America Needs a True Maritime Strategy
Opinion by James Holmes • 33m ago
Recent word out of Washington, D.C. revealed something gobsmacking: U.S. law designates the secretary of transportation as the nation’s supreme authority on maritime strategy. The law instructs the secretary to consult with the secretary of homeland defense and the commander of U.S. Transportation Command. Together, they develop a national maritime strategy and update it every five years. The U.S. Maritime Administration, or MARAD, a subordinate arm of the Department of Transportation, obliged. An amendment to the law now circulating in Congress would require the MARAD administrator to testify before relevant committees semiannually on the state of U.S. national maritime strategy.
Congress should jettison that terminology. It obscures a real and grave problem.
A Strategy for the High Seas
MARAD has published a valuable maritime transport strategy. It is nothing even close to a national maritime strategy. Calling it that conveys the false impression that America has a coherent, comprehensive approach to seaward endeavors when it does not. The nation sorely needs a document worthy of being called a national maritime strategy. Such a directive would explain how officialdom intends to raise and use resources relevant to the sea to fulfill its purposes. The nation also needs someone knowledgeable and powerful enough to put the strategy of that sweep into effect, bolstering the public weal and America’s world standing.
It would make zero sense to put the secretary of transportation in charge of national maritime strategy. That person has no place in the military chain of command and may know little about sea warfare beyond its logistical aspects.
How should a national maritime strategy be pitched? At the highest level. I define strategy as the art and science of using power to fulfill purposes. Maritime strategy, then, is the art and science of using sea power to fulfill purposes relating to the sea. In other words, it is about devising ways to use the means of strategy — sea power in all its forms — to achieve political ends. Ways, means, and ends — relating the three is what a national strategy should do.
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