In May 2015, the People’s Republic of China’s Ministry of National Defense released its latest Military Strategy white paper. The paper outlines Beijing’s national security concerns, the mission and strategic tasks of the Chinese armed forces, a series of guidelines to strengthen China’s active defense, and an approach to developing China’s armed forces in preparation to counter challenges. In it, China has also highlighted its nuclear ambitions and strategy in the overall context of expanding and intensifying the preparation for military struggle (PMS):
“China’s armed forces must meet the requirement of being capable of fighting and winning, focus on solving major problems and difficulties, and do solid work and make relentless efforts in practical preparations, in order to enhance their overall capabilities for deterrence and warfighting.”
The Second Artillery Force in the Xi Jinping Era
Nuclear forces are a crucial component in Beijing’s military strategy, and the white paper describes China’s nuclear force as a strategic cornerstone for safeguarding national sovereignty and security. The document stresses how the People’s Liberation Army Second Artillery Force (PLASAF) is placing emphasis on both conventional and nuclear missiles, even for precision long-range strikes, stating that
“the PLASAF will continue to keep an appropriate level of vigilance in peacetime. By observing the principles of combining peacetime and wartime demands, maintaining all time vigilance and being action-ready, it will prefect the integrated, functional, agile, and efficient operational duty system.”
According to the Chinese government, Beijing is developing capabilities to maintain strategic deterrence. It is also preparing itself to be able to carry out a nuclear counter-attack. The White Paper also assures that Beijing is committed to its stance on no-first-use of nuclear weapons. This is distinct from its 2013 White Paper, which made no reference to the no-first-use doctrine, leading many to wonder if Beijing was rethinking its policy. The 2015 document also states that Beijing will not attack any non-nuclear state or nuclear weapons free zone with these weapons.
The document does mention Taiwan, however, and reunification remains crucial to China’s national security. And while Beijing has reiterated its stance on no-first-use doctrine this time, however, the no-first use may not be applicable to territories which Beijing considers its own. Therefore, in case of greater resistance from Taiwan, China’s no-first-use doctrine may not apply.
The document also stresses China’s willingness to limit its nuclear weapons to a minimum level sufficient to ensure its national security interests. Beijing also expresses its unwillingness to involve itself in a nuclear arms race with any country, emphasizing that they will optimize their nuclear force structure; improve strategic early warning, command and control, missile penetration, rapid reaction, and survivability of their forces; and deter other countries from using or threatening to use nuclear weapons against China.
China is already working on missile penetration aids and Chinese missiles could be fitted with decoys, chaff, mylar balloons, and sub-munitions. China has also developed missiles flying at depressed and lofted trajectories and is working on multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRVs) and maneuverable re-entry vehicles (MARVs) as penetration aids. Chinese engineers are attempting to overcome a hit-to-kill intercept by enclosing the anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) warheads in a metallic shroud cooled by liquid nitrogen.
Chinese DF-5, via FAS.
With a no-first-use doctrine, the survivability of nuclear forces is crucial and enables a minimum deterrent posture. Beijing has been working on the survivability of its nuclear forces, including replacing liquid fueled missiles with solid, with only the DF-5 and DF-5A liquid fuel missiles left in its arsenal. It has also been working on developing mobile missile systems, dummy silos near silo-based missile sites, and hard and deep tunnels (in the Hebei Mountains, for example).
China is also believed to be concentrating on an early warning system to detect enemy nuclear capable ballistic missiles. This, along with missile and air defense systems, enables Beijing to not only detect incoming ballistic missiles but also to intercept them and launch a counter-strike.
Deep, protected underground tunnels along with the early warning system will only enhance China’s ability to absorb a first strike and retaliate, thereby strengthening Beijing’s no-first-use policy. Possessing a credible early warning system would also limit the need for China to mating its nuclear warheads with delivery systems during peacetime.
PLAN nuclear ballistic missile submarine, PLAN Photo.
China’s sea-based nuclear deterrent also provides survivability for its nuclear force. Beijing has already developed ballistic missile submarines of the Jin and Xia class. The Xia class submarine can fire the JL-1 submarine launched ballistic missile (SLBM) and the Jin can fire JL-2 SLBM which is of longer range than the JL-1. According to the Federation of American Scientists, naval facilities have been built to service the new ballistic missile submarine fleet which includes upgrades at naval facilities, submarine hull demagnetization facilities, underground facilities and high bay buildings for missile storage and handling, and covered tunnels and railways to conceal these activities.
