1000 ship Navy
By Following up the maritime theme…
The latest thing in maritime circles is the “1000 ship Navy”. This isn’t an effort to triple the existing USN; the Navy is looking for 313 ships, and won’t get that. Rather, the 1000 ship Navy envisions a global coalition of navies cooperating to fight terrorism, piracy, drug trafficking, human trafficking, natural disaster, and any other ills that afflict the international system. The project is extraordinarily ambitious, but the rewards for developing a successful international coalition could be enormous.
A lot of work that navies do can be thought of as constabulary. When not fighting each other (and high intensity naval warfare is an exceptional rare occurence), navies search for smugglers, pirates, and drug traffickers. The reason the United States was able to respond so quickly and in such force to the tsunami disaster was because of available naval assets. Wary cooperation and poor communication between naval assets allow illicit commerce to persist and make disaster relief more difficult. Just as the plethora of different police organizations often makes it easy to escape speeding tickets, terrorists, smugglers, and pirates exploit the “seams” between navies when plying their trade.
There are already some examples of international maritime cooperation. Under the aegis of NATO, Operation Active Endeavour conducts maritime constabulary work in the Mediterranean. Active Endeavour includes non-NATO countries as disparate as Russia, Israel, and Algeria, and has generally been considered a success. On the other side of the world, PACCOM (Pacific Command) has sponsored a communications network that links the various navies of the region in an effort to spread effective methods and make cooperation easier. Both efforts have the incidental effect of making “hot” conflict between their participants less likely.
The difficulties are also tremendous. A lot of the countries that would have to cooperate are suspicious of one another, or of the United States. Agreement on basic principles isn’t too hard, but the devil is in the details. In the Mediterranean, for example, North African countries are notably less excited about refugee hunting missions than their European counterparts. The same problem of emphasis exists with drug trafficking and even piracy. Some of the questions dealt with by the network would invariably touch on political concerns. For example, a cooperative naval effort to monitor North Korean trade might not win universal support. Much work would need to be done, and even then the prospects aren’t necessarily bright. Nevertheless, given the tremendous amount of money that the nations of the world devote to their naval resources, it would be nice to at least try developing a multilateral naval framework. Nudging the military and political establishment of the United States in a multilateral direction is never a bad idea, either.
Cross posted at TAPPED.