The Hattendorf Prize Lecture, 2018

“History, Truth Decay, and the Naval Profession” Why in this age of constant technological, economic, social, and political change should navies actively concern themselves with the naval past? Herein I will try to answer this question, one often asked by skeptics anxious to insert into the developing courses of professional military education (PME) material that seems so much more relevant to the contemporary problems they face

New Directions in Maritime Strategy?—Implications for the U.S. Navy

The defense of the system requires a range of naval tasks that covers much of the spectrum of conflict, a range that seems to be getting ever wider. The resultant strategies are a blend of cooperative and competitive approaches in policy, since the two are no more mutually exclusive in maritime-strategy making than they are in international political life

Great Britain Gambles with the Royal Navy

British defense policy makers have taken a risky gamble for the future of the Royal Navy—they have undertaken the most ambitious program of fleet recapitalization for perhaps forty years, at a time when naval defense spending is less than half of what it was in the Cold War era. This gamble will only have paid off if and when current programs complete

The New U.S. Maritime Strategy: Another View from Outside

The refreshed “Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower” raises a number of questions: What is this new “strategy,” whom is it for, what has changed, and how will other navies and their nations react

UK air-sea integration in Libya, 2011: a successful blueprint for the future?

This is an English version of the chapter written in March 2012 and which appeared in ‘Integration der britischen Luft- und Seestreitkräfte im Libyenkrieg 2011: Erfolgreiche Blaupause für die Zukunft?’ in S. Bruns, K. Petretto, D. Petrovic (eds), Maritime Sicherheit, Globale Gesellschaft und internationale Beziehungen, (VS-Verlag, Wiesbaden, 2013), ISBN: 978-3-531-18479-1. The Corbett Centre would like to thank the publishers for permission to reproduce it as a Corbett Paper.Libya was a successful operation fought in a manner Sir Julian Corbett would have immediately recognised as being typically British. Operational success was based upon the successful integration of UK air and sea assets. As a time, scope and geographically limited operation based on air and sea integration as part of an existing alliance framework (NATO), UK participation in the 2011 Libya operation seems likely to help set the course for British defence in the short-term. Sea based forces were crucial to ensure sea control as an enabler for projecting force ashore from the sea through TLAM and NGS and carrier based aviation. They also enforced a UN arms embargo on the Libyan regime while allowing supplies to reach the Libyan rebel forces

Outgoing Australia?

Australia's two recent Defence White Papers have continued the country's strategic shift towards an outgoing defence posture within Asia, and a further shift away from its previous focus on a 'near abroad' comprising the waters to its immediate north and to the troubled island states of the South Pacific. Now, much of the policy discourse is on the challenges and the requirements of the 'Indo-Pacific region' and of Australia's playing a more significant role in moulding its destiny. Hence, the country's emphasis on even closer relations with the US (of which the Darwin decision is an especially good illustration), with India and Japan and with Indonesia not just as a significant factor in the control of illegal immigrants, but as a future determinant of strategic outcomes in Southeast Asia. Hence also, in terms of policy implementation, the Army's new-found enthusiasm for a 'maritime strategy' and the Navy's acquisition of Hobart class Air Warfare Destroyers (AWDs), Canberra class Amphibious Assault Ships (LHDs) and its aspirations for perhaps a dozen long-range submarines to succeed the Collins class. But this new emphasis on Australia maintaining a more distant and potentially interventionist focus in the Indo-Pacific region is not without its critics. Criticisms fall into two categories. The first comprises doubts about whether such a posture is wise, still less necessary, especially if it is seen as code for national involvement in a policy of 'containing' a rising China. Others, on the basis of the West's troubled interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the domestic political reaction to them - suggest that the age of interventionism is over. For evidence of this they point to the West's recent reluctance to get sucked militarily into the troubles of Syria. International activism of this sort can certainly be portrayed as unwise, avoidable even counter-productive. The second category of doubt is about the feasibility of such an outgoing policy. Some argue that Australia simply cannot afford the military means that such an ambitious policy focus would require. For them, the evident gap between what it needs and currently envisaged levels of defence spending suggest that successive governments have, whatever they may say, more or less accepted that limitation for the foreseeable future. Still others point to the spread of sea-denial capabilities around the region and doubt whether intervention, or even a forwards posture, in all but the most benign of political environments is actually militarily feasible. Finally sceptics point to the extent of the challenge faced by Australia's maritime defence industry especially with a 'valley of death' opening up after the completion of the AWD and LHD programmes and before the start of any future submarine or frigate replacement project. For all these reasons, such sceptics urge the reigning in of Australia's ambitions and a return to a focus on the defence of Australia's near abroad. Many of their arguments are weighty, not to be dismissed lightly and could well recur in still greater strength in the years to come. Nevertheless, they may be based on false premises; if so, it would be mistake for the country to retreat from its activist aspirations for those reasons. Instead this paper will argue that an outgoing maritime policy is both preferable, and for all its manifest challenges, possible