While the document highlights concerns over the U.S. re-balancing strategy in the Asia Pacific region, it carefully left out concerns over the U.S. ballistic missile defense systems in Taiwan and Japan. There is also no mention of nuclear arms control and nuclear disarmament as an objective in China’s long-term nuclear strategy. At a time when analysts and practitioners of international security are apprehensive of China’s nuclear weapons and have suggested including it in nuclear arms control measures, the exclusion of any mention of control and disarmament leaves it unclear where the country really stands on the issue.
Debalina Ghoshal is a Research Associate with the Delhi Policy Group. The views expressed in this article are her own.
CIMSEC is and always will be free for everyone, but we would be grateful for those who wish to provide a modest regular donation to support our operations.
Peter D. Haynes has written a singularly useful book for anyone interested in how the American sea services—shorthand for the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard—think about, make, and execute maritime strategy. Captain Haynes is a naval aviator, sports a Ph.D. from the Naval Postgraduate School, and serves as deputy director for strategy, plans, and policy at the U.S. Special Operations Command.
Now, it’s doubtful he has penned a bestseller. There just aren’t that many folks out there in the wider reading public inclined to get their navy geek on. That’s a shame. But it should be required reading for readers of these pixels, and for anyone entrusted with devising, prosecuting, or overseeing endeavors on the briny main. It will adorn my bookshelf from henceforth.
So much for the overall verdict. Let me share two big takeaways I culled out of Toward a New Maritime Strategy. First and foremost, this is a venture in self-knowledge. Take it from the ancients: that’s important. Know thyself, commanded an inscription at the entryway to the Greek temple at Delphi, where supplicants went to ask counsel from the god Apollo.
Knowing who we are as the seafaring arm of American foreign policy will alert us to habits of mind and patterns of behavior that prevail within the services. In so doing it helps us glimpse our future while alerting us to pitfalls and obstacles we’re apt to confront. Knowing ourselves is half the battle, as a Chinese sage of famous memory once advised.
Which is a roundabout path back to Haynes’s treatise. As the title advertises, the book is about strategy-making since the fall of the Soviet Union. The author, however, starts by delving into the prehistory to today’s strategic debates. He traces the maladies he discerns to the Cold War’s early days as much as to its endgame. Enamored of its tactical and operational success in the Pacific War, deprived of a peer adversary, and with the U.S. Air Force clamoring for an outsized share of the defense budget for the atomic age, the navy leadership in effect lost its vocabulary for thinking about and debating maritime strategy.
This was an unintended consequence of change in the marine surroundings. The navy commenced deployments around the Soviet periphery unbidden in the immediate post-World War II years. The proportion of sea time in a mariner’s career swelled as a result, making “sustained superior performance at sea” the benchmark of excellence—and thus of promotions, awards, and all manner of good things.
However healthy it may be for seamanship and tactical skill, sea duty affords little leisure for studying larger matters such as diplomacy and strategy. Other factors—the mania for scientific-technical disciplines, increased stovepiping between the surface, submarine, and aviation communities, and on and on—only compounded the career penalties besetting would-be strategic thinkers.
For Captain Haynes, in short, the early Cold War begat an organizational culture unfriendly to strategic thought. Culture is resilient. Oftentimes that’s a good thing. It provides intellectual ballast in tumultuous times.
But it can be a bad thing—as the greats attest. “To change anything in the Na-a-vy is like punching a featherbed,” as Franklin Roosevelt reportedly exclaimedwhile serving as assistant secretary of the navy during World War I. “You punch it with your right and you punch it with your left until you are finally exhausted, and then you find the damn bed just as it was before you started punching.”
Or as FDR’s secretary of war Henry Stimson joked after World War II, “the peculiar psychology of the Navy Department … frequently seemed to retire from the realm of logic into a dim religious world in which Neptune was God, Mahan his prophet, and the United States Navy the only true Church.”
In Roosevelt’s and Stimson’s spirit, Haynes suggests that navy culture worked against higher-order thought long after the war. Indeed, this failing constitutes a recurring theme as he examines strategy-making efforts spanning from the 1980s through the triservice 2007 Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower. His account of these enterprises—which gave rise to directives bearing titles like …From the Sea and Sea Power 21—is worth perusing at length.
