Tag Archives: Navy

Does Seapower Pay?

Daniel Drezner is an International Politics professor at Tufts University with an informative and entertaining blog at Foreign Policy.  He recently published an article in the journal International Security asking whether “military primacy yields direct economic benefits.”

This is an important issue for seapower advocates, with organizations like the U.S. Navy traditionally claiming that American dominance at sea is part of the bedrock foundation of a smoothly running international economic system.  The 2007 Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower argues that the “maritime domain…carries the lifeblood of a global system that links every country on earth,” and that “United States seapower will be globally postured to secure our homeland and citizens from direct attack and to advance our interests around the world that relies on free transit through increasingly urbanized littoral regions.”  

The 2010 Naval Operations Concept similarly envisions U.S. naval forces that “effectively conduct the full range of maritime security operations and are instrumental in building the capacity, proficiency and interoperability of partners and allies that share our aspiration to achieve security throughout the maritime commons.”

The current strategy document for the U.S. sea services, a Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower
The current strategy document for the U.S. sea services, A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower

Drezner examines three potential ways in which a state’s military primacy could provide tangible benefits:

1. Geoeconomic Favoritism: “Military preeminence” may spur private sector investment both domestically and from abroad, as “all else being equal, a country is far more likely to attract foreign capital if it is secure from foreign invasion.”

2. Geopolitical Favoritism: Weaker states may “provide voluntary economic concessions to the dominant security actor.”

3. The Public Goods Benefit of Military Primacy: Military “primacy facilitates the creation of global public goods” with “a wide range of international relations theorists” claiming “that a liberal hegemon is a necessary and sufficient condition for the creation of an open global economic order.”

The particular potential benefits of U.S. seapower in its current, globally-deployed state would most likely be realized in terms of the “Public Goods Benefit.”  The particular hypothesis which Drezner is trying to test here is whether “by acting as a guarantor of the peace in hotspots such as the Middle East and Pacific Rim, the United States keeps the international system humming along-which in turn yields significant benefits to the United States itself.”

In terms of concrete examples of how the U.S. military has secured the global economy by protecting the sea-lanes, Drezner cites naval operations in the Middle East, an area of both political instability and significant economic importance due to the need to securely ship oil out of the region as well as the recent multi-national campaign against Somali pirates.  However, he then proceeds to question whether naval or military power can be credited with minimizing energy market disruptions or defeating piracy, pointing out that “world oil markets” can be relatively resilient and are capable of adjusting to severe price changes, and that “improved private security on board” merchant shipping may have been a more important factor in the decreased threat from Somali pirates.  With his focus being military power in general, however, he does not provide a detailed discussion of seapower’s role in the global economy other than his brief discussion of oil and piracy.

Keeping the trucks rollin'
                          Keeping the trucks rollin’

Drezner claims that if “unipolarity” and military primacy worked as predicted, China should have been “pacified” by the various manifestations of U.S. policy towards the Far East as part of the the 2011 “pivot,” but instead has acted increasingly aggressive towards its neighbors.  Unaddressed in this article, yet probably at the top of the list of factors impacting and/or justifying continued U.S. naval hegemony in the Pacific, is the tangible impact of growing Chinese strength afloat.  It is often assumed by China-phobes that a China with a strong navy acting assertively in regards to its claims over the surrounding oceans would be bad for the international system (presumably through somehow limiting freedom of navigation in the region), hence justifying continued American military presence in the Pacific.  However, there is no empirical evidence to prove that case yet (because it has not happened), and advocates of both sides are forced to rely on hypotheticals.  Drezner has asked the right macro-level questions, but it is unclear if there is specific enough data to generate a definitive answer regarding the tangible benefits of specifically American (or Chinese) naval primacy in East Asia.

Drezner concludes that military primacy is an important resource for a Great Power, but that “military preeminence” alone  does not produce “significant economic gains.”  Although primacy can be an “an important adjunct to the creation of an open global economy and the reduction of militarized disputes and security rivalries,” a hegemon whose economic strength is declining may not be capable of reaping the benefits of the economic system it has established and protected.

While members of the sea services or naval enthusiasts generally embrace the notion that seapower is an important element of protecting the international system and prosperity both at home and abroad as undisputed truth and gospel, the jury is still out on whether military power is always worthwhile in economic terms, and Drezner questions those often reflexive assumptions here.  In an era of budget uncertainty, the Navy needs to have good tangible answers to justify its continued existence when these types of questions are asked in the future.

