Kick the Door Down with AirSea Battle…Then What?

Abstract

Books Reviewed: Beyond Air-Sea Battle: The Debate over US Military Strategy in Asia. By Aaron L. Friedberg Fire on Water: China, America and Future of Pacific By Robert Haddick Anti-Access Warfare: Countering A2/AD Strategies By Sam J. Tangredi. Power projection is a stated aim of our armed forces. It is distillation of much of what our armed services exist to do. We vaunt our ability to intervene powerfully almost anywhere we choose to and win once we are there. Power on that scale is quintessentially American. Its roots, however, can be found in Antiquity. What, after all, were Greeks doing at gates of Troy but projecting power? Yet before Industrial Revolution power could only be projected on a small scale. Afterwards power projection on a large scale became possible and flowered in response to demands of Western imperialism. As Aaron Friedberg noted in an earlier book, from a military perspective the most important product (of Industrial Revolution) was a marked improvement in ability of European states to project and maintain military power far from their own frontiers. (1) The United States is inheritor of that experience. AirSea Battle (ASB), now subsumed into wider Joint Operational Access Concept, is latest tool for projecting US power. To be accurate, ASB is an concept not necessarily an invasive one. It is designed to take down an enemy's defense ensuring access we have enjoyed since 1945 to threaten invasion or destruction of critical infrastructure in pursuit of our national objectives continues. The US Navy proclaims Alfred Thayer Mahan to be its defining strategic thinker. However, in its pursuit of power projection it is acting not as his disciple but as disciple of his near contemporary, Sir Julian Corbett, architect of what became known subsequently as British Way of War. Corbett viewed what we would now call access operations as acme of naval operations; ability to project power around an opponent's periphery wounding, confusing and weakening him preparatory to landing final and mortal blow; which may very well also arrive by sea as America was poised to do against Japan in summer of 1945. Although Mahan and Corbett agreed broadly on most aspects of naval practice, they differed sharply on benefit of amphibious operations. Mahan, who had a much more insightful view of critical economic dimension of maritime power than Corbett, saw what we now call power projection as highly risky and a wasteful distraction from Navy's primary purpose of sea command. Given power projection's deep roots in history and military thought, most accounts of ASB, when they suggest it is a new response to a new problem are wrong, or at best only right in part. Troy may have failed to keep Greeks at bay but as Sam J. Tangredi shows, anti-access strategies were practiced as far back as wars between ancient Greece and Persia. However, in line with its supreme industrial power and expansionist ideology, most relevant precursors are all American, starting perhaps most obviously with determination to maintain access to Pacific in face of Japan's rise after World War I. That rise lead Marine colonel Pete Ellis to undertake his pioneering studies and analyses of island landing grounds and bases in early 1920s. The second major criticism of ASB--that it includes attacks against homeland of a nuclear adversary and therefore takes unprecedented escalatory risks--is also misplaced. It is lineal descendent of Navy thinking going back to Admiral Forrest Sherman's post-World War II naval strategy, a strategic formulation that led to Maritime Strategy of 1980s which is still hailed as most complete statement of offensive military intent ever laid down by this country's navy; one which by threatening Soviet homeland and its nuclear deterrent anticipated possibility of a nuclear exchange. …