90 percent by sea - Defence Academy of the United Kingdom

90 percent by Sea: Maritime
Commerce and the Royal Navy
Lt Cdr T A H Kirkwood RN
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“© Crown Copyright 2012”
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ABSTRACT
The connection between maritime commerce and the Royal Navy is a historic one but since
the Second World War, the relationship has become increasingly distant. This paper
examines why, and considers the consequences for British seapower in the round as well as
for the Royal Navy’s doctrine and focus. Using information presented in academic,
parliamentary and government literature, the paper examines the historical relationship
between the RN and maritime commerce. It explores the relevance of such a relationship
within the modern system of international maritime trade for the RN, as well as the maritime
strategies of emerging nations. It concludes that given the continued significance of maritime
trade to the UK, the increasing vulnerability of the international system and the normative
power of emerging nations’ maritime strategy, the RN will need a doctrinal shift towards an
emphasis on the provision of power at sea, as opposed to power from the sea, to meet the
challenges of the future.
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‘We’re a maritime nation—we’ve grown by the sea and live by it; if we lose command of it we
starve…We’ve been safe so long, and grown so rich, that we’ve forgotten what we owe it to.’ 1
The notion that a component of a nation’s power in its seapower, and that a component of a
nation’s seapower is its merchant navy, is a long held one. Certainly, the great American
naval theorist Alfred Thayer Mahan recognised the indivisibility of trade from a nation’s
seapower: ‘If navies, as all agree, exist for the protection of commerce, it inevitably means
that in war they must aim at depriving their enemy of that great resource’ 2 whilst in Britain, Sir
Julian Corbett has similar sentiments: ‘Command of the sea, therefore, means nothing but
the control of maritime communications, whether for commercial or military purposes’. 3 More
recently, the ‘virtuous maritime circle’, 4 describing the circular relationship between maritime
trade, maritime resources, naval strength and maritime supremacy, has been used to
describe the historical development of British mercantile and naval strength, with successive
monarchs encouraging the construction and use of a sovereign merchant fleet to carry British
goods, and naval strength to prevent or punish interference with it.
Today, however, few would see Britain’s maritime trade as having quite so central a place in
naval thinking. British Maritime Doctrine considers it specifically in paragraph 238, under
‘Role 2 – Maritime Security’; 5 a demotion indeed from the opening paragraph of Mahan’s
work, which tells us that ‘the profound influence of sea commerce upon the wealth and
strength of countries was clearly seen long before the true principles which governed its
growth and prosperity were detected’. 6 Indeed, the retreat of commerce protection from its
position as a core naval role at the heart of the Royal Navy’s raison d’être has been a slow
but seemingly inexorable process. The aim of this essay is to examine why, and will argue
that the doctrinal divergence of the RN from the protection of commerce has had a significant
second order consequence: it has subordinated the ability to provide power at sea to the
requirement to deliver power from the sea. This is likely to be detrimental to both. Moreover,
since the critical requirement for the nation to sustain its way of life is uninterrupted access to
a global maritime trading system, it should instinctively follow that the protection and
assurance of that system, across the spectrum of conflict, is a primary, core function of the
RN. Consequently, the ability to deliver power at sea is the RN’s most fundamental utility;
and in an international community which has proliferated increasingly Mahanian views as
well as an array of advanced naval technology, the delivery of power at sea is likely to
supersede the requirement to deliver power from the sea in future.
1 Erskine Childers, The Riddle of the Sands (Ria Press edition: 2008), 34
2 John B. Hattendorf, ed., Mahan on Naval Strategy: Selections from the Writings of Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer
Mahan (Annapolis: United States Naval Institute, 1991), xxvii
3 Sir Julian Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy (London: Conway Maritime Press, 1972), 90
4 Geoffrey Till, Seapower: A guide for the Twenty First Century (London: Frank Cass Publishers, 2004), 20
5 Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre, JDP 0-10 British Maritime Doctrine (DCDC, 2011), 2-18
6 Hattendorf, ed., Mahan on Naval Strategy, 1
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Seapower has often defied precise definition. One of Mahan’s great contributions to the
development of Naval thought was the linking of maritime and naval activities to wider
national and international issues – in some ways, an ‘integrated’ view of seapower. 7 His
analysis of the elements of seapower – Geographical Position, Physical conformation, Extent
of Territory, Number of Population, National Character and Character of Government - went
well beyond anything that had preceded it. Indeed, prior to his seminal work ‘The Influence
of Seapower on History:1660-1783 ‘, thinking had not really pushed much beyond a
consideration of the naval battle. 8
Sir Julian Corbett also sought to describe permanent
principles of maritime strategy, with his central thesis of sea control. Even so, ‘Seapower
means different things to different people. It can be an almost mystical concept…[or] a more
coherent but equally universal concept, an interlocking system of forms of sea use’. 9
Alternatively, ‘Seapower and land power are not abstractions; they are the partial expression
of the strength of specific historical polities at specific times...neither is [seapower] a mystical
generality’. 10
Geoffrey Till, in ‘Seapower: A guide for the Twenty First Century’ treats
seapower as both an input – Navies, coastguards, the marine or civil industries, the
contributions of land or air – and as output, defined in terms of consequences: the sea based
capacity to determine events both at sea and on land. 11
For the purposes of this essay, the
definition that seapower is ‘the ability to use the seas and oceans for military or commercial
purposes and to preclude an enemy from the same’ 12 indicates the relationship between the
civil and military maritime sectors. This echoes the current definition of ‘maritime power’ in
the latest edition of British Maritime Doctrine: ‘The ability to project power at sea and from the
sea to influence the behaviour of people or the course of events’. This also implies a nonmilitary
aspect, although not explicit, and for this essay, maritime power will refer to the
military dimension of seapower: that delivered by the Royal Navy, the Royal Air Force and
other elements of the Ministry of Defence and wider UK government departments. 13
power’ refers to those elements directed by the Naval Service.
‘Naval
The argument for the primacy of maritime trade and the importance of the delivery of power
at sea will consider a number of factors. First, the historical context: what happened to
marginalise maritime trade as a determinant of naval affairs? Second, the nature of the
global maritime system: has the doctrinal shift away from trade been because trade is not as
important as it used to be? How do emerging maritime powers view seapower and how do
they view the utility of maritime power? Finally, the resilience of the system: what happens
when the system is attacked?
7 Ibid., ix
8 T 124, Seapower (London: Jonathen Cape Ltd, 1941), 17
9 Eric Grove, The Future of Seapower (London: Routledge, 1990) , 3
10 Colin S Gray, The Leverage of Seapower: The Strategic Advantage of Navies in War (New York: The Free
Press, 1992), xii
11 Till, Seapower: A guide for the Twenty First Century, 4
12 Gray, The Leverage of Seapower, 4
13 DCDC, JDP 0-10 British Maritime Doctrine, v, vi
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The idea that Britain’s power derived from its ability to trade freely over the sea was
understood almost as soon as world wide trade became significant for Britain in the
fourteenth century. With a weak Navy and much of Britain’s trade carried by foreign
shipping, Richard II introduced the first Navigation Act in 1381 to increase the size of the
merchant fleet, by ruling that all goods shipped either to or from England could only travel in
English ships. 14 This protectionist measure was re-enacted repeatedly by successive
monarchs and governments until finally repealed along with the Corn Laws in the late 19 th
century. During the Elizabethan period of aggressive expansion, challenging Spanish
supremacy and dominion was little more than sanctioned piracy, with Drake and Raleigh the
most famous of a breed of sailor intent on enriching themselves, and the Crown, by capturing
Spanish merchant shipping and seeking to deprive Spain of lucrative trading routes to the
Americas – and the narrative and rationale were clear: as Raleigh said: ‘whoever controls the
seas controls the world trade; whoever controls world trade holds all the treasures of the
world in his possession, and in fact, the whole world’. 15 The ability to exercise what Mahan
would later describe as Command of the Sea 16
– the ability to use the sea to one’s own
advantage whilst denying its use to an adversary – was hugely important to Britain in
mercantile terms, eventually allowing the virtual monopolisation of trade to and from Europe
and the world. As Corbett would state: ‘It is commerce and finance which now more than
ever control or check the foreign policy of nations’ 17 and the wealth of nations was carried by
sea: in a time before virtual money, the world’s trade routes were the conduits for flows of
commodities and capital, with British shipping the infrastructure and London the hub,
guarded by protectionist policies and a powerful Navy. The relationship between the
merchant fleet and the naval fleet was a close one. Despite a decades long cycle of
expansion and decline driven largely by the requirements of various protracted continental
wars, by the close of the Victorian era both the merchant marine and the Navy were seen as
vital, interrelated national assets and a preoccupation with ensuring unchallenged naval
supremacy prevailed. This view, in which maritime power was the key determinant of
national power, was formalised by the writings of Mahan, which prompted a resurgence of
naval thinking at the turn of the century 18 - not least in Britain, where Mahan’s work had
particular resonance. 19
The role of the RN for the protection of trade also reached its zenith in the late 19 th century.
Much of the period since Trafalgar had been spent conducting operations which generally fell
short of fleet battle: even the War of 1812 had, from an RN perspective, been one of single
14 Jean Cantlie Stewart: The Sea Our Heritage (Banffshire: Rowan Books, 1993), 3
15 Robert D Heinl, Dictionary of Military and Naval Quotations (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1966), 288
16 A Hattendorf, ed, Mahan on Naval Strategy, xx
17 Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, 95
18 Till, Seapower: A guide for the Twenty First Century, 42
19 T 124, Seapower, 18
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ship actions and commerce raiding. 20 In fact, suppression of the slave trade, anti-piracy and
Imperial skirmishes had been the norm for much of the 19 th century. The protection of
commerce – an ever increasing commitment after 1815 21 - was a broad concept, which
included an array of activities far beyond the physical protection of shipping on the high seas.
It was concerned as much with the opening and maintenance of safe trading routes and
regions, the encouragement and protection of ‘trade friendly’ regimes, warlords or tribes, the
promotion of commerce, hydrography, exploration and persuasion of the unwilling through
the overt display of Britannic might, across an ‘enormous, sprawling maritime empire’. 22
Nevertheless, by the end of the 19 th century, technological advance was making the physical
defence of commerce increasingly difficult. In an age of sail, the convoy was seen as a
practical method of ensuring the safety of merchant vessels against marauders: warships
could outperform and outmanoeuvre the vast majority of merchant vessels and were thus
highly suitable to escort without slowing the convoy down. But with the advent of steam
propulsion, this was no longer the case and Naval strategists, including Corbett, doubted the
practicality of the convoy system: ‘…it now becomes doubtful whether the additional security
which convoys afforded is sufficient to outweigh their economical drawbacks and their liability
to cause strategic disturbance’, 23 whilst in 1903, a Royal Commission took evidence from
Prince Louis Mountbatten, Director of Naval Intelligence, and the commanders of the
Mediterranean and China Fleets. All reported that ‘it was a misconception to suppose that
protection to merchant shipping could only be given in convoys and by naval cruisers and
destroyers…the best defence in their view against detection and destruction was the ship’s
speed, its alteration of course….’ 24 Thus the rejuvenation of the Navy brought about by the
Naval Reform Act of 1889 considered commerce protection a principle driver for Fleet
modernisation but progressively abandoned the convoy as the principle means of protection.
Driven by the normative power of Mahan’s writings, the Battle Fleet was fast becoming the
totem of Naval supremacy around the world. The outcome of the war at sea would be
decided by mighty fleets which would seek the other out early in any war for decisive battle –
a modern Trafalgar - resulting in de facto sea command and unfettered and continued
