Geostrategic Media Political Commentary, Analysis, Security, Defense
“I am not my predecessor” is not a policy. Not a terribly good one, anyway. And yet newcomers to office in Washington, DC, tend to frame themselves that way. It’s how officeholders differentiate themselves from their vile, buffoonish, incompetent forbears—especially if power changes hands between political parties as it did on January 20.
Carlos Del Toro, formerly President Joe Biden’s secretary of the navy, is one of those political appointees whose legacy must not be swept into history’s dustbin, even as Republicans take over from rival Democrats and try to distinguish themselves from Biden administration policies.
A Naval War College graduate and a U.S. Navy destroyer captain by trade, Secretary Del Toro was largely responsible for some noteworthy developments on the technical side of naval affairs. Among his signature accomplishments was “TRAM,” a system whereby logistics vessels can reload destroyers’ missile launch siloes at sea. Formerly, a destroyer had to withdraw from the combat zone and return to port to reload. That took it out of the fight for quite some time. Reloading on station keeps the ship in the theater and the fight—bolstering the fleet’s combat power where and when it’s needed.
After all, being stronger at the time and place of battle is what it’s all about. TRAM was a technical innovation with operational, if not strategic, import.
But Del Toro also concerned himself with bigger things. In particular, he fashioned an initiative he dubbed “a new National Maritime Statecraft.” He proposed the concept, starting with an address at Harvard in late 2023, and championed it throughout his remaining tenure. Here’s how he defined it: “Maritime statecraft, in a broad sense, encompasses not only naval diplomacy but a national, whole-of-government effort to build comprehensive U.S. and allied maritime power, both commercial and naval.”
Now, I have never been a fan of the phrase “maritime statecraft,” chiefly because the term statecraft is not in the everyman’s lexicon. It’s academic and wonky, and it doesn’t resonate with the popular mind. Don’t believe me? Go over to your favorite pub, order a brew, and ask your neighbor to define it. Chances are he can’t. A head-scratcher is unlikely to command much political fervor or longevity in a representative republic such as ours.
That’s a problem.
But if the terminology is underwhelming, what Del Toro had in mind is overwhelmingly important and must continue into the Trump years and beyond. The secretary was trying to inflect the national culture back toward seafaring, where it belongs. Seawater used to course through American veins. It needs to again if the United States is to prevail over formidable antagonists such as the People’s Republic of China.
The basic point is this. Maritime strategy is the art and science of harnessing sea power to achieve national purposes. It’s about purpose and power, ends and means. Maritime statecraft is the habit of thinking and acting strategically toward the oceans and seas. It’s all-encompassing. It refers to officialdom’s habit of thinking in nautical terms, rallying the multitude of domestic stakeholders, public and private, including the American people, behind the common cause, and courting allies, partners, and friends to contribute to that cause. In short, government, society, and armed forces must rediscover what they forgot following the Cold War when opinionmakers bestriding the halls of government, academia, and think tanks talked themselves into believing that naval threats had been vanquished for all time and sunny uplands awaited. History had ended. Economic globalization was the future.
Doing away with that false consciousness is a matter of utmost importance as the United States squares offagainst China, Russia, and their crummy little toadies around the Eurasian perimeter.
But getting our minds right is not everything. Success in maritime statecraft is far from a foregone conclusion. America is a maritime nation, but it has no real maritime strategy. No one is in charge of the saltwater enterprise as a whole, and frankly, it’s doubtful anyone can choreograph all of its elements under our decentralized federal system. Responsibility and authority are fragmented even within the federal government. The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, two distinct arms of the Department of Defense, have issued documents billed as maritime strategies across the decades. The Coast Guard, now part of the Department of Homeland Security, joined in more recently—giving rise to the notion of a tripartite “naval service.”
And that was worth doing. The United States prides itself on deploying a “national fleet.” The sea services should act in unison for maximum tactical, operational, and strategic gain. But past documents were partial maritime strategies at best. They explained how the armed U.S. maritime contingent intended to do business in great waters. They were about wielding naval power.
Yet, as Del Toro stated at Harvard, concentrating on warlike ventures obscures a lot. In fact, commerce, not sea battle, is—or should be—king for overseers and practitioners of nautical affairs. It certainly was for strategic grandmaster Alfred Thayer Mahan, who pronounced a society’s cultural propensity for trade the chief determinant of its fitness to take to the oceans. The pursuit of wealth was part of its “national character.” Wrote Mahan, “the tendency to trade, involving of necessity the production of something to trade with, is the national characteristic most important to the development of sea power.” A would-be seagoing society likewise had to have a knack for marine pursuits. “If sea power be really based upon a peaceful and extensive commerce, aptitude for commercial pursuits must be a distinguishing feature of the nations that have at one time or another been great upon the sea.”
In other words, there’s more to sea power than a navy (or a marine corps or coast guard). Tools have to be made. Domestic industry needs to manufacture goods for sale to foreign customers to satisfy their needs and wants. Shipbuilders need to construct fleets of merchantmen to haul those goods across the main, and, yes, warships to protect them on their voyages. Think of sea power as a supply chain for manufacturing, transporting, and delivering wares to overseas buyers, harvesting tax revenue from trade, and thereby funding a naval guardian for the merchant fleet. Properly orchestrated, sea power sets in motion a virtuous cycle among commerce, diplomacy, and naval affairs.
A navy, in short, is a necessary but far from sufficient implement for carrying out maritime strategy. The trouble is that the bulk of the U.S. maritime enterprise—in particular, its commercial and industrial functions—lies in sectors outside the control of the Pentagon or Department of Homeland Security. Some are in the Department of Transportation and other agencies. A great deal—think Electric Boat, Bath Iron Works, and other yards—resides in private hands. America has no comprehensive maritime strategy to coordinate all of these implements toward the Mahanian ends of prosperity, security, and martial clout.
Nor is it likely to develop one.
Still, political leadership in Washington can approximate a concerted approach to high-seas pursuits. That’s what Del Toro’s maritime statecraft demands and why the Trump administration should embrace it. The White House can appoint some senior overseer, probably housed within the National Security Council, and endow that person or people with the authority to manage U.S. government endeavors relating to the brine. Such an overseer can forge alliances with the array of private firms that furnish the makings of sea power. It can also reach out to foreign firms to supplement the United States’ much-depleted maritime infrastructure.
An executor of maritime strategy, then, must be a toolmaker and an alliance-builder as well as a tool wielder. That’s the legacy of Carlos Del Toro that’s worth preserving and extending in this brave new world.
