Diplomacy & Crisis News

Dans une interview accordée le 17 décembre à La Croix, Kirsty Hughes, directrice du Scottish Center on European Relations, revient sur le Brexit et ses conséquences pour le Royaume-Uni, notamment les Écossais. Kirsty Hugues est l’auteure de l’article « Le Brexit et la fragmentation du Royaume », dans le dernier numéro de Politique étrangère (n° 4/2020) qui consacre son dossier principal au Brexit.

La Croix : Avec le Brexit, les tensions entre les différentes composantes du Royaume-Uni s’accentuent. Y a-t-il le risque d’un éclatement ?

Kirsty Hughes : Il y a des tensions constitutionnelles entre les quatre parties du royaume, l’Écosse, l’Irlande du Nord, le pays de Galles et l’Angleterre, ce qui peut paraître étonnant pour un pays qui n’a pas de Constitution écrite. Ces tensions existaient avant le Brexit, depuis le référendum écossais de 2014, même si le vote a donné une majorité de 55 % pour rester dans le Royaume-Uni.

Le camp indépendantiste s’est mis à espérer. Il a toujours eu le soutien des jeunes, et aujourd’hui les deux tiers des personnes de moins de 50 ans soutiennent l’indépendance. Et le fait que Londres et Édimbourg s’étaient mis d’accord, à l’époque, pour ce référendum qui aurait pu mettre fin à l’unité du Royaume-Uni, fut une grande avancée.

Aujourd’hui Boris Johnson refuse un tel référendum. Or, depuis que le pays est sorti de l’UE, 51 à 58 % des Écossais soutiennent l’indépendance. Car beaucoup désapprouvent la gestion de la crise sanitaire par Boris Johnson et son gouvernement. Les Écossais non indépendantistes, comme les conservateurs et les travaillistes, font eux aussi confiance à la première ministre écossaise et cheffe du parti indépendantiste (SNP) Nicola Sturgeon, qui a obtenu 70 % d’approbation, pour sa gestion du Covid-19.

Une réunification de l’Irlande serait-elle aussi imaginable ?

K. H : Qu’une majorité d’Irlandais du Nord et du Sud souhaite la réunification, prévue dans l’accord du Vendredi saint (1998), est possible dans un proche avenir compte tenu du Brexit. Imaginons aussi que l’Écosse organise un référendum dans deux ans et que les indépendantistes l’emportent, cela aura un impact non négligeable sur la politique en Irlande du Nord. Les Irlandais voudront-ils rester dans le Royaume-Uni réduit à l’Angleterre et au pays de Galles ? La question est : quand veut-on organiser un référendum sur la réunification de l’Irlande ?

Le vote favorable au Brexit est-il l’expression d’un nationalisme anglais ?

K. H : Oui, je le crois vraiment. Et si le pays de Galles a lui aussi voté, à une très faible majorité, pour le Brexit, c’est parce que ce sont principalement des Anglais retraités qui y ont voté dans ce sens. En Écosse, 38 % ont voté pour le Brexit ce qui n’est pas massif, et il s’agissait surtout de gens pauvres qui voulaient que les choses changent.

Le Parti conservateur est de plus en plus un parti anglais et gallois. Il n’existe pas en Irlande du Nord, et en Écosse, il représente 20 à 25 % des voix seulement. Ce nationalisme anglais a été encouragé par les divisions internes au sein du parti et par le fait que les eurosceptiques, minoritaires il y a vingt ans, le dominent aujourd’hui. Je me souviens que Malcolm Rifkind, ancien ministre des affaires étrangères conservateur, aujourd’hui à la retraite, évoquait la nécessité d’un Royaume-Uni plus fédéral, mais les gens comme lui sont désormais minoritaires au sein du parti.

Aujourd’hui, les conservateurs écossais ne se sentent-ils pas plus écossais qu’anglais ?

K. H : Le Brexit a divisé les Tories écossais. La plupart de ses politiciens ont fait campagne pour le Remain, y compris Ruth Davidson, qui était alors la cheffe du parti. Une fois que le résultat en faveur du Brexit a été connu, ils auraient pu tenter d’influencer le gouvernement de Londres pour aller vers un soft Brexit ou même pour organiser un second référendum. Mais au lieu de cela, ils se sont alignés sur la première ministre britannique, Theresa May. Aujourd’hui, alors même que Londres a adopté une approche plus agressive envers l’Écosse, on peut voir au cœur d’Édimbourg, un immense drapeau de l’Union Jack planté sur un grand immeuble !

L’Écosse ne fait plus partie de l’Union européenne. Si elle votait pour son indépendance, sa réintégration serait-elle possible ?

K. H : Pour l’heure, l’Union européenne cherche plutôt à bâtir une meilleure relation avec Londres, elle n’est pas favorable à l’éclatement du Royaume-Uni. Sur l’indépendance de l’Écosse, les Européens ne prendront pas position, ils resteront neutres. Mais si la séparation est agréée avec Londres, je pense que l’UE accepterait d’intégrer l’Écosse en tant qu’État indépendant. Car c’est une économie de marché, une démocratie de longue date. Si l’Écosse vote pour son indépendance dans deux ou trois ans, elle pourrait rejoindre l’UE d’ici à 2030. Et si l’Irlande du Nord quitte aussi le Royaume-Uni, l’Angleterre et le pays de Galles vont peut-être enfin vivre dans le monde d’aujourd’hui, au lieu de vivre dans le mythe d’une grandeur passée.

