It Turns Out We Actually Need a Navy

N aval warfare had become something of a forgotten discipline prior to the war in Ukraine and the spillover of the Hamas war against Israel into the Red Sea. Wars against post-Cold War rogue states and non-state actors were fought on land, with maritime forces providing mobile air and troop support, as well as humanitarian aid in the event of a rebellion, coup, or natural disaster. However, a series of recent events in the Levant, the Red Sea, and the Western Pacific should remind decision-makers that naval power remains the cornerstone of success in great-power competition.

Employed effectively, naval forces can rapidly accomplish U.S. strategic objectives at all levels of escalation. As stated in the U.S. Navy’s Naval Doctrine Publication One, naval forces are “lethal, mobile, expeditionary in nature, self-sustaining outside land bases and scalable in capability and capacity for different operations.” America’s political leaders routinely fall back on the Navy to respond to crises, but they lack the expertise and mindset to make best use of the tools at their disposal.

Consider the evidence of recent history. U.S. Navy warships in the Red Sea have seen their deployments extended multiple times to continue their mission against Houthi missile and drone attacks, but Washington lacks the political will to prosecute the campaign to a decisive conclusion. An unclear decision-making process stimulated by political concerns produced an unstable floating Army pier for humanitarian-aid delivery to Gaza. Ignored was the proven method of delivering aid by helicopter and landing craft from U.S. Navy amphibious warships — the kind of operation that U.S. Sailors and Marines routinely conduct in response to natural disasters around the world. Finally, in the Philippine archipelago, a U.S. ally is beleaguered by a vigorous Chinese Communist Party gray-zone campaign against its territorial waters and maritime interests.

While many in D.C. profess to be “navalists,” effective use of the Navy is too often needlessly limited. Soon, the shrinking fleet will be unable to manage even moderate crises in more than one geographic location. The understanding of navalism as a tool of geopolitical statecraft appears at its nadir just as the above-mentioned crises are presenting themselves.

Take Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who are firing missiles and launching drone strikes against commercial vessels transiting the Red Sea and the Bab-al-Mandeb Strait. Self-sustaining expeditionary naval forces with lethal firepower were able to provide a prompt response to these attacks. However, even networked U.S. assets are hard-pressed to stop Houthi missile launches emanating from multiple locations along the 1,900 kilometer-long Yemeni coastline. U.S. naval forces have been allowed some freedom to attack identified Houthi missile launchers ashore. But the act of destroying those targets has not by itself been enough to halt the overall missile barrage against commercial shipping. Logical next steps would include marshaling those commercial vessels desiring protection into a defined maritime-security-transit corridor or — better yet — taking the conflict directly to the Houthi leaders in charge of the missile attacks. Just as they weren’t during the United States’ early 19th-century campaign against the Barbary pirates, attacks on means alone (in this case, the Houthi missiles themselves) are not enough. Direct attacks on Houthi leaders themselves may be the only way to force them to cease missile and drone strikes. So far, the U.S. government has not authorized this, and U.S. warships remain on the defensive and vulnerable to attack as the Houthis continue their missile campaign.

Houthi attacks began under the pretext of support to Hamas in its Oct 7, 2023, attack on Israel, thus linking the two fights. While there is a vigorous, although misdirected naval response in the Red Sea, a familiar naval tool for providing aid was rejected out of hand where it could have best been applied. To provide humanitarian aid to Gaza, the Biden administration chose a rarely used and weather-dependent deployable floating pier. A key selling point was no American “boots on ground” that might lead to greater U.S. involvement in the crisis. A more effective and proven choice would have been a Navy Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) of specialty ships equipped with landing vehicles and rotary-wing aircraft easily capable of transferring aid supplies ashore. An ARG’s landing craft include the aircushion LCAC and more conventional LCU vehicle, and could also move trucks to the Gaza beach without a U.S. presence ashore.

Finally, in the remote Second Thomas Shoal of the Philippine archipelago, a former U.S. Navy tank-landing ship now owned by the Philippine military has become a sort of maritime firebase anchoring the Filipinos’ claim to those shoals against a hostile Chinese attempt to force their retreat. Employing classic Cold War tactics, Beijing has declared a “nine-dash line” border of maritime control over almost the entire South China Sea, and used its Coast Guard to harass, intimidate, and bully smaller neighboring states into surrendering their maritime claims to China. An easy U.S. maritime response would be to undertake the resupply of the grounded Philippine ship with U.S. Navy assets. The PRC is unlikely to use water cannons on a U.S. Navy ship, and in any case the United Nations already confirmed the maritime boundaries of the Philippines in its landmark 2016 South China Sea arbitration decision, which the Chinese Communists rejected. The U.N. arbitration award was very specific, declaring, “The ‘nine-dash line’ thus cannot provide a basis for any entitlement by China to maritime zones in the area of Mischief Reef or Second Thomas Shoal that would overlap the entitlement of the Philippines to an exclusive economic zone and continental shelf generated from baselines on the island of Palawan.”

The U.S. cannot go wrong by standing with its Philippine ally in defense of sovereignty and international law on the Second Thomas Shoal. Their gray-zone aggression aside, the Chinese are unlikely to start a war there.

Navies are the Swiss Army Knife of the diplomatic tool kit. They are the only form of military unit that can make a port visit to a competitor state one day, deliver humanitarian aid the next day, and go to war with vigor on the day after that. National decision-makers have forgotten how to use this essential tool of diplomacy and deterrence that presidents from Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush used to achieve U.S. policy goals without provoking a global war. Everyone in D.C. may think today that they are a “navalist,” but current misapplication of naval forces suggests reeducation is in order. Policy-makers have realized sea power is important, but there is precious little understanding of how to use maritime forces in a nuanced or effective way. Much of this stems from wanting maritime forces to operate in the same manner and to the same ends as land-air forces, when they are in reality qualitatively different tools.

That mindset needs to change in D.C., and it needs to change quickly. The Navy can be a tremendously effective tool for achieving U.S. policy aims — but only if our leaders know how best to use it.