Second, Haynes attests to the hazards of placing inordinate faith in the social sciences when drawing up strategy and designing forces. Exhibit A: the 1991-1992 Naval Force Capabilities Planning Effort. This was the project that resulted in …From the Sea, the navy’s first post-Cold War statement of how it viewed the surroundings and intended to manage them. The planning effort convened a group of senior U.S. Navy and Marine officers and civilian academics.
Group members based their deliberations largely on the “Manthorpe Curve.” This graph, the brainchild of then-Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Bill Manthorpe, represented an attempt to foretell how the strategic environment would evolve over the coming twenty years. Captain Manthorpe based it on his study of the past, looking at patterns of rise-and-fall and regional flare-ups. He forecast turbulence following the Soviet collapse, intermittent regional threats, and the rise of a potentially hostile empire around 2011.
Schools of thought coalesced around these three intervals: Cold War aftermath, midterm regional troubles, advent of a new peer competitor. Those worried about managing the transition to the post-Cold War world coveted large numbers of inexpensive constabulary-like platforms. Carrier aviators and a few fellow travelers called for pummeling rest-of-world threats selectively to keep them from mutating into global problems. Submariners beseeched the sea services to husband their technological edge, investing in top-end platforms—like attack and ballistic-missile subs—that it would take to face down another Soviet-caliber antagonist.
Such are the demands on a global sea power that feels obliged to manage the system of international trade and commerce, keep a lid on regional troublemaking, and discourage a Eurasian hegemon from challenging the international order it leads.
But isn’t strategy the art of staying in tune with the times? Why not realign strategy and forces to cope with immediate problems rather than hedge against a great-power struggle that may never come? That’s what some members of the Naval Force Capabilities Planning Effort urged. And indeed, …From the Sea in effect codified this view, proclaiming that the U.S. Navy could afford to focus on projecting power ashore because no one threatened its command of the sea.
Yet adapting to new, less trying circumstances is imprudent when it wrong-foots efforts to meet foreseeable challenges of greater consequence later on. For this observer the message that leaps out from the Manthorpe Curve is this: history granted post-Cold War America only a short respite—in historical terms—before the onset of the next great-power challenge. It was imperative to start getting ready then. It takes a long time to regenerate advanced weaponry and adept users—the lineaments of combat power—once those resources lapse. By adapting then, the naval leadership let the material and human capacity for readapting languish.
Think about it from the vantage point of 1991-1992. The generation of commanders destined to face Manthorpe’s next big thing circa 2011 was already in uniform. They were junior to mid-career officers. Having them unlearn the skills and habits needed to wrest maritime command from a serious foe was a decision of colossal moment.
Ships, aircraft, and armaments to wage the new struggle needed to be dreamt up, built, and tested to be ready when a new rival came on scene—meaning now. We’re now scrambling to reinvent capabilities—long-range anti-ship missiles, among many others—that atrophied when history endeda quarter-century ago. Othershave disappeared without replacements.
Such insights are scattered throughout Toward a New Maritime Strategy. Lastly, it’s a book reviewer’s sad but sacred duty to join the nattering nabobs of negativity—that is, to find some fault with the work under review. One quick but significant critique. Maritime strategy is about more than naval strategy. It’s even about more than a navy and its corps of sea soldiers. Haynes can be taken to task for neglect on this point.
For the United States, any genuinely maritime strategy should encompass the U.S. Coast Guard, whose commandant, after all, was the third co-signer of the 2007 Maritime Strategy. Yet this sister sea service is largely invisible in Haynes’s account. The tension between this book’s title and subtitle is revealing: Toward a New Maritime Strategy, but American Naval Thinking in the Post-Cold War Era.
There’s more truth-in-advertising in the latter than the former. What was that hybrid constabulary/combat service doing during the era under study, how did its leadership contribute to the making of the Cooperative Strategy, how does the strategy shape its operations, and how does coastguardsmen’s maritime thought resemble and differ from that of fellow seafarers? What changed after 9/11, when the U.S. Coast Guard became an arm of the newly created Department of Homeland Security?
More attention to the coast guard, in short, would have enriched Haynes’s commentary while imparting a truly maritime flavor to it. But I quibble. Opinionated as it is, this book may win Peter Haynes few friends within the naval establishment. One hopes it influences people, nevertheless—reacquainting the services with their cultures, strengths, and foibles as they reenter a competitive age of sea power. Read it.