Lieutenant Commander Mark Munson is a Naval Intelligence officer currently serving on the OPNAV staff.  He has previously served at Naval Special Warfare Group FOUR, the Office of Naval Intelligence, and onboard USS Essex (LHD 2).  The views expressed are solely those of the author and do not reflect the official viewpoints or policies of the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government.

Coal to Oil and the Great Green Fleet

HMS BARHAM, a QUEEN ELIZABETH class Battleship, one of the Royal Navy's first oil-powered ships
HMS Barhham,Queen Elizabeth-class battleship, one of the Royal Navy’s first oil-powered ships

It has been more than a month since the Senate failed to pass legislation that would have blocked U.S. Navy efforts to develop and use biofuels.  This passage of time means it might now be possible to make a less emotional and more measured comparison of the Navy’s “Great Green Fleet” to the decision-making processes behind previous similar historic transitions in propulsion.

The stated goal of the Great Green Fleet is to fuel an entire Carrier Strike Group with “alternative sources of energy” by 2016 (the definition of which helpfully includes nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines).  Most of the controversy surrounding the project has been over the amount spent developing sources of biofuels ($170 million), a main focus of the Navy’s drive to find half its fuel from “alternative sources by 2020”.

Comparisons between the U.S.’s current naval situation and that of Great Britain a century ago may be so common now as to be cliche (a topic I’ve dabbled in myself on a few different occasions), but this potential change in the preferred source of propulsion for the surface fleet is reminiscent of the Royal Navy’s shift from coal to oil before the First World War.  Convinced that oil was necessary to make new ships that would outperform and outfight those of the Germans, Winston Churchill, civilian head of the Royal Navy as First Lord of the Admiralty from 1911 to 1915, created a commission led by then-former First Sea Lord Admiral Jackie Fisher with instructions to figure out how to implement the change: “You have got to find the oil; to show how it can be stored cheaply: how it can be purchased regularly & cheaply in peace, and with absolute certainty during war.”

Some of the factors used by the leaders of the U.S. Navy today in evaluating the fuel issue echo the way that it was framed by Churchill a century ago, with the performance implications of the fuel, costs, and the security of supply informing the decision-making process to different degrees.

Since the biofuels to be used by the Great Green Fleet are interchangeable with current oil-derived fuels, the actual performance benefits for the U.S. Navy are minimal, and the difference between old and new fuel sources ought to be transparent to the operator.  There were significant performance advantages associated with a switch from coal to oil by the Royal Navy, however.  While coal was less prone than oil to explosion if struck by enemy fire, this was greatly outweighed by oil’s much diminished labor requirements – no need for stokers to haul coal from storage spaces to the plant – and ease of refueling at sea.  On a pure performance comparison, oil-driven engines also generally allowed ships to go faster and further.

Although the cost of oil was not necessarily the biggest issue in debates over the switch from coal in the early twentieth century it has been the main item of contention surrounding the Great Green Fleet.  Biofuels for the Great Green Fleet have regularly been described as four times the cost of regular fuel.  The Secretary of the Navy has countered that the high costs associated with the initial investment will be worthwhile because the investment will help make alternative fuels “more commercially viable” and cheaper in the long run.  While biofuels are much more costly now, price volatility means that oil’s current price advantage is not always guaranteed.

In fact the vulnerability of the global oil supply is the primary issue both debates considered, although each set of decision-makers reached an opposite set of conclusions.  While the U.S. is not necessarily dependent on oil extracted in the Middle East, the volume of oil originating from major suppliers like Saudi Arabia has a significant impact on its price, which in turn affects the American economy and consumers (including the military).  In its public pronouncements on the Great Green Fleet, the U.S. Navy has made such a consideration clear, arguing that “the purpose of these energy goals is to improve our combat capability and to increase our energy security by addressing a significant military vulnerability:  dependence on foreign oil.”  “Market volatility” in its own right has been a significant Department of Defense cost,  with price increases alone accounting for a $19 billion bill in 2011.

Skeptics of the Royal Navy’s proposed switch to oil propulsion had serious reservations about its supply.  Wales was a rich source of the high-grade coal used by warships of that era, and the U.K. at the time had no domestic source of oil (Jackie Fisher famously stated that “Oil don’t grow in England.”).  Fortunately, oil exploration had just seriously begun in the Middle East, and Britain “solved” its oil supply problem by government investment in the new Anglo-Persian Oil Company and an agreement for a twenty year oil supply.  A revisionist assessment also puts the supply question on its head, holding that British leaders, fearful of labor unrest, felt Middle Eastern oil was a more secure commodity than coal taken out of the ground.

