conflict at sea

Conflict at sea

James Cable

Naval conflict has been less important in the second half of the twentieth century than in the first. Navies have operated in support of armies or as instruments of coercive diplomacy. There has been only one true naval war. Conflict in the Falklands was typical because it was local, limited and unexpected. These are likely features in future, for total war at sea seems so pointless that it could only arise by accident, a risk increased by some naval activities in peace. But the motives and the capacities for local and limited conflict at sea are proliferating.

Keywords: Naval conflict; Gunboat diplomacy; The Falklands War

Sir James Cable is a writer and lecturer on international relations and naval affairs. His latest book is Di~~/ornnry ar Sm (Mac- millan, 19X5)

Conflict at sea has a history that somewhat resembles those ocean currents which, over the years, exert a variable influence on human destinies, as changes in the water bring or repel the fish, alter the climate, shape the lives of landsmen. Navies, even the sea itself, do not have the same importance in every century or for all maritime countries.

In the 20th century change has been as extensive as it has been drastic. From 1900 to 1945, for instance, naval history may not have

comprised the whole history of international relations, but it was an essential component, it dominated the subject. The question ‘why do the kings of the earth so furiously rage together?’ often found a naval answer. In 1900 Germany’s Second Naval Law - the dark root of a suicidal war, of the end of European supremacy and of one phase of civilization - sprang from the impulse to naval rivalry. Naval rivalry, then with France and Russia, first led Britain to abandon isolation for the Anglo-Japanese alliance and, when Germany became the European rival, to rely on Japanese support for the security of the British Empire in Asia and Australasia. Naval attack on Port Arthur in 1904 began the Russo-Japanese war; the smashing naval victory of Tsushima in 1905 not only doomed Russia to defeat, but laid the foundations of Soviet Communism. Naval rivalry in the North Sea drove Britain into continental alliance, into the unprecedented agonies of continental war, began the process that would end, half a century later, in Britain’s eclipse as a great power. And, in that first world war, Britain was almost beaten - by German submarines. In 1922 US financial power imposed the Washington Naval Treaty - almost the only successful disarmament agreement, but also one of the causes of the second world war. Between those two wars navies were continually active and important: in Central America, in the Caribbean, in China, in the Mediterranean, off the coasts of Spain. In the second world war, the naval campaign in the Atlantic was crucial for Britain, that in the Pacific for Japan and the USA. Only the great battles dragging their harrow to and fro across the Russian plains were largely, but not entirely, exempt from naval influence. Without navies, moreover, neither of those two great wars would have been a world war.

When the final instruments of surrender had been signed aboard the USS Missouri on 2 September 1945 - a ceremony repeated, rather to US annoyance, a fortnight later aboard HMS Amon at Hong Kong - there began the demobilization of the largest and most powerful navies ever created. Even the British Pacific Fleet, by US standards a mere task force, a token contribution to their vaster efforts, comprised 272 ships, including four battleships, 17 aircraft carriers, ten cruisers and 40

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destroyers. It goes without saying that the entire Royal Navy does not now remotely approach the magnitude of that single fleet. If today’s US admirals wcrc to achieve their ambition of a hOO-ship navy, they would have half as many ships as the single US Task Force 51 of 1945.

The new naval era

Despite the acquisition by the world’s navies of ships and missions undreamt of in 1945; even allowing for the immense increase in destructive potential; not forgetting the growth of the Soviet Navy; the staggering numerical total achieved by the Chinese or the introduction to many other navies of missile-firing craft that are small, but fast. formidable and numerous; it can nevertheless be argued that navies nowadays constitute a smaller proportion than in 1945 of the total military effort of maritime nations.

