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This collection of documents reflecting the evolution of official
thinking within the United States Navy and Marine Corps during the
post-Cold War era concerning the fundamental missions and strategy
of the sea services is part of a larger project designed to bring
greater transparency to an important dimension of our recent naval
history. This project was initiated by Professor John Hattendorf
with his authoritative study in Newport Paper 19, which utilized
much previously classified material, of the so-called Maritime
Strategy developed and promulgated by the Navy during the 1980s. In
the present volume, Newport Paper 27, covering the decade of the
1990s, Professor Hattendorf assembles for the first time in a
single publication all the major naval strategy and policy
statements of this period. Though all are public documents, most of
these statements remain very little known and relatively
inaccessible, at any rate outside the Navy itself. They are also
not always easy to interpret, reflecting as they often do subtle
shifts in emphasis or the nuances of internal bureaucratic argument
rather than broadly understandable major changes in strategic
thought or practice. Accordingly, the documents are accompanied by
an introductory essay that attempts to put them in the proper
historical and institutional perspective, as well as by a brief
commentary for each that provides additional pertinent information
and attempts to assess wider significance. A second Newport Paper
dealing with comparable naval strategy statements of the 1970s and
1980s, in the same format and also edited by Professor Hattendorf.
It is important to bear in mind that this material is not merely of
historical interest. In his address to the annual Current Strategy
Forum at the Naval War College in June 2006, the Chief of Naval
Operations. Adm. Michael Mullen, announced his intention to craft
what he called a new "maritime strategy" geared to the contemporary
and emerging global security environment. The complex and not
altogether happy story of earlier efforts within the Navy along
similar lines can contribute in vital ways to preparing essential
groundwork for such an undertaking.
To understand a series of events in the past, one needs to do more
than just know a set of detailed and isolated facts. Historical
understanding is a process to work out the best way to generalize
accurately about something that has happened. It is an ongoing and
never-ending discussion about what events mean, why they took place
the way they did, and how and to what extent that past experience
affects our present or provides a useful example for our general
appreciation of our development over time. Historical understanding
is an examination that involves attaching specifics to wide trends
and broad ideas. In this, individual actors in history can be
surprised to find that their actions involve trends and issues that
they were not thinking about at the time they were involved in a
past action as well as those that they do recognize and were
thinking about at the time. It is the historian's job to look
beyond specifics to see context and to make connections with trends
that are not otherwise obvious. The process of moving from recorded
facts to a general understanding can be a long one. For events that
take place within a government agency, such as the U.S. Navy, the
process cannot even begin until the information and key documents
become public knowledge and can be disseminated widely enough to
bring different viewpoints and wider perspectives to bear upon
them. This volume is published to help begin that process of wider
historical understanding and generalization for the subject of
strategic thinking in the U.S. Navy during the last phases of the
Cold War. To facilitate this beginning, we offer here the
now-declassified, full and original version of the official study
that I undertook in 1986-1989, supplemented by three appendices.
The study attempted to record the trends and ideas that we could
see at the time, written on the basis of interviews with a range of
the key individuals involved and on the working documents that were
then still located in their original office locations, some of
which have not survived or were not permanently retained in
archival files. We publish it here as a document, as it was
written, without attempting to bring it up to date. To supplement
this original study, we have appended the declassified version of
the Central Intelligence Agency's National Intelligence Estimate of
March 1982, which was a key analysis in understanding the Soviet
Navy, provided a generally accepted consensus of American
understanding at the time, and provided a basis around which to
develop the U.S Navy's maritime strategy in this period. A second
appendix is by Captain Peter Swartz, U.S. Navy (Ret.), and consists
of his annotated bibliography of the public debate surrounding the
formulation of the strategy in the 1980s, updated to include
materials published through the end of 2003. And finally, Yuri M.
Zhukov has created especially for this volume a timeline that lays
out a chronology of events to better understand the sequence of
events involved. The study and the three appendices are materials
that contribute toward a future historical understanding and do
not, in themselves, constitute a definitive history, although they
are published as valuable tools toward reaching that goal. To reach
closer to a definitive understanding, there are a variety of new
perceptions that need to be added over time. With the opening of
archives on both sides of the world, and as scholarly discourse
between Russians and Americans develop, one will be able to begin
to compare and contrast perceptions with factual realities. As more
time passes and we gain further distance and perspective in seeing
the emerging broad trends, new approaches to the subject may become
apparent. Simultaneously, new materials may be released from
government archives that will enhance our understanding.
