Overview

The book examines the evolution of American naval thinking in the post-Cold War era. It recounts the development of the U.S. Navy's key strategic documents from the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 to the release in 2007 of the U.S. Navy's maritime strategy, A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower. An insightful and penetrating intellectual history, it critically analyses the Navy's way of thinking and ideas, and recounts how they interacted with those that govern U.S. strategy to shape the course of U.S. naval strategy in the post-Cold War era. The book explains how the Navy arrived at its current strategic outlook and why it took nearly two decades for the Navy to develop a maritime strategy in an era in which the relative saliency of such should have been more apparent to Navy leaders. The author, a Navy captain, doesn't shy from taking to task the institution and its leaders for their narrow worldview and failure to understand the virtues and contributions of American sea power, particularly in an era of globalisation. It describes the reasons behind the Navy's late development of a maritime strategy during the post-Cold War era. It recounts the origins and evolution of the Navy's distinctive way of thinking and ideas about sea power since before the Second World War, particularly how they shaped and were shaped by the Navy's Cold War experiences. It argues that the Navy's way of thinking and ideas, and how they interacted those that governed U.S. strategy, bounded and channelled U.S. naval strategy away from a maritime approach as they had during the Cold War. It took an implausible series of events for one to emerge, including a losing war in Iraq-that called into question long-standing assumptions about U.S. strategy, threatened the Navy's relevance, and brought about a systemically oriented U.S. strategic approach-and the appearance of two maritime-minded Navy leaders. It focuses on the process by which the Navy developed its strategic documents, the process where institutional ideas are assembled, negotiated, and reshaped in light of other influences-i.e., the direction of U.S. strategy, budgetary constraints, perceived threats, and the competing interests of other domestic and institutional actors-because even though the subject is American naval thinking (and here it must be emphasized that the concept itself is somewhat metaphorical as only people can think), that is how real strategy is made.

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9781612518527

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Reviews

This book is of outstanding importance. Haynes argues convincingly for a real revival of thought and action for an American global maritime strategy. This will make for uncomfortable reading to many, but read it they must. It is criticism, but of a constructive and fundamentally friendly kind. --Colin S. Gray, professor emeritus of strategic studies at the University of Reading; author of The Future of Strategy

This crisp and authoritative review is written by an insider, but one who is prepared to criticize. Coinciding with the issue of a new version of the 'Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower, ' this book will strike many as controversial. For that reason alone, this is a 'must-read' for anyone seriously interested in the world's maritime future, as well as its past. --Geoffrey Till, author of Seapower: A Guide for the 21st Century

In this finely crafted history, Peter Haynes identifies the institutional constraints that shape the Navy's strategy-making process. He shows how organizational culture, an overwhelming focus on operational considerations, and the impact of the Goldwater-Nichols reforms limit the Navy's ability to adjust to a changing international setting. Toward a New Maritime Strategy not only describes the Navy's strategic products since the end of the Cold War, it also explains how Navy culture shapes successive visions of future strategy. --James J. Wirtz, co-editor of Strategy in the Contemporary World

In this finely crafted history, Peter Haynes identifies the institutional constraints that shape the Navy's strategy-making process. He shows how organizational culture, an overwhelming focus on operational considerations, and the impact of the Goldwater-Nichols reforms limit the Navy's ability to adjust to a changing international setting. Toward a New Maritime Strategy not only describes the Navy's strategic products since the end of the Cold War, it also explains how Navy culture shapes successive visions of future strategy. --JAMES J. WIRTZ, co-editor of Strategy in the Contemporary World

Author Information

Captain Peter D. Haynes of the U.S. Navy is the assistant deputy director, Strategy, Plans, and Policy (J5), of the U.S. Special Operations Command. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame, USA and then received a PhD in Security Studies and a masters' degree in Strategic Planning from the Naval Postgraduate School. A carrier aviator, combat veteran, and former squadron commander, he has served in numerous strategy positions on various senior staffs.

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