The year 1945 also inaugurated a remarkable and unexpected period

in naval history: 36 and a half years without a naval war. In the modern era the longest such interval had previously been the 29 years between the battle of Lisa in 1866 and the battle of Wei-Hai-Wei in 1X95. Navies did admittedly play an ancillary role in many of the armed conflicts.

often amounting to local and limited wars. that have taken place at such frequent intervals since 1945. British and US warships operated against the shore in the Korean War (19X&53). First French and then US warships bombarded the coast of Vietnam between 1946 and 1975. The Royal Navy were active in intercepting seaborne raiding parties during Confrontation with Indonesia (1963-66). But none of these campaigns involved any challenge from an opposing tleet. Warships did sink others in the Indo-Pakistan war of 1971, in the almost unceasing belligerency of Arabs and Israelis. or in the fighting of 1978 and 1979 between Vietnam and Cambodia, but these encounters were of little significance to the outcome of hostilities and did not deserve the title of naval war. From I945 to 1982 there was no conflict at sea that naval officers could study in the way that soldiers and airmen analysed the lessons of the campaigns in Korea, South-East Asia. the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East. Indeed. until April 10X2 a British admiral had a much safer job than a British ambassador.

Gunboat diplomacy

Of course, navies were neither idle nor unimportant during the long interval before the one undoubted naval war the second half of the 20th century has so far produced. Even the last 25 years alone arc rich in examples of the use or threat, by numerous governments, of limited naval force, otherwise than as an act of war. in order to secure advantage or to avert loss, either in the furtherance of an international dispute or else against foreign nationals within the territory or the jurisdiction of their own state. That is the definition of gunboat diplomacy.

The reader should ignore the parrot-cry still emitted by the invincibly ignorant: ‘the days of gunboat diplomacy are over’. What those persons mean is that no British officer now holds the appointment of Rear Admiral Yangtse, that British warships no longer ascend the great rivers of China to support a British consul or protect some British community hundreds of miles inside China. That practice was interrupted by the

262 MARINE POLICY October 1985

second world war and terminated in 1949, after an innovative Chinese commander had flouted a century’s conventional wisdom and deployed a battery of field artillery to stop HMS Amethyst dead (or so he thought) in the narrow waters of the Yangtse.

The expedient now denied to the Royal Navy in Chinese rivers - the use of warships in coercive diplomacy - nevertheless remained available to them - and to many other maritime powers - wherever the circumstances were more favourable and whenever a suitable opportun- ity offered. Naturally there were many disputes in which this particular expedient did not even deserve consideration. In other cases it was attempted without success. The use or threat of limited naval force for political purposes is a specialized instrument: a screwdriver that must fit the screw, not a hammer that will drive any old nail. Since 1945, however, gunboat diplomacy has been attempted, often with some success, by 35 different countries, large and small, many of whom have also been the victims of gunboat diplomacy exercised against themselves by others. A long list of historical instances and a detailed analysis of the principles involved will be found in the author’s Gclnhoat Diplomacy 1919-1979 (Macmillan, 1981). Here the need for brevity demands more summary treatment.

The first point to note is that, in the expression ‘limited naval force’, limited is a political adjective. It means such force as will not lead to war, for all coercive diplomacy is an alternative to war and must be considered a failure if it leads to war. That is why the October 1973 confrontation between such important naval forces as the US Sixth Fleet and the Soviet Fifth Eskadra was still an exercise in limited naval force: it was not meant to lead to war, nor did it. That was why Icelandic gunboats achieved the objectives of their government between 1958 and 1976 by harassing British trawlers and defying British frigates. Iceland had correctly calculated that Britain would not resort to war, would not even risk the bloodshed that raising the level of conflict would have involved.

General Galtieri, on the other hand, got it wrong and his resort to gunboat diplomacy failed because he provoked his victim into war. Yet he was using the most effective kind of limited naval force: the definitive, which creates a fait uccompli the victim cannot resist and to which he can only respond by acquiescence or escalation. In 1967 Israeli torpedo-boats put a stop to US electronic espionage of their war with Egypt by attacking and driving off the USS Liberty; in 1968 the North Koreans imitated this example by capturing the USS Pueblo and making hostages of her crew. If the circumstances are right, limited naval force is just as good a weapon for David as for Goliath. Its achievements can also be larger and more durable. Cyprus was only the most conspicuous of the various islands which changed hands, in whole or part, sometimes more than once, during the 1970s through the definitive use of limited naval force. General Galtieri undoubtedly hoped the Falklands would provide another example in April 1982 and, if he had possessed the patience to wait a year or two for the British government to finish demolishing the Royal Navy and the British merchant marine, he would have succeeded.

