where it claims an interest. By getting more involved and working with other states of the region while at the same time committing actual naval forces to help, we build partnerships, lead, and help. It is a win-win-win result.
From a moral standpoint we owe it to these people. Here is the causal logic—when the U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq all those years ago we removed the government in power and destabilized the region. From that context Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) developed. During the final years in Iraq we estimated we had pretty much solved the problem of AQI, but instead it had simply transformed itself into the current Islamic State (ISIS). At the same time Syria fell into civil war, a conflict not unrelated to our actions in Iraq and has been further de-stabilized, especially since 2013, by an increasingly powerful and dangerous ISIS. The upshot is that some, not all, of these refugees can be traced to American policy choices, so there exists something of a moral obligation to help with the result of our, for lack of a better word, blundering in the Middle East.
Finally, we get back to the purely humanitarian reasons—the salvation of (mostly) innocent human life. Obviously things are being done, but there is little reason to allow people to helplessly drown or die of exposure at sea on un-seaworthy craft. They already think they can make it and so the arguments that they would not flee if they did not think someone would help are not only ill-informed, they are morally wrongheaded. In fact, the United States by simply having ships in the Eastern Mediterranean is obligated to “render assistance” should it run across people in distress on the high seas. Simply stationing ships on patrol in that area will naturally result in a requirement to render assistance because we certainly do not want any more Dubuques like we had in the South China Sea after the Vietnam War had ended.
As with any use of American taxpayer-funded projects, use of U.S. Navy assets must be judicious. Also, we must coordinate with partners and allies in the region, but rendering assistance on the high seas is part of international law and a moral imperative, more than one might think given our distance from the Eastern Mediterranean. However, if the United States is to use its Navy as the “sysadmin” of the global maritime regime, as Captain Peter Haynes discusses in his recent book on the “new maritime strategy,” then this sort of action and use of naval power is part of the responsibility that the mantle of maritime leadership confers. Or perhaps we no longer aspire to lead in this domain? I think not.
Dr. John T. Kuehn is the General William Stofft Chair for Historical Research at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College CGSC). He retired from the U.S. Navy 2004 at the rank of commander after 23 years of service as a naval flight officer flying both land-based and carrier-based aircraft. He has taught a variety of subjects, including military history, at CGSC since 2000. He authored Agents of Innovation (2008), A Military History of Japan: From the Age of the Samurai to the 21st Century (2014), and co-authored Eyewitness Pacific Theater (2008) with D.M. Giangreco as well as numerous articles and editorials and was awarded a Moncado Prize from the Society for Military History in 2011. His latest book, due out from Praeger just in time for the 200th Anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo is Napoleonic Warfare: The Operational Art of the Great Campaigns.
The views are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
The United States has been a maritime power since its inception. Maritime trading has always been essential to its economy and over the years has stretched across the globe. Protecting these interests is the job of U.S. Navy. Its origins date back to when North African pirates began seizing American merchant vessels and holding their crews to ransom. This article will explore what could have been if the United States had decided to appease the pirates instead of investing in a national navy to protect its economic interests on the high seas.
The United States had barely stepped on to the global stage, when it faced its first foreign crisis. Its merchant fleets were increasingly coming under attack by North African pirates from the Barbary States. This problem of piracy was hardly new: since the 16th century, European commerce in the Mediterranean had been under threat from the Barbary Nations in North Africa. These states consisted of Tripoli, Algiers, and Tunis, which were nominally protectorates of the Ottoman Empire, along with the independent Sultanate of Morocco. The economies of this region were heavily dependent on piracy and a series of warlords, called Deys, maintained their power largely by bringing in tribute. The European nations had found it easier to simply pay off the pirates rather than engage in sustained military action that would likely forge either temporary peace or require an expensive occupation of North African territory.
American merchant shipping had, in its early years, been protected by European powers: by the British during the colonial period, and during the Revolution later by the French. The onset of the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, however, drew attention from the pirate threat in the Mediterranean and left American merchant vessels with European help. Furthermore, upon achieving independence, the fledgling U.S. government found itself short of money. The Continental Navy, which fought during the revolution, was disbanded and the remaining vessels were sold off to raise funds. Unfortunately, this left American merchantmen to fend for themselves on the high seas.