U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1970s: Selected Documents, edited by
John Hattendorf, is the thirtieth in the Newport Paper monograph
series and the second in a projected four volume set of
authoritative documents on U.S. Navy strategy and strategic
planning. The first volume in this series, U.S. Naval Strategy in
the 1990s: Selected Documents, Newport Paper 27, also edited by
Professor Hattendorf, appeared in September 2006. The current
volume was originally intended to include documents relating to the
development of the Navy's "Maritime Strategy" during the 1980s, but
the bulk of relevant material has made it advisable to dedicate a
separate volume to that period; this is due to appear shortly. A
final volume will then cover documents from the 1950s and
1960s.When combined with Professor Hattendorf 's authoritative
narrative of the genesis and development of the "Maritime
Strategy," The Evolution of the U.S. Navy's Maritime Strategy,
1977-1986, Newport Paper 19, these volumes will provide for the
first time a comprehensive picture of the evolution of high-level
U.S. Navy (and to some extent U.S. Marine Corps) strategic thinking
over the half-century following the end of World War II. Many of
the documents reprinted here were-and were intended to be-public
statements. In all cases, however, these documents remain little
known and mostly inaccessible, certainly outside the Navy itself.
It is important to emphasize that they need to be read with careful
attention to their historical and institutional contexts. They are
in any case not always easy to interpret, and they differ
substantially in the weight they carried at the time or later. For
these reasons, we have felt it essential to present the documents
accompanied by a general introductory essay that locates them in
their appropriate contexts, as well as by brief commentaries on
each providing additional pertinent information and attempting to
assess their wider significances. This project, it is hoped, will
contribute importantly not just to our understanding of our recent
naval history but also to the serious study of military
institutions, strategy, and planning more generally. Also, it is
worth noting that this material is of more than merely historical
interest. The U.S. Navy (with its sister sea services, the Marine
Corps and the Coast Guard) is currently on the verge of completing
a major review of its naval and maritime strategy in a new era of
protracted low-intensity warfare and growing global economic
interdependence. This exercise, whatever the immediate result may
prove to be, has unquestionably served the valuable purpose of
stimulating serious thought about fundamental strategic issues at
many levels throughout the Navy. These volumes can be expected to
be an important resource in a continuing process of strategic
assessment and education as the Navy continues to adjust to a
rapidly evolving security environment.
U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1980s: Selected Documents is the
thirty-third in the Naval War College Press's Newport Papers
monograph series, and the third in a projected four volume set of
authoritative documents relating to U.S. Navy strategy and
strategic planning during and after the Cold War. Edited by John B.
Hattendorf, a distinguished naval historian and chairman of the
Maritime History Department at the Naval War College, this volume
is an indispensable supplement to Professor Hattendorf 's uniquely
informed narrative of the genesis and development of the Navy's
strategy for global war with the Soviet Union, The Evolution of the
U.S. Navy's Maritime Strategy, 1977-1986, Newport Paper 19 (2004).
It continues the story of the Navy's reaction to the growing Soviet
naval and strategic threats over the decade of the 1970s, as
documented in U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1970s: Selected Documents,
Newport Paper 30 (2007), and sets the stage for the rethinking of
the Navy's role following the demise of the Soviet Union at the end
of the 1980s, as presented in U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1990s:
Selected Documents, Newport Paper 27 (2006). Both of these volumes
were also edited by John Hattendorf. A fourth volume, of documents
on naval strategy from the 1950s and 1960s, will eventually round
out this important and hitherto very imperfectly known history.
This project will make a major contribution not just to the history
of the United States Navy since World War II but also to that of
American military institutions, strategy, and planning more
generally. Including as it does both originally classified
documents and statements crafted for public release, it shows how
the Navy's leadership not only grappled with fundamental questions
of strategy and force structure but sought as well to translate the
strategic insights resulting from this process into a rhetorical
form suited to the public and political arenas. Finally, it should
be noted that all of this is of more than merely historical
interest. In October 2007, the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral
Gary Roughead, unveiled (in a presentation to the International
Seapower Symposium at the Naval War College) "A Cooperative
Strategy for 21st Century Seapower," the first attempt by the sea
services of this country to articulate a strategy or vision for
maritime power in the contemporary security environment-a new era
of protracted low-intensity warfare and growing global economic
interdependence. It is too early to tell what impact this document
will have on the Navy, its sister services, allies and others
abroad, or the good order of the global commons. To understand its
meaning and significance, however, there is no better place to
begin than with the material collected in this volume and its
forthcoming successor.
U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1980s: Selected Documents is the
thirty-third in the Naval War College Press's Newport Papers
monograph series, and the third in a projected fourvolume set of
authoritative documents relating to U.S. Navy strategy and
strategic planning during and after the Cold War. Edited by John B.
Hattendorf, a distinguished naval historian and chairman of the
Maritime History Department at the Naval War College, this volume
is an indispensable supplement to Professor Hattendorf 's uniquely
informed narrative of the genesis and development of the Navy's
strategy for global war with the Soviet Union, The Evolution of the
U.S. Navy's Maritime Strategy, 1977- 1986, Newport Paper 19 (2004).
It continues the story of the Navy's reaction to the growing Soviet
naval and strategic threats over the decade of the 1970s, as
documented in U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1970s: Selected Documents,
Newport Paper 30 (2007), and sets the stage for the rethinking of
the Navy's...
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