A Sea Control Revolution?

Sea control has changed. In recent years, there has been a quiet revolution in maritime strategy that has seen navies increasingly expected to exert greater levels of control over more of the world’s oceans, more of the time. Whether it is NATO forces protecting critical maritime infrastructure in the Baltic, Pacific Island nations requiring maritime domain awareness to protect against illegal fishing, or Chinese coast guard and maritime militia vessels occupying features in the South China Sea, navies across the globe are confronting major challenges and are being forced to operate in new and novel ways. Behind all of this is a change in the value that states place upon the seas. Drawing on work from my recent article in Comparative Strategy, I show how — for many countries — growing areas of the world’s seas and oceans now have considerable economic significance, and value in terms of sovereignty and identity. This newfound value has generated the demand for a new form of sea control, which is radically different from that set out in classical maritime strategy.

Traditional Sea Control

Sea control is the foundational concept in traditional maritime strategy, but it is remarkably limited in scope. The expectation has always been that even the most powerful of states will only be able to achieve it “in limited areas for limited periods of time.” Furthermore, it only really exists in wartime, as that is the only time when you can exclude another state from being able to use the seas.

Within traditional maritime strategy, these limitations on the concept of sea control mattered little because the sea itself had no value. The seas were seen as a global commons which could not be owned or occupied. The sole purpose of sea control was to facilitate use — or deny it to an adversary. In Julian Corbett’s words, “command of the sea is only a means to an end. It never has been, and never can be, the end itself.”

The use of the seas was framed through the lens of maritime communications, and by that, classical maritime strategists meant ships. To use the seas, you only ever needed sufficient control to sail a ship over a specific bit of ocean at any given time.

The Malta convoys in World War II provide an excellent example of this. The Mediterranean was a highly contested theatre, and the convoys relied on the British being able to achieve a moving bubble in which they had sufficient sea control to provide a reasonable level of protection. These operations did get vital supplies through, but relied on the deployment of huge forces and came at great cost in terms of both merchant and naval vessels. All of this was to achieve a level of sea control that was temporary and geographically highly constrained.

The Changing Value of the Seas

There are three broad trends which have seen a change in the value that states place upon the seas. The oldest of these is the process of legal territorialization. Under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, states have been awarded more extensive rights, most notably in an exclusive economic zone extending 200 nautical miles from their coasts. With rights come responsibilities, and states have developed new means to monitor and police activities occurring across this greatly expanded area. This, in turn, has ensured that coastal states are expected to have a form of control over roughly 40% of the world’s seas and oceans, and do so in peace as well as wartime.

The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea gave states certain rights, primarily related to economic resources across a much wider area of the sea than had previously existed. However, there is a growing trend for states to reinterpret these economic rights as something far closer to actual sovereignty. This extra-legal territorialization is the second trend which is reshaping the value that states place upon the sea.

The classic example of this process is playing out in the South China Sea, where China and other claimant states assert that they have rights far exceeding those granted under the convention. These include the ability to exclude others from using the seas, an idea at the very heart of the concept of sea control. Much of this discussion is framed through the concept of “blue territory” and the language of sovereignty. Within this rhetoric, there are consistent claims that control over large swaths of what had previously been seen as a global commons is critical to the military and economic security of the state. In this framing, sea control is no longer simply a means to an end: It has become the end in and of itself.

It is easy to claim that this is simply China acting illegally, but the trend of reimagining exclusive economic zones through a lens of national sovereignty is much wider. The perception that exclusive economic zones are national waters has imbued much of the recent discussion of Russian operations in the seas around Europe. This shifting perception in the media and among the public has fed into a strong political rhetoric around challenges to sovereignty, and a growing demand for action in response to “incursions.”

Similar trends are apparent in the Indo-Pacific within Australian reactions to the deployments of two Chinese task forces to the region. Senior political figures have repeatedly conflated the exclusive economic zone with sovereign territory, with Senator Bridget McKenzie remarking that “sailing warships into another sovereign country in an exclusive economic zone … is a real incident.” Elsewhere, there has been an acknowledgement that the People’s Liberation Army Navy activities were technically legal. However, numerous figures, including the opposition party’s defense spokesperson and a former deputy secretary of defence, argued that they were a threat to national security and therefore had no right to be there. This, of course, directly parallels Chinese arguments that freedom of navigation outside of territorial waters undermines national security. Perhaps ironically, the second task force deployment, in which the Chinese ships intentionally skirted the edge of Australia’s Exclusive Economic Zone, further highlights the shifting norms over the perception of this large swath of the world’s oceans.

