Seapower in a changing world

Editorial from the April 1997 edition of the Maritime Affairs Newsletter

Change is constant feature in our lives. The intensity of change ebbs and flows with each turn of the tide, driven by some combination of social, economic, and technological factors. Today, we are riding a surge of change without knowing exactly where it will take us. Not everyone is happy about the rate at which change is taking place, and for some it is hard to accept the end of an era, particularly when it has been one of relative comfort. But change advances at an unrelenting pace and there is little we as individuals can do to alter it. What we can do though, is make certain that the process of change is managed well. This requires an understanding of the way change affects or could affect those things which concern us.

Much of the April 1997 edition of the Maritime Affairs Newsletter deals with seapower in various forms and with changes to traditional concepts of seapower. Rob Huebert, for instance, asks whether gunboat diplomacy is the means by which Canada should deal with future disputes at sea. George Kolisnek looks at the decline in the capability of the former Soviet Navy and wonders whether it can be a useful instrument of Russian state policy. David Griffiths tells a fascinating story of the use of nuclear-powered submarines to do under-ice scientific research. In their own way, each of these articles addresses some aspect of contemporary seapower.

There are as many definitions of seapower as there are authors on the subject. Traditionally, seapower is the ability of a state to control the seas and project power across the sea. That view of seapower is enduring: from the Peloponnesian and Punic Wars to the American War of Independence to the Persian Gulf and UN operations in the Adriatic. But more recently, the definition has become broader to encompass more than just naval power.

If a state is dependent on the oceans or a particular part of an ocean for national security, then it makes sense that it be able to determine what happens in those waters. And these can be distant as well as home waters. Although we hold this as an enduring principle, it too has been the subject of change. For instance, political concepts of sovereignty have taken a more collective form; similarly, the instruments of power itself have changed to place as much weight on economic as military power. And there are also arguments that include intellectual power in the new calculus.

The power of new ideas cannot be overlooked. They have shaped the international system since the Second World War; every bit as much as the forces of decolonization and self-determination. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea is largely a product of intellectual power. Many other UN initiatives for collective action have their origins in intellectual rather than economic or military power. Yet, ironically, many of those innovative ideas for problem-solving require the use of military force and money.

It is in this context that seapower must exist now and in the future. Even though seapower still has economic and geographic dimensions, today it is mainly concerned with the maritime dimension of problem solving in a very complex and highly diversified world where collective response is preferred to unilateral action.

But does this alter the fundamental concept of seapower? It is hard to imagine why it would. A need to control activities at sea, especially in areas where the potential for widespread damage through misuse or abuse is high, will always exist. To allow completely unrestrained use of the oceans is tantamount to condoning anarchy. No sensible society would behave this way. Similarly, within a globally integrated economy, freedom of lawful navigation is essential. A well ordered society simply cannot allow some rogue state or group of individuals to hold any part of the collective economy to ransom.

When things go wrong, or when there are warning signs that they might go wrong, it is in the collective interest that stability restored as quickly as possible. Ideally, this should be done without having to use force. In this I agree with Rob Huebert. But that is not always possible. On occasion, force is necessary to solve a problem quickly. Likewise, it is sometimes necessary to negotiate from a position of military strength. These too are enduring principles and, short of a complete transformation in basic human nature, they will continue to be so.

There are some other enduring factors in the use of naval forces as an instrument of state and collective policy. First, naval forces are unique in their ability to deploy quickly and remain in an area for extended periods without complex logistic support systems. Second, there is an inherent flexibility within most naval forces that allows individual units to change role quickly without loss of efficiency or without having to return home to reconfigure. Third, warships have a symbolic value in that they are legal extensions of their parent state. The presence of a warship is a clear signal of the interest or concern of a state (or of a group of states in the case of a multinational force) about a situation.

Changes in the way the world conducts business or in the priorities of states and individuals will not, on their own, alter the basic concept of seapower or the need for it to maintain order in the world. Yet the changes taking place today require that seapower become ever more flexible in the ways it is used to solve problems.

While the need for traditional skills will remain largely unaltered, new skills may be called for. It is not difficult to envisage the use of warships (including submarines) to monitor a situation of concern, to collect, analyze and correlate data, and to report back to a political authority. Information management is enormously important in modern diplomacy and in responding to crisis. A well-positioned ship can thus become an invaluable, if not essential, element of the crisis management process.

Warships can also provide an almost immediate source of comfort and relief in a disaster. They can provide a base for many types of operation until such time as a base can be established ashore. They can provide security. Other ships cannot do these things to the same extent because they are not symbols of authority and they do not have the same vast pool of individual skills found in a modern warship.

In a rapidly changing world it would be unrealistic to expect seapower not to change. But these changes should be seen as evolutionary rather than revolutionary. They represent a maturing process whereby navies become increasingly flexible instruments of state and coalition policies.

The basic principle of seapower -- the ability of a state or group of states to control the seas and to project power when necessary -- has not changed. It is only the way by which we do those things that has changed to encompass a broader range of tasks.

Peter Haydon
April, 1997

© Copyright Maritime Affairs 1997