access for commerce, with squadrons of cruisers, supported by a global network of coaling
stations, to patrol the empire’s massive sea lanes. Ship owners too were convinced of the
modern, speedy merchant vessel’s relative invulnerability. And while the abandonment of
the convoy proved fatally flawed during both of the subsequent World Wars, it was the first
time in which the tactics for the defence of commerce was disaggregated from the defence of
20 J.R. Hill, ed, The Oxford Illustrated History of the Royal Navy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 119
21 Ibid., 162
22 Andrew Gordon, The Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command (London: John Murray, 1996),
160
23 Roger Parkinson, The Late Victorian Navy: The pre-Dreadnought era and the Origins of the First World War
(Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2008), 115
24 Stewart: The Sea Our Heritage, 49
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the merchant ships themselves. Even so, there was never serious doubt as to what a navy
was for, rather, the argument concerned how it could best be achieved. As Mahan wrote in
1897: ‘The necessity of a navy…springs, therefore, from the existence of a peaceful shipping
[sic], and disappears with it’, 25 whilst 15 years later, Corbett agreed: ‘It is obvious that if the
object and end of naval warfare is the control of communications it must carry with it the right
to forbid, if we can, the passage of both public and private property upon the sea…To make
the position clear we should say ‘Commerce prevention’. 26 Even so, both Mahan and
Corbett agreed that commerce raiding was the tactic of the weak, an indecisive form of
warfare that could not defeat a nation with a strong navy, extensive mercantile fleet and
significant shipbuilding resources 27 - perhaps, their greatest miscalculation, given the events
of the subsequent World Wars. 28
The repeal of the Navigation Acts in 1849 also had seismic long term consequences for
British merchant shipping. Even so, Britain’s industrial advantage meant that by the turn of
the century, over 50 percent of all merchant shipping sailed under a British flag – 13 1/2
million gross tons - a staggering monopoly on the carriage of trade and a huge ‘invisibles’
earner for the British economy. 29 But newly industrialised nations began to catch up and by
the outbreak of the First World War, although tonnage had increased to nearly 19 million
tons, as a proportion, British flagged shipping had fallen to less than a quarter of the total. 30
However, British controlled oceanic carrying capacity was still impressive and represented a
huge strategic asset during the unrestricted submarine warfare of WW1. This threat had
been largely discounted by the pre-war Admiralty, who considered the submarine of limited
utility and unlikely to be able to locate and destroy dispersed shipping in the vastness of the
oceans. 31 Nevertheless, merchant shipbuilding declined during the inter war years and was
only re-invigorated with re-armament, with tonnage in 1939 approximately restored to 1918
levels. 32 Once again, despite the rapid re-introduction of convoying, British vulnerability to
commercial blockade was brutally exposed, with horrendous shipping losses peaking in
1941. The emphasis on the maintenance of supply routes was not confined to the Battle of
the Atlantic: for the allies, economic warfare was particularly effective in the Pacific theatre
against another island power, Japan, where American and British action was spectacularly
successful against Japanese merchant shipping – possibly the most decisive example of
Guerre de Course in history. 33,34
25 A Hattendorf, ed., Mahan on Naval Strategy, 28
26 Corbett, Some principles of Maritime Strategy, 91
27 Ibid., xiv
28 Ibid., xvi
29 Stewart, The Sea Our Heritage,43
30 Ibid
31 Ibid.,49
32 Ibid., 59
33 Translates as ‘War of Corsairs’ – the tactic of commerce raiding. Conducted by privateers in the 19 th Century
and submarines in the 20 th .
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Nevertheless, the Second World War marked the beginning of the end of the centrality of
commerce and its protection (or attack) as a central theme of Naval business, not least
because of technological advances which now allowed the RN to establish firm footholds in
domains formerly out of reach – on land and in the air. The RN had always been
instrumental in delivering the Army: Corbett’s assertion that ‘great issues between nations at
war have always been decided…either by what your army can do or else by fear of what
your fleet makes it possible for your army to do’ 35 was prescient. The advent of long range
gunnery and sea-borne airpower had allowed, for the first time, the aspiration for Joint
exploitation and integration to begin to bear fruit in a profound manner, particularly in the
development of amphibious warfare. From the disaster at Gallipoli, to the integrated,
industrialised and professionalised process at Normandy and the subsequent American
island-hopping advances of the Far Eastern campaign thirty years later, the Allied navies had
moved from ‘the Army is a shot to be fired by the Navy‘ 36 to firing plenty of shots themselves.
Maritime power could now be seen not just as an enabler and deliverer of armies ashore but
as having a crucial contribution in the concentration of force and provision of firepower from
the sea base; and this role – the delivery of power from the sea, as opposed to the provision
of power at sea, became more and more to define naval capability requirements and
operational utility.
Even so, the Navy was loathe to abandon the role of commerce protection. The First Sea
Lord in 1948, Lord Fraser of North Cape, put the defence of commerce as his top priority:
‘Planning can only proceed on something we know we must do. Escort safely our
convoys’. 37 This was formalised in the ‘Three Pillars’ defence strategy of 1948: defence of
the UK, maintaining vital sea communications and securing the Middle East as a defensive
and striking base against the Soviet Union. 38 However, the advent of the nuclear age
brought the utility of sea control forces into serious doubt. The Sandys review of 1957 stated
that the two roles of defence were to ‘play their part with the forces of Allied Countries in
deterring and resisting aggression’ and ‘to defend British colonies and protected territories
against local attack, and undertake limited operations in overseas emergencies’. But for the
first time, the purpose of the Navy was in question: ‘the role of Naval forces in total war is
uncertain’. 39 With any nuclear war expected to be over in a few days or weeks, traditional
naval roles such as blockade or other forms of economic warfare would simply not have time
to be effective, let alone decisive, and the Naval staff struggled to make a convincing case
for the retention of substantial and expensive sea control forces – if sea control is not
34 Gray, The Leverage of Seapower, 13t
35 Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, 14
36 T124, Seapower, 154
37 Eric J. Grove, The Royal Navy since 1815 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 219
38 Clare Taylor, A Brief Guide to Previous British Defence Reviews (House of Commons Library
SN/IA/5714,2010),2
39 Cmnd 124, Defence outline of Future Policy (London: HMSO, 1957), 4
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equired, what are they for? As a Board of the Admiralty paper stated in 1957, ‘Naval
planning for Global War has not so far resolved the problems involved in conducting maritime
operations from this country after a megaton attack’. 40 Even the concept of a ‘broken
backed’ war - which envisaged that the nation would continue to function, and require
massive reinforcement from across the Atlantic after a first strike – was losing currency in the
thermonuclear age. 41 Thus in less than a decade, the costly nature of sea control coupled
with the emerging nuclear threat fundamentally undermined the case, at the political level, for
commerce defence as a core role. This had a far reaching, and recurring impact: the
disaggregation of the protection of maritime trade from core Naval business removed at a
stroke the ‘instinctive’ arguments that the RN had long relied upon – that the nation’s
economic security in peacetime, and very existence in wartime, was underpinned by a strong
merchant marine, which in turn, relied on a strong Navy for its protection. Mahan was right
when he noted ‘nor is it easy to conceive what broad military use [navies] can subserve that
at all compares with the protection and destruction of trade’. 42 Generations of Naval officers
would struggle to make a resonant argument thereafter.The political disenchantment with the
protection of commerce endured. The Sandys review may have marked the bleakest vision
in which conventional forces were of questionable utility, with the tide only began to turn in
favour of stronger conventional forces with the arrival of the incoming Labour government in
1964, and the realisation that some form of limited war may form a precursor to nuclear
attack. Nevertheless, the RN did not do well – 1966 defence estimates confirmed
cancellation of the new carrier and the eventual run down of the carrier capability in toto, to
be replaced by land-based air. Again, the Navy had struggled to make its case to the then
Defence Secretary, Denis Healey, who later stated ‘the Navy argued its case for the carrier
badly. I had to keep sending its papers back to be more persuasive’. 43 The RN had reaped
what they had sown: the rebranding of the aircraft carrier as a tool for policing far-flung
imperial outposts to win over Sandys in 1957 – seen as such a coup at the time - meant that
with the end of the East of Suez role, their retention was impossible to justify. Although the
1970s were a period of relative affluence for the RN, doctrinally the period reflected an
increasingly continental focus for conventional forces. Philosophically, the menace of the
USSR had driven policy away from the Corbett/Mahan models, with their emphasis on trade
and maritime power, towards a firmly continental outlook. Politically as well, commitment to
the continent was an overriding treaty obligation. So by 1982, the protection of commerce
had become a virtual irrelevance for John Nott, the Secretary of State: he tended to agree
with his scientific advice that cast serious doubts on the efficacy of convoy given Soviet
submarine numbers and capabilities, even for the protection of reinforcement shipping from
40 Moore, The Royal Navy and Nuclear Weapons, 86
41 Richard Moore, The Royal Navy and Nuclear Weapons (London: Frank Cass Publishers, 2001), 64
42 A Hattendorf, ed, Mahan on Naval Strategy, xxvii
43 Denis Healey, The Time Of My Life (London: Penguin Group, 1989), 276
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the USA. 44 Echoing the frustration of the 1950s, the First Sea Lord, Sir Henry Leach, did not
agree. In a ‘State of the Nation’ newsletter in November 1981 he wrote: ‘…the weight of
scientific advice – unsubstantiated by any actual war or operational experience – was
singularly unhelpful’, 45 going on to define both the protection of reinforcement and resupply
shipping, as well as UK and NATO merchant shipping, as core roles, 46 despite its absence in
either the Nott review. 47 While the Falklands campaign may have been a temporary
reprieve, it in no way altered the fundamentally land-centric, continental view of European
and British defence.
This presented a real problem to Naval planners when the Cold War ended. If, even with the
array of threatening sea denial forces, a submarine fleet measured in the hundreds and the
powerful anti-ship missile surface fleet of the Soviet Navy arrayed against Britain, the RN
couldn’t persuade Ministers that the threat to commerce was a priority, there was little
chance that the argument would gain traction with the disappearance of the Soviet threat.
So, as in 1957, there was only one option: find a new argument. By the Strategic Defence
Review of 1997, this was articulated as the Maritime Contribution to Joint Operations
(MCJO). 48 Power from the sea finally replaced power at sea as the principle force driver for
the RN – and arguably, continues to do so. Nevertheless, this was a brilliant achievement.
With the trend in the 1980s towards a heavy anti-submarine warfare (ASW) focus, the
disappearance of the Soviet submarine threat left the RN’s core capabilities looking
increasingly outdated. Quite simply, the RN had to find a narrative which had resonance with
the other services in the new, Joint environment, or it would not survive. This has continued
to evolve: submarines became strategic Intelligence collection platforms, also capable of
delivering Joint Fires via the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM); the Invincible class light
aircraft carrier, which had proven its worth largely for Fleet protection in the Falklands,
became a Strike Carrier; and even the 4.5 inch gun on the front of the RN’s frigates and
destroyers was remarketed as a ‘joint fire’. ‘Jointery’, in many ways, saved the RN from
sliding into insignificance, but the cost was high: the strategic narrative of the RN was
subsumed by the hard capability requirements of the Joint campaign which placed primacy
on contribution to land effect and thus had little room for the funding of traditionally ‘core ‘
naval roles, in particular, sea control, unless directly concerned with defending SLOCs for the
delivery and resupply of the land force.
Consequently, the RN has also maintained a circumspect view since the 1990s. This
doctrinal ambivalence is apparent in the first edition of BMD, published in 1995, in which ‘The
44 Grove, The Royal Navy since 1815, 244
45 Letter from Admiral Sir Henry Leach, 2600/85 dated 13 November 1981.
46 Ibid
47 Cmnd 8529, Statement on the Defence Estimates 1982 (London: HMSO, 1982), 24
48 Cmd 3999, Strategic Defence Review: Modern Forces for the Modern World (London: HMSO, 1998), 321
8

