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Jane's Navy International

Naval power: strategic relevance in the 21st century

[Content preview Subscribe to IHS Janes Navy International for full article]

Professor Christopher Bellamy examines what navies do, why naval power is important, and how

naval activity at and from the sea will continue to have a fundamental effect on the global security

balance.

In his classic work The Influence Of Sea Power Upon History , first published in 1890, the great

American strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan summarised the principal difference in the mode of

operation between armies and navies: "Armies pass through countries more or less inhabited by a

stationary population and they leave behind them traces of their march Fleets move through a

desert over which wanderers flit, but where they do not remain; and as the waters close behind

them, an occasional waif from the decks may indicate their passage, but tells nothing of their course

"

With public attention focused on recent conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, it is easy to

forget the importance of naval and marine forces, even though international intervention in Libya

came primarily from the sea and the air. Naval and marine forces have been, and continue to be,

heavily involved in Afghanistan.

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Container ship HS Beethoven at the new London Gateway shipping terminal on 7 September 2013.

London Gateway will be able to handle a range of ships, including the new generation of Triple-E

container vessels. (Martin Wright)

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This lack of awareness applies to the merchant fleets that deliver 90% by volume of everything the

world's population consumes and uses, as explained by Rose George in her 2013 book Deep Sea And

Foreign Going . Seventy percent of the planet is covered by the oceans and seas, and a

corresponding proportion of the planet's resources lie beneath them. Yet a ship barely needs to sail

beyond the 12 n mile limit of a nation's territorial waters before it becomes invisible both to the

naked eye and the mind's eye. For most people whose clothes, coffee, computers, and

carbohydrates - not to mention their smart phones - all come by sea, out of sight often is out of

mind.

Globalisation by sea

This feature will demonstrate that, in the 21st century, naval power - or perhaps more accurately,

maritime power, because navies and the merchant marine have always been closely entwined - will

become more important as a function of globalisation. The very sinews of globalisation are found at

sea. In 2010 the volume of goods and the distance they were carried by sea was estimated at 35,000

billion tonne-miles. International Maritime Organization (IMO) forecasts estimated that this

staggering volume-distance calculation would increase to more than 50,000 billion tonne-miles by

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2030. International shipping intelligence analysts Clarkson's forecasts an even more dramatic rise of

4% per year from 2013, which could mean a 50% increase by 2025. This is due to the growing size of

ships and the demands of the growing economies of China and India in particular, but also Indonesia

and Brazil.

According to the Global Marine Trends 2030 analysis by QinetiQ, Lloyd's Register, and the University

of Strathclyde, published this year and providing a detailed analysis of global resource and shipping

trends, the global fleet of ships displacing more than 99 gross tonnes numbered more than 103,000

in 2011. These were primarily bulk carriers, tankers, and container ships, and are thus central in the

analysis of global marine trends. However, the cruise ship industry is also the fastest growing facet

of the tourist industry. Cruise ship security is likely to be of greater concern to developed countries'

governments than the merchant ships they own.

The LNG tanker LNG River Niger. Current global maritime trade patterns suggest a significant

increase in the gross tonnage of LNG to be moved by sea, with China and India dominating the LNG

import market. (Ian Shiffman)

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The growth of Asia is critical to the expected increase in seaborne trade. According to Global Marine

Trends 2030 , the greatest increase in flow of the crude oil trade will be from the Arabian Gulf, the

Black Sea, and Latin America to China and the rest of Asia. Liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports in

2030 will be dominated by China and India, with an insatiable appetite for energy. They will also

dominate non-liquefied natural gas imports, along with Japan and Europe. Russia and the United

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States will remain the biggest natural gas exporters, with Russia's natural gas and oil production

shifting to eastern Siberia and the Arctic.

According to Global Marine Trends 2030 , China and India will also dominate coal imports.

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International governance

The high seas, usually defined as the maritime realm beyond states' 12 n miles territorial waters, are

governed by the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). This unique convention

makes the sea, in theory, the most tightly and consistently governed realm on the planet - apart,

perhaps, from the skies above it. International airspace also begins 12 n miles off the 'baseline'

(normally defined as low tide, but with allowances for average lines officially controlled by states

and, of course, any islands - however small - controlled by states).

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Implications for navies

Naval thinkers have not always managed to clearly explain the relationship between the protection

of trade in the increasingly interconnected 'global commons' and the requirement for navies or

other maritime security forces. However, Mahan, in his 1902Considerations Governing the

Disposition of Navies , did so. More than 110 years ago he noted that the globalised shipping world

of his own time "form[ed] an articulated system, not only of prodigious size and activity, but of an

excessive sensitiveness, unequalled [sic] in former ages". Today's interconnected network, feeding

globalisation and servicing a 'just in time' economy, is even more 'sensitive'. According to Professor

Andrew Lambert, speaking in 2013 on the 70th anniversary of the turning point of the Battle of the

Atlantic, even in the darkest hours of that campaign, when the United Kingdom stood in real danger

of being starved to death, there were far more stockpiles of key commodities - fuel and food - at any

time than there are now in 2013.

However, the United Kingdom's 2010 National Security Strategy does not mention the words

'maritime' or 'sea' at all. The risks to global maritime trade are implied only through what the

strategy lists as 'tier three' risks of short- to medium-term disruption to international supplies of

resources (such as food and minerals) that are essential to the United Kingdom, or disruption to or

price instability in oil and gas supply as a result of war, accident, major political upheaval, or

deliberate manipulation of supply by producers.

Yet these arguments are not decisive. Those who understand the importance of the sea and the UK's

dependence on it have not managed to translate these convictions into political intent. In order to

answer the question of whether and why navies are relevant today, it is important to ask what

navies (and coastguards, because most countries do not have the resources to sustain an

oceangoing navy) are intended to do and what threats they are able to counter. The principal threats

to maritime security can be defined as follows:

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* The threat or use of force against the sovereignty, territorial integrity, or political independence of

a state;

* Terrorist acts against shipping, offshore installations, and other maritime interests, the illegal

transport of weapons of mass destruction or components thereof, and other unlawful acts;

* Piracy within an EEZ or on the high seas, and armed robbery at sea (within territorial waters);

* Disruption of vital supplies, such as energy and food, as well as less vital but still valued goods and

luxuries, as a result of all of the above;

* Transnational organised crime other than piracy, such as people, narcotics, and arms smuggling;

* Minor crime - for example, illegal immigration and less serious forms of robbery at sea;

* Threats to resource security such as illegal, unregulated, and unreported (IUU) fishing;

* Environmental threats such as pollution or illegal dumping of toxic or other wastes;

* Illicit broadcasting from international waters (outside the 12 n mile territorial seas);

* Espionage or other illicit 'research';

* Use of the maritime environment as a tool of war.

US sailors from the aircraft carrier USS George Washington and marines from the 2nd Marine

Expeditionary Brigade deliver US Agency for International Development supplies to the Philippines

following Typhoon Haiyan in 2013. As demonstrated following a number of recent humanitarian

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crises around the world, the flexibility of naval forces has enabled them to make a proactive and

positive contribution to relief oper