Tag Archives: Hunt for Strategic September

Cast Adrift: Canada’s Maritime Strategy

October 4, 2013 Guest Author 2 Comments

This article is a part of The Hunt for Strategic September, a week of analysis on the relevance of strategic guidance to today’s maritime strategy(ies). As part of the week we have encouraged our friendly international contributors to provide some perspective on their national and alliance strategic guidance issues.

As the United States undertakes a rigorous review of its strategic guidance, Canadian defence planners should take note. An update is expected for an important element of American maritime strategy, Cooperative Seapower for the 21^st Century, which calls for operations to be carried out ‘ideally’ in concert with allies. The Quadrennial Defence Review (QDR), to be issued next year, will assess the threats and challenges faced by the United States and set out long-term plans on how to develop American capabilities accordingly.

In contrast, Canada lacks an equivalent to the QDR, with any strategic review conducted on an ad hoc basis. In 2001, a weighty tome was published by Canada’s Department of National Defence (DND), entitled Leadmark: The Navy’s Strategy for 2020. As this was developed and released prior to the September 11^th attacks and such operations as Active Endeavour, an update came in 2005, entitled Securing Canada’s Ocean Frontiers: Charting the Course from Leadmark. Since then, no further updates to Canada’s maritime strategy have been released. In 2008, DND released the Canada First Defence Strategy (CFDS), but this is primarily concerned with funding and procurement issues for the Canadian Forces as a whole. The CFDS is already badly dated; where it does briefly outline the Canadian Forces’ strategic objectives, it identifies security for the 2010 Winter Olympics as a top priority.

Canada could benefit greatly from an equivalent process to the QDR. One of the objectives of such a review should be to determine whether the Royal Canadian Navy is still in strategic lockstep with its allies. If a significant gap in capabilities and/or priorities is found, an update on the scale of Leadmark 2.0 may be necessary in order to ensure Canada is capable of upholding its commitments to its allies. There is some cause for concern as to whether Canada is already falling behind, making the need for a defence review all the more urgent.

In 2011, as a follow-up to the CFDS, the National Shipbuilding Procurement Strategy (NSPS) was released. While some of the particulars are hazy, the NSPS is intended to modernize the Royal Canadian Navy, replacing many vessels that have been operating well past their intended date of retirement. For example, the Joint Support Ship Project will see Canada’s two Protecteur-class auxiliary vessels replaced with three Berlin-class replenishment ships. However, perhaps the most ambitious aspect of the NSPS is the Single Class Surface Combatant Project, which calls for the replacement of Canada’s 12 Halifax-class frigates and three Iroquois-class destroyers with 15 vessels of as yet unknown capabilities or classification. However, there are strong indications that these new vessels will be similar in many respects to the current Halifax-class frigate.

As some observers have noted, the United States Navy has placed greater attention in recent years on the littoral zone. Meanwhile, Canada remains focused on a traditional naval task force role, lacking sealift capabilities or any means of reliably deploying in littoral waters. If the Littoral Combat Ship is the shape of things to come, Canada’s expected frigates (or at least frigate-like vessels) may not be fully compatible. Though the Royal Canadian Navy will remain useful for maritime interdiction and generally supporting the United States in ensuring continental defence, Canada may find itself largely ignored by American strategists in favour of other, more compatible allies. Had DND undertaken reviews similar to the QDR, some course correction could have been made to Leadmark, its successor, and the subsequent NSPS. One can only hope that the Single Class Surface Combatant once unveiled will prove to be something capable of participating actively alongside US and NATO maritime forces.

Even so, calls for an update to Canadian strategic guidance have been limited. In analyzing Canadian public opinion, the original Leadmark laments, “some Canadians are unaware of their navy, and do not understand where ‘naval’ fits into a ‘national’ strategy.” 12 years later, one may wonder whether parliamentarians have also forgotten their navy, hoping that haphazard fleet-replacement will be a sufficient remedy.

Paul Pryce is a Junior Research Fellow at the Atlantic Council of Canada. With degrees in political science from universities in both Canada and Estonia, he has previously worked in conflict resolution as a Research Fellow with the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. His research interests include African security issues and NATO-Russia relations.