Retrouvez l’interview de Kirsty Hughes ici.

Retrouvez l’article de Kirsty Hughes ici.

Retrouvez le sommaire du numéro d’hiver 2020-2021 de Politique étrangère (n° 4/2020) ici.

Accéder à l’article de Stephen Wall, « La politique étrangère britannique après le Brexit : la géographie, c’est le destin » ici.

Retrouvez le sommaire complet du numéro 4/2020 de Politique étrangère ici.

Addressing the UN Security Council on Monday, the UN envoy for the Middle East Peace Process urged Israelis, Palestinians, regional States and the broader international community to “take practical steps to enable the parties to re-engage” in the peace process. 

Rust Belts exist around the world, and integrating them into the larger trans-Atlantic community is key to political stability.

Insisting that Iran must abandon its missile program could fall into the hardliners’ trap and make a new agreement impossible.

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An international operation coordinated jointly by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the international police organization INTERPOL has disrupted trafficking networks that supply terrorist groups across West Africa and the Sahel, the UN agency reported on Monday. 

The shifting ground in the Middle East is creating new options for breaking the stalemate.

Though Israel remains opposed to Palestinian independence, 2020 marked the year of its acceptance in the region.

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The discovery of U.S. spy networks in China fueled a decadelong global war over data between Beijing and Washington.

Cette recension a été publiée dans le numéro d’hiver 2020-2021 de Politique étrangère (n° 4/2020). Laure de Rochegonde, chercheuse au Centre des études de sécurité de l’Ifri, propose une analyse de l’ouvrage dirigé par Amélie Férey, Assassinats ciblés. Critique du libéralisme armé (CNRS Éditions, 2020, 368 pages).

Si le fait d’abattre un ennemi n’est pas nouveau, la conduite de la guerre au XXIe siècle a vu l’émergence de tactiques visant à l’éliminer avant même qu’il n’attaque. Ces opérations d’assassinats ciblés ne sont toutefois pas respectueuses du cadre légal international. Pourquoi une pratique considérée comme illégale a-t‑elle été adoptée par des États censés placer le respect du droit international au cœur de leur politique étrangère ? C’est cette énigme que s’attache à résoudre Amélie Férey, chercheuse en science politique au Centre de recherches internationales de Sciences Po (CERI), dans cet ouvrage issu des recherches et des enquêtes de terrain menées pour sa thèse de doctorat.

Initialement très controversés, les assassinats ciblés sont devenus une pratique courante dans un paysage stratégique contemporain marqué par l’avènement de la « guerre contre le terrorisme ». Ainsi François Hollande a-t‑il reconnu que la France avait mené des opérations « homo » (pour homicide) au cours de son mandat contre des chefs djihadistes. En 2019, l’armée française s’est en outre dotée de drones armés, très prisés pour les opérations de targeted killing.

Pour comprendre la manière dont les démocraties sont parvenues à faire accepter ce droit de tuer, l’auteur examine les arguments mobilisés par les gouvernements américains et israéliens – qui en sont les figures de proue – depuis le début des années 2000. La légitimation de ces frappes, explique-t‑elle, est symptomatique d’un changement dans l’art de la guerre et fait intervenir quatre aspects de la légitimité : les aspects traditionnel, formel, conséquentialiste et substantiel. Une violence politique serait légitime à condition qu’elle respecte la tradition guerrière, qu’elle n’aille pas à l’encontre des régulations légales, qu’elle permette d’obtenir des résultats satisfaisants, et qu’elle puisse faire l’objet de contrôles, en particulier démocratiques. Les régimes libéraux que sont Israël et les États-Unis s’autorisent donc à perpétrer des assassinats ciblés parce qu’ils estiment que ceux-ci sont conformes au droit (c’est-à-dire qu’ils sont légaux), qu’ils engendrent un bien-être général supérieur au coût humain qui les accompagne (qu’ils sont par conséquent utiles), et qu’ils peuvent se justifier moralement (ils sont dès lors considérés comme moraux).

Comme le souligne Frédéric Gros dans sa préface, l’intérêt de cet ouvrage tient aussi à ce que l’auteur, sans condamner les assassinats ciblés, fragilise les argumentations visant à les légitimer. Ce faisant, elle aide le lecteur à se repérer dans les grands débats qui entourent cette pratique. Tient-elle de la frappe punitive ou de la guerre préventive ? A-t‑elle un rôle dissuasif et lutte-t‑elle efficacement contre la menace terroriste ? Cette analyse, si elle se fonde sur les cas américain et israélien, est aussi intéressante pour saisir les ambivalences de la position française sur le sujet.

Alors que l’exécution par un drone américain du général iranien Qassam Soleimani en janvier 2020 a donné lieu à de vifs débats, cet ouvrage apparaîtra essentiel à tous ceux qui veulent comprendre les procédés par lesquels certains États s’autorisent à « éliminer l’ennemi avant qu’il ne nuise ». Il éclaire les évolutions et les reformulations de la violence légitime en démocratie libérale, à l’aune de la « guerre contre le terrorisme ».

Laure de Rochegonde

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With a week to go until elections are scheduled to take place in the Central African Republic (CAR), the UN is concerned about an escalation of armed attacks, amid reports that armed groups have taken control of towns near the capital, Bangui.