Application of Maritime Power’ is heavily weighted towards power from the sea. 49
Successive editions have gradually reversed this emphasis, with the current edition more
balanced between power at sea and power from the sea, commenting in its opening
paragraphs that ‘The UK is a maritime trading nation whose prosperity, stability and security
depend on the vital access provided by the sea and the maintenance of an international
system of law and free trade’. 50
However, Britain’s National Security Strategy of 2011 does
not mention the word ‘maritime’ or ‘sea’ at all. 51 The risks to trade are only implied through
‘Tier three’ risks of ‘Short to medium term disruption to international supplies of resources
(e.g. food, minerals) essential to the UK’, or ‘disruption to oil or gas supplies to the UK, or
price instability, as a result of war, accident, major political upheaval or deliberate
manipulation of supply by producers’: 52 hardly compelling. Once again, perhaps, Naval
convictions and instincts have failed to translate into political intent.
Thus the Naval narrative during the last century has had to continually adapt and evolve to
remain ‘relevant’. The RN has developed arguments as to its utility which went far beyond
the protection of convoys and the balancing of continental power. A crisis of confidence at
the start of the nuclear era in the 50s led to a refocus as ‘out of area’ enabler in the 60s and
70s; a defender of the home base and Eastern Atlantic in the 1980s; to an enabler and force
provider for Joint expeditionary operations since then. It is perhaps, therefore, unsurprising
that the Naval staff have periodically been criticised for their inability to articulate deep held
and instinctive beliefs in a manner that is relevant and persuasive politically. With the
disaggregation of trade and commerce protection as a core role, the case became inherently
difficult to argue, even more so with the technocratic, output and capability driven approach
to defence planning that has characterised the last 50 years. From the Mahanian revolution
to the end of the second world war, the ‘ways’ were a matter of choice: whether sea control
through decisive battle, Guerre de Course or Fleet in Being. But the ‘ends’ were not in
doubt: it was about sea control, to enable military and commercial activity - the protection of
your own and the disruption of the enemy’s. But with the advent of the nuclear age and
subsequently, the recession of a direct State threat to trade, the ends somehow became a
matter of choice also. Naval power and its utility also became normative, subject to fashions
in the evolution of naval thinking and more recently, constrained to find the cheapest
solution. At the turn of the last century, Mahan’s writings influenced the development of
navies and doctrinal thinking around the world, led by the principle Naval power – the RN 53 .
Since the dawn of the thermonuclear age, the USN has provided the lead to which allies
aspire and adversaries respond, with Soviet area denial capabilities a direct counter to
49 BR1806, The Fundamentals of British Maritime Doctrine (London: TSO, 1995), 81-105
50 BR1806, British Maritime Doctrine (Shrivenham: DCDC), v
51 A Strong Britain in an Age of Uncertainty: The National Security Strategy (London: TSO (The Stationary Office),
2010), passim
52 Ibid, p 27
53 T124, Seapower, 15
9

Atlantic reinforcement; and today’s Chinese Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2AD) doctrinal and
material development a similar counter to US strength. For the RN, the move towards power
projection in the 1990s was heavily influenced by the evolution of US Navy and US Marine
Corps’ thinking: ‘Forward – From the Sea’, and ‘Operational Manoeuvre from the Sea’, 54
required to preserve Naval core capabilities by selling them to a Joint customer.
Simultaneously, sea control and commerce protection became associated in Naval circles
with a derisory “constabulary” navy as opposed to a warfighting one; a ‘frigate navy’, without
the need for capabilities such as carrier aviation, whose utility was solely defined by its ability
to deliver land effect – a curious echo of 1957. Structure has also played its part: abolishing
single service ministries in the 1960s, whilst perhaps the precursor to fully Joint operations
and force development, contributed in its own way to the marginalisation of core naval
matters which is entrenched by today’s fully Joint constructs, which by their nature
subordinate single service imperatives regardless of strategic merit. The flexibility inherent
in Naval forces allows for “rebranding” - but agile utility begets flexibility of purpose in the
round, an absence of absolutes and continual institutional introspection about the naval
‘case’. Consequently, the utility of maritime forces cannot be assumed to be understood at
a political level: the argument is key.
So if successive generations of politicians have not been persuaded by the significance of
maritime trade, is this simply because it is not very significant? How has globalisation
affected British seapower? And how is seapower, and its application, viewed by rising global
and maritime powers? Certainly, the pattern of UK trade has significantly changed since the
start of the 20 th century. Towards the end of the Victorian era, Britain was truly the centre of
world trade: in 1897, just over half the world’s merchant tonnage sailed under a British flag. 55
At the peak of British manufacturing dominance, 41 percent of the entire world’s finished
goods were manufactured in the UK. 56
The Empire was the economic powerhouse of the
nation; and trade powered the Empire. At the turn of the 20 th century, over 50 percent of all
imports of all the Imperial possessions – still including India, Canada and Australasia – came
from Britain, while over 40 percent of their total exports were destined for Britain 57 .
Nevertheless, Britain still had huge trading links with Europe and the USA, which accounted
for over half of both exports and imports: by 1910, the UK’s largest trading partners were the
USA , France, Germany and India. 58 In 1900, Britain accounted for 15% of total world trade,
equal (although not for long) with the USA. 59 Following WW2, relative decline was rapid: the
UK was bankrupt and deeply indebted. UK exports accounted for a 25% share of the world
54 Geoffrey Till, ed., Seapower at the Millennium (Stroud: Sutton Publishing Limited, 2001), 20
55 Stewart, The Sea our Heritage, 43
56 B.W.E. Alford, Britain in the World Economy since 1880 (London: Longman Group Ltd, 1996), 18
57 Return showing the trade of the various British colonies and possessions, inclusive of bullion and specie, with
the United Kingdom, other British possessions, and foreign countries during each of the years 1890-1900. (House
of Commons Parliamentary Papers online, accessed 7 Dec 11)
58 Alford, Britain in the World Economy since 1880, 38
59 Ibid., 41-42
10

total in 1950; by 1960, this had fallen to 16%. Today the total share is just over 2 ½% 60 - a
significant decline, although still ranking as the world’s fifth largest trading nation. Overseas
trade is predominantly with the EU (approx 55%); and the USA is still the UK’s largest single
trading partner. 61 Nevertheless, while relative decline has been significant, the UK is vastly
richer in real terms than in 1900; value of imports and exports has grown; and tonnage has
massively increased. 62 This has mirrored the incredible increase in world merchant trade –
over the last 40 years alone, sea borne trade has nearly quadrupled – from around 2.5 billion
tons, carried in a world fleet of 326 million tons of shipping in 1970, to over 8 billion tons of
cargo carried in over a billion tons of shipping in 2008 63 - so while the British share of the
whole has gone down significantly, the total amount of cargo passing through British ports
has steadily increased. Thus, although it is tempting (and traditional) to see UK trade as
having declined significantly in real terms since the height of empire, this is incorrect by
almost any measure – in fact, staggeringly so. In 1897, near the zenith of British Imperial
dominance in trade, British ports handled around 80 million tons of imports and exports. In
2011, UK ports handled over 500 million tonnes of cargo including over 5.5 million
containers. 64 Today, the UK imports and exports to China alone a greater volume of cargo
than Britain traded with the whole of the empire at the height of her Imperial trading power.
Also significant is Britain’s decline as a manufacturing powerhouse, largely due to the
reconfiguring of the British economy to services and finance, which now accounts for over
75% of GDP, with production and agriculture combined at around 16%. 65 This has a huge
impact on the UK’s trade balance. Historically, up until the 1980s Britain has broadly
maintained an even trade balance: exports approximately matched imports. However, this
has radically changed over the last thirty years and the trade deficit now stands at around £4
billion a month – the sixth highest in the world and excluding financial and service
(‘invisibles’) this increases to around £9 billion. In other words, the UK imports £9 billion
more manufactured goods and commodities than it exports, every month of the year. 66 Thus
outside of wartime, the UK has never been so dependant on imports as it is today.
60 IMF, World Economic Outlook report, April 2012: 179,
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2012/01/pdf/text.pdf (accessed 10 May 2012).
61 Department for Business Innovation and Skills: UK trade performance over the past years: 9,
http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/international-trade-investment-and-development/docs/u/11-720-uk-tradeperformance
(accessed 9 May 2012)
62 IFW, ‘Quarterly UK Sea Freight Statistics, Q1 2011’. http://www.ifwnet.com/freightpubs/ifw/article.htm?artid=20017882827&src=rss
(accessed 7 Dec 11)
63 UN CTAD, Review of Maritime Transport 2009 (New York and Geneva: United Nations, 2009), 76
64 Quarterly UK Sea Freight Statistics, Q1 2011, accessed 7 Dec 11.
65 Office of National Statistics, United Kingdom National Accounts (The Blue Book) 2011, 30,
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/naa1-rd/united-kingdom-national-accounts/2011-edition/index.html (accessed 10
May 2012)
66 Department for Business Innovation and Skills, UK trade performance over the past years, 7-15
11