The first U.S. merchant ship was seized in October of 1784 by a Moroccan raider. The crew was held captive for a decade and many wrote letters home describing the deplorable conditions of their imprisonment. The resulting public outcry compelled renewed interest in dealing with this persistent pirate threat.
Dealing between Morocco and the U.S. were not necessarily negative, however. Morocco was the first nation to recognize the United States in 1777 and subsequently signed The Moroccan-American Treaty of Friendship in 1786. The other Barbary States were not as easily dealt with. Algiers continued to demand tribute from the U.S. and ransomed captives, although a peace treaty was signed in 1796. The agreement proved very costly for the U.S. (requiring up to 10% of its annual revenue) and military options were increasingly considered. In 1801, Congress approved the construction of six frigates for use in protecting American shipping and compelling the Barbary States to allow American ships to sail the Mediterranean unscathed. Tripoli declared war the same year after its demands for tribute were refused by the newly elected President Thomas Jefferson.
The U.S.S. Chesapeake, one of the U.S. Navy’s original six frigates.
A fleet under the command of Edward Preble was ordered to blockade the port of Tripoli. The expedition was largely successful although losses were taken. The decisive action of the conflict occurred when the former U.S. consul William Eaton led eight U.S. marines and approximately five hundred foreign mercenaries on an overland march to capture the city of Derne, and threatened the capital of Tripoli. The fall of Derne marked the first U.S. victory on foreign soil (and is immortalized in the lyrics of the Marine Corps Hymn). Tripoli subsequently signed a peace treaty with the U.S. in 1805, ending the first Barbary War.
With this first American victory on foreign shores, the Navy demonstrated its ability to project power over long distances and sustain an extended naval campaign away from home ports. In addition, this was the first U.S. Marine landing and subsequent land campaign. The U.S. had demonstrated that it could protect its citizens and could meet any aggressive acts against it with force. In addition, the U.S. was no longer compelled to pay tribute to any foreign nation.
A second Barbary War began when the War of 1812 again drew European attention away from North Africa. Once again U.S. merchant ships were taken by pirates and again the Navy was dispatched to the Mediterranean. In 1815, a fleet under the command of Stephen Decatur won several battles against Algerian pirates and forced Algiers to sign a treaty protecting American vessels from piracy.
Building a navy and launching military expeditions against the Barbary pirates was by no means a unanimous policy decision on the part of the U.S. government, however. Even within Jefferson’s own party, the Democratic-Republicans, there was considerable opposition to the idea of creating a regular navy in the first place. Many prominent Americans were skeptical of creating a centralized standing military because they felt is could be used by rulers to oppress its citizenry. From the Anti-Federalist papers (Brutus X):
“The liberties of a people are in danger from a large standing army, not only because the rulers may employ them for the purposes of supporting themselves in any usurpations of power, which they may see proper to exercise, but there is great hazard, that an army will subvert the forms of the government, under whose authority, they are raised, and establish one, according to the pleasure of their leader.”
Even if the military remained subservient to the state, there were concerns that a standing peacetime military would encourage the government to provoke wars and promote their own agendas that would not be in the best interests of the nation. Still others felt that future of the new United States lay in expanding westward across the continent. Building up a navy, they felt, would allocate resources away from this expansion. In the end, Jefferson and his supporters won out, but it could have easily gone the other way.
Had history followed this alternate course, and the anti-navalists won out, the trajectory of America becoming a world power would have been curtailed. The U.S. would have contended with numerous economic and geopolitical problems. A U.S. Navy would have eventually been created, but not until an event such as the Civil War prompted renewed interest in military expansion. Even then, the resources and expertise would not be in place to accommodate such a policy.
In the meantime, the U.S. would have continued paying tribute to the Barbary States in order to secure safe passage for its merchants, thus straining the national budget. Even if westward expansion became a priority, maritime trade would have remained the economic backbone of the country. In order to continue its overseas trade, the U.S. would be forced to remain reliant on Europe for maritime protection or limit its trade with Europe accordingly and remain a strictly regional power. Instead, America would probably turn its gaze southward to the Spanish colonies in Central and South America. This alliance would almost certainly spark tensions with Britain, France, and even the Dutch, the primary competitors for territory in the Americas. Any number of conflicts could break out, making the War of 1812 look like a border skirmish by comparison.
