Rethinking Maritime Strategy: a New Approach for a More Complex Maritime Environment

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What I Believe: 8 Tenets That Guide My Vision for the 21st C Navy



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The ideas of strike (as in Sea Strike), shield (as in Sea Shield), basing (as in Sea Basing) are central to Naval strategy, and arguably to all self-defense in the form of attack, stance or position, blocking or avoiding. Attack, however, has advantages over the other two types, in fostering a stronger way of thinking and action and that includes strategy and tactics. This does not mean unprovoked attack, but rather deeply provoked attack.

Novel operational concepts are almost as important as attack. These include 1. focus on the individual and less on the plurality, in the sense of asking strategically how the individual or most individuals would respond instead of how some communicating group or even humanity as some hypothetical super-individual entity would respond (an example is failing to realize that individuals will cooperate with almost anybody in pursuit of fanatical goals, like Shiite and Sunni terrorists). 2. focus on damaging the enemy rather than rebuilding the "former enemy" during warfare (an example being WWII, where we did the correct thing and won the War). 3. focus on simultaneous attacks against multiple enemy nations (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan for example) rather than sequential attacks separated and followed by long periods of time. 4. focus on borders at least as much as on internal or external aspects of nations (if Ancient Rome wasn't enough of an example, then Iraq and Afghanistan are). 5. focus on time and causation, including violence-orientation through family and peer upbringing and which nations have long-term mostly violence-oriented histories (a surprising number do). 6. beware of defending violence-oriented nations, institutions, groups, and/or individuals, who should either be compelled during wartime to unconditionally surrender or be bombed back into the Stone Ages.

Osher Doctorow

Posted by Osher Doctorow Ph.D. on 2/11/2007 1:06:51 AM

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