It is not just the scale of maritime trade that has evolved beyond all recognition since the
middle of the 20 th Century. It is also the globalised nature of maritime commerce. 67
Commercial shipping has been transformed by de-regulation, with ‘national’ fleets of
merchantmen, although resurgent, still dwarfed by shipping flying flags of convenience,
manned by multinational crews and carrying cargoes who’s ownership may change several
times during a voyage, particularly with ‘global’ commodities such as oil or grain.
Containerisation has also transformed the industry: a modern ocean-going container ship
can routinely carry up to 15,000 twenty foot containers – two of these ships can carry the
equivalent tonnage of an entire WW2 convoy. 90% of the world’s manufactured goods are
shipped in containers, as well as a quarter of the world’s dry cargo: in 2011, there were an
estimated 29 million containers in service around the world. 68
Containerisation has also transformed trade by allowing the accurate prediction of
cargo quantities, arrival times and condition. Ships unload in hours, not weeks. ‘Just in time’
manufacturing, a business model pioneered by Toyota to drive down the inefficiencies of
holding inventory, has been embraced to now include energy, commodities and food as well
as manufactured items: delivery can be predicted within hours, raw materials can arrive on
the same day they are required for production and inventory, and thus costs, are
minimised. 69 Ocean carriage has been replaced by door to door delivery – a total logistics
system. Production can be distributed globally, with components brought together at the final
point of assembly from around the world, enabled by seamless delivery. Coupled with the
vast economies of scale inherent in bulk and containerised shipping, seaborne movement of
goods is cheap, reliable and thus good for business – pre containerisation, shipping costs
were typically 5-10% of the retail price; today, this has dropped to far less than a single
percent. 70 But as a consequence, the concept of a “reserve”, able to sustain an enterprise in
the event of a disruption to supply, has all but disappeared. Once dockside wharves and
warehouses would store weeks or even months supplies of commodities and goods to cope
with fluctuating demand or the vagaries of supply. An uninterrupted, seamless flow between
customer and supplier regardless of location makes this an expensive and unnecessary way
of doing business. This has clear strategic implications for the nation’s resilience and places
an absolute imperative on the maintenance of uninterrupted use of the sea globally, in every
circumstance.
Sea routes have remained largely unchanged, although as shipping increases in size and
strength, more extreme routes – such as Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope – are used
all year round and newer routes, such as the North West Passage and Northern Sea Route
67 Sam J Tangredi, ed., Globalization and Maritime Power, (Washington: National Defence University Press,
2002), 10
68 UNCTAD, Review of Maritime Transport 2011, 39
69 Tangredi, ed., Globalisation and Maritime Power, p 135
70 Ibid., 134
12

etween the Atlantic and Pacific north of Russia may become increasingly viable as Polar ice
retreats in summer. 71 Nevertheless, geographic choke points are becoming ever more
critical as production and output, enabled by maritime transportation, increases while
alternate supply infrastructure does not keep pace. For example, shipping through the
Straits of Hormuz carries around 17 million barrels of oil per day – around 33% of total world
demand; this compares with a maximum pipeline capacity overland, both via Saudi Arabia
and Iraq, of around 6 million barrels per day. 72 Approximately 50% of total world tonnage
routes through the Malacca Straight. 73 The Suez and Panama canals, Bab-al Mandeb Strait
and the Bosporus and Gibraltar Strait all carry vast quantities of commodities and trade; and
in addition, the increasing requirements for deep water port facilities, specialised, purpose
built loading and unloading facilities, with sufficient landward infrastructure for collection and
distribution, have created ‘man made’ chokepoints centred around the ‘spoke and hub’
system of port facilities 74 , with hub ports such as Shanghai, Singapore, Rotterdam, and
Dubai carrying significant proportions of the total world movement of dry cargo. Economies
of scale promote ever larger ship construction: in 2011, Maersk have ordered 12 container
vessels capable of carrying 18000 twenty foot container equivalent units (TEUs); 75 and
designs exist for a maximum of 35000 TEUs, the current theoretical limit in vessel size for
safe navigation of the Malacca straight (known as Malaccamax) 76 - the limits for the Panama
and Suez Canals (Panamax/Suezmax) having already been reached – which not only
represent a gigantic amount of floating capital but which require ever more specialist
equipment to handle, and restrict those facilities which are capable of berthing such deep
draught vessels to a smaller number of colossal container hubs. In the event of disruption to
such a specialised hub, there is simply nowhere else these ships can be used and even a
flow of medium to large sized vessels is dependant on the construction of massive shore
side infrastructure – specialist craneage, roads, rail links, unloading areas and acres of
container parks. As an example, in 1996, the US Center for Naval Analysis conducted a
study which indicated that while the closure of geographic chokepoints in South East Asia
would cost around $8 billion per year in steaming costs, disruption to the port facilities at
Singapore could easily exceed $200 billion annually; and in 1996, the largest container ship
carried a mere 7400 TEUs. 77 And while many geographic choke points can be
circumvented, albeit at an increased cost, infrastructure cannot. The international
infrastructure for the distribution of trade is vast and efficient but it has become increasingly
71 DCDC Strategic Trends Programme, Regional Survey: The Arctic out to 2040 (Shrivenham: DCDC, 2009), v
72 Global Oil Choke Points (New York: Lehman Brothers, 2006), 35
73 K.R Johnson, Maritime Power and the Asia Pacific, in ‘Seapower and the Asia Pacific: The Triumph of
Neptune?’, ed. Geoffrey Till and Patrick Bratton (Oxon: Routledge, 2012), 48
74 Tangredi, ed., Globalisation and Maritime Power, 133
75 UNCTAD, Review of Maritime Transport 2011, 37
76 Tangredi, ed., Globalisation and Maritime Power, 137
77 Ibid., 139
13

inflexible, resulting in highly concentrated trade flows. Consequently, the vulnerability of the
system has also increased.
In the UK, the changing nature of the merchant fleet has also had profound implications for
the Navy’s profile amongst the citizenry. Historically, the understanding that Britain was a
maritime nation dependant on trade was an instinctive one. Merchant ships berthed in busy
city dockyards; major cities expanded on the wealth of trade delivered to the ports and
wharves of the cities, which employed thousands and was a visible daily reminder of the
importance of the sea, whilst the RN remained totemic of Britain’s Imperial power and reach.
Ships were owned in Britain and the relationship between traders and shippers was a close
one, with London the world centre for both trade and shipping. Even many of the political
class had an instinctive maritime heritage, with wealth built on the back of this relationship
and powerful political lobbies representing the interests of trading merchants, and thus, a
powerful, independent voice supporting the naval strategic narrative. Today, globalisation
and technological advances have made Britain more dependant on trade, more vulnerable to
trade disruption and more than ever, dependant on uninterrupted global access to the high
seas, whilst simultaneously concentrating the physical aspects of containerisation and
delivery to huge but remote facilities, out of sight of the population and employing a much
smaller proportion of them; whilst the carriage trade has become a global marketplace open
to all, which has divorced the merchant from the means of delivery and greatly diluted the
maritime lobby.
So how has this affected Britain’s seapower? There is a compelling argument that
globalisation has been an undermining influence. Seapower as an output ‘is not simply what
it takes to use the sea…rather, it is the capacity to influence the behaviour of other people or
things by what one does at or from the sea.’ 78 Till’s description of the 5 constituents of
seapower - Population, society and government; maritime geography; resources; a
maritime economy; and other sources of seapower 79 echo Mahan’s elements but in a
globalised world, the maritime economy – from shipbuilding to the carriage trade, to flag
regulation to insurance and shipbroking - has become truly internationalised. In the case of
the UK, the globalised, liberalised and open market in merchant shipping has had a huge
effect on the flagged merchant fleet, while global deregulation has diluted the nexus of flag,
destination, cargo and ownership that combined to contribute a significant utility as a
constituent of seapower. Even with nations with much larger nationally flagged merchant
shipping such as Norway and Greece, in an interconnected, global market for shipping it is
hard to see how the flagged fleet could be used as an instrument of maritime power as once
it was. Equally, the skills and technologies for naval shipbuilding have largely been lost as
civilian shipbuilding has migrated East. Naval shipbuilding, if maintained nationally, has
78 Till, Seapower: A guide for the Twenty First Century, 96
79 Ibid., Ch 3
14