The third trend, which is reshaping the value that states place upon the seas, is the recognition of the importance of critical maritime infrastructure. This infrastructure has played a role in energy and communications for decades, but the importance of submarine data cables and offshore hydrocarbons has increased dramatically in recent years. The real shift, however, has come in perceptions. The recent attacks on maritime infrastructure in northern Europe have highlighted the vulnerability of this infrastructure and the way in which damage to it could have profound impacts on the economic and human security of the state.

Virtually all of this infrastructure lies outside of territorial waters, and much of it is beyond states’ exclusive economic zones. Despite this, nations are increasingly expectant that their armed forces can control the seas through which this infrastructure runs. This was very clearly revealed in the statements made by the U.K. defence secretary regarding Russian submarine activity in the Atlantic, and the responses to it made by journalists and others.

Impact on Navies

This shift in perceived value has dramatic implications for sea control and navies more generally. The legal territorialization has seen a massive expansion of the constabulary role of navies. Australia’s Exclusive Economic Zone is larger than its land mass, and its navy and other maritime law enforcement agencies are expected to be able to police this area. One of the most obvious changes is in the requirement for information. The focus on maritime domain awareness has been driven by an acknowledgement that it is the critical currency for any maritime security operation. Across the globe, navies and other maritime law enforcement agencies are now expected to know more about what is happening over a much larger area than ever before.

The process of extra-legal territorialization places a particular priority on presence as a means of asserting or contesting sovereignty. In East Asia, there has been a trend towards the “occupation” of the seas, led by coast guards and maritime militia. This novel form of sea control has reached its apogee in the development of permanent presence, whether that be Vietnam’s DK platforms or Chinese island building.

For those pushing back on excessive claims, presence is also a critical tool. In order to contest the realities on the water, a range of countries, including Canada, New Zealand, Japan, and Australia, have all significantly expanded the presence missions that they require their navies to conduct.

Finally, navies are now expected to be able to monitor and control the waters containing critical maritime infrastructure. This is a daunting task. Knowing what is happening on the surface of the sea is challenging. Knowing what is happening through the water column and on the seabed is even more difficult. And this is all before we even broach the question of the navies’ ability to act on this information.

The scale of this task is also vast. Unlike a ship, to secure a cable, you need to exert sea control over the entire length of the cable, all the time. Much of this infrastructure lies in waters where other states have rights of freedom of navigation, posing profound legal questions. Also, unlike ships, infrastructure cannot easily be rerouted to minimize risks or avoid dangerous areas. Despite these difficulties, it is apparent that governments around the world expect their navies to be able to deliver this level of sea control, and do so all the time.

Whither Sea Control?

In recent years, a new concept of sea control has developed. This process has been driven by the fact that the seas now have a far greater value to states than that baked into the traditional concepts of maritime strategy.

This new form of sea control is defined by its persistence, its geographic extent, and the fact that it needs to be exercised in peace as well as in war. In many ways, it is far more reminiscent of the control of land territory than it is to traditional concepts of sea control, something unsurprising given the newfound value of the seas. Navies have been grappling with many of the symptoms of this shift in recent years, without acknowledging their root cause.

When viewed in total, it is possible to see the extent of the challenge facing navies. The reality is that the world’s oceans remain as vast and inhospitable as ever, and the resources of navies are finite. The tasks that they are being asked to fulfill, however, have expanded dramatically. Resolving this misalignment between demands and capacity will be one of the defining challenges of the coming decade, requiring a shift in force structure and other critical inputs to capabilities commensurate to the changing nature of the tasks. The character of the new requirements in terms of capability will vary greatly from country to country, depending on the specific value of the seas within their own strategic context. However, the requirement for greater capacity will be ubiquitous.

Navies around the world are increasingly looking to uncrewed platforms to help square this circle. Experiences in the Middle East and Europe highlight the potential of uncrewed surface and underwater vessels, particularly in persistent surveillance. Despite the desires of naval leaders, they are unlikely to prove a magic bullet. Uncrewed platforms cannot meaningfully assert presence, nor can they conduct the broad range of roles below the threshold of conflict which are essential to the exercise of sea control.

In reality, states should acknowledge that, if the value that they place in the seas has changed, then their investment in the protection of that value also needs to change. In many areas around the world, this recapitalization and expansion of maritime forces is already underway, but without a clear understanding of the fundamental nature of the shift in maritime strategy. A better grasp of the changes in the value of the seas and the nature of sea control should enable navies to make a clearer and more coherent case to government and the public at large about why this investment is essential.

Richard Dunley, Ph.D., is a senior lecturer in history and maritime strategy at University of New South Wales Canberra, where he teaches at the Australian Defence Force Academy. His research extends across naval history and contemporary maritime strategy.

Image: Petty Officer 1st Class John Hetherington via Wikimedia Commons