Australian Maritime Issues 2007 - Royal Australian Navy

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How Might the World’s Navies Contribute to and Benefit from the ‘1000-Ship Navy’ Proposal? Lieutenant Commander Chris Watson Royal Australian Navy 2007 Winner Open Section A simple list, navy by navy, with actual and perceived contributions and benefits, would answer the question posed. Of more use would be to understand the strategic factors driving the concept’s development and to consider whether it will be pursued if it does not bring measurable benefits to the United States (US). It is conceivable that current legislation, international bodies, smaller multilateral groups, other national agencies and commercial bodies are already fulfilling the function of a ‘1000-Ship Navy’. National Interest The greatest threat to peace is the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and we must work together to stop proliferation. With those words to the Polish people on 31 May 2003 at Wawel Royal Castle in Krakow, President Bush introduced his Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI). By the time he returned to Poland in June 2006, the related White House Press Release trumpeted that ‘since the initiative was launched, the PSI has grown from a handful of nations to a global partnership of more than 70 countries from all around the world’. 1 In March 2004, as part of his annual testimony to the US Congress, Admiral Tom Fargo, USN, the Combatant Commander for all the US Joint Forces in the Pacific Command, raised the issue of a Regional Maritime Security Initiative (RMSI). The RMSI was intended to develop a partnership of willing regional nations with varying capabilities and capacities to identify, monitor, and intercept transnational maritime threats under existing international and domestic laws. In September 2005, at the 17th International Seapower Symposium at the United States Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, the US Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), Admiral Mike Mullen, USN, posited his vision of a ‘1000-Ship Navy’. In October 2006, he described this to the Honolulu Advertiser as a ‘global maritime partnership’. 2 Helen of Troy, wife of Menelaus, King of Sparta, is known as the face that launched a thousand ships – the number of warships the Greeks were said to have taken to Troy to retrieve her. It is unlikely that, some 3000 plus years after Helen eloped to Troy with Paris, it will prove as easy for Admiral Mullen to achieve the feat of maritime unity he envisages. That is to say: ‘a fleet-in-being, if you will, made up of the best
234 AUSTRALIAN MARITIME ISSUES 2007: SPC-A ANNUAL capabilities of all freedom-loving navies of the world … a fully interoperable force – an international city at sea’. 3 In answering the question posed above it is essential to understand that it is US foreign policy imperatives that drive the concept. This is not a criticism of the US. Despite Admiral Mullen’s words, navies are not designed to be ‘freedom-loving’ but tools of their political masters. No other navy will contribute or benefit except as a direct result of its own government’s policy decisions to support, acquiesce, or obstruct the progress of a ‘1000-Ship Navy’. The KISS Principle That the foreign policy of the US desires to exploit the security potential of the global maritime community in its fight against the spectre of evil is completely understandable. It is certainly laudable from the American taxpayers’ perspective. Americans by nurture now think ‘big’. Thus there was no early hesitation to use the word ‘global’ in the phrase ‘global war on terror’. Regrettably, too often they also think ‘simple’. It is a nation with so many sophisticates and intellectuals, yet among 300 million Americans they are very thinly spread. A foreigner listening to the President’s first State of the Union address following 11 September 2001 could not help but be struck by the audacious over-simplification in his tendentious statement that ‘States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming [sic] to threaten the peace of the world.’ 4 When considering how the world’s navies might contribute to and benefit from the CNO’s ‘1000-Ship Navy’, we might wish to bear in mind that it is a concept that perfectly fits the ‘big’ and ‘simple’ approach favoured by the world’s only remaining superpower. The US was the target of the 2001 attacks. That other countries in the international community suffered losses and that one of the three intended targets was the World Trade Center should not distract from the principal target, which, viewed through a set of Al Qaeda ‘effects-based’ spectacles, was entirely focused on changing US foreign policy. However, would even the most strategically-minded terrorist have foreseen that among the secondary and tertiary effects of September 2001 would be the alienation, to one degree or another, of many important players in the international community from US foreign policy and the US itself? Policy by-products of US hegemony have seen the world protesting in the past, most notably during the Vietnam War. The dilemma the US faced after 2001 was either to rely on international bodies for appropriate and timely action that would effectively support US policy, or to go it alone while manipulating their scores of bilateral relationships to achieve policy goals. The former would have maintained the sympathy vote, and possibly in the longer-term achieved internationally binding success. The latter seems more attractive to the independent, frontier spirit and gratifies a concomitant supposition that immediate and positive results will follow. Either option would have followed the ‘Keep It Simple Stupid’ principle. Unfortunately the Bush administration
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