largely had to become a self-sustaining industry as yards are unable to maintain the
workforce at the appropriate level by constructing merchant ships when military orders dry
up. In many ways, therefore, access to a global market has proved to be a maritime leveller,
where traditional maritime powers no longer have preferred access to the maritime economy;
trade between nations is liberalised and open, allowing access for all; and where maritime
skills are no longer seen as a national asset, but can also be acquired as needed through the
market. Naval construction is less globalised but has not been immune: defence contractor
consolidation and the increasing complexity of warships means that whilst assembly can take
place in the UK, the idea of a national, complete and discrete ability to build warships is, at
best, optimistic.
Additionally, since the flag nexus no longer is mutually reinforcing, the requirement for a state
to provide protection for its vessels has also been diluted. A British flagged, owned,
operated and crewed vessel destined for the UK makes a compelling case for protection; a
foreign owned, operated, crewed and cargo’d vessel taking advantage of the considerable
tax advantages of UK registry, 80 less so. If the responsibility to protect globalised merchant
shipping has itself evolved into a global responsibility, there is a far less compelling
imperative to ensure that the capability to protect one’s own flagged fleet is maintained.
Thus the Department For Transport’s assertion of the RN as a ‘benefit’ of UK Flag
registration has a profound caveat: ‘Worldwide security threat level information provided to
UK registered ships with support for British Nationals on board from British Consuls and
Royal Navy protection dependent on the availability of assets and the nature of the threat’. 81
Containerisation and the use of “hub and spoke” may make a container ship transiting the
Indian Ocean an indiscriminate target if the aim is to disrupt the UK: her cargo will be likely to
be multinational, perhaps delivered in Rotterdam, with the UK portion of containers shipped
via the Channel tunnel or delivered by one of a fleet of small container ships. But the
majority of imports – particularly the vast tonnage of bulk commodities - do not arrive in
containers. For example, 35% of the UK’s LNG will be delivered by sea by 2030; 82 a steady
stream of LNG carriers between Qatar and the newly constructed South Hook LNG terminal
in Wales – one per week – will transit the Straits of Hormuz, Indian Ocean, Cape of Good
Hope and Atlantic. This represents a significant potential point of failure for the UK’s energy
security.
80 Maritime Coastguard Agency, UK Ship Register Tonnage Tax, Department for Transport,
http://www.dft.gov.uk/mca/mcga07-home/shipsandcargoes/mcga-ukshipregister/mcga-ukshipregistermerchantships/mcga-ukshipregister-tonnagetax.htm
(accessed 1 Mar 2012)
81 Maritime Coastguard Agency, Advantages of Registration, Department for Transport,
http://www.dft.gov.uk/mca/mcga07-home/shipsandcargoes/mcga-ukshipregister/mcga-ukshipregistermerchantships/mcga-ukshipregister-advantagesofreg.htm
(accessed 1 Mar 2012)
82 Chamber of Shipping, Protecting UK trade and the UK way of life, Chamber of Shipping, http://www.britishshipping.org/publications
(accessed 1 Mar 2012)
15

Taken in the round, therefore, the expression of a nation’s seapower is far more aligned with
its maritime power than ever before: as the virtuous maritime circle has been inherently
weakened, it stands to reason that the repository of the nation’s residual seapower lies with
its navy. That said, the decline in the national, British view of the significance of seapower
has not necessarily been echoed elsewhere: the emerging economic nations have embraced
a different model, seeing seapower as once the UK did: as an interrelated tapestry of military
and civilian interests contributing to their security and prosperity. It is no coincidence,
therefore, that nations rising fastest economically – the so-called BRIC nations 83 – are also
the nations embracing seapower - and with the military dimension heavily weighted towards
the ability to deliver sea control – power at sea. In China’s case this is expressed in both the
development of a vigorous domestic shipbuilding and owning nexus as well as the
construction of a large, blue water navy. Indian naval construction has become a priority for
defence spending in recent years, in part as a response to China’s increasing capabilities.
China’s ‘turn to the sea’ 84 - reminiscent of European mercantilist notions of the 19 th Century
- has been triggered by a number of factors: the decline of the landward threat and the
‘marinisation’ of her more pressing security concerns; the colossal rise in dependence on
SLOCs for energy security (by 2015, 75% of all crude oil imports will be shipped via the
Malacca, Makassar and Lombok straits); 85 and the tremendous economic growth enabled by
an explosion of seaborne trade. 86 The traditional Gorshkov-inspired, Anti-Access and Area
Denial (A2AD) model aimed at countering the US Navy’s expeditionary capabilities has been
increasingly supplemented by the development of well-found blue water capabilities – a
relatively new development – with the People’s Liberation Army (Navy) (PLA(N)) the fastest
growing force in the Chinese military. 87 Indeed, the PLA(N) is expected to expand
considerably out to 2020 – a force of 78 submarines, 73 escorts plus the highly publicised
carrier programme. 88 ‘Active Defence’, China’s maritime operational strategy, seeks to
‘improve its sustainability and combat capability in distant waters’, 89 a doctrinal shift away
from the defence of Chinese physical borders to a broader and more outward looking view:
the defence of her interests. What is notable about these developments is both in how China
has recognised the strategic merits of pursuing an integrated maritime strategy; as well as
the conviction that the Navy is there to deliver power at sea – sea control of essential sea
83 Brazil, Russia, India and China
84 James R. Holmes and Toshi Yoshihara, Chinese Naval Strategy in the 21 st Century: The Turn to Mahan
(Abingdon: Routledge, 2008),2
85 Mold Nizam Basiron and Sumathy Permal, ‘The Malaysian Perspective’ in Southeast Asia and the Rise of
Chinese and Indian Naval Power: Between rising Naval powers, eds Sam Bateman and Joshua Ho (Abingdon:
Routledge, 2010), 89
86 Holmes and Yoshihara, Chinese Naval Strategy in the 21 st Century: The Turn to Mahan,3,4
87 Huang Jing, ‘The PLA Navy: expanding into uncharted waters’, in Southeast Asia and the Rise of Chinese and
Indian Naval Power, eds Bateman and Ho, 22
88 Ibid., 24
89 Ibid., 29, 30
16

lanes, and beyond. Power from the sea does not appear to fit in a Chinese maritime
operational or strategic model.
India has a similar view: indeed, ‘Whoever controls the Indian Ocean dominates Asia…This
ocean is the key to the seven seas’ 90 may have been misattributed to Mahan but it
resonates within a navy which is similarly configured for sea control, whose recent rapid
growth and aspirations for continued reach are a result of growing maritime dependence and
a perceived requirement to balance China’s growing maritime influence. Indian and Chinese
carrier development is for the provision of traditional Fleet protection as a core role, as
opposed to Strike, with carriers as the centrepieces of powerful fleets optimised for sea
control. Regionally, it is proving normative: a rediscovery of the importance of maritime
power, for Korea, Malaysia as well as the established maritime proponent, Japan which has
put sea control at the centre of maritime thinking, whether for maritime security or
warfighting. 91
Whilst both Chinese and Indian naval growth clearly has broader drivers than simply a preoccupation
with protecting SLOCs, it is nevertheless a Mahanist view of the application of
seapower which prizes the ability to deliver power at sea above all else. Indeed Admiral Liu
Huaqing, widely regarded as the founding father of China’s modern Navy, agreed with
Mahan that ‘a nation’s prosperity and well-being are intimately bound up with Command of
the sea. Such Command must be exercised both in peacetime facilitating the international
commerce that underlies wealth creation, and in wartime, to control sea communications with
the theatre of conflict.’ 92
Russia’s view is strikingly similar. Promising a massive expansion of its Navy, Russia
already spends 40% of the military budget on naval forces, 93 with a clearly articulated grand
strategic ambition which is shifting from that of an essentially defensive preoccupation with
the former Soviet Union to that of a globally active, outward-looking ‘great power’ with the will
to shape the international system. 94 This ambition is significant – to construct a naval fleet
capable of challenging any adversary in major warfighting at sea. Notable is the doctrinal
similarity with the USA: ‘the course and outcome of armed struggle as a whole will now be
determined mainly by confrontation in air and outer space and at sea’. 95
As Corbett notes, ‘Owing to the general common nature of sea communications, attack and
defence of trade are so intimately connected that the one operation is almost
indistinguishable from the other’. 96 The fastest growing economic and military powers have
90 Rahul Roy-Chaudhury, Seapower and Indian security (London: Brassey’s, 1995), 199
91 Masashi Nishihara, ‘Naval competition and confidence building: A Japanese perspective’ in Southeast Asia and
the Rise of Chinese and Indian Naval Power, eds Bateman and Ho, passim.
92 Holmes and Yoshihara, Chinese Naval Strategy, 29
93
James Bosbotinis, The Russian Federation Navy: An Assessment of its Strategic Setting, Doctrine and
Prospects (Shrivenham: The Defence Academy of the United Kingdom, 2010), 2
94 Ibid., 3
95 Ibid., 9
96 Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, 264
17

come to stress the importance of influence over the maritime environment as fundamental to
their prosperity and power: all express this clearly through the growing emphasis on Naval
policy, with the firm focus on the ability to deliver power at sea. This is highly likely to be
regionally normative. For a maritime nation whose national interest is defined as ‘shaping a
stable world – [taking] actions beyond our borders to reduce the likelihood of specific risks
affecting the UK or our direct interests overseas’, 97 it is critical.
For the RN, this poses some fundamental questions: should the global focus on sea control
be normative for the RN? Can the RN continue to subordinate power at sea in an
environment that will be increasingly populated by high technology maritime forces which
have not done so? Till recognises the normative nature of the utility of maritime power when
he states: ‘while the capacity to participate in expeditionary operations is at the moment key
to being a security provider, it should not be assumed that this will forever necessarily be the
main focus of significant Navies. Nor should it be assumed that this focus in any sense
reduces either the need for sea control, or the abiding value of the qualities that are required
to gain and maintain it.’ 98 As BMD tells us, ‘for British Maritime Power, the real focus of
maritime strategy is what you do once you have control of the sea: the essence of maritime
power is the ability to influence events on land’. 99 But put another way, this means that
without control of the sea, there can be no effective maritime strategy at all: sea control is, by
definition, a fundamental pre-requisite - so perhaps, a fundamental naval truth. The
attributes of maritime power, as defined by BMD, are considered to be ‘inherent’ strengths; 100
but a fundamental assumption underpinning Access, Mobility and Poise is that sea control
must be a given for these attributes to be exploited. Equally critical is sea control’s relativism:
one strives for a ‘minimum’ level of sea control 101 and this ‘minimum’ will be defined by also
defining an acceptable level of risk. But if acceptable risk is very low – for example, for the
deployment and positioning of an aircraft carrier or amphibious group – then the ‘minimum’
level of sea control will be very high. From Admiral Villeneuve after Trafalgar, Admiral
Scheer after Jutland to Admiral Anaya after the Falklands campaign: all could attest to the
futility of procuring and maintaining expensive, high-end warfighting capabilities if the final
balance between risk and “minimum” sea control comes out even marginally in the red. Thus
the limits of a navy’s sea control capabilities relative to risk precisely equate to the limit of its
ability to apply maritime power, either at or from the sea. Corbett agrees: ‘The attack and
defence of overseas expeditions are governed in a large measure by the principles of attack
and defence of trade. In both cases it is a question of control of communications..’ 102
97 National Security Strategy, 11
98 Till, Seapower: A guide for the Twenty First Century, 376
99 British Maritime Doctrine 2011, 2-13
100 Ibid., 2-1
101 Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre, Joint Concept Note 1/12, Future ‘Black Swan’ Class Sloop-of-
War: A Group System (Shrivenham: DCDC, 2012), 2-1
102 Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, 285
18