Alternatively, an agreement could be reached whereby U.S. goods would be transported in European hulls to overseas markets. Such an agreement would deter piracy at the cost of ceding control of the U.S. economic lifeline to foreign powers who could gain immense leverage by threatening to choke it off. While this would have prevented a rising America from coming into coming into conflict with other states, ultimately, this would have the effect of reducing the U.S. to little more than a de facto European colony yet again.
Strategically, policies like the Monroe Doctrine would not be viable for the U.S., given the lack a strong deterrent. Other European competitors would have free access to U.S. waters and generally be able to do as they pleased. Indeed, the Quasi War with France in 1798 and the War of 1812 proved that the U.S. needed a naval force that could stand up to the other European powers. In both cases, the Navy was able to protect American interests at sea. Hiring privateers for protection would be an option for the U.S., though likely an expensive strategy in the long run. In addition, with naval action relegated to secondary importance, it is unlikely that the U.S. would develop the capability to produce homegrown warships. Noted ship designers such as Joshua Humphreys, the designer of the first U.S. frigates, would take their expertise elsewhere, not to mention the great American naval commanders who would remain unknown.
Instead the U.S. began a strong naval tradition of projecting power globally that would manifest itself in the coming decades with the Great White Fleet, the opening of Japan, and the Spanish American war, and continued into the modern era. It is telling, perhaps, that the 2011 Libyan intervention is sometimes referred to the Third Barbary War.
Christopher Stephens is a graduate from the College of William & Mary and is currently with the Project for the Study of the 21st Century. He has formerly completed internships with the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command and the Joint Forces Staff College.
Sources
Ohls, Gary J. Roots of Tradition: Amphibious Warfare in the Early American Republic. Ann Arbor: UMI, 2008
Peskin, Lawrence A. Captives and Countrymen: Barbary Slavery and the American Public, 1785–1816. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009
Tinniswood, Adrian. Pirates of the Barbary: Corsairs, Conquests, and Captivity in the 17th Century Mediterranean. New York: Penguin, 2010.
The Anti-Federalist Papers. Brutus X. January 24, 1788
The High Seas Fleet and the PLAN: Striking Similarities in Strategy, Force Structure and Deployment
The first part of this series examined the nearly identical origins, and dismal, early combat histories. This second installment compares the equally similar strategy, operational art, and force structure, and concludes with observations on the PLAN can avoid the fate of the High Seas Fleet. Read Part One here.
Both new fleets entered their identifiable “blue water” eras with similar strategies, operational concepts and tactics. The German High Seas Fleet retained robust coastal defense force structures even as its focus moved to the maritime space outside its own near abroad. This dual aspect of coastal and blue water operations was a key element in German strategy that was designed to defeat Great Britain’s Royal Navy (RN). High Seas Fleet architect Admiral von Tirpitz believed that a German Navy 2/3 the strength of the RN would be sufficient to defeat the British Navy in a battle if waged in German terms. Tirpitz envisioned drawing a portion of the RN into battle in the North Sea, but reasonably coast to German bases where torpedo craft (surface and subsurface), minefields and even shore batteries on advanced locations such as Heligoland Island might support the High Seas Fleet. German naval historian Holger Herwig suspects that Tirpitz never intended to attack Britain, but hoped that “British recognition of the danger posed by the German Fleet concentrated in the North Sea”, would “Allow the Emperor to conduct a greater overseas policy.”[1] The possibility would always exist that if Great Britain still defeated the German Navy in battle that it would be too damaged and perhaps, “Find itself at the mercy of a third strong naval power or a coalition (France and Russia).[2] Herwig also suggests that other would-be maritime powers might be inspired by Germany’s example and perhaps convince those nations to seek Germany as an ally. To achieve these ends, Tirpitz in effect attempted to create the early 1900’s equivalent of an Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) zone in the Heligoland Bight of the North Sea.