"Oil! Glorious, Oil! Hot, sweet crude in barrels!"
“Oil! Glorious, Oil! Hot, sweet crude in barrels!”

Regardless of why the decision to adopt oil propulsion was made, its implications (oil historian Daniel Yergin called it “Churchill’s great gamble”, pushing “for conversion to oil before the supply problem had been solved”) were significant, committing Britain to maintaining a secure supply line to the Middle Eastern oil fields in order to keep its military machine going.  This may not have necessarily been a major new commitment when Britain still maintained India and a variety of other Asian territories as part of its Empire, but it was a significant geopolitical decision, one mirrored decades later by the U.S. when President Carter outlined what has since been labeled as the Carter Doctrine, a policy of U.S. military commitment to the region that has been acted upon by each of his successors.  Carter stated in his 1980 State of the Union address that:

“An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and any such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”

Ironically, the British shift to oil-powered ships had little to no impact on the fight at sea during the First World War.  In fact, the Royal Navy was faced with shortages caused by German U-Boat attacks on tankers, resulting in extended stays in port and speed limits on some ships.  To Winston Churchill, however, the tactical advantages of oil outweighed other considerations like the cost of oil and any potential supply vulnerabilities.  He felt that oil would help the Royal Navy win a war at sea with Germany and that “Mastery itself was the prize of the venture.”

The relevant question today is whether the strategic calculus has changed since that time.  To the Royal Navy a century ago, the risk of an uncertain supply of fuel was mitigated by the expectation of better fighting ships.  Does the current uncertainty associated with oil make it a vulnerability to the fleet, and can that vulnerability be managed or hedged against by biofuels or other energy sources?

Lieutenant Commander Mark Munson is a Naval Intelligence officer currently serving on the OPNAV staff.  He has previously served at Naval Special Warfare Group FOUR, the Office of Naval Intelligence, and onboard USS Essex (LHD 2).  The views expressed are solely those of the author and do not reflect the official viewpoints or policies of the Department of Defense or the US Government.

Economics and Somali Piracy

Somali Pirates
                                                                             Pirates a lá Somali

 

While the consensus seems to be that Somali piracy is in a terminal decline, over the weekend the Washington Post’s Wonkblog highlighted an interesting academic study from last year that attempted to determine the costs of Somali piracy since 2008.  The bottom line, from economists Timothy Besley, Thiemo Fetzer and Hannes Mueller, was that piracy increased the cost for shipping bulk cargo through the region 8%, with a 14% seasonal discount between December-February and June-September when the monsoon causes sea states to be less hospitable to pirates.

Of particular interest is the economist’s attempt to measure how efficient piracy has been as a method of transferring wealth from the rest of the world to Somalia.  According to their analysis, pirates generating a total in $120M in annual ransoms would possibly drive industry to spend up to ten times that amount on insurance and onboard security.  Theoretically, Somalia could get the same amount of money from an .8% tax on charters than the 8% increased costs faced by shippers.

Piracy has driven some economic growth in Somalia, with one study arguing that ransoms received in 2009 were five times greater than the budget of Puntland.  Such development has been uneven however and did not benefit all Somalis. Intriguingly, economic growth and development measured in terms such as construction, urbanization, and light emissions measured through overhead imagery showed significant growth in major Puntland cities like Bossasso, rather than main Puntland pirate bases like Eyl and Hobyo.

Although ransoms as a wealth transfer are a “thought experiment” which the authors don’t necessarily advocate as policy, there is a clear subtext that aid for effective security forces would be a cheaper method to achieve the security needed to eliminate piracy than paying ransoms or funding afloat counter-piracy task forces.  They cite Stig Hansen’s compelling argument that the triggering event for the explosion of piracy in recent years was the Puntland economic crisis in 2008, during which the government of the semi-autonomous region suspended pay to the police and militia responsible for border security.

Of course while a tax on trade to fund a wealth transfer to Somalia may have been a much more efficient way of combating piracy than the current combined approach of naval forces afloat, industry best practices, a Kenyan invasion of Somalia, and the funding of AMISOM troops (in a previous article in Proceedings I vainly attempted to compare the relative costs and benefits of counter-piracy task forces afloat and security forces in Somalia), it does not square with any accepted notion of freedom of navigation in international waters.  While an effective Somali government would certainly have the right to regulate economic activity in its Exclusive Economic Zone (commonly listed narratives for the start of piracy in the region include grassroots local efforts to regulate illegal fishing and toxic waste disposal by foreigners in Somali waters), impeding or taxing commercial shipping traversing international waters adjacent to Somalia would be unacceptable to the international community.