But times have changed in fundamental ways: notions of sea control, commerce raiding or
protection – indeed, the role of the world’s Navies - must be set against the radical evolution
of the international maritime system that has developed over the last 60 years. The growth in
military maritime forces, although significant in recent years, has still been vastly outstripped
by the growth of the global merchant fleet. As already described, in existence today is a truly
colossal global system of shipping and infrastructure upon which the vast majority of the
developed and developing world depends. Is it even possible to significantly disrupt it? Is the
market so large that it can always compensate? Has it become so vital that it is in no-one’s
interest to disrupt it? To examine these questions, it is worth reviewing two instances where
the system has come under attack: during the Tanker War of the 1980s and in the current
upsurge in piracy in the Gulf of Aden.
Where the Tanker War is particularly instructive is both in the potential for providing a
scenario for future intervention, as well as for highlighting issues which arise when sovereign
nations go to war in a globalised commons. This has resonance today where a conceivable
future scenario would be a requirement to protect neutral shipping in an area of conflict at
range. Iraq’s motivation throughout was a classical Clausewitzian use of war as an
instrument of policy and ‘diplomacy intensified’, allowing Saddam Hussein’s regime to
conduct vigorous negotiation whilst exhausting Iran’s economy and erode the will to fight; 103
whilst the Western, and Soviet motivation was, in the most part, designed to insulate their
shipping and their economic prosperity from a conflict which was not ostensibly targeted
against them but could certainly directly affect their interests. Saddam Hussein’s strategy of
attacking Iranian shipping was a result of his failure to achieve rapid victory against Iran after
launching what he assumed would be a ‘limited’ war in 1980. 104 But after tentative offers of a
peace settlement between Iran and Iraq were rejected in 1982, Saddam Hussein began to
attack Iranian tankers en route to Iran. This quickly escalated, with Iran attacking shipping
en route to Iraq – but because Iraq had little flagged shipping of its own, Iranian attacks were
directed against any shipping, including that of Gulf states, en route to or from Iraq. 105
Kuwaiti shipping was an obvious target; and Kuwait turned to the International community
(taking the unusual step of approaching both the USA and the Soviet Union for assistance).
Attacks on shipping escalated throughout the conflict, peaking in 1987 with losses on both
sides: Iraq tended to strike from the air; Iran using the Revolutionary Guard (IRGCN) in small
surface craft armed with mines or anti-ship missiles; and attacks were conducted both in the
Gulf of Oman and the Gulf entrance to the Straits of Hormuz, as well as against shore
103 Nadia El-Sayed El-Shazy, The Gulf Tanker War: Iran and Iraq’s Maritime Swordplay (London: Macmilan Press
Ltd, 1998), 310
104 Warrern Chin, ‘Operations in a War Zone’ in The Royal Navy and Maritime Power in the Twentieth Century,
ed. Ian Speller (London: Frank Cass, 2005), 183
105 Chin, Operations in a War Zone, 184
19

installations in both Iran and Iraq. 106 The multinational response was extensive: Soviet,
American, British, French, Belgian and Dutch and other naval units were dispatched for
escorting or mine clearance duties. Despite some angry rhetoric from Tehran, there was
never a concerted attempt to close the Straits of Hormuz; indeed, considerable rational
restraint was shown throughout, even after the accidental shooting down of Iran Air Flight
655 by the USS Vincennes in 1988 107 . Nevertheless, by the ceasefire in August of 1988 there
had been an estimated 411 ships attacked in the Arabian Gulf and Gulf of Oman, as well as
an ‘inadvertent’ Iraqi Exocet attack on the USS Stark. 108 A further 18 were mined in the Red
Sea in a supporting operation. 109 The UK’s Armilla patrol, deployed initially in 1980,
eventually swelled to three frigates and four minehunters – almost 20% of available naval
forces. 110
The Tanker War highlighted a number of important aspects of maritime operations which still
have relevance today. Although it is nearly 30 years ago, it occurred when the globalisation
of the maritime environment and merchant shipping had been well underway for some years
and it confirmed the difficulties inherent with the use of sovereign capabilities in this
globalised maritime community. Kuwaiti reflagging to the USA enabled protection of these
vessels by the US Navy, whilst the RN was successful in providing protection to British
flagged ships: the proportion that were attacked was considerably lower (0.5%) than the
average. 111 US re-introduction of the convoy was also largely successful: after a disastrous
start in which the escorting units were forced, for their own protection, to follow in the wake of
the reflagged Kuwaiti tanker Bridgeton which had already struck a mine, the convoying
operation – Operation Earnest Will – successfully escorted 259 ships in 127 separate
convoys, with no attacks. 112 Nevertheless, the rush to reflag brought its own problems:
many in the international shipping community felt that reflagging would be escalatory,
preferring to canvass for a multilateral, UN-led solution and in the UK, the National Union of
Seaman considered reflagging to undermine British neutrality in the war. By 1985, 87 ships
had reflagged to the UK, while a request to reflag 50-60 Norwegian ships had to be declined
as the Armilla patrol was at capacity. 113 Even so, this was the first time that the notion of
Flag state registration began to seem somewhat questionable in determining which shipping
to protect: exactly what represents the National interest? A hastily re-flagged vessel or a
vessel of foreign flag but with a UK-bound or owned cargo?
106 Lee Allen Zatara, Tanker War: America’s First Conflict with Iran, 1987-1988 (Philadelphia: Casemate, 2008),
385
107 Zatara, Tanker War, 297
108 Martin S Navias and E.R Hooton, Tanker Wars: The assault on Merchant Shipping during the Iran-Iraq crisis,
1980-1988 (London: I. B. Taurus & Co Ltd, 1996), 183
109 Ibid.
110 Chin, Operations in a war zone, 191
111 Ibid., 193
112 Navias and Hooton, Tanker Wars, 147
113 Idid., 141
20

It also highlighted the ability of relatively weak maritime forces to inflict significant damage
and disruption on a sophisticated adversary. ‘The world’s most formidable naval power...
was humiliated by an ancient pre-World War One (1908) mine’ 114 and the lesson for smaller
Navies, or those which may seek to deny access to larger ones, appears to have been that
Area Denial and Anti-Access measures can be relatively cheap to employ but expensive to
counter, requiring full spectrum capabilities including Mine Countermeasures and
sophisticated anti-ship missile defence capabilities - a genuine asymmetric advantage which
can be clearly identified in Russian, Chinese, North Korean and Iranian maritime strategy
today. The extent to which RN forces were able to achieve sea control in such a contested
environment is itself debatable: perhaps, if the absolute minimum requirement is the ability to
prevent one’s own ship from being sunk in a contested area, the Armilla patrol achieved a
little better: the ability to defend oneself and one or two adjacent ships as well. Thus the
business of commerce protection is demonstrably not a binary ‘constabulary vs. war fighting’
sum: quite the opposite, in fact, as to achieve sea control when it is contested by any
remotely technologically able adversary requires an extraordinarily specific, expensive and
technical set of skills and equipment that only well-found navies can provide.
In addition, the Tanker War is instructive in its effect on the maritime system. The conflict,
and numerous attacks on merchant shipping, peaking at 165 separate attacks in 1987, 115 did
not come close to halting the flow of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. In fact, the vast
majority of ships passing through the Straits did so without the benefit of protection from
anyone – the country whose nationally flagged shipping was worst hit during the conflict was
Liberia. 116 Thus even 30 years ago, the market was able to compensate for the additional
risks, with higher insurance premiums and some judicious reflagging. With 16,800 ships
transiting the Gulf throughout the war, it was a risk worth taking given that only an estimated
1.25 percent were attacked. So why protect at all? First, concerns about the continued
supply of oil vital to Western economies were highly significant: a much greater proportion of
oil passing through the straits was destined for the West than is the case today. Second,
Flag status carried a political imperative that was, perhaps, stronger than it is today: British
flagged shipping were more likely to be associated with British merchant seaman than now.
Similar concerns resonate today, although for subtly different reasons. Significant structural
changes in the global oil market have increased its volatility to the extent that, according to
the Independent Treasury Economic Model (ITEM), even the fear that the Strait of Hormuz
could close would cause an oil spike; and the threat of such a spike was a risk on a par with
a eurozone debt crisis for the UK’s economy. 117 Similarly, the hard economic reality of
114 El-Shazly,The Gulf Tanker War, 294.
115 Ibid.,185
116 El-Shazly, Tanker War, 19-23
117 Angela Monoghan ‘Threat of oil price spike is on a par with eurozone debt crisis, ITEM warns’ The Daily
Telegraph, April 10 (2012), B1
21

