This third maritime-centric EMC Chair symposium is a follow-up to the release of the 2015 Cooperative Strategy for 21st century Seapower. The symposium will explore maritime strategy, concepts essential to implement the maritime strategy, and international reactions to it. Participants from DOD, academia, and the policy community will convene in Newport to discuss maritime issues. The implications are important for understanding the types of missions combatant commanders will execute and the types of equipment and training the sea services must provide to support these missions.
Keynotes:
VADM Charles D. Michel, Vice Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard
David E. Sanger, New York Times
Research Addresses:
Thomas Hughes, School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, "Admiral Bill Halsey and the Unanticipated Strategy: The South Pacific in World War II"
Carol Atkinson, University of Southern California, "Military Soft Power"
Sally C. Paine, U.S. Naval War College, "Wars for Asia"
Panel 1: International Perspectives on Maritime Strategy
The 2007 maritime strategy and its 2015 update stress the importance of partnering with navies around the world to provide maritime security. The 2015 revision of a "Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower" devotes an entire section to international partnerships because “By expanding our network of allies and partners and improving our ability to operate alongside them, naval forces: foster the secure environment essential to an open economic system based on the free flow of goods, protect US natural resources, promote stability, deter conflict, and respond to aggression.”
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Click to Open The panel will investigate this strategic approach to global maritime security, and discuss the effectiveness and limitations of the strategy. By bringing together international officers to reflect on the strategy and global role of the U.S. Navy, panelists will consider the challenges and opportunities for an internationalist maritime strategy.
Moderated by Tony Cowden, U.S. Naval War College
- Admiral Nirma Verma, India (Ret.), CNO International Fellow, U.S. Naval War College, "A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower, An Indian Perspective"
- Admiral Guillermo Barrera, Colombia (Ret.), U.S. Naval War College, "Western Hemisphere Perspective on Maritime Strategy"
- Rear Admiral Chris Parry, CBE, The University of Reading, "Avoiding the Dragon's Breath and the Bear's Claws"
- Commodore Lee Cordner AM, Royal Australian Navy (Ret.), The University of Adelaide, "Risks, Rhetoric and Reality: United States Maritime Strategy 2015 and Beyond"
Panel 2: Reflections on Maritime Strategy
The panel will review how the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard "refreshed" the 2007 Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower to keep pace with changing times.
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Click to Open Panelists will explain the advantages and drawbacks to how the sea services make strategy, draw lessons from the making of the 2007 maritime strategy, and furnish insight into how the services can execute the 2015 strategy in contested surroundings in Eurasia. The panel will shed light on how the U.S. Navy in particular can revise organizational arrangements to put strategy in charge of programming and budgeting--and thus reconnect maritime strategy to larger national purposes.
Moderated by James Holmes, U.S. Naval War College
Panel 3: Navy Force Development
The 2015 maritime strategy calls for the Navy to possess a wide ranging set of capabilities including: all domain access, deterrence, sea control and power projection, and maritime security. Along with these capabilities, the updated strategy brings forward several concepts, which if implemented successfully, will enable the Navy to leverage partnerships with other services and countries, better prepare its people to implement the strategy in the future, and develop needed capabilities in the “electromagnetic-cyber” environment.
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Click to Open This panel will offer perspectives on what force structure elements will be needed to achieve these objectives taking into account the growing threats around the world combined with budget realities.
Moderated by Roger Ducey, U.S. Naval War College
Panel 4: New Perspectives on Maritime Strategy
This panel will offer perspectives from young scholars to illustrate how strategic theory interacts with the 21st century’s challenges. Serving as a bridge between today’s strategy documents and the future, these scholars will offer new perspectives on maritime strategy.
Panel 5: Maritime Warfare
"A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower" declares that "the Sea Services operate in the world’s oceans to protect the homeland, build security globally, project power, and win decisively. This ability to maneuver globally on the seas and to prevent others from using the sea against our interests constitutes a strategic advantage for the United States." Yet the ability to maneuver is increasingly challenged as adversaries employ anti-access/area-denial concepts and weapons against the US and its partners. Consequently, new concepts are needed to employ naval forces in denied areas.
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Click to Open The aim of this panel is to investigate how the sea services will operationalize the evolving concept of Joint Access and Maneuver in the Global Commons(JAM–GC).
Moderated by Richard Crowell, U.S. Naval War College
- Bryan Clark, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, "“Virtual Attrition” and Victory in Maritime Warfare"
- Frank Hoffman, National Defense University, "Commanding Tomorrow's Contested Zone: Operationalizing CS21 in the Littorals"
- BJ Armstrong, PhD Candidate, King's College London, "The Prism of Classical Naval Strategy: Another Persepective on JAM-GC and 21st Century Operational Concepts"
- William F. Bundy, U.S. Naval War College, "Future Maritime Forces: Unmanned, Autonomous, and Lethal"
Panel 6: Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief
Humanitarian organizations, international agencies, and militaries increasingly find themselves faced with complex emergencies and natural disasters in urban settings. Future climate change projections place coastal mega-cities at even greater risk than they are today.
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Click to Open The high population density and intricate physical infrastructures contained within urban environments present a multitude of challenges to civilian-military coordination efforts and can significantly hinder effective responses. The U.S. Armed Forces routinely supports the U.S. Agency for International Development in responding to major disasters overseas that threaten the safety and well-being of U.S. citizens, as well as those of other countries. America’s Sea Services possess a broad range of rapidly deployable capabilities that have proven critical to life-saving and relief efforts during complex crises, when other responding organizations’ capabilities have been exceeded or are unable to provide a comprehensive response given the magnitude of the disaster. This panel will explore the challenges that exist during urban emergencies and possible strategies, concepts, training opportunities, and organizational changes that the U.S. Sea Services can institute to improve the efficacy of civilian-military humanitarian responses in these environments.
Moderated by David Polatty, U.S. Naval War College