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James Holmes

Security, Americas

America needs to ensure it can deter, and defeat, any enemies.

Key point: The number of ships matters. However, it is a bad idea to only use that metric when deciding what kind of a navy is needed and how it stacks up vs other countries.

The walking dead are ravaging Capitol Hill—again! I refer not to literal ghouls but to misleading ideas about navies that refuse to die in policymaking circles. The living dead shamble around during election season or just after—in other words, at times of political flux like this one, when one house of Congress has changed hands and the other is undergoing a leadership shakeup.

Take out one zombie factoid with a shot to the head and ten or a hundred more just like it trample the fallen corpse to get at you.

The latest to traffic in undead ideas is Sen. David Perdue, representing my erstwhile home state of Georgia. He’s taking over as chairman of the Seapower Subcommittee, an arm of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee. The new chairman exhibits a gratifying sense of urgency about America’s return to history after its post–Cold War strategic holiday, and about the need to bulk up the sea services to wage protracted strategic competitions against peer competitors.

That’s the good news. In stating his case, though, Senator Perdue uttered a factoid that is as manifestly incomplete as it is commonplace as an index of naval power. “Today we have the smallest Army since WWII, the smallest Navy since WWI, and the oldest and smallest Air Force ever,” he told Defense News. “At the same time, we face complex threats from China, North Korea, Russia, and Iran.”

That’s a dark picture to paint, and Perdue is correct in a strict factual sense: at 287-odd ships, there are fewer vessels in the U.S. Navy inventory now than at any time since the Great War. (Actually, the inventory has rebounded after bottoming out in the 270s—but only by a handful of vessels.) But the important question is whether the navy is powerful enough to accomplish the goals assigned it by senior commanders and their political masters. Naval power is not solely a function of hulls in the water. Think of ships as delivery vehicles. They deliver combat power to a particular scene of action at a particular time, in concert with friendly sea, ground, and air forces, to overcome the combat power a particular foe has staged there.

If the U.S. and allied force outguns the antagonist at the decisive place and time, it is sufficient regardless of how many or few ships take part in the engagement. If not, then U.S. naval commanders have a problem. So we should divorce calculations of naval might from brute numbers of hulls, which reveal little about whether a given fleet size is adequate to apply enough combat power at likely hotspots to fulfill U.S. strategic goals.

What U.S. maritime strategy calls on the navy to do matters a great deal to this calculus. For instance, a 287-ship force might well suffice to mount a hemispheric defense of the Americas, working alongside allied forces from Canada and Latin America. It would probably boast surplus capacity for such humble duty. Yet a fleet that size might be woefully understrength to take the fight to China in the South China Sea, Russia in the Black Sea, or Iran in the Persian Gulf. In short, reaching back to World War I to compare raw numbers reveals little about the outcomes of probable encounters in the here and now, and thus about the prospects for U.S. tactical, operational, and strategic success or failure.

Tallying up ship numbers, then, makes poor shorthand for U.S. naval power. Bean counting yields one datapoint, albeit an important one. There is some bare minimum of assets needed to concentrate strength at scenes of battle. But bean counting not only disregards the enemy, the surroundings, and the goals set by the navy’s overseers, it doesn’t differentiate among ship types. A century ago a battleship counted as a ship of war, and so did a winsome destroyer. A fleet made up entirely of battleships would have been the same as a fleet composed of destroyers by Perdue’s standard. It would have been an entirely different creature.

Today, similarly, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier bearing scores of warplanes counts as a ship. But so does a littoral combat ship with light armament and one-thirtieth the flattop’s tonnage. So does a lumbering amphibious assault ship that deposits marines and cargo on embattled shores rather than assail enemy fleets. Simple ship counts obscure elementary distinctions like these while making no judgment about the balance among ship types and missions within the fleet.

Statistics can lie. If you couple the “smallest navy since World War I” talking point with the results of realistic wargames showing that the U.S. Navy fields too few vessels vis-à-vis prospective foes under realistic circumstances, though, then you have the makings of a useful benchmark to gauge whether U.S. naval means are sufficient to advance U.S. strategic and political ends. And in turn you can bellow forth a rallying cry to lawmakers, administration officials, and the electorate to furnish more shipbuilding resources.

Apart from gamesters, you can consult scholarly work for informed opinion about these matters. For instance, back in 2010 a team of scribes from the Center for Naval Analyses compiled a study postulating that the U.S. Navy stood at a force-structure “tipping point” beneath which it would no longer be the globetrotting service it has been since Congress passed and Franklin Roosevelt signed the Two-Ocean Navy Act of 1940.

If the sea service dwindled much further in numbers and especially in capability, maintained the CNA team, it would possess too few assets to discharge the missions entrusted to it. The U.S. Navy would revert to the regional force it was before World War II.

The fleet still hovers around that tipping point nine years hence. At least Senator Perdue errs in the right direction by fretting over fleet numbers. In all likelihood the U.S. Navy is too small, even when you redefine ships as delivery vehicles for combat power and estimate U.S. battle strength through that unorthodox but illuminating technique. Still, friends of American sea power need more than soundbites to lend punch to their pleas for a larger fleet.

Now, so as not to pick on Senator Perdue too much, it’s worth noting that the World War I comparison is far from the most loathsome zombie to stampede through force-structure debates at times of political change. However flawed, Perdue’s talking point at least alerts Washington and the nation to danger. Taking other ubiquitous factoids at face value could induce America to relax its guard at a time when relaxing is the last thing it should do.