simply allowing the market to ‘price in’ casualties and lives lost as a monetary risk premium,
to be eventually paid by the consumer, is even less acceptable when viewed through the
lens of today’s social, media and political drivers: it is increasingly non-discretionary for a
nation to intervene to protect their merchant seamen – for the UK, still a significant
constituency 118 - and in extremis, the mariners of other nations, if caught up in conflict.
The second example, at the opposite end of the war fighting scale, is the response of the
international maritime community to the significant increase in the incidence of Piracy in the
Gulf of Aden and Somali basin. The resurgence in piracy was brought about by a number of
factors, but principally, the failure of the Somali state and absence of governance along
1000s of miles of the Somali coast, which provides a haven for this lucrative enterprise, while
a lack of opportunities for legitimate employment make piracy an attractive and relatively low
risk option. Somali piracy underwent a metamorphosis in 2003 with the formation of a
number of extremely businesslike and focused pirate enterprises on the Eastern Somali
seaboard, for example, the so-called ‘Somali Marines’. 119 A clampdown in 2005 by the Union
of Islamic Courts, a radical Islamist movement, prompted the relocation of piracy to the
uncontrolled North East of the Horn of Africa, but with the UIC’s removal by the Ethiopian
Army in 2006, piracy took off. 120 The business model is compelling. Even in 2005, the
ransom for the MV Feisty Gas, a Hong Kong flagged liquid petroleum tanker captured in
April, was $315,000 – a fine return on an initial ‘investment’ of, perhaps, a few thousand
dollars. By 2010, ransoms had increased dramatically, with $9.5 million paid for the release
of the oil tanker MV Samho Dream. 121 The number of pirate attacks also spiralled: in 2006,
the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) recorded 18 incidents in the region; by 2009, that
number had risen to 148 – 62% of the global total. 122 Some context is required: a vast
amount of shipping travels through the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean each year – the
number of vessels attacked equates to around 0.5 percent of transits – in other words, there
is around a one in 200 chance of a ship being attacked on a particular voyage.
Economically, the cost, in increased insurance premiums (which in some cases have
increased 100-fold) can still be passed on as freight costs without a significant impact simply
because of the economies of scale that exist in modern commercial shipping. For example,
a $250,000 premium on a 10,000 TEU vessel – a 250-fold increase - equates to an
additional $25 dollars per container equivalent; a container costs in the region of $1200 to
ship from Hong Kong to Rotterdam, so even a massive hike in insurance costs only adds
118 27,000 UK nationals routinely employed at sea (DfT webpage ‘Seafarer statistic 2011’ at
http://assets.dft.gov.uk/statistics/releases/seafarer-statistics-2011/seafarer-statistics-2011.pdf, accessed 14 Mar
2012)
119 Jay Bahadur, Deadly Waters: Inside the Hidden World of Somalia’s Pirates (London: Profile Books Ltd, 2011),
32-34
120 Ibid., 34-38
121 Ibid.
122 Martin N Murphy, ‘Somali Piracy: Why Should We Care?’, Royal United Services Institute Journal December
2011 Vol 156 No 6, 9
22

around 2 percent to the cost. Even taking into account the costs of maritime operations, the
total cost of piracy is estimated at somewhere between $7 and $12 billion annually – a large
number, for sure, but dwarfed by worldwide maritime commerce of around $12.2 trillion in
2010. 123
The response of the international community has been relatively slow. Up until 2008, the
international maritime presence in the Gulf of Aden was provided by Task Force 150 of the
Combined Maritime Forces (CMF), administered by the US Navy’s NAVCENT organisation
operating from Bahrain. Since then, the number of umbrella organisations and nations with
an interest in the Gulf of Aden has increased massively: NATO under the auspices of
Operation Ocean Shield, EU Naval Forces’ Operation Atalanta and CMF’s Task Force 151
all run concurrent counter-piracy operations, with a plethora of participating nations from
NATO members to Singapore and New Zealand as well as significant independent Naval
presence from the People’s Republic of China, India, Russia and Iran.
Nevertheless, it would be simplistic to suggest that all of these nations dispatched ships to
the region out of a concern to a threat to the commons: the incidence of piracy also
presented a number of strategic opportunities. Arguably, for the West, it has allowed the
continued normalisation of Naval presence in a region of national interest, not least because
of the strategic importance of the trade routes. For China, it has allowed the PLA(N) to
demonstrate new capabilities for out of area operations within an operational setting; this has
certainly not been lost on regional maritime nations of Asia. India, another unilateral actor, is
keen to demonstrate its reach across the Indian Ocean. 124 Additionally, a powerful
international naval force in the Gulf of Aden is a telegraph to other regional players who may
take note of the international response to attempts to interfere with maritime trade, or who
may wish to threaten key choke strategic points – notably Iran 125 . Anti-piracy operations
have provided a useful pretext to allow contingent pre-positioning of maritime forces for this
eventuality also. 126
But the Grand Strategy argument only goes so far. Significant US domestic pressure to
become more proactive about the piracy problem intensified after the capture of the MV
Maersk Alabama in 2009 127 . The steady degeneration of Somalia and rise of the remnants of
the UIC, Al-Shabaab, recently declared as allied with Al-Quaeda, has raised Somalia’s profile
further. Containment of a failed state, denying funds to an extremist Islamist organisation
whilst ensuring the safe delivery of Humanitarian aid are all powerful motivations to send
Naval forces, if only to prevent further spillage of Somalia’s problems into the Indian Ocean.
123 Ibid.
124 Lee Willet, ‘Pirates and Power Politics, Naval Presence and Grand Strategy in the Horn of Africa’, Royal
United Services Institute Journal December 2011 Vol 156 No 6.
125 BBC. News (Middle East) ‘Iran threatens to block Strait of Hormuz oil route’. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ukpolitics-17131208
(accessed 28 Feb 2012).
126 Willet, ‘Pirates and Power Politics, Naval Presence and Grand Strategy in the Horn of Africa’
127 John C Payne, Piracy Today: Fighting Villainy on the High Seas (New York: Sheridan House, 2010), p13
23

And crucially, Naval forces are very good at being seen to fulfil the political objective of
protecting civilian shipping and civilian mariners from kidnap, whilst ensuring no actual
entanglement ashore in Somalia.
Even so, the scale of the response has been significant, especially when considering that the
economic driver alone is not terribly compelling. Even taken as a percentage of trade through
the Gulf of Aden, the total cost of Piracy is a somewhat smaller proportion than, for example,
what the UK’s retail industry loses to shoplifting. 128 As in the Tanker War, insurance
premiums may rise and risk may be ‘priced in’; but this cannot satisfy the domestic political
requirement to protect mariners. Indeed, the kidnap of the British couple sailing in the vicinity
of the Seychelles in 2009 – released after a £600,000 ransom was paid 129 – attracted far
more media coverage and attention than the capture of the British flagged, but foreign
crewed, MV Asian Glory in 2012, a car transporter shipping from Singapore to Jeddah, or the
MV St James, a chemical tanker pirated in the same week, also with a multinational crew. 130
And at the same time, the human factor has the potential to profoundly affect the economic if,
for example, it becomes increasingly difficult to crew merchant shipping transiting the Gulf of
Aden because of insecurity: the hostage rate for seafarers transiting the Indian Ocean in
2010 was 12 times that of Turkey, currently the world’s most kidnap prone country. 131 The
powerful Indian labour union, as well as the Anglo-Danish union have already warned that
seafarers may boycott the area; 132 whilst in June 2011, the International Transport Workers
Federation, with over 600,000 seafarers in affiliated unions, called for planning for
commence to implement a call to refuse to sail into the area 133 . Thus reassurance - the
perception of security provided by the presence of Naval vessels – has a significant part to
play in the human story of piracy.
Even more apparent than during the Tanker War is that National interest or political
imperative does not necessarily follow the flag registration of a particular vessel: nationality
of crew, cargo and destination clearly have a significant impact. The MV Faina, the vessel
which first drew international media attention to Somalian piracy was a Ukrainian flagged
transport ship laden with tanks (reputedly bound for the conflict in Sudan), pirated in 2008 134 ;
next to make the headlines was the Saudi super tanker MV Sirius Star 135 , carrying $100
million of crude oil. And while Flag status may be less of a determinant in national interest,
conversely, its absence does not mean that there is no national interest either. As the Chief
128 Murphy, ‘Somali Piracy: Why Should We Care?’, 9
129 The Guardian, ‘British Couple kidnapped by Somali pirates freed after ransom payment’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/14/paul-rachel-chandler-released-somali-pirates (accessed 28 Feb 12)
130
BBC News ‘Pirates seize second UK-flagged vessel in days’, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8437581.stm
(accessed 28 Feb 12)
131 Ibid.
132 Murphy, ‘Somali Piracy: Why Should We Care?’,9
133
House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, ‘Piracy off the coast of Somalia’, House of Commons,
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmfaff/writev/1318/1318.pdf (accessed 1 Mar 2012)
134 John C Payne, Piracy Today: Fighting Villainy on the High Seas (New York: Sheridan House, 2010), 146
135 Ibid., 171
24

Executive of the Baltic Exchange commented in 2011, ‘There most definitely is a UK nexus
to the whole piracy issue. London remains a very important maritime services centre, a
shipowning centre…Even if it is not UK flagged, many of the ships…have multi-national
crews, multi-national origins, and are actually owned or operated by businesses run from the
UK. They are insured here and it is the London P&I 136 clubs, for example, that often shell out
£10m a time for one of these ships…The UK absolutely has an interest in this’. 137 The
response has been to ‘globalise’ the solution: the majority of Naval vessels are committed to
multilateral task forces tasked to protect all shipping, as opposed to unilateral deployments
for the protection of Flagged shipping (albeit with some notable exceptions); and
consequently, there has been no scramble to re-flag. Co-operation at the informal unit level
between disparate Naval forces to deconflict task force or unilateral activity and attempt to
provide a coherent response has been almost unprecedented. In this respect, then, it is the
Navies which have adapted most coherently to the globalised nature of the commons.
Private security companies will doubtless provide vessel protection detachments, armed or
otherwise, but this is unlikely to eliminate the problem: not all vessels will carry them; and as
they become ubiquitous, so pirate tactics will inevitably evolve. Similarly, a business model
to provide waterborne protection has yet to succeed: because of the speed, endurance and
seakeeping qualities required of an escort, they need to be relatively large – and thus
expensive to build and run - to be effective. So at present, there is no viable alternative to
navies in the enforcement of security on the high seas.
Piracy has certainly transformed the relationship between the RN and the commercial sector.
Even so, what has been highlighted most prominently by the commercial sector is not the
efficacy of Naval forces in protecting their valuable assets, rather that the military response
has been too small to be effective. As Spyros Polemis, the chairman of the International
Chamber of Shipping, stated in 2011, ‘the current military response – with only a handful of
navy ships available to provide protection on any given day – has been a sticking plaster on
a gaping wound’. 138 It is not hard to see why: on average, between 20 and 30 ships, at best,
are available to patrol 2.5 million square miles of ocean. Naval performance has been hard
to quantify: how much worse would piracy be if the navies of the world were absent? But this
is far from a ringing endorsement of their success in sweeping the scourge of piracy from the
seas. Indeed, Rules of Engagement, risk aversion, legal wrangles over jurisdiction,
evidential thresholds for prosecution, and above all, a failure to take the fight to dry land, all
hamper the success of anti-piracy operations against an adaptable, resourceful and
unconstrained adversary: sea control is proving difficult to exert, even against the ultra-low
tech – skiffs, outboard motors and rifles.
136 A P&I club is a Protection and Indemnity Insurance mutual association which provides cover for its members.
137 Roger Hailey, ‘Baltic Boss Penn clashes with Royal Navy anti-piracy chief’, in Lloyds List March 10, 2011.
http://www.freshwater-uk.com/images/24/lloyd-s-list-page-2-100311.pdf (accessed 29 Feb 12).
138 Murphy, ‘Somali Piracy: Why Should We Care?’, 7
25