Lieutenant Commander Mark Munson is a Naval Intelligence officer currently serving on the OPNAV staff.  He has previously served at Naval Special Warfare Group FOUR, the Office of Naval Intelligence, and onboard USS Essex (LHD 2).  The views expressed are solely those of the author and do not reflect the official viewpoints or policies of the Department of Defense or the US Government.

Maritime Janus

As_janus_rostrum_okretu_ciach

 

January is named for the Roman God Janus, the two-faced deity of the doorway or the threshold.  With one face looking toward the future, and the other contemplating the past, Janus inspires the annual reviews of naval affairs  as well as the predictions for the future that we see in the naval blogosphere.  New Years 2013 in the maritime world is no different than in years past.

Over at Information Dissemination our favorite China shipyard-watcher Feng has a great post summarizing where the People’s Liberation Army Navy has been in the past year.  Two things caught our eye in reading through Feng’s summary.  First, seeing it all laid out in one place really emphasizes the capacity that is being developed by Chinese shipyards.  For all the discussion of a dwindling industrial base in the United States, it is interesting to watch the pace of work in the Chinese shipbuilding industry.  Second, we shouldn’t miss the massive construction underway for the maritime policing and Coast Guard equivalents in the People’s Republic.  USCG cutters routinely deploy globally, sailing with USN ships in the Arabian Gulf and Pacific as well as the regular patrol of our backyard in the Caribbean.  As China continues to build cutters and grows the size of their maritime security forces, we should expect them to develop interoperability with the PLAN in the same way the USCG and USN have developed their concept of The National Fleet.  This melding of law enforcement patrol with military operations (based on a model provided by the Americans) in the South and East China Seas will continue to complicate the issues there.

Also at ID, CDR Bryan McGrath gives us a quick look at some highlights for I&W to watch for in 2013.  We were glad to see him place the Blue/Green Team as his top item to keep an eye on.  The Marines need to get over their fears of another Guadalcanal and return to their historic roots as an integrated part of naval forces.  The Navy needs to overcome their self-consciousness about their comparative lack of recent combat experience and learn to look to the Marines for ideas and help in developing new concepts.  It is time that both forces genuinely came together as an integrated, hybrid force rather than a pair of brothers constantly arm wrestling over who side is “supported” and who is “supporting.”  We also note that discussions about the future of the Air Wing are on CDR McGrath’s list.  That’s easy for a former SWO to say, but he’s right.  The Naval Aviators amongst us are going to have to realize that there need to be some serious changes.  Hard thinking, innovative ideas, and practical experimentation and testing will be required…humming “Highway to the Danger Zone” and quoting Goose and Slider will only give our adversaries more time to realize our weaknesses and take advantage of them.  Maverick told us that you don’t have time to think up there…unfortunately today’s challenges require us to have people who are practiced and capable thinkers.

Elsewhere online the sometimes genial, sometimes grumpy, CDR Salamander takes a broader view toward the future at his blog.  Strategy is the matching of ends, ways, and means.  Sal points out that the United States must figure out the last part, with an honest and genuine assessment of the national financial status.  Without it, developing “the ends” of national policy, and “the ways” of a sound Naval policy and shipbuilding plan, is impossible.  That honest assessment…it isn’t going to be pretty.  It has some very serious ramifications for the Department of the Navy, but also for every single part of American society.

We encourage you to follow the links and read the posts.  There is some serious thinking here, some deep analysis, and some quick ideas that can help us frame the coming year – all worth your time.  Janus is the namesake of the first month of the year and serves as a symbol of our New Year’s passion for self-assessment.  He also serves as a fantastic symbol for naval analysts in general as we attempt to clarify the lessons of the past to illuminate our way into the future.  If you’re still feeling a need for speed though, check this out to get your 2013 off to the right start.

The Firm of Maynard, Cushing, & Ellis does not represent the opinions of anyone that matters.  Formed by Lieutenant Robert Maynard RN, Lieutenant William Cushing USN, and Captain Pete Ellis USMC, the firm doesn’t speak for the US Government, the Department of Defense, The Foreign Office, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, or the Department of Silly Walks.