Impressive overview of new maritime strategy
Tuesday, December 22, 2009 at 11:12PM ARTICLE: Inside the New Maritime Strategy, By John Ennis, Proceedings, December 2009 Vol. 135/12/1,282
Interesting story passed on by old student of mine (a rare and tiny fraternity) from Naval War College. Actually, Bob was my best, and once he started wielding his lightsaber, I backed off so as not to join the Force prematurely.
Recalling my description of the process behind "...From the Sea," this is a great retelling of the major debate points and very much worth the read.
Most pertinent bit to me:
Should We "Name" China?
The question of whether to "call out" China in the document was one of the most interesting and engaging of the entire process. Doing so would have been uncontroversial; after all, several senior OSD documents, including the last Quadrennial Defense Review, had done so, and there were many voices on Capitol Hill calling for the Navy in particular to be more mindful of the "Chinese threat." That said, the combined maritime leadership decided not to do so, largely on the basis of two ideas.
The first was the centrality of the global system to the strategy and the critical cooperative relationships with like-minded nations in fostering and sustaining that system. Simply put, China has a huge stake in having the global system function smoothly. Crafting a strategy that invited them to maintain the system, rather than needlessly antagonizing them, seemed appropriate.
Second, there was never any question among the writing team or the flag and general officers who approved the strategy that the Chinese would read themselves into the document in the places where they wanted them to. This was largely confirmed in the work of Dr. Andrew Erickson of the Naval War College's China Maritime Studies Institute, who monitored open-source Chinese reactions to the document. These reactions were largely predictable, with a certain amount of attention paid to the document's description of a "multipolar" world (they liked this) and a sense of foreboding over the object of all this "cooperation."
Impressive logic on both counts--as in, sophisticated and mature.
(Thanks: Bob Nugent)
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