Preparing for naval war

Such were the activities - helping armies in limited war and lending

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appropriate force to coercive diplomacy - in which navies have most distinguished themselves since 1045. Thcsc were not the major preoccupations of their admirals, the rui.wrl d’&re of their building programmcs, the precepts of staff colleges and instructors. the theme of manoeuvres, the arguments advanced to their political paymasters. To a surprising number of navies what mattered was preparation for major naval war: IIcr Tug it was called in 1914 on both sides of the North Sea. the decisive encounter between opposing battle fleets. The difficulty today is that no admiral - except for some single-minded neutrals with precise if limited objectives - is really certain what hc is preparing for. In 1014, as it turned out. the most important admirals were all mistaken, but at the time they had no doubts: the objective was another Tsushima. Today nobody, not even Admiral of the Fleet Sergei Gorshkov. has fully recovered from the appalling candour of that I957 British Defencc White Paper: ‘the role of naval forces in total war is somewhat uncertain’.

So it is. Naval forces arc obviously useful only in limited war. For that matter only limited war can nowadays be considered a true political instrument, ;I continuation of policy by other means. General war ot total war can only become nuclear war. a contingency of possible interest to historians in New Zealand. but offering no choice of outcomes of much significance to the inhabitants of the Northern

llemisphere. This is not a prognosis which has so far been accepted by either the

political leaders or the admirals of the principal naval powers. Whether or not they themselves believe that there is a useful role for naval forces in total war, they have noted that their rivals are building ships, deploying ships and exercising ships as if such a role really existed. At least in self-dcfcnce they feel compelled to do the same. The worst of their hypotheses even has a certain nightmare plausibility: the use of submarines in nuclear deterrence and war. Whatever advances may be made in the detection of submerged submarines. missiles mounted in such vcsscls are likely to remain less vulnerable than missiles mounted anywhere else. The largest surviving fleet of missile-firing submarines, whether lost in the ocean wastes or hidden beneath the Arctic ice. might thus be regarded as the ace of trumps tither in an exchange of nuclear threats or in an exchange of nuclear missiles.

So everybody is constantly trying to dcvclop the capability to locate. track and destroy such submarines. How much success would matter in war is doubtful. because it is difficult to imagine how the ability of one superpower to destroy enemy submarines before these had time to fire their missiles could remain unsuspected by the other. Progress towards assured detection would not, therefore. escape the familiar nuclear dilemma: the greater becomes the ability of one superpower to disarm the other by a first strike. the greater is the incentive for the other superpower itself to strike first. Peace-time efforts to improve submarine detection are not only inherently destabilizing, but some of the methods employed are distinctly risky. Submarines, for instance, are most easily encountered in the vicinity of their known bases. This is where intruders lurk and where defenders seek to discourage their investigations. Incidents can and do occur, but it is uncertain how lethal this process of probe and parry can become before it has serious consequences. If an exploring submarine fails to return, the cause could be mere misadventure. but it could also indicate alarming progress in


Conflicl al .wa

underwater detection or a special state of alert or tension. Another disturbing form of naval activity, which is conducted on and

above the surface of the sea as well as below it, is to gather intelligence about the adversary’s defences by simulating an attack and seeing how he responds. One day the victim of such a mock attack will mistake its purpose, will remember that modern naval battles are won by the first salvo and will fire it. When something of the kind happened in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964, the encounter between two US destroyers and some North Vietnamese torpedo boats was made the pretext for a disastrous escalation of the Vietnamese War. That was all too deliberate, but a genuine accident could easily have occurred in October 1973 when, at a time of acute superpower tension, anti-carrier groups of the Soviet Fifth Eskadra carried out mock attacks on carriers of the US Sixth Fleet. That was a gesture of defiance rather than a probe and a violation of the 1972 agreement between the two governments, but it might not have occurred without the general growth in provocative intelligence- gathering, a practice seen at its most obtrusive in the constant penetration of Swedish territorial waters by foreign submarines.