Artwork featuring German coastal defense torpedo craft.
Evidence suggests that the PLAN is following a similar strategy. The Chinese are well on their way to building a very credible, regional naval capability.[3] The PLAN’s emphasis on operations within the Chinese defined “first island chain” seems to mirror Tirpitz’s focus on decisive battle in the North Sea. There is no evidence to suggest the Chinese are planning to launch an aggressive naval war against the United States, but are building naval forces sufficient to convince the United States and other would be opponents that the risk involved in combating such a force will entail significant naval losses. As Germany acquired the island of Heligoland in 1890 in order to secure the naval approaches to its significant ports from blockade, China is seeking to control and expand islets in the South China Sea in order to create a buffer zone around its sea lines of communication with its primary hydrocarbons supply sources in the Persian Gulf. Control of the South China Sea would also support potential military operations to place Taiwan under Communist Chinese control. Tirpitz thought his fleet would prevent Britain from considering a preemptive attack on Germany, as it had done on a nascent Danish Navy at Copenhagen in 1805. China appears to be creating its own A2/AD network to similarly deter U.S. action against the People’s Republic in the event of conflict over Taiwan, or contested islands in the South and East China Seas. Like Great Britain a century ago, the U.S. today must consider, “whether the U.S. Navy in coming years will be large and capable enough to adequately counter improved Chinese maritime forces while also adequately performing other missions around the world.”[4]
Artwork featuring PLAN coastal defense torpedo craft.
Although it is clearly building a “blue water” fleet that includes aircraft carriers, capable surface ships and submarines, the PLAN also maintains large forces of missile-armed littoral combatants analogous to the large German light forces of the early 20th century. China also has a much more powerful equivalent to the German shore batteries in the form of the Anti-ship Ballistic Missile, but this weapon does not yet appear to have been successfully tested against a moving target at sea.[5]With the bulk of its blue water fleet concentrated in home waters, and supported by similarly-based aircraft, submarines, land-based missiles and light naval forces, China has deployed a naval force structure remarkably similar to that of Imperial Germany. It appears focused on the control of its immediate sea zone and intended to deter the maritime hegemon from interference in its growing global economic, political and possible military activity.
There are some trends to suggest some of the new blue water PLAN units will deploy beyond the first island chain and operate in regular deployments abroad as the U.S. Navy has done since 1948.[6] Such deployments are fraught with peril if unsupported by a large global naval support structure and close allies. Admiral Graf von Spee’s crack cruiser squadron was deployed overseas at the German Pacific colony of Tsingtao (now the Chinese city and naval base of Qingdao) in 1914, but Tirpitz otherwise kept the heavy units of the High Seas fleet almost entirely in home waters for deterrence and potential combat against the Royal Navy. A future Chinese von Spee might wreak havoc on shipping and naval forces in the Indian Ocean or Red Sea, but would also be, “a cut flower in a vase, fair to see, yet bound to die” as Churchill said of the German commander.[7]
A Similar Potential for Catastrophic Failure
Both navies also share similar traits that eventually led to catastrophic failure in war for the High Seas Fleet. Admiral von Tirpitz based his strategy for victory against the Royal Navy on superior technology and highly trained personnel as well as specific numbers of capital ships. German warships were slower, had smaller guns and more austere in accommodation than their British counterparts, but had better gunnery optics, had thicker armor, and would prove more survivable in combat thanks to superior internal subdivision. German naval personnel were also expected to be more technically expert and better disciplined than their RN equivalents. This entailed adopting some of the harsher attributes of the Prussian Army to the naval service rather than forging a unique German naval culture to compete with that of the RN, who was the “motherhouse” for a multitude of world navies including those of the United States and Imperial Japan. Looking back in 1929, Germany’s official naval historian Admiral Eberhard von Mantley described the German naval culture of the Hohenzollern period as, “A Prussian Army Corps transplanted on to iron barracks.”[8]
The PLAN is likewise inured with the culture of a non-naval organization. The Communist Party of China plays a role in the Chinese navy similar to that played by the Imperial hierarchy in Hohenzollern Germany. The political work within the Chinese navy was once described as the “lifeline” of the service and essential to its support from the Chinese Communist Party.[9] The current commander of the PLAN, Admiral Wu Shengli, has long had close ties to the Communist Party through his father who was a Red Army political officer and governor of Zhejiang. Admiral Wu may also have had close ties to future Chinese President Jiang Zemin, who served as Shanghi Party Secretary when Wu was Deputy Chief of Staff for the Shanghai naval Base in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Like the support from the Chinese Communist Party, the Kaiser’s patronage, support and favor toward the Hohenzollern German Navy was that force’s connection to the German ruling elite and they budgetary support that connection supported.
