Replacing the Maritime Strategy: The Change in Naval Strategy from 1989-1994 A dissertation presented to the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of Ohio University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy Steven T. Wills April 2017 ©2017 Steven T. Wills. All Rights Reserved. 2 This dissertation titled Replacing the Maritime Strategy: The Change in Naval Strategy from 1989-1994 by STEVEN T. WILLS has been approved for the Department of History and the College of Arts and Sciences by Ingo Trauschweizer Associate Professor of History Robert Frank Dean, College of Arts and Sciences 3 ABSTRACT WILLS, STEVEN T., Ph.D., April 2017, History Replacing the Maritime Strategy: The Change in Naval Strategy from 1989-1994 Director of Dissertation: Ingo Trauschweizer The change in U.S. naval strategy from 1989 to 1994 was the most significant of its kind since the end of the Second World War. The end of the Cold War, the provisions of the Goldwater Nichols Act of 1986 and the effects of the First Gulf War of 1991 combined to radically alter U.S. and naval strategic thinking. The end of the Cold War brought about a review of U.S. naval strategy, but the personalities involved created a new process that greatly hampered the re-creation of strategy designed to combat peer competitors. The provisions of the Goldwater Nichols Act of 1986 indirectly affected the Navy staff where strategy documents had heretofore been produced. Talented officers that had sought service on the Navy Staff gravitated instead toward the Joint Staff and regional Commander Staffs as these positions offered better chances for promotion and advancement. Finally the First Gulf War caused a crisis of confidence among the Navy’s senior leaders in that they did not get to validate traditional naval warfare concepts against Saddam Hussein’s limited Iraqi naval forces. This feeling seems to have further convinced leaders to leave behind traditional concepts and the service staff structures that created them in favor of Army and Air Force methods of organization for combat. Those services appeared to have confirmed their warfare doctrines in the 1991 conflict. Congress agreed and the Navy was concerned that vital funding in the post-Cold War-era 4 required the seagoing service to also adjust to a warfare organization more favorable to legislative support. These factors combined to produce a different kind of new naval strategy in the form of the “From the Sea” white paper. It eschewed blue water naval operations for those in the coastal regions of the world know as the littorals. U.S. Marine Corps forces, which had almost always had a secondary role in naval strategic planning in the past, were in many cases given the leading role in From the Sea with the regular Navy providing logistics support. Once adopted, however, From the Sea was increasingly less relevant as an active document as its predecessor (the 1980’s Maritime Strategy.) In the absence of an integrating opponent like the Soviet Union, the fight with the other military services for scarce budgetary resources dominated the concerns of naval leadership. The Budgets and Assessment arm of the Navy Staff had achieved a significant superiority in authority and influence over its peer staff counterparts as a result of post-Cold War reorganization in response to this concern. Preservation of shrinking naval force structure rather than future strategic planning dominated naval thinking for the next quarter century. The strategy arm of the Naval Staff, weakened in influence due to reorganization, and less well staffed by talented officers due to the Goldwater Nichols Act provisions, was unable to conduct effective strategic planning that had an influence on naval budgets and force structure planning. As a result, the naval service was increasingly less capable of producing new strategic concepts in the post-Cold War era. 5 DEDICATION This work is dedicated to my wife Alice, my son John and my daughter Emily who endured many evening hours, weekends and several vacations without me so that it could be completed. My wife’s encouragement sustained this effort and I could not have accomplished it without her loving support. 6 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The contributions of numerous active and retired officers, civilian officials and academics were essential to the completion of this work. The author is grateful to the following persons for their comments, support and assistance; Captain Arthur (Trip) Barber, USN (ret), Captain/Dr. Roger Barnett, USN (ret), Mr. Irv Blickstein, Commander/Dr. Mitch Brown, USN (ret), Former Deputy Navy Undersecretary Dr. Seth Cropsey, Captain Richard Diamond, USN (ret), Captain/Dr. Thomas Fedyszyn, USN (ret), Commander Paul Giarra, USN (ret), Dr. John Hanley, Captain R. Robinson (Robby) Harris, USN (ret), Professor John Hattendorf, Captain/Professor Wayne Hughes, USN (ret), Captain William Spencer Johnson, USN (ret), Commander/Dr. John Kuehn, USN (ret), Former Navy Secretary Dr. John Lehman, Captain/Dr. Brad Martin, USN (ret), Rear Admiral Michael McDevitt, USN (ret), Commander Bryan McGrath, USN (ret),Mr. Greg Melcher, Vice Admiral Henry C (Hank) Mustin, USN (ret), Mr. Charles Nemfakos, Mr. James O’Brasky, Admiral William Owens, USN (ret), Dr. Bruce Powers, Dr. David Alan Rosenberg, Captain Robert (Barney) Ruebel, USN, (ret), Rear Admiral Joseph Sestak, USN (ret), Rear Admiral James Stark, USN (ret), Commander/Dr. Stanley Weeks, USN (ret), Commander/Dr. Steve Woodall, USN (ret), and Dr. Harlan Ullman. The author is especially grateful to Captain Peter Swartz, USN (ret), who very graciously opened to research his archives, rolodex and insights on nearly four decades of naval strategy and policy. This work would not have reached its level of detail in the absence of Captain Swartz’s contributions, for which the author will always be grateful. 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract ............................................................................................................................... 3 Dedication ........................................................................................................................... 5 Acknowledgments............................................................................................................... 6 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 8 Chapter 1: Naval Strategy: 1945-1980 ............................................................................. 26 Chapter 2: The 1980's ..................................................................................................... 104 Chapter 3: The Effect of the 1986 Goldwater Nichols Act on Navy Strategy ............... 172 Chapter 4: The Impact of the First Gulf War and the Revolution in Military Affiars on Navy Strategic Change ................................................................................................... 227 Chapter 5: Making the Change ....................................................................................... 292 References ....................................................................................................................... 361 8 INTRODUCTION It was becoming readily apparent by the middle of 1989 that the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact would have significant implications for the U.S. military. This was especially true for the United States Navy (USN) that had devised its Maritime Strategy and associated 600-ship navy for the purpose of countering global Soviet threats. Naval analyst Ronald O’Rourke described this period as the Navy’s “most significant crossroads in four decades” and a change that “called into question many of the basic assumptions that have guided U.S. Defense Planning for naval and other military forces since the 1950’s.”1 The historical assessment of periods of fundamental strategic change is vital to understanding both the changes of that era and those of past significant change. It also serves to perhaps predict and understand future occurrences. This work serves to explain in detail the fundamental alternations in strategic thinking, organization and execution of global U.S. naval operations that occurred in the relatively short period between 1989 and 1994. While the transition from the 1980’s era Maritime Strategy to the post-Cold War and post-Gulf War naval policy entitled “From the Sea” was essentially successful, the U.S. Navy did not accurately assess those Cold War-era elements of Navy strategic organization that had proved effective at creating the strategy and operational analysis of the last two decades. This failure in retrospect served to leave the Navy ill-prepared to conduct the strategic assessment necessary to identify a new era of strategic competition where both rising and revanchist near-peer competitors as well as non-state actors now 1 Ronald O’Rourke, “The Future of the U.S. Navy”, in Joel Sokolsky and Joseph Jockel, eds.,Fifty Years of Canada-United States Defense Cooperation: The Road from Ogdensburg (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1992), 289. 9 threaten U.S. naval superiority in a growing number of geographic locations. Periods of great change demand considered response. While immediate strategic conditions may alter and demand new solutions, that does not mean that the system of producing strategic thinking must also change. The U.S. Navy’s system of producing strategic documents had successfully functioned since 1970, yet Navy leaders in the period