The strategy pendulum

Lex brought to our attention a couple of criticisms of Kaplan’s latest article in the Atlantic from both the left and the right. I don’t think these criticisms are fair. First of all, I didn’t read the article as a throwback to another era or as the prioritization of the navy over other services. I read it simply as a warning to the right hand not to forget what the left hand is doing. This is a timely warning, and is a reflection of the swinging pendulum of strategic thought.

In the post-cold war the first new influential thinking that came out was net-centric warfare, developed by an admiral. The army guys read up on that stuff and loved it, and it is reflected in the RMA literature filled with visions of “the network” and “total battle space awareness.” Well, that platform-based stuff doesn’t translate too well on the ground. There are important functional differences between air and sea operations and ground operations. Some theorists tried to modify NCW to fit the ground war (NEOps, ADO etc.) but others simply abandoned it. Now the pendulum has swung the other way. All the current conceptual work is in xGW, COIN, UW etc. None of this fits the platform-based services particularly, but they are still reading the stuff.

With all the attention focused on the ground fighters, there is a lack of visionary thinking for the navy. I do not condone the fickle North American strategic culture always searching for the “Next Big Thing,” but there seems to me to be a lack of conceptual work on naval theory. For example, the only theories that appeared in the Kaplan, Farley and Lind articles were the old, barnacled tomes of Mahan and Corbett. I have already spoken about the difference between the two but I think the ever-vituperative Bill Lind summed it up well in his article: “Mahan in essence wrote naval theory for children … Corbett in contrast writes for adults.”

I ask you: who are the naval equivalents of Lind, Hammes and van Creveld? We need a Boyd of the sea. The only strategic theorist I know that is working on these issues is Colin S. Gray, of whom I am only barely familiar.

So, before you go “spanking” old Kap over his article, remember this: How many “experts” do we have on Afghanistan, Iraq and COIN popping out of the woodwork now? Academic journals on security are jam-packed full of articles on that stuff. Naval arms races in northeast Asia on the other hand? There may be lots from the mid-90s when we were preparing for “war with Japan” and a fight over Taiwan, but since then it has dropped out of the headlines. Unfortunately the situation there has yet to be defused. There is lots of build-up still happening but it is a page 10 story. That is the kind of stuff that Kap has made a career drawing attention to. Remember the Balkans? In about 10 years when there is a boomer war going on in the Pacific, and DOD only has a shiny new COIN manual to turn to, the US president will be calling Kap to the White House once again for a chat.