Two such fallacies come to mind. One holds that the U.S. Navy is “larger” than the next X navies combined, X usually being some double-digit number. That being the case, it should smash smaller rivals into kindling with ease, right? But this factoid makes no sense whatever when cross-referenced against numbers of hulls. Reputable estimates indicate, for instance, that China’s navy will boast over 500 vessels by 2030, even as the U.S. Navy struggles to field a 355-ship fleet. How could America’s navy constitute the larger force?

It turns out that this living-dead factoid refers to the total tonnage of the U.S. Navy fleet vis-à-vis foreign navies. On average American ships displace—or, roughly speaking, weigh—more than their counterparts overseas. Like numbers of hulls, tonnage is not a meaningless figure. Larger vessels can carry more fuel, armaments, and stores. Bigger is better—to a point.

But aggregate tonnage must also be taken in context. For one thing, the size of a ship says little about the armament and sensors installed aboard. A mammoth vessel could bear minimal armament. Combat logistics ships—transports for fuel, ammunition, refrigerated stores, and the like—are a case in point. Undefended by escort vessels, a large ship can make easy pickings for a much smaller foe such as China’s fleet-footed Type 022 Houbei catamarans. These lightweight 225-ton craft pack a heavy wallop in the form of eight anti-ship missiles. Offensive power need not correlate with tonnage, in other words.

For another, U.S. Navy men-of-war must carry more supplies than probable adversaries. After all, likely battlegrounds lie thousands of miles from North American shores. U.S. expeditionary forces must haul everything they need to fight in a China’s, Russia’s, or Iran’s backyard, or they may as well stay home. Meanwhile local defenders may get away with smaller vessels because they operate close to home—near their supply and operational bases—and because they’re backed by the combined firepower of shore-based air and missile forces. Antagonists, in other words, might make do with lesser craft and still attain their goals. The Type 022 is not a war-winning craft on its own. It is a formidable craft when integrated into a defensive thicket made up of ships and shore-based weaponry.

It’s a fallacy, then, to compare the tonnages of U.S. and foreign navies and conclude the battle result is a foregone conclusion. Doing so oversimplifies radically. In reality the bulkier U.S. Navy will square off not against a hostile navy but against a hostile joint force—a composite of sea, air, and ground forces operating close to home. In warfare as in sports, the advantage goes to the team making a home stand. Girth is no guarantee of victory for the visitors.

The second noxious factoid relates to budgets. All too often even knowledgeable pundits or officials cite the U.S. defense budget relative to likely competitors and conclude American supremacy is guaranteed. Because Washington spends more than the next Y powers combined—Y, like the X in tonnage comparisons, being some double-digit figure—then victory must be a sure thing. If you spend more you must have purchased superior strength. Right?

Not necessarily. He who spends the most may not win, just as he who weighs the most may not. Officialdom must not draw false comfort from budget comparisons suggesting that the United States holds a lopsided advantage over its rivals because it outspends them. Again, think about where likely sea fights will take place: in waters and skies close to hostile shorelines. The U.S. military must maintain pricey base infrastructure, not to mention those bigger, more expensive ships, planes, and armaments, merely to get into the battle zone. Fighting close to home is cheap by contrast. Advantage: red teams. Prevailing against distant opponents off their own coasts tends to cost you more than it costs them.

Factor in such disproportionate expenditures and the margin between U.S. and foreign spending doesn’t gape nearly so wide as budgeteering implies.

You would think the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had put paid to the conceit that the bigger, higher-tech, more expensive force inevitably triumphs. Substate enemies brandishing makeshift weaponry gave the U.S. and coalition armed forces fits during those conflicts. Afghanistan is sputtering to an indecisive conclusion at best. It’s hard to imagine that China, or Russia, or Iran would fare more poorly than the Taliban or Iraqi militant groups considering all the resources these martial states can tap.

That’s the trouble with the undead: you can’t reason with them. You have to shoot down ghoulish ideas one by one when the herd swarms. Looks like we’d better stockpile ammunition for a long siege.

James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College, coauthor of Red Star over the Pacific. This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.

Charlie Gao

Security, World

The F-5E modernization program continued through the 2000s and 2010s, with the final jet being delivered in 2013.

Here's What You Need To Remember: If you're a developing country without a monstrous military budget, the F-35 isn't for you. The F-5, a sleek, fast, and affordable upgraded third-generation fighter, might be.

The F-5E “Tiger” is one of U.S. aerospace industry’s largest export successes. Designed as a budget lightweight fighter, the F-5E is still operated by many nations around the world despite the availability of more modern fighters.

Its continued service is enabled by miniaturization of electronics, which allows for more powerful radars and more systems to be integrated into the same spaces as the original system. This approach is exemplified by the F-5EM operated by Brazil, one of the most advanced variants of the F-5E flying today.

Brazil first acquired F-5Es in 1974 after comparing it to rival NATO light fighters like the Harrier, Jaguar, Fiat G.91 and A-4 Skyhawk. Forty-two units were purchased originally, followed by twenty-six more in the 1980s.

These aircraft served in without much modification until CRUZEX I aerial exercise in 2002. The exercise simulated conflict between the Brazilian Air Force (FAB) and a French Armee de l’Air force equipped with Mirage 2000s with E-3 Sentry AWACS support. The results were abysmal, with France expected to take air superiority in a real conflict despite some good simulated kills by FAB Mirage IIIs.