James Holmes is professor of strategy at the Naval War College and senior fellow at the University of Georgia School of Public and International Affairs. A former U.S. Navy surface warfare officer and combat veteran of the first Gulf War, he served as a gunnery and engineering officer in the battleship Wisconsin, engineering and damage-control instructor at the Surface Warfare Officers School Command, and military professor of strategy at the Naval War College. His most recent books (with long-time coauthor Toshi Yoshihara) areStrategy in the Second Nuclear AgeandRed Star over the Pacific. Designated an Atlantic Monthly Best Book of 2010, Red Star over the Pacific has been named to the Navy Professional Reading List as Essential Reading. The views voiced here are his alone.
Readers interested in reviewing books for CIMSEC can contact the book review editor at books@cimsec.org.
On 26 May 2015, China released its first ever White Paper focusing exclusively on military strategy. China’s economic rise propelled by an extensive growth strategy has caused its integration with the global economy. It has consequently developed expansive interests linking its fate with that of the global system, most notably its access to African and Persian Gulf resources. China’s transition from the ‘near coast defence’ maritime doctrine in the 1980’s (product of a maritime strategy that was seen only as an extension to the continental strategy) to the ‘near seas control’ doctrine till 2004 calling for China to exercise control up to the first island chain has mirrored China’s increasing integration in the global economy. The conferment of historical missions upon the Chinese Navy post 2004 required it to focus on the distant seas as well. That was symptomatic of the increased stakes China had in influencing the events in the maritime commons, and was a trend that has continued unabated. The document acknowledges this, noting that:
“In the new circumstances, the national security issues facing China encompass far more subjects, extend over a greater range, and cover a longer time span than at any time in the country’s history. Internally and externally, the factors at play are more complex than ever before.”
Taiwan’s reunification and safeguarding its territorial claims in the ‘near seas’ remain important to China. However, the emphasis accorded to safeguarding of China’s overseas interests is notable, as observed in the section on National Security Overview which says:
“With the growth of China’s national interests, its national security is more vulnerable to international and regional turmoil, terrorism, piracy, serious natural disasters and epidemics, and the security of overseas interests concerning energy and resources, strategic sea lines of communication (SLOCs), as well as institutions, personnel and assets abroad, has become an imminent issue.”
A Blue Water Force
The most revealing part of the strategy indicating China’s aim to build a globe spanning blue water navy says:
“..the PLA Navy (PLAN) will gradually shift its focus from “offshore waters defense” to the combination of “offshore waters defense” with “open seas protection,” and build a combined, multi-functional and efficient marine combat force structure.”
The section on force development goes on to say:
“The seas and oceans bear on the enduring peace, lasting stability and sustainable development of China. The traditional mentality that land outweighs sea must be abandoned, and great importance has to be attached to managing the seas and oceans and protecting maritime rights and interests. It is necessary for China to develop a modern maritime military force structure commensurate with its national security and development interests, safeguard its national sovereignty and maritime rights and interests, protect the security of strategic SLOCs and overseas interests, and participate in international maritime cooperation, so as to provide strategic support for building itself into a maritime power.”
An overhead view of China’s carrier, the Liaoning.
Far Seas Operations
The strategic guideline of active defence is prescribed for the military with a focus on winning local wars in conditions of modern technology and informationisation (with the maritime military struggle aspect being highlighted).
In the section about Preparation for Military Struggle, however a reference is made to the need to strengthen strategic prepositioning. Limited logistical support severely constrains the PLAN’s ability to operate beyond East Asia; and in context of the Indian Ocean, this could be interpreted to refer to the strengthening of a Chinese policy popularly dubbed as the ‘String of Pearls’. Recent talks between China and Djibouti aimed at enhancing Chinese naval operations in the region is part of a Chinese effort to establish a variety of access points in the Indian Ocean Region in the upcoming years.
Further (as seen in the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence 2015 Report on the PLAN) it is clear that the Chinese naval order of battle is undergoing qualitative improvements as legacy combatants are giving way to larger multi-mission ships capable of undertaking a broader spectrum of missions. The PLAN’s involvement in diversified missions in the far seas is mirrored in both its acquisition patterns and far seas training patterns (as routine deployments in the Philippines, operations in the Mediterranean and increasing incursions in the Indian Ocean indicate).