Strategic Outlook

The Road to the QDR, Part I

September 24, 2013 Guest Author Leave a comment

This article is special to The Hunt for Strategic September, a week of analysis on the relevance of strategic guidance to today’s maritime strategy(ies).

Before our other writers suggest ways ahead for strategic guidance I thought I’d take a brief look at the origins and of the American institution of what has come to be the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR).

Our first stop: 1993. The Soviet Union, “the threat that drove our defense decision-making,” had died in an aborted coup two years prior, at the barricades of the Russian White House. At the request of Congress, the U.S. Department of Defense conducted what it called the Bottom Up Review (BUR), an analysis of the nation’s strategic outlook, the forces required to meet the still-present dangers of the world and the thorough scrubbing of Department-wide processes to best support those capabilities. The BUR was developed to respond to a changed world, but one recognizable today, with such headlining concerns earlier outlined to the Atlantic Council by Les Aspin, Secretary of Defense at the time of the BUR, as terrorism, “regional thugs”, and Japanese economic power (so some things have actually changed).

One of the most important decisions made in the BUR was to choose as its force structure-requirement benchmark the ability to fight and win to major regional contingencies (MRCs). As a result, a critique leveled at the BUR was that while it paid lip service to other objective-driven force structure requirements – such as the naval need to furnish 11 carriers (plus a reserve training carrier) to sustain a global presence – it nonetheless rested on an assumption that the ability to prevail in two MRCs would provide enough force structure to handle all requirements from “lesser-included cases.” The fault in this assumption, the critique posited, was that it did not fully recognize the specific and perhaps different capabilities, nor the straining operational tempo, such lesser contingency or peacetime operations would demand from the active duty force.

Another guiding assumption in the BUR was the belief that even in a fiscally constrained environment the military could sustain its readiness without risking what it termed “force enhancement”. This was essentially a gamble that procurement, and research and development efforts to modernize the force could be sustained along with readiness, at the cost of some downsizing of the Armed Forces.

By 1997 the BUR’s 2 MRC requirement had been adopted by the National Security Strategy and National Military Strategy. However, Eric Larson notes that by this point it had also become clear that high deployment-rates and operational tempos were not only degrading readiness but were risking the vaunted force enhancements, as funds marked for modernization were shifted to operations and maintenance accounts whenever one of those ol’ lesser –case contingencies reared its head. Additionally, Larson wrote that “research in fact suggests that the cumulative level of peacetime operations approximated a full MRC or more of force structure.” Against this backdrop Congress would act (yes, there was a time those two words could appear together in the same sentence). With the 1997 National Defense Authorization Act Congress formally established the requirement for a “comprehensive examination” every four years, specifically entitled the Quadrennial Defense Review, tasking the Secretary of Defense to examine:
─ Force structure
─ Force modernization plans
─ Infrastructure
─ Budget plan
─ Other elements of the defense program and policies of the United States

How did the first QDR play out? Stay tuned…

LT Scott Cheney-Peters is a surface warfare officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve and the former editor of Surface Warfare magazine. He is the founding director of the Center for International Maritime Security and holds a master’s degree in National Security and Strategic Studies from the U.S. Naval War College.

The opinions and views expressed in this post are his alone and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not necessarily represent the views of U.S. Department of Defense or the U.S. Navy.

Strategic Outlook

On Stockdale and Strategy

September 23, 2013 Guest Author 2 Comments

The following article kicks off The Hunt for Strategic September, a week of analysis on the relevance of strategic guidance to today’s maritime strategy(ies).

For two weeks in September, I participated in a Navy fleet exercise, supporting our nation’s defense by flinging razor-sharp PowerPoint slides at the enemy.

The nature of the exercise – which featured U.S. and coalition ships sailing into an escalating regional tiff – raised an important question with which fans of Admiral Stockdale may be familiar: “Who are we? Why are we here?” In other words, why did this fleet of American warships exist and why did it bother coming to this forsaken, if fictional, part of the world?