This sparked a significant push to modernize the FAB’s capability to defend Brazil’s airspace. Modernization of the Mirage III was explored but deemed to be cost ineffective. The F-5E showed much more promise.

In the 1990s, Chile, facing a similar need to modernize, created their own variant, the Tiger III Plus with assistance from Israel Aircraft Industries. A similar program with newer technology could be done with the FAB’s F-5Es.

The program began in the 2000s when a contract was awarded to the Brazilian firm Embraer to modernize forty-six F-5Es with European and Israeli technology. The key aspect of the modernization was to “extend” the legs of the F-5E from being a short-range “point defense” fighter to something that could cover more ground over Brazil’s rather large borders.

To this end, the radar was upgraded to the SELEX Grifo-F, which involved lengthening the nose cone of the aircraft to account for the larger radar antenna. But while the new radar was better, the F-5EM was designed with a secure data link to connect to FAB E-99 AWACS aircraft and ground radars, which were envisioned to vector the F-5s onto a target.

The role of the data link in FAB doctrine is significant. In addition to the dominance displayed by the French Mirages working with E-3s during CRUZEX, the FAB always favored vectoring their fighters from more powerful radars due to poor experience with the original F-5E radar. During a night intercept of a British Vulcan bomber in 1982, the F-5E’s onboard radar was unable to effectively search for the massive aircraft, the fighters were reliant on ground radar.

To take advantage of the additional range given by the data link and radar systems, the Israeli Derby active-radar medium-range air-to-air missile was integrated into the F-5EM. While lighter and shorter ranged than heavier missiles like the AMRAAM and R-27, the missile gave the FAB much-needed beyond-visual-range capability in air-to-air combat, the third nation after Chile and Venezuela to gain such capability.

Many other systems were added or upgraded on the F-5EM. In addition to the Derby, Israeli Python III short-range missiles were integrated. The Israeli DASH helmet mounted display was installed in the cockpit to cue those missiles, making the F-5EM a formidable close range fighter.

A radar-warning receiver, onboard oxygen generation system, hands-on throttle and stick, and INS/GPS navigation are all included. The addition of all these systems came at a cost though. The starboard M39A2 20mm cannon was removed to make space for electronics in the jet.

Finally to address the F-5E’s meager internal fuel capacity, provision for air-to-air refueling was added.

The F-5E modernization program continued through the 2000s and 2010s, with the final jet being delivered in 2013. Eleven additional F-5Es were acquired from the Jordanian Air Force in 2009 to increase the number of the type in FAB service.

The type is expected to serve on to 2025, with the integration of the new A-Darter beyond visual range air-to-air missile expected to happen soon. The new Gripen Es being acquired by the FAB are expected to supplement the shorter ranged F-5EMs.

Brazilian experts stress that the FAB’s capability gap with neighboring air forces was only narrowed by the upgrade and that the F-5EM still remains an outclassed fighter in modern air combat due to its shortcomings and old-school design. Regardless, it was the best the FAB could do on a limited budget and the resulting craft was quite good for the money spent.

Charlie Gao studied political and computer science at Grinnell College and is a frequent commentator on defense and national-security issues. This article first appeared in 2019.

Image: Reuters.

James Holmes

Security, Americas

Learning from past battles will help ensure U.S. flattops can keep sailing and survive modern threats.

Key point: Battleships lost their purpose due to advanced technological threats. Today, aircraft carriers are also threatened by powerful weapons.

How can the U.S. Navy prolong the relevance of its big-deck aircraft carriers amid increasingly menacing surroundings? In part, through hindsight. The Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor rudely evicted dreadnought battleships from their perch atop the navy's pecking order. The day of the aircraft carrier had arrived. And yet battleships found new life for a time, pressed into service for secondary but vital functions. That could be the flattop's eventual fate as well. Naval-aviation proponents may find insights from battleship history discomfiting. They should study them nonetheless.

Amphibious operations, not sea fights against enemy surface fleets, gave battleships renewed purpose after Pearl Harbor. Dreadnoughts took station off the Solomon Islands scant months later, pummeling Japanese Army positions to support U.S. Marines embattled on Guadalcanal. The opposed landing is among the most grueling missions amphibian forces can undertake. Debarking from amphibious transports, making the transit from ship to shore in fragile landing craft, and clawing their way onto the beach under fire constitute the most delicate part of the endeavor.

Carl von Clausewitz pronounces defense the stronger form of war. Never is this more true than in amphibious combat. Defenders strew obstacles along the beaches, position gun emplacements to rake landing craft approaching through the surf and make things hellish while soldiers and marines are at their most vulnerable. Nor is island warfare any cakewalk, even after the force is ashore. Softening entrenched enemy defenses, then, is imperative both before sea-to-shore movement commences and after the fighting moves inland.

Battlewagons rendered yeoman service as shore-bombardment platforms throughout World War II. Reactivated Iowa-class battleships, moreover, saw action during the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the first Gulf War. Nor is this purely an Asian enterprise. Indeed, this Friday marks seventy years since swarms of Allied ships descended on the French coast. Troops stormed the Normandy beaches in history's most epic opposed landing. Some 10,800 Allied combat aircraft dominated the skies, flying from airfields in nearby Britain. Battlewagons, cruisers, and destroyers cruising offshore rained gunfire on German strongpoints.