As long as the world’s rulers continue to disregard the beginner’s rhyme

Never, never let your gun Pointed be at anyone

accidental war will continue to be as conceivable at sea as elsewhere. But how might major naval war deliberately be initiated?

Naval war: concepts and exercises

There seems nowadays to be widespread agreement that general war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact could scarcely be confined to the oceans. In nuclear war the decisive targets would be on land; in conventional conflict navies would be expected to support the operations of armies. However there is no wholly convincing scenario for a general war that would remain conventional long enough for navies to be of major importance. That old favourite, the Third Battle of the Atlantic, was never fully accepted by many soldiers and airmen and its plausibility is declining. Wars do, of course, often assume unexpected forms and admirals are sensible to study and practise different strategies _ operations against the shore, sea control or denial, coastal defence or blockade - without concerning themselves overmuch with the hypothe- tical political situations in which such measures might be required. It does seem likely, even if one or more of the superpowers were involved, that naval war would be local and limited: the seizure of some outlying island; an amphibious descent on one of the flanks; a naval intervention or confrontation outside the North Atlantic Treaty Area; organizing or breaking a blockade of some third country.

But both superpowers have large navies with a wide range of capabilities. They do not seem to have been built, deployed or exercised to meet only one contingency and it would be sensible to assume that either is capable of rising to an unexpected challenge and being used in ways or for purposes now unforeseen.

Even the rather scanty evidence offered by the exercises which the principal naval powers conduct suggests that they all have more than one scenario in mind. Exercises should not, of course, be regarded as


rehearsals for potential operations. They are all intended to practise the handling of ships at sea in company - a necessity emphasized by the high incidence of collisions among allied navies manoeuvring together for the first time. Many are also intended to overawe adversaries or to reassure allies by ostentatious movements that might never be attempted in time of actual war. Relatively few are meant to test the feasibility of operations seriously contemplated and the secrecy in which such manocuvres are shrouded is sometimes needed to conceal the fact that the wrong side won.

Peace-time notions of the nature of future war are often even more astray at sea than elsewhere. Naval exercises in the 1930s when half a dozen British battleships tried to ‘cross the T’ of the other half a dozen did nothing to prepare British admirals for the Norwegian campaign of 1940 or the second battle of the Atlantic. As for such strangely named NATO exercises as Display Determination X0, in which the royal yacht f3ritunnia was escorted as part of a convoy from Lisbon to Palcrmo, or Magic Sword South, in which c)~re US Carrier Battle Group gave tactical air support to Central Europe, the strategic Icssons they taught are beyond conjecture. but can scarcely have been enlightening in the only naval war of our era.

The Falklands: a typical naval war

There is. of course, a widespread conspiracy to pretend that the Falklands War was a freak incident that could never be repeated, a conflict with some &sons for ship constructors, damage control officers and the designers of missiles, but quite irrelevant to defence policy, strategy or even naval tactics. In awarding the prize for impudence, it is hard to choose between ‘we expect HMS Invincible to be handed over to Australia next year’ (Cmnd 852991 of 18 June 1982) and ‘the many useful lessons we have learned from the Falklands Campaign . do not invalidate the policy we have adopted following last year’s defence programme review’ (Cmnd X758 of December 1982).

Naturally it could be argued that, even if Bourbons continued to rule,

learning nothing and forgetting nothing, in both Buenos Aires and London, the new airfield in the Falklands would enable the islands to be defended with much less naval assistance. Long odds might bc laid against a task force being needed at Gibraltar and better than evens in the case of Belize. But if we consider the type and scale of naval operations rather than their precise political purpose, WC must note that the largest and most successful operation undertaken since the Falklands by any navy anywhere was the capture of Grenada. Politically this was a definitive use of limited naval force of the same kind as the Argentine Operation Rosario against the Falklands on 2 April 1982. In naval and military terms, allowing for the absence of significant opposition and the enviable ability of the USA to crack their nuts with steam-hammers, Operation Urgent Fury against Grenada was more akin to the British Operation Corporate than was either to most NATO exercises. Connoisseurs of national psychology, incidentally, will relish the contrast between the three code names.