Looking to the Future
China has enhanced overseas interests, is building a blue water fleet to conduct far seas operations and the Indian Ocean is slated to become an active area of operations for the PLAN. Should this set alarm bells ringing in India? The answer is that it’s too early to tell.
The Chinese fleet is currently optimized for anti-surface warfare and has made substantial investments and developments in advanced Anti-Ship Cruise Missiles and Over the Horizon Targeting systems in pursuit of the same. Proficient as it may be in Anti Surface Warfare and increasingly Anti Air Warfare (shipboard air defences having witnessed dramatic improvements of late) Anti-Submarine Warfare and power projection in contested environments remain weaknesses for China. Given PLAN’s priorities closer to home, the pace at which aircraft carriers, large deck amphibious ships (power projection tools) and its anti-submarine capabilities are bolstered will be indicating the priority PLAN places on being able to sustain far seas operations that can involve high intensity combat operations.
Just as important as adapting to these developments militarily though would be closely mirroring Chinese diplomatic approaches not just in the Indian Ocean region but within China’s backyard as well. Whether or not such an approach is considered feasible depends in large part on whether it is the pursuit of simply a reactive or a pro-active strategy that is being considered. Either way policy must be formulated keeping in mind the fact that China has growing global interests and this is occurring simultaneously with the loosening of its historic reticence for using its military forces in far seas operations.
This piece was originally published as a Viewpoint at the National Maritime Foundation. The author (Himanil Raina) can be reached at himanilraina@gmail.com.
In mid-March 2015, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Marine Corps, and the U.S. Coast Guard published its new strategy “A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower: Forward, Engaged, Ready.” This article looks at the new strategy through the prism of Germany, one of the leading industrial powers in the world and a country dependent on unhindered maritime trade routes.
As much as for any other nation, the American sea services remain a benchmark for Germany in terms of operations, standardization, and for combined operations. After all, the United States fields the single global force projection navy: It is the qualitatively largest naval force and the only one that is forward-present or rotating in areas of strategic interest. In addition, the U.S. Navy (and, to a lesser degree, the Marine Corps and the Coast Guard) is frequently and proactively used as a foreign policy tool. In short, U.S. sea power helps shape the international security environment for better or for worse. German security policy must heed the political and military implications of where U.S. naval power is being projected (and in some cases, where there is a divergence) in order to play an accordingly responsible and reliable role. As the smallest of the three German military branches, it has often been under the radar of policy-makers and the public. In contrast to the U.S. Navy, for instance, the German Navy has until recently not been understood as a tool of statecraft. Accordingly, German naval operations were, for a long time, more reactive than proactive (which is, certainly, a function of cautious leaders aware of German history as well as of the dynamics of force structure and deployments).
German expeditionary military operations (and by implication, its strategy) by law must be integrated in systems of collective defense or collective security. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) firmly bounds Germany and the United States together in a military alliance that is fundamentally maritime in character, although it has been focusing heavily on ground operations for the past decades. Since 1990, Germany’s small navy, grouped around larger frigates and smaller coastal combatants as well as a few state-of-the-art conventionally-powered submarines, has continuously been operating in maritime focus areas as diverse as the Central and Eastern Mediterranean, the Horn of Africa, the Persian Gulf, the Adriatic Sea, and obviously the Baltic Sea and North Sea. It transformed from an escort navy of Cold War days to an increasingly expeditionary navy, as the German military historian Bernard Chiari has characterized it.
German tender FRANKFURT AM MAIN (A 1412) meets U.S. amphibious transport dock MESA VERDE (LPD 19) somewhere between Berlin and Washington.
In all of these regions and in various naval operations, cooperation with U.S. naval forces was the norm rather than the exception.[i] European waters moved to the periphery of American geopolitical thinking. Consequently, U.S. naval forward presence in the 6th Fleet area of responsibility diminished significantly after the end of the Cold War. Aircraft carriers, for instances, were often only seen in the Mediterranean when they transited to or from the Persian Gulf. Northern European waters, which saw extended U.S.-led naval presence since “The Maritime Strategy” of the 1980s, were almost completely empty of U.S. Navy surface warships (with the notable exception of the annual U.S. Baltops exercise in the Baltic Sea, and on-and-off port visits and exercises in between). Together with the changing security environment in Central Europe, in principle this offered new opportunities for the German Navy, which at the time transformed from protecting to projecting force – in doctrine, not in the composition of the fleet.