Historically, piracy has been defeated either ashore, or by attrition of the pirates themselves
– from Brooke and Keppel rampaging through the jungles of Borneo to anti piracy patrols on
the China station (in one example, 500 pirates were killed and 1000 taken prisoner, for the
loss of 6 killed, 17 wounded). 139 For Polemis, ‘Governments have so far failed to protect
shipping, and the smooth flow of world trade, from being literally held to ransom by Somali
criminals’. 140 Even the use of armed guards to protect individual ships, so long resisted by
the Merchant community – and the International Maritime Organisation 141 - who have
consistently argued that the use of armed force by civilian entities on board civilian ships is
fraught with legal difficulty, is likely to become increasingly common 142 – perhaps, a modern
consequence of the decades of neglect of commerce protection – and represents a reversal
of the imperative to ensure that sovereign navies, not private entities have a monopoly on the
legal use of violence on the high seas. Even so, a new version of the virtuous maritime circle
may be emerging. Security of merchant shipping is high on the agenda of the network of UK
based maritime organisations, from the Baltic Exchange, the Chamber of Shipping, Unions,
Insurers and private security companies. The President of the Chamber of Shipping stated
in his 2011 annual review that: ‘The past year’s Strategic Defence and Security Review has,
therefore, raised concerns, particularly the fact that it will now be some 10 years before the
new Type 26 frigates come into service. We need the Royal Navy to regain its proper
strength as swiftly as possible.’ 143 And in a parliamentary report on Somali piracy by the
Foreign Affairs Committee in 2011, the majority of the submissions called for the
maintenance or strengthening of Naval forces. 144 This encouraging level of visibility and
lobbying by industry on the RN’s behalf is reversing a trend for the RN, which was becoming
increasingly invisible to the shipping industry. Additionally, the UK’s flag register looked in
terminal decline as recently as 10 years ago, with less than 6,000,000 tons and under 300
ships on the register 145 . Today, due to a generous tax regime, that figure has tripled, to
18,000,000 tons and nearly 1400 ships 146 - similar to pre WW2 levels - representing a unique
opportunity for the RN to reengage with the civil sector that should not be wasted.
The narrative for the Royal Navy has been in almost continual flux since the end of the
Second World War. Relativism, the power of ideas and theory and the development of a
139 William Laird Clowes, The Royal Navy: A History from the earliest times to 1900, Volume 6 (London: Chatham
Publishing, 1997), 390
140 Murphy, ‘Somali Piracy: Why Should We Care?’, 7
141 James Kraska, Contemporary Maritime Piracy: International Law, Strategy, and Diplomacy at Sea (Oxford:
Praeger, 2011), 71
142 The Daily Telegraph, ‘Armed guards to protect British ships from pirates’,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/piracy/8858159/Armed-guards-to-protect-British-ships-frompirates.html,
(accessed 1 Mar 12)
143 Chamber of Shipping, ‘The Chamber of Shipping Annual Review 2010-2011’, Chamber of Shipping,
http://www.british-shipping.org/publications (accessed 1 Mar 2012).
144 House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee Report ‘Piracy off the Coast of Somalia’, 2011, passim
145 Chamber of Shipping, Annual Review 2011, 7
146 Ibid.
26

adically altering strategic environment have shaped the fundamental arguments as to what
the RN is for. The advent of the nuclear age ultimately resulted in a doctrinal dislocation
away from commerce protection, a core raison d’être of the RN until then, against a backdrop
of near annihilation in which maritime commerce would be the least of the nation’s concerns
– and the relationship between trade and the RN has never recovered. Instead, the
requirement to streamline, make the RN relevant in the Joint environment and limit the worst
predations of the ‘Peace Dividend’ in the early 90s required a significant re-branding. The
consequence was a doctrinal shift towards delivering power from the sea, arguably at the
expense of power at sea. This was not the result of some epiphany in naval strategic
thought but a pragmatic remarketing of maritime utility, required as a consequence of
resource competition within Joint defence structures. At the same time, globalisation was
reducing the UK’s seapower, in a number of ways. A liberalised, global market has seen a
de facto reduction in the national ability to regulate those vessels carrying goods to and from
the UK: the idea of a national merchant fleet (although embraced by emerging nations such
as China) as a strategic asset, is thoroughly at odds with the laissez-faire approach to the
international shipping market. The globalisation of ownership, cargo, crew and destination
has also reduced the political imperative to protect such vessels, instead seeking ‘globalised’
solutions to the problems of protecting commerce from the predations of the high seas. The
perception that the significance of maritime trade has declined may be false but in relative
terms, it is now dwarfed by the network enabled financial and services sector as an invisibles
earner: hence, perhaps, the National Security Strategy’s assessment of Cyber security as
amongst the most pressing risks to the UK. 147 Thus until recently, the idea of the virtuous
maritime circle had been so undermined that it had become a mutually destructive one: a
shrinking economic contribution led to a reduction in economic and political influence, and a
consequent dilution of understanding of maritime matters. This in turn has contributed to a
national ‘sea-blindness’, which neither the RN nor the civilian sector have been able to
overcome and an ever shrinking maritime constituency as navies, both military and
merchant, reduce. But in recent years, a substantial number of factors have combined to
suggest a resurgence in the political importance of the maritime economy. The remarkable
growth of the UK flag register, the nexus of maritime business interests in the City of London,
and above all, the total reliance on maritime trade for the UK’s way of life, have all been
brought sharply into focus by recent challenges to the international system, particularly in the
Gulf of Aden. This crisis has also demonstrated that the system is resilient but not
invulnerable: it is a system of people, of seafarers, of citizens - with a political voice and an
imperative to be protected. It has also exposed the limitations of the market, which may be
able to manage risk to profits, cargos and potential ransom payments via insurance
147 National Security Strategy, 27
27

premiums but is incapable of protecting its mariners; and it highlights the political
requirement for governments to protect their citizens where markets cannot. In this, there is
simply no viable substitute for Navies as the regulators of the maritime commons. ‘Future
Navy Vision’ tells us that ‘The Royal Navy will protect Britain’s interests, citizens, territory and
trade by being ready to defeat our nation’s enemies with a deployable maritime force; one
able to conduct decisive combat operations at sea, from the sea, on land and in the air
alongside our sister services. With our allies and partners we will promote international
maritime security and deter threats to our peace, prosperity and way of life.’ 148 Given that the
reliance of the UK on maritime trade will only deepen, it seems likely that the emphasis on
trade must inevitably increase.
More broadly, DCDC’s ‘Future Character of Conflict’ tells us that the future battlespace will
be ‘congested, contested, constrained, cluttered and connected’ 149 – this is as true at sea as
on land, with a tapestry of military, paramilitary, terrorist, civilian and criminals competing,
cooperating or coexisting in the maritime environment. Within this context, notions of sea
control become equally complex and extend far beyond the basic requirement to defeat a
well defined enemy fleet via decisive battle or blockade: 150 sea control in such an
environment becomes the ability to influence various actors to behave in ways which enable
the freedom of action to achieve one’s own goals. As both the Tanker Wars and anti-piracy
operations clearly demonstrate, sea control and commerce protection are difficult and
demanding disciplines even against a low technology adversary; whilst against a
technologically competent adversary, the full spectrum of warfighting capabilities will be
required. This has significant implications for the RN considering the proliferation of naval
technology and, more importantly, the proliferation of a doctrine which prizes the ability to
control what happens at sea as opposed to the ability to deliver land effect from it. Power
from the sea must of course remain an essential pillar of maritime capability; but sea control
is relative - a zero sum game: the greater the adversary’s capability, the more one’s own
freedom of manoeuvre is constrained. Thus as the RN’s ability to contest for control of the
sea declines in relative terms, so does the utility of maritime power in the round. Perhaps
though, after nearly 20 years of the primacy of power from the sea, the swing of the
pendulum is beginning to reverse. The most recent Maritime Concept concerning possible
future capability addresses sea control specifically, stating ‘Sea control will remain the
principal requirement for the Royal Navy and underpins its very being’, 151 an unusually
unequivocal statement for a navy so long pre-occupied with delivering effects landward of the
148 Royal Navy. ‘The Royal Navy Today, Tomorrow and Towards 2025’. Ministry of Defence.
http://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/About-the-Royal-Navy/~/media/Files/Navy-PDFs/About-the-Royal-
Navy/Future%20Navy%20Vision.pdf (accessed 10 May 2012).
149 The Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre, The Future Character of Conflict (Shrivenham: DCDC,
2010), 21-25
150 British Maritime Doctrine 2011, 2-11
151 JCN 1/12, 1-10
28

high water mark. Indeed, the concept for a ‘group system’ of numerous, cheap, small but
modular, highly capable sloops readily optimised for sea control – across the spectrum of
conflict – may finally neuter the specious ‘constabulary versus warfighting’ debate, 152 enable
more sensible employment of extremely expensive and bespoke capabilities – “buying back”
genuine contingency and readiness - whilst adding significantly to the core requirement of
sea control.
The National Security Strategy recognises that ‘we must use all instruments of national
power to prevent conflict and avert threats beyond our shores’. 153 An opportunity exists to
articulate how the totality of the nation’s seapower can be brought to bear via an integrated
maritime strategy which defines the nation’s requirements of the sea and describes the ways
and means to achieve it, integrating military forces, maritime trade and the tapestry of
domestic maritime activity upon which the nation depends; indeed, it is instructive that the
UK has none whilst emerging economic powers do. Clearly, the RN has a central role, with a
powerful narrative at its core: the maintenance of the international maritime system as both a
peacetime imperative, under the maritime security banner, and an inherent requirement
during warfighting, where the system may be most threatened. With the recognition that ‘our
national security depends on our economic security and vice versa’, 154 the ability to
guarantee the use of the sea for our own purposes and, if necessary, to deny its use to
others – for either commerce or for military purposes, across the spectrum of conflict - should
become the RN’s defining raison d’etre and critical Joint contribution: one which requires the
full spectrum capability of the ‘balanced fleet’ just as much now as always.
152 Ibid., passim
153 National Security Strategy, 9
154 Ibid., 4
29

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36

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author and do not necessarily reflect official thinking and policy either of
Her Majesty’s Government or of the Ministry of Defence.

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