The Ministry of Defence said the Falklands Campaign ‘was in many respects unique’, yet it fits snugly into the pattern of naval history. Surprise, for instance, is characteristic. At Sinope (1854), Port Arthur (1904) and Pearl Harbor (1941), naval surprise started wars. In the


Falklands the surprise of 1770 was almost uncannily similar to that of 2 April 1982: the secret expedition from Buenos Aires, the surrender of

the handful of British marines after a brief resistance to overwhelming odds, the assembly of a task force at Portsmouth, even the resignation of the Foreign Secretary! The only difference was the resolution of the dispute in Europe rather than in the islands. The second Falklands campaign of 1914 was again a surprise: no pre-war planner had expected Von Spee’s China Squadron to turn up there. Nor had Von Spee expected to find Sturdee’s battle-cruisers (one of them called Invincible - history does repeat itself), but he did catch Sturdee coaling. Had the German squadron arrived a couple of hours earlier and been handled with greater dash, there might have been a nasty mess in Stanley harbour.

The shots that helped to deter Von Spee from charging Stanley before Sturdee could get out of harbour were fired by HMS Canopus. That ancient battleship had been beached for harbour defence - one of the options apparently considered for Belgruno before she was sunk nearly 70 years later. Ships regularly perform functions in war that differ from those for which they were intended. Even the battle-cruisers that sank Von Spee’s squadron had had to be prised from the Grand Fleet in the North Sea, the role for which they had always been destined and in which they proved much less effective than at the Falklands.

The only naval war of our era was won by ships either destined for disposal or fighting in roles for which few of them had been intended. There were heavy losses, as there had been, and for the same reasons, in the Norwegian campaign of 1940. But in 1982 the objective was achieved. Surprise and the unexpected use of warships for unintended purposes have featured in many of Britain’s wars and the pattern is likely to continue. Only aggressors can fight where, when and how they choose and plan their resources accordingly. A navy on the defensive must, if it is to survive, be sufficiently flexible to adapt itself to the unforeseen.

Limited war: past and future

The Falklands War was also local and limited: the British did not overtly attack the mainland of Argentina or ships in Argentine waters; Argentina did not attempt a guerre de course against British trade; neither side tried to widen the war. This has been the general pattern of armed conflict, not only at sea, for the last 25 years. Local and limited wars have been frequent and remain probable, because they can be won. Vietnam did defeat the USA; Israel did beat Egypt; General Menendez had to surrender at Port Stanley. This was what Clausewitz had in mind when he declared war to be ‘a true political instrument’ and Lenin, when he responded ‘politics is the reason, and war only the tool, not the other way round’. There being no ascertainable limits to human folly, total war is not impossible, but it can no longer have a political purpose or bring political advantage.

For local and limited wars, the traditional motives remain as valid as ever they were and there are perhaps two new factors making it more likely that such wars could occur at sea. The first is the growth of potential causes of specifically maritime dispute: rivalry in the exploita- tion of the seabed; quarrels about the right to prevent others from polluting adjacent seas or even the oceans; the probability that


terrorism will spread from the land and air to the sea, so that piracy, for instance, acquires so political a character that some pirates or marine hijackers can expect support from some states. The second factor is the growing diffusion of maritime power with even the largest and most sophisticated warships becoming vulnerable, in confined waters, to cheap missiles mounted in relatively cheap vessels or aircraft or even ashore. Since May 1981, for instance, 127 merchant ships have been attacked in the Persian Gulf in spite of the presence, for most of that time, of warships of the world’s four principal navies near the entrance to the Gulf. Small states can not only do more damage at sea. but are often politically less exposed than formerly to retaliation.

There remain the risks of unintended escalation, not only through those naval accidents of challenge and response that were earlier discussed, but when the navy of a client state gets itself into trouble and appeals for help to its patron. The tendency of warships from the principal navies to congregate at trouble spots has its dangers.

Conclusion

If the pattern of the recent past is any guide to the near future. however, naval conflict in the rest of the century will more often be threatened than launched; will usually take the form of coercive diplomacy; will. if it goes further, be local and limited; and will almost invariably be unexpected in its location, its timing, its motives, its conduct and even in the identity of its participants.


conflict at sea

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