Naval historian Norman Friedman has suggested that one of the great flaws of the Hohenzollern fleet is that it was built without a clear strategic objective in Germany’s overall national military strategy.[10] Admiral von Tirpitz was very effective in assembling political and public support for a large fleet of capital ships, but when war did occur he did not have a defined plan as to how this very expensive fleet would be used. Friedman also points out that the German General Staff also no idea of what to do with the High Seas Fleet and that neither naval nor military leadership ever exploited its potential until late in the war with the U-boat campaign, which did not involve Tirpitz’ heavy surface units. German naval officers, especially those of senior rank also had little or no combat experience in 1914 against which to measure their operational performance at the outset of war.
While the Chinese have long planned on using naval forces to support the potential reclamation of Taiwan, and to protect vulnerable littoral areas bordering the Chinese state, their construction of larger warships such as carriers and large surface combatants has wider and more uncertain strategic ends. The PLAN and Chinese Army/Air Force elements can certainly dominate the South China Sea and its immediate surroundings in the event of a major Pacific War for a significant period of time. Would it be possible, however, for the PLAN alone to venture further afield to break likely distant blockades of Chinese hydrocarbon supplies and trade with a core fleet of “two aircraft carriers, 20-22 AEGIS like destroyers and 6-7 nuclear attack submarines?”[11] Like Tirpitz fleet of a century ago, an enlarged PLAN is strong enough in its own backyard, but risks considerable losses if it ventures away from bases and meets the combined strength of US and allied joint forces. This “prestige” element of the PLAN, like the High Seas Fleet, may be equally lacking in full strategic assessment as was its German counterpart. In addition, senior PLAN officers, like their High Seas Fleet counterparts from 1914, lack combat experience in war at sea.
Dr. Friedman suggest one other potentially chilling possibility when he references German historian Volker Berghahn’s claim that the German General Staff and aristocratic establishment may have seen war as a means of preventing the rise of a Center left Reichstag as a political check against traditional Prussian authority.[12]A war was seen by military and Prussian establishment leaders as a means of rallying the increasing working class around national objectives and recreating the unifying environment that produced the German Empire at the conclusion of the Franco-Prussian War.
China’s stagnating economy, which slowed to 7.4% in 2014, a low figure not seen in 25 years, and the results of that change on the average Chinese citizen, has the potential to cause similar global unrest.[13]The Communist Chinese essentially made a bargain with Chinese citizens in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Square riots. It would “deliver stability and prosperity” in return for continued loyalty and support of the Communist Party. The party has kept that promise for the last quarter century and delivered a 20 fold increase in the average income.[14] With this economic tide now cresting and perhaps beginning to recede, might Communist leaders seek to rally the Chinese public to international and security issues in order to distract from a looming economic downturn and maintain its control over the Chinese state? It is interesting to note that belligerent Chinese rhetoric on its South and East China Seas claims, and associated land reclamation efforts accelerated as economic advances waned. Could Communist leaders resort to more aggressive international efforts in order to preserve their rule as some historians have suggested Hohenzollern Germany did in 1914?
U.S. writer Mark Twain is reputed to have said, “History dos not repeat itself, but it sometimes rhymes.” The development of the PLAN over the course of the Cold War and especially the last twenty five years seems to rhyme very closely with that of the Hohenzollern High Seas Fleet. There are, however, some comforting differences. China is not nominally ruled by a mercurial Kaiser and has no Admiral von Tirptiz that is fully disconnected from other state organs of national security planning. It is not likely planning actual war with the United States or its close Pacific allies. That said, whether in mitigation of internal economic issues or paranoia over its seaborne hydrocarbon supply routes, China has engaged in a direct challenge to U.S. maritime superiority not seen since the Soviet Union created a global navy in the early 1970’s. While the Soviet effort was in the context of a wider Cold War, the Chinese maritime buildup has taken place in what has been a zone of relative peace since the end of the 1970’s.