To deadly effect. Battleship gun rounds are comparable in weight to a Volkswagen Bug. Imagine flying economy cars exploding in your midst and you get the idea. So lethal was Allied naval gunfire that Desert Fox Erwin Rommel informed his Führer that "no operation of any kind is possible in the area commanded by this rapid-fire artillery." Quite a testament coming from one of history's great commanders.

And yet furnishing fire support was quite a comedown in status for the battlewagon, once the pride of navies from London to Washington to Tokyo. Seafarers reared on the works of Alfred Thayer Mahan and Sir Julian Corbett assumed fleets of "capital ships"—battleships escorted by their lighter, but still-heavily-gunned, thickly armored brethren—would duel for maritime supremacy at the outbreak of war. By sinking or incapacitating an enemy battle fleet, the navy would secure the blessings of "command of the sea." That meant virtually unfettered freedom to blockade enemy shores, assail enemy merchantmen, or project power ashore.

The battleship once performed the glitziest of missions, but Pearl Harbor demoted it to secondary, unglamorous duty. Ships built to withstand hits from exploding VWs could venture within reach of shore-based enemy defenses—artillery, tactical aircraft, and the like—with good prospects of survival. And commanders could risk them with impunity. If the aircraft carrier was now the centerpiece of naval warfare, it was imperative to conserve flattops for future actions. After December 7, by contrast, the dreadnought was a wasting asset searching for a mission.

So why not send these vessels into harm's way? Once dethroned from the battle line, in short, battleships became expendable assets. In so doing they became ground-pounders' favorite ships. Therein lies wisdom. Herewith, are five lessons from the battleships' twilight years, applied to today's high-tech, access-denial/area-denial age:

Extend striking reach: As noted before, modernized battleships saw action in Korea, Vietnam and the Persian Gulf. But these were relatively permissive surroundings where few defenders could do serious damage to armored vessels. More forbidding settings might have told another story. To be sure, battleship guns boasted extravagant range by gunnery standards. They could send rounds over twenty miles downrange. But that's short range for today's speedy attack aircraft and antiship missiles. Closing in on enemy coastlines, perversely, compresses the time available to ward off attack. That would render a battleship's staying power doubtful despite its ability to take a punch. Boosting the range of a ship's main armament, it seems, is critical to survival in this age of gee-whiz antiship weaponry. The farther away from enemy countermeasures, the better a man-of-war's prospects for staying alive—and accomplishing its goals.

Boost shipboard defenses: On the other hand, the laws of physics are a stern taskmaster. Battleships could disgorge one or two rounds per minute from each of their nine big guns. Hence, their devastating impact on defenders at Normandy. But the rate and volume of fire may suffer as the range separating the firing platform from its targets increases. Long range also reduces the amount of territory a vessel can reach. These problems are acute for a carrier, which reuses the delivery systems—the aircraft—that put ordnance on target. Aircraft have to launch, make their way to the combat zone, turn loose their weapons and make it back to the ship to refuel and rearm. That cycle takes time—and the farther offshore the flattop, the longer it takes. The strike group, thus, needs to get as close to its objectives as possible. Consequently, anything ship designers can do to harden ships against air and missile attack will improve the carrier's, and its escorts', ability to stand into danger at acceptable risk. Rugged construction, stealth, exotic weaponry, such as lasers and electromagnetic railguns—any of these will enhance warships' capacity to withstand landward assault and project power. Suffice it to say, striking the balance between self-protection and offensive firepower is a dicey prospect.

Don't cling too tight to the old: Seamen have a habit of falling in love with ships, ship types, and missions. Letting go is hard to do—even when circumstances warrant. Mahan defined capital ship broadly, to mean any warship capable of meting out and taking heavy blows. Naval commentators, nonetheless, construed his writings as advocacy on behalf of a specific ship type—the armored battleship. Once that assumption found its way into U.S. Navy strategy and doctrine, it took incontrovertible evidence—such as Japan's air assault at Pearl Harbor—to shatter habitual ways of thinking about sea combat. Better to remain intellectually and doctrinally nimble and repurpose old ships, aircraft and armaments when need be. Remember Rommel's verdict on naval gunfire at D-Day. Naval gunfire exuded little sex appeal. But it was a decisive factor in France.

Embrace the new: The reciprocal is that navies tend to see new, experimental ships as fleet auxiliaries—as assets that help the existing fleet execute what it already does, only better. Early on, for instance, naval officers considered the submarine an adjunct to the battle fleet. Aircraft carriers and their air wings were "the eyes of the fleet," scouting and screening for battleships, rather than offensive weapons in their own right. The dreadnought thus lingered on long after its successor, the flattop, hove into view. (Today the U.S. Navy may be repeating the pattern with unmanned-aircraft development. Having debated whether UAVs should emphasize ground attack or surveillance, navy potentates evidently favor the latter. A new set of eyes for the aircraft-carrier strike group may be in the offing.) Hanging onto old hardware and doctrine can represent a grievous mistake—so can being standoffish toward novel warmaking methods.