CS-21 (2007)
To understand the implications for Germany from CS-21R, it is instructive to briefly review the impact of that document’s predecessor, CS-21 (2007). The strategy, which appeared on the eve of the global financial crisis, featured a systemic approach, that is: it emphasized the cooperative nature of naval forces working together to build maritime security regimes in order to protect the globalized system of the exchange of goods, services, and information. Such an approach – highly uncommon for most maritime, much less naval strategies – fared well in principle with Germany. It did so for several reasons: First, it appeared to overcome the unilaterlist notions of the era of President George W. Bush. Second, it emphasized the need to protect the global commons from harm and hardship, and by extension safeguard the sea lanes on which Germany’s industrial power is very dependent. Third, the cooperative nature was in line with German security policy thinking, which has a marked uneasiness towards employing military means and much rather focuses on ‘civilian-military cooperation’, ‘comprehensive approaches’, and a primate of soft power politics (as if sensible sea power would not offer the vast variety of policy measures on the spectrum of conflict). Fourth, the open spirit of CS-21, its deliberately glossy format, and the non-militaristic lingo had potential to appeal to makers and shapers of policy. It is no coincidence that CS-21, not CS-21R or any other U.S. Navy capstone document, remains the yardstick for naval strategy planning and thinking in Germany for the time being.
German navy corvette Braunschweig (F 260) departs Hamburg in December 2006 on its maiden voyage. The vessel is the first-in-class of the K130-type corvettes.
Operationally, maritime counter-terrorism operations (such as Operation Enduring Freedom’s TF 150 off the Horn of Africa, in which Germany actively participated since 2002), maritime capacity-building measures (such as UNIFIL’s maritime task force off the Lebanese coast since 2006) and counter-piracy efforts (with EU NAVFOR Atalanta being stood up in December 2008) appeared to be the dominating naval missions of the period, along with the occasional disaster relief and humanitarian assistance operations which CS-21 had elevated to a strategic objective. Such a view fared well in Berlin, and for the navy, it meant a boost in public relevance.
In this view, CS-21 was a very fitting document for the German Navy, which to date does not have a unique capstone document of its own. The systemic maritime strategy published in Washington emphasized seemingly softer naval missions at the perceived expense of warfighting, deterrence, or amphibious landings. Implicitly, in the view of Germany, the U.S. and some other allies would probably still do these things, but the focus clearly was elsewhere.
The German navy frigate FGS Hamburg (F220), left, and the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69), right, take on fuel and stores from the Military Sealift Command fast combat support ship USNS Bridge (T-AOE 10), center, during a replenishment-at-sea in the Arabian Sea on March 23, 2013. The Eisenhower, Hamburg and USS Hue City (CG 66), top, are deployed to the 5th Fleet area of responsibility to conduct maritime security operations and theater security cooperation efforts.
While the narrative about the role of naval forces now was increasingly clear to the German public – after all, fighting pirates and other bad guys at sea has a long tradition in Germany, dating back to the days of the Hanseatic League – a severe intellectual disconnect that had developed since 1990 finally surfaced. More than ever, maritime security operations (MSO), although but one of any balanced navy’s many missions, became the key raison d’être for the German Navy. Stripped of the word ‘operations’, ‘maritime security’ (or Maritime Sicherheit in German) increasingly turned into a catch-all term in German policy and military circles to legitimize the current fleet. The paradox consequence: The securitization of the maritime sphere, as Christian Bueger has characterized it, led to an increasingly diluted understanding of risks and naval countermeasures while at the same time producing an unjustified, mind cuffs-like emphasis on MSOs as the sole rationale for German sea power. The consequence could be observed in the 2011 NATO campaign against Libya: For political reasons that reached to the German foreign minister, the frigate Niedersachsen (F 208) was quickly detached from the NATO force which prepared to strike targets in Libya. The change in government after the 2013 general election in Germany set the stage for a slightly different approach.