No nation, or group of nations has denied China’s rise to the very top of world economic indicators, or its right to build whatever military establishment it desires. The crux of the problem is China’s aggressive bid to use elements of maritime power to close off sections of heretofore international waters. It is similar to the Communist state’s past land-based activities such as seizing Tibet and engaging in punitive expeditions against Vietnam. Like Hohenzollern Germany, another land-based power looking to move seaward, China fails to comprehend the dangers in aggression directed toward powers dependent on the free flow maritime trade. China would be well served to turn its naval expansion program toward less provocative ends.
Steve Wills is a retired surface warfare officer and a PhD candidate in military history at Ohio University. His focus areas are modern U.S. naval and military reorganization efforts and British naval strategy and policy from 1889-1941.
[1] Holger Herwig. The Luxury Fleet, The Imperial German Navy, 1888-1918, Abington/Oxon, UK and New York, Routledge Library Editions (reprint), The First World War, 2014, p. 36.
[4] Ronald O’Rourke. China Naval Modernization: Implications for U.S. Navy Capabilities—Background and Issues for Congress”, Congressional Research Service, Washington D.C., 01 June 2015, p. ii.
Recent Chinese pronouncements regarding the shift of their Navy from defensive to potential offensive operations contain a refrain with which naval historians are most familiar. It is a song once sung by another continental military power newly flush with a successful and expanding international economy.
South China Sea fleet vessels.
China’s shift toward an offensive naval capability sounds very similar to the formation of the Imperial German High Seas Fleet (Hochseeflotte) in 1907. The Chinese and Hohenzollern navies have many commonalities in origin, training and choice of force structure. Their strategy, operational art and tactics are also remarkably similar to Kaiser Wilhelm’s fleet of the late 19th and early 20th century. The Chinese Navy may have also replicated the fatal flaw that left the High Seas Fleet incapable of achieving the victory it came so close to achieving in late 1917. Like the German imperial elite of the late 19th century, the Chinese Communist Party is now also seeking “a place in the sun” through President Hu Jinatao’s “new historic missions” assignment of 2004. China may too think that “its future is on the water” as did the Kaiser’s navy over a century ago. Such visions, however, for a fleet that has not seen battle against a peer opponent since 1894, can be dangerous.
Similar National Origins and Early Dismal Performance
Like Imperial Germany, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is a continental land power that must look far into its past to find naval virtue. The Kaiser had to search back to the fifteenth century Hanseatic League in order to find heroic German maritime exploits that might be emulated by his own 20th century sailors. The PRC must equally rely on the historically remote Islamic Admiral Zheng He, who served the Ming Dynasty Yongle Emperor in the early 15th century as both a land and ocean-going commander. Both fleets were traditionally led by army officers and designed for coastal or at best littoral operations.
Both the German and Chinese fleets suffered from timid national leadership, and a paucity of training and operations that led to enforced idleness or defeat as late as the 19th century. Other Baltic powers often made short work of the Prussian Navy in war. The Swedes completely annihilated a Prussian fleet at the Battle of Frisches Haff in 1759. The Prussian Navy played practically no role in the three 19th century conflicts precipitated by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck that led to German unification. Its Danish, Austrian and French opponents either ignored, blockaded, or chased the small Prussian Navy from the seas. The Imperial Chinese Navy also suffered from neglect and poor performance from the Early Modern Period into the 20th century. The forces of the East India Company and the British Empire made short work of primitive Chinese warships in the two Opium wars of the mid 19th century. The French Navy destroyed the Chinese Fujian Fleet at the Battle of Fuzhou in 1884 and the Imperial Japanese Navy decisively defeated the Chinese Beiyang Fleet at the Battle of the Yalu River in 1894. The post-1949 People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has fought minor skirmishes against the Vietnamese, but has yet to engage anything approaching a regional, nor peer opponent in naval combat.