Find an alternative: It is entirely possible that the technical challenges cataloged here are insoluble at any affordable cost, much as restoring the dreadnought's supremacy was impossible in World War II. Accordingly, it behooves the U.S. Navy and friendly services to experiment with new technologies and concepts now, in case the sunset of the aircraft carrier approaches. We make much of the abrupt switch between battleships and carriers as the capital ships of choice. But navy leaders didn't conjure the carrier into being in 1941, when they needed a new capital ship. Rather, farsighted leaders such as Admiral William Moffett—a battleship-officer-turned-air-power-enthusiast—had pushed the development of naval air during the era of battleship supremacy. Hence, the implements to prosecute an aviation-centric strategy already existed when the navy needed them. Commanders merely had to divine how to use them. As things worked out, the ex-capital ship performed support duty while its replacement bore the brunt of navy-on-navy fighting. Not a bad division of labor.

In short, battleship history suggests that today's leaders face an array of technical, tactical and operational challenges. It also suggests that imagination poses the stiffest challenge. One hopes there's a William Moffett out there thinking ahead to the next big thing.

James Holmes is Professor of Strategy at the Naval War College and coauthor of Red Star over the Pacific, just out in Mandarin from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He was the last gunnery officer to fire battleship guns in anger, in 1991. The views voiced here are his alone.

This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.

James Holmes

Security, Americas

There are several lessons that could be applied to a modern war with China today.

Key point: There are three important take away from that costly, but effective, campaign. Here is how America won—and would win again.

This year marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands. The battle is one of seven naval engagements that—together with hard-ground fighting on the part of the U.S. Marines and Army—make up a six-month bloodletting known to history as Guadalcanal. It’s a struggle replete with insights into martial strategy and operations.

There are three big ideas that come out of studying the Solomon Islands campaign. First of all, the physical setting may impel strategic and operational deliberations. The Solomon Islands is a chute of an island chain. Guadalcanal constitutes its southeastern terminus, while the Japanese fortress at Rabaul lay just beyond its northwestern terminus in yesteryear. The Solomons commands little intrinsic value apart from its strategic geography. It invites the greats of literature to turn eloquent phrases disparaging it. James Michener, to name one, terms Guadalcanal “that godforsaken backwash of the world.”

This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Yet “location, location, location” makes as good a slogan in strategy as in real estate. War is a business of positions, as the little Emperor Napoleon liked to point out. Position augmented by military power translates into strategic advantage for a site’s holder.

And the Solomons abounded in geostrategic potential during World War II. Imperial Japanese Navy warplanes based on Guadalcanal could fan out, menacing shipping steaming along sea routes connecting North America with beleaguered Australia. They could help isolate a crucial American ally in the Pacific War. They could stop the U.S. armed forces from commencing their long march up the island chain toward the Japanese stronghold at Rabaul, the Philippine Islands—which had fallen during the onslaught that engulfed Pearl Harbor—and thence toward Japan itself. And Imperial Japanese Navy warbirds could help Japan stake its claim to even more South Pacific turf.

The U.S. high command, spurred by Chief of Naval Operations Ernest King, pronounced surrendering such strategically located ground unacceptable. Admiral King agitated constantly on behalf of offensive action in the Pacific theater—and he made the Solomons his project in mid-1942. The fight in and around the Solomons would last for twenty-six weeks, from the American amphibious landings in August 1942 until the Japanese pullout in February 1943. That’s a lot of resources, manpower and time to expend on something about which you care little.

Lesson one: it may be worthwhile to undertake a campaign to deny an adversary something rather than wrest it away for yourself. If so, you surrender some strategic autonomy. You go somewhere because an antagonist precedes you there. Contenders, in short, may not get to fight on ground of their choosing. Sometimes they fight where and when they wish. Other times they fight where and when they must. And once in awhile neither combatant especially cares to contest a particular battleground. They bestride the field to deny it to each other.

Such was the case with Guadalcanal. American and Japanese forces waged a “bloody and desperate campaign” for—as historian Samuel Eliot Morison puts it—real estate that “neither side really wanted, but which neither could afford to abandon to the enemy.” It’s doubtful the U.S. leadership would have felt constrained to go to Guadalcanal had the Imperial Japanese Navy not gone there first and commenced constructing an airstrip, which was dubbed Henderson Field once it was under U.S. Marine management.

For their part, it’s doubtful Japan’s military rulers would have elevated the Solomons above their principal objective in the South Pacific, Port Moresby in Palau, had the U.S. sea services not contested Guadalcanal and Henderson Field with such ferocity.

Second, setting and enforcing priorities proves dicey in theater-wide contests, let alone in contests spanning the globe. Scatter forces across the map in smaller and smaller packets, and you render each packet weaker and weaker—perhaps subjecting each one to defeat, and dooming the force to piecemeal defeat. U.S. commanders and their political masters had to juggle not just commitments within the Pacific Ocean, but between the Pacific and European theaters.

Top political leaders had agreed to defeat “Germany first” even before America entered the war. The Germany-first covenant wrong-footed partisans of naval action in the Pacific for quarrels over how to apportion resources for what amounted to two full-blown wars—both of which commanded compelling importance.

Protagonists of the European theater had official policy on their side. They argued, in contemporary parlance, that the Allies should hold in the Pacific until they could win in the Atlantic. Only then would they turn full force to the war against Imperial Japan. “Holding” for Europeanists meant parrying Japanese blows while doing little, if anything, offensive in reply. It connoted passive defense. Doing the minimum against Japan would allow Washington to conserve manpower, military hardware and resources of all sorts to thrash the Axis in Europe.