CS-21R (2015)
CS-21R, the revised version of CS-21, is being phased in a radically changing security environment. The return of geopolitics over the Ukraine-Russia crises, the rise of the “Islamic State” in Syria and Iraq, the outbreak of Ebola in Africa, failing states in the Southern Mediterranean region, increasing tensions in the South-East Asian littorals, the challenging dynamics of an Iranian quest for a nuclear program, the fallout of the currency and debt crisis in Europe, and many more factors provide ample evidence that the world has not turned into a notably more stable, peaceful, and serene place. Germany is slowly, albeit steadily adopting a more robust posture to address such threats and dynamics. Still, until 2014, the Army-focused operations in Afghanistan dominated the German strategic thinking about the use of military force. With the end of combat operations, the German military establishment and parts of the public and the policy elite are reconsidering their country’s role in the international arena. A new “White Book” is currently in development (the first since 2006, and only the third since the end of the Cold War). This process was recently kicked off with a public forum in order to be as inclusive for stakeholders, analysts, and the public alike. For German terms, an open discussion about defense issues is rather revolutionary. Thus, the orchestrated speeches by President Joachim Gauck, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and Secretary of Defense Ursula von der Leyen at the 2014 Munich Security Conference – calling for more robust German engagement, including military means – were remarkable in every way. A 2013 think tank report was outspoken in a similar manner, declaring that Germany’s new power meant a new degree of international responsibility. The 2010 abolition of conscription and (yet another) new organization and orientation of the Bundeswehr by then-Secretary of Defense Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg have proven to be a fundamental challenge for the service. It has also been demonstrated that against the backdrop of an increasingly violent world, the military is an integral part of German power, and must be treated, organized, funded, and employed accordingly. All of this is important to understand the environment in which CS-21R is made public.
Minehunter FULDA (M 1058), seen here in 2008, and its sister ships may see increased operational relevance now that the Baltic Sea area has once again returned as a maritime focus area with potential for both, cooperation and confrontation (photo: Deutsche Marine)
It is still too early to call the shots on the true effects and consequences of CS-21R on Germany and the German Navy. CS-21R has received little attention in the media (with the exception of the trade press), and even the handful of German military blogs have remained silent so far. There are at least three aspects that have a direct relevance for Germany.
First, a closer look at the document reveals the inclusion of fiscal dynamics into U.S. naval planning. It is likely that the trend of less U.S. naval presence in Germany’s maritime focus areas has very real implications for what the German Navy may be asked to do. This would, in turn, yield the need to invest better in the Deutsche Marine and raise the budget accordingly in line with established overarching defense requirements. A second, potentially contentious point is the absence of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HA/DR) as a core strategic capability of the sea services in the new U.S. document. Whereas navies are certainly not built for such operations, as Samuel Huntington already cautioned in his landmark 1954 Proceedings article, such missions provide an opportunity for quick political gains. A response to the on-going migration waves from Northern Africa to Southern Europe using military vessels for search and rescue could be such a measure, even though Germany’s possible participation in would be conditional once again on an international mandate and with the clear understanding that the European littoral states would also shoulder their operational responsibility. Third, CS-21R’s regional approach is centered on the Indo-Asian-Pacific region. These are hardly traditional operating areas for the German Navy, even if the maritime discourse in Germany has been shaped by anti-piracy patrols. Within the framework of “responsibility”, it is conceivable to argue that other nations (and the U.S.) are more responsible for that region, although Germany would potentially be willing to play its part and contribute forces along defined missions (such as in Operation Atalanta or in one of NATO’s four standing naval forces, should the situation require it). The flipside of such an argument is that Germany would have to play a more assertive role in its “home waters” such as the Baltic Sea, the North Sea, and by extension the waters surrounding Europe. As for the Baltic Sea, the first few steps are on the horizon, at least in terms of re-focusing strategically and operationally, and taking leadership through collective security management. Whether the capabilities and the political will can follow along, however, remains to be seen. Still, CS-21R and the environment in which it has been published, provides an opportunity for Germany to focus on the value of navies in international security. A stand-alone strategic capstone document would help explain this new role to its allies as well as to the public and to many policy-makers alike.
From another era? The officers and crew of the German destroyer Lütjens (D 185), say goodbye and render honors to USS Winston S. Churchill (DDG 81) by lining the rails in their Dress Blues as they came alongside the ship at sea. The German Sailors, who had become good friends with many of the crew on board Churchill, were flying an American flag at half mast and had hung a homemade banner that read, “We Stand By You.” The ships had been conducting joint exercises off the coast of the United Kingdom prior to the terrorist attack on the United States on September 11th.
[i] In recent years, there has also been an increasing level of integration with German Type F-123/F-124 frigates being part of U.S. Navy carrier strike groups in the Persian Gulf. Other cooperative measures such as the exchange of officers or cooperation in technology issues have been around since the formation of the German Navy after World War II.