SMS Rheinland participates in a gunnery exercise, 1914.
The German High Seas Fleet and the PLAN both had to be “reborn” in new political and economic environments of their respective nations. The united German state surged to new economic power between 1871 and 1906 and surpassed the British in steel production halfway into the first decade of the 20th century.[1] Germany also came close to equally British world trade and coal production by 1914.[2] Great Britain continued to prosper as both Germany and the United States surpassed Britain in key economic indicators and Britain’s Gross National Product grew from 1.32 billion to 2.1 billion Pounds over the period from 1870-1900.[3] Despite these changes, the British Empire did not regard either Germany of the U.S. as a potential enemy, and Canada’s shared border with the U.S. caused more concern to the British in 1900 than did Germany’s economic growth.[4] Germany, however, despite its unchallenged economic success decided to engage the British Empire in a naval building race that the British did nothing to instigate. Some historians have said the British detainment of several German ships transporting relief supplies to Dutch Boers during the Second Boer War (1899-1902), served as a catalyst for the passage of the German Second Naval Law which was much more provocative and aimed at Great Britain than its predecessor.[5] Emboldened by economic success and military strength, and baited into action by its inability to influence sea lines of communication outside its sphere of influence, Germany embarked on a risky warship building competition with the established naval hegemon at the time and made that challenge right on that naval power’s home doorstep.
China has had an equally meteoric economic rise since the time it also changed political organization by throwing off its Maoist past and embracing state-sponsored capitalism. Like Imperial Germany, post Mao China has combined pride in economic growth with its aggressive continental past. The People’s Republic appears to have had the same sort of decisive “maritime moment” as Imperial Germany when the U.S. deployed two aircraft carriers to the Taiwan Strait in 1996 as a response to simmering tensions between the PRC and Taiwan. There appears to have been a similar rage amongst the Chinese Communist Party and military leadership over the 1996 US deployment, as there was from German Aristocrats, businessmen and military leaders over the seizure of German relief ships off South Africa in 1900. It is this kind of significant public support that allowed for the growth in the German Navy of the early 20th century and may play a role in public support for an expanded PLAN.
Both fleets also began as coast defense organizations led by Army officers and dependent on inexpensive denial capabilities. The early German Imperial Navy was first led by infantry General Albrecht von Stosch and General (and later Imperial Chancellor) Leo von Caprivi. It had few large ships and invested much of its effort in the development of torpedo craft and mine warfare. The architect of the High Seas battlefleet, Admiral von Tirpitz, and many of the Imperial Navy’s future senior officers came out of the German Navy’s torpedo boat arm. While Kaiser Wilhelm II played a very public advocacy role for larger and more capable surface ships, such expansion would not have been possible in the absence of strong support from the German business and political community. While perhaps not fervent navalists like the Kaiser, they certainly thought that having a Navy to protect emerging commercial interests was a good investment, and were willing to invest in Germany’s new naval effort. The spirit of American navalist Alfred Thayer Mahan’s writings on the importance of a battle fleet to a nation’s political and global economic health found as many adherents in Germany as it did in Great Britain, the United States, and Japan.
The early PLAN was also led by Army Generals. The most prominent advocate of improving Chinese naval capabilities was General Liu Huaqing, who served as PLAN commander from 1982-1987.[6]China’s naval strategy from 1949 through the 1980’s was also remarkably similar to Germany’s in that it was focused on coastal defense and emphasized missiles, torpedoes and mines deployed from small, coastal combatants. China appears to have also embraced the theories of Alfred Thayer Mahan as Germany did a century ago and added the study of the American navalist’s works to the curriculum of its advanced naval education courses.[7]
Part two of this article will examine how Hohenzollern Germany and the People’s Republic of China developed striking similarities in force structure, naval strategy, and deployment of their naval forces.
Steve Wills is a retired surface warfare officer and a PhD candidate in military history at Ohio University. His focus areas are modern U.S. naval and military reorganization efforts and British naval strategy and policy from 1889-1941.
[1] Aaron Friedberg, The Weary Titan; Britain and the Experience of Relative Decline, 1895-1905, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1988, p. 25.