Sometimes the highest authority has to adjudicate such disputes, and so it was in 1942–43. As Morison observes, preparations for Operation Torch—the invasion of North Africa—represented the marquee show in the Atlantic theater that fall, even while battle raged in the Solomon Islands (D-Day in North Africa came that November). In October, nevertheless, President Franklin Roosevelt overruled his Europe-first military chiefs. He instructed them to reinforce on Guadalcanal while still pressing ahead with Torch.

Offensive action in the Solomons meant foregoing a cross-English Channel invasion of France in 1943—an offensive the Joint Chiefs longed to mount.

Japanese ground and naval commanders had to balance among commitments as well. Tokyo had taken on a land war on the continent of Asia—a full-blown war in itself—alongside multiple maritime entanglements in the South Pacific. Army and navy chieftains wrangled over priorities but ultimately felt obliged to follow the U.S. Navy and Marines to Guadalcanal. The Japanese high command doubled down by the close of August, several weeks into the struggle. Military rulers downgraded Port Moresby temporarily until Japanese forces could win in the Solomons.

Lesson two: no combatant can do everything everywhere on the map at the same time and expect to triumph. Japan, in particular, had to husband resources, as it was battling a foe boasting many times its economic strength—and thus many times its latent military strength. The United States found itself in similar straits into 1943, when industry had geared up to produce war materiel in vast quantities.

Wise leaders interject themselves in strategic debates when necessary—refereeing among proponents of competing courses of action.

Lesson three focuses on a more general proposition: we err when we distinguish too sharply between “Eastern” and “Western” warmaking methods. Western commentators make much of Mao Zedong’s concept of “active defense.” Mao represents the theorist of the weaker contender, not to mention a practitioner of his own strategy—a strategy meant to help the weak turn the tables on the strong. Wittingly or not, Westerners depict him as the purveyor of some esoteric Oriental art of strategy premised on deception and guile.

And indeed, Mao does draw heavily on the writings of Sun Tzu, China’s martial philosopher of undying fame. Master Sun predicates his philosophy of warfare on being nimble, wily and deceptive. Yet Mao’s writings are no mere knockoff of Sun Tzu’s. Far from it. They owe as much to Western scribe Carl von Clausewitz as to any Asian master. Maoist active defense, for example, is about luring stronger foes onto onto one’s home ground. They have to advance across significant distances just to reach the battlefield—and overextend or even exhaust themselves in the process.

The Maoist concept derives in part from Clausewitz’s observation that the combatant that seizes the offensive at the outset of war sees its strength attenuated as its forces close in on the defender. The invader gets more and more remote from his bases. His logistics grow increasingly tenuous. The enemy, perhaps aided by partisan warfare, harries the invader’s flanks with minor tactical actions, sapping his combat power. Meanwhile the defender falls back on his own bases and sources of supply—exploiting the advantages that go to the home team protecting its home ground.

Ultimately the invader passes the “culminating point of the attack,” a crossover point beyond which the defender holds the upper hand. Reversing the balance of forces empowers the erstwhile weaker contender to take the offensive—and win a conventional trial of arms. Mao distills his doctrine of active defense from this insight. Chinese statements about strategy remind us, time and again, that active defense, a product manufactured partly in Europe, remains the “essence” of Chinese martial thought and the strategies to which thought gives rise. Maoist ideas thus represent an amalgam of purportedly Eastern and purportedly Western concepts about warlike enterprises.

Pretty Oriental, eh?

But the same works both ways. Americans involved with the Guadalcanal campaign formulated Maoist-sounding ideas for holding the Solomons. Allies such as Winston Churchill’s Great Britain preferred that the United States do as little in the possible in the Pacific theater—thus shunting the overwhelming bulk of manpower, hardware and other resources into the European theater and speeding the Grand Alliance along its road to victory. Skeptics branded Admiral King’s Pacific strategy “defensive-offensive,” evidently as a term of derision. Yet his logic was sound, and Mao would have grasped it immediately: hold if you must, wage offense as soon as you can.

Gen. Alexander Vandegrift, who oversaw ground combat on Guadalcanal during its earliest, most grueling phase, likewise hit on a notion he termed “active defense.” Once U.S. Marine defenders had withstood the shock of early Japanese efforts to wrest back Henderson Field, and once American convoys had replenished manpower and war materiel on Guadalcanal, General Vandegrift started mixing offensive tactical forays into his predominantly defensive posture. The result: a hybrid form of defense that wore down a formidable, resolute foe, enabling U.S. forces to hold the airfield—America’s unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Solomons. Mao would recognize and applaud Vandegrift’s operational artistry.

Lesson three: let’s not overstate the disparity between Eastern and Western ways of war. The great Michael Handel counsels that the differences are largely illusory, and that a universal logic of strategy transcends civilizations, ideologies and historical epochs. Not just Mao but King and Vandegrift fashioned virtually identical strategies for the weaker combatant. So, for that matter, did Julian S. Corbett. Such parallelism is no mere accident.

Guadalcanal, then, teaches that lesser priorities can upstage operations in ostensibly more pressing theaters of conflict. Strategists constantly evaluate and reevaluate their relative importance. The campaign also reminds us that strategists don’t vary radically from place to place or time to time. Not bad for a seventy-five-year-old fight over seemingly worthless ground.

James Holmes is Professor of Strategy at the Naval War College and coauthor of Red Star over the Pacific (second edition forthcoming 2018). He recently deployed to the Pacific with Carrier Strike Group 9, embarked in USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71). The views voiced here are his alone. This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters

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