We can talk about Quadrennial Defense Reviews and Strategic Choices Management Reviews and TPS Reports endlessly, but they’re all at a level of granularity that misses the point, which is – why do we bother?

The national security strategy answers the question. At least, it should. But lately, it’s hard to define what it is.

Time was, it could be summed up as a doctrine (think Monroe or Truman) or perhaps in a word, such as “containment.” The armed forces were structured to support some overarching goal and their missions were more or less guided by it. But that time is past. This isn’t to say we don’t have a national security strategy – we do– but does the general public possess any common notion of what it might be?

Luckily, I know some members of this “public,” so I asked them. Respondents to my unscientific inquiry included teachers, scientists, cops, economists, retired military officers and everything in between. A sampling of responses follows.

“Our national strategy in foreign affairs seems to lack a strong guiding principle, well-founded or misguided or anything else it might be. We seem to be reacting to a series of foreign crises (often in philosophically inconsistent ways) rather than making any serious attempt to proactively influence the course of foreign affairs.”

“Our national strategy in foreign affairs seems to be one of PR rather than defense.”

“Simply put… ‘might makes right.’”

“Strategy seems like a generous term – it suggests deliberate action. U.S. policy is set ad hoc and largely reactive. The terms “incoherent” and “ineffective” come to mind… though the administration would say it is promoting democracy and U.S. interests broadly.”

“Promote democracy, protect trade, maintain world power status.”

“Our national strategy is, despite all pronouncements, a strategic retreat from aggressive foreign policy, and a return to more diplomacy, less stick.”

“We either do not have one, or it is to shoot from the hip.”

“I’d have to surmise that our national strategy is to act in accordance with what we view to be our own short-term economic self-interest.”

“The U.S. post-WWII strategy has been to promote political and economic stability in those parts of the globe in which there is a perceived national interest… the last three administrations have done a terrible job articulating a foreign affairs strategy to the American people, or Congress.”

A couple of themes emerge here: First, respondents don’t know much about the national strategy, and events don’t give them a “warm fuzzy” that it either exists or is being executed. Second, they perceive a reactive streak to current U.S. strategy – events drive our actions, not the other way around.

Well, America, I’m happy to report we do have a National Security Strategy. Our nation’s actual priorities, per the National Security Strategy of 2010, can be summed up as Security, Prosperity, Values and International Order. I think. Actually, it might be Building Our Foundation, Pursuing Comprehensive Engagement, and Promoting a Just and Sustainable International Order. It’s hard to tell as written. Maybe I’m not so happy to report we have it, after all.

From a communications standpoint, this is a problem, which leads to at least one of three other problems in the real world (possibly – probably? – all three):

1.) Nobody understands it.

2.) Policymakers don’t follow it.

3.) Foreign powers don’t take it seriously.

What to do?

Let’s start by acknowledging that in this arena, the U.S. is a victim of its own success. With the Cold War won, the population of foreign dragons to slay was drastically reduced (though Christian Bale continued to find employment). The U.S. has become, in effect, a status quo power, whose chief goal is maintaining the world system (economic, diplomatic and otherwise) and bringing the outliers into it. “Okay, guys, let’s just keep things the way they are and try to encourage incremental improvement at the margins” is not a very sexy mission statement.

But that is no excuse. Whatever the challenges, a clear and concise strategy must be articulated. And most importantly, it has to be meaningful to the layperson, whose taxes are paying for it and whose children are wearing the uniforms.

My recommendation: Get back to basics. The security establishment is spending a disproportionate amount of time on the means – budgets, force structures, manpower reviews – when what needs some articulation is the end. What does the U.S. want the world to look like? What goals are we working toward? Even a status quo power can have ideals to strive for. We could do far worse than refer back to Admiral Stockdale and ask ourselves, “Who are we? Why are we here?”

Matt McLaughlin is a Navy Reserve lieutenant and strategic communications consultant who doesn’t work on that kind of strategy. Opinions expressed do not represent those of the Department of Defense, the Department of the Navy, or his employer.

Fostering the Discussion on Securing the Seas.