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Toward a New Navalism -

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Toward a New Navalism
Second Prize, CNO Naval History Essay Contest, Professional Historian Category, Sponsored
by General Dynamics.
By Andrew K. Blackley
December 2021
Proceedings
Vol. 147/12/1426
FEATURED ARTICLE
VIEW ISSUE
The Navy has enjoyed supremacy on the high seas for more than 70 years
and has kept the ocean commons open for the benefit of all nations. But
continental powers are rapidly expanding their naval forces and wielding
new technologies that could render obsolete the force structure that has
enabled the Navy to maintain its dominance. The ships the service currently
is building are beset by problems, and its existing fleet is rapidly aging. To
make matters worse, the government’s ability to finance new ship
construction looks grim now and for the foreseeable future. The nation that
once exulted in its naval victories has largely forgotten them, and it takes its
sea services for granted.
This could be describing the current situation for the U.S. Navy, but it actually
refers to the predicament facing the British Admiralty in the mid-1880s. The
Royal Navy was grappling with aging ships and forces stretched thin by
global responsibilities, a muckraking press, government inquiries into its
competence, and the growing French and Russian navies. Nonetheless, it
emerged from the 19th century stronger than ever, with the largest, most
modern fleet in the world and enjoying wide public and political support.
How was this accomplished?
In one word: navalism.
The U.S. Navy today does indeed find itself in a similar situation to the 19thcentury Admiralty. Facing the renewed growth in naval power of its Cold War
adversaries, budget constraints, and a Congress often skeptical of its requests
for a larger fleet, the service should look to the past for direction on how to
acquire the political capital to build the force structure it will need to meet
future challenges. The path forward is to engage public—and hence
political—support through a new navalism for the 21st century.
The Birth of Navalism
Arthur J. Marder, a historian specializing in British naval history, described
navalism as “the big navy movement,” led by naval officers, politicians, and
sympathetic civilians. In Britain, they used popular support to obtain the
political clout needed to finance the rapid expansion of the Royal Navy in the
1890s.1
The navalism of that era can be said to have had two components: “hard” (or
directed) and “soft.” The former was practiced by naval professionals,
sympathetic publishers, and political allies, who defined a new blue-water
naval strategy that required a bigger fleet, made the case for that naval
expansion in Parliament, and then financed, designed, and built the ships
they envisioned to carry out that strategy. “Soft” navalism was practiced by
the popular press and advocacy groups, who used the new forms of mass
communication that emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century to rouse
patriotic fervor, build popular enthusiasm for the technological wonder that
was the modern battleship, and ultimately persuade the public of the need
for a powerful navy for both national security and national identity.2 The deft
use of mass communication laid the groundwork that enabled the “hard”
navalists to secure the political means to rebuild and expand the Royal
Navy.
Britain began to awaken from the “long lee” of Trafalgar in the 1880s, stirred
in part by the muckraker W. T. Stead, whose articles in the Pall Mall
Gazette called into question the ability of the Royal Navy to defend the British
Empire.3 Admiralty intelligence reports pointed to a dangerous growth in the
navies of France and Russia; in particular, France’s Jeune École strategy
of guerre de course was seen as an existential threat to Britain’s sea
trade.4 Public concern and agitation by naval officers such as Captain Charles
Beresford led to parliamentary investigation and ultimately resulted in the
Naval Defence Act of 1889.5
Journalist William T. Stead’s articles critical of the Royal Navy reached a wide
public and are credited with igniting the navalist agitation in the press that
led to the Naval Defence Act of 1889. Public Domain
This groundbreaking legislation for the first time dictated the size of the
Royal Navy, requiring that it be larger than the combined fleets of the two
next-largest foreign navies, a standard that remained in effect until 1921. The
act called for the construction of 10 new battleships and 38 cruisers within a
five-year period.6
In the 30 years following passage of the act, the Royal Navy remained the
world’s premier naval force, thanks to the willingness of the British taxpayer
to maintain naval supremacy at almost any cost. That willingness was
engendered through the work of a sympathetic press and furthered by the
efforts of the Navy League of Great Britain, founded in 1895 for the specific
purpose of promoting British sea power to the British public. The result was
an unprecedented level of enthusiasm for the Royal Navy and a resolute
belief in its importance to the economic well-being of the Empire and the
prestige of the nation.7
Navalism also blossomed in the United States in the late 19th century,
triggered by the realization that the post–Civil War Navy had deteriorated to
such an extent that it was inadequate to defend the nation.8 In 1884, the
Chilean Navy took delivery of the protected cruiser Esmeralda; her 10-inch
rifled guns were said to be able to lob shells into San Francisco from a
distance well outside the range of the defending shore batteries.9 There was
no ship in the U.S. Navy to match her. The prospect of South American navies
raiding U.S. coasts with impunity—and the realization that European powers
equipped with modern warships could easily reassert themselves in the
Western Hemisphere—provided the impetus for funding a “New Navy” of
steam and steel warships. In 1883, Congress authorized construction of the
“ABCD” protected cruisers and, with the Naval Act of 1890, the Navy’s first
battleships.
The New Navy would be led by a caste of highly trained, professional, and
progressive naval officers.10 These officers found an intellectual home in the
U.S. Naval Institute and the Naval War College. The 1890 publication of Alfred
Thayer Mahan’s seminal The Influence of Seapower Upon History: 1660–1783,
with its emphasis on the importance of global sea power, was a product of
this intellectual flowering and provided the foundation for a new American
navalism. Thus began the transformation of the U.S. Navy from a peace force
of cruisers and coast defense monitors to a fleet of modern battleships
capable of defending the nation on the high seas.
The New Navy gained great popular support by its success in the SpanishAmerican War, which was colorfully documented by an enthusiastic press.
Mahan also wrote dozens of articles that appeared in popular magazines that
explained the imperatives of sea power to the average citizen.11 The directed
navalism of the professionals, combined with this emerging soft navalism,
induced successive Congresses to appropriate the funds to build an ever
larger and more capable fleet, one that would show that the United States
was a world power with global reach.
Keenly aware of the importance of public opinion, President Theodore Roosevelt worked
to build popular and political support of the Sea Services. The Great White Fleet’s
around-the-world transit in 1907-08 was a public relations triumph. Credit: U.S. Naval
Institute Photo Archive
The ascension to the presidency of consummate navalist Theodore Roosevelt
accelerated the growth of the Navy. Keenly aware of the importance of public
opinion, Roosevelt urged creation of the Navy League of the United States in
1902 to build popular and political support. The around-the-world transit of
the Great White Fleet in 1907–8 not only demonstrated the technical prowess
of the U.S. Navy, but also was a public relations triumph.12 Roosevelt’s
successors continued his naval expansion. By the end of World War I,
American navalists had succeeded in transforming a lackluster navy into one
that was second to none.
Navalism is Not a Dirty Word
The term “navalism” has different connotations for different audiences, and it
has acquired a distinctly bad reputation in certain quarters. Some historians
see American navalism as having been driven by the desire to create an
“imperial” navy, useful for dominating the Caribbean and Central America by
gunboat diplomacy and acquiring possessions in the Pacific by force.13 The
navalists of Edwardian Britain and Wilhemine Germany stoked the nationalist
sentiments of their people in a race to build more and better dreadnoughts,
and the popular antagonism that was engendered is believed by some to be
a contributory cause of World War I.14 An extension of Germany’s militarist
culture, the Kaiserliche Marine’s ostensible purpose was to secure Germany’s
colonial possessions, but its real purpose was to threaten the dominance of
the Royal Navy “between the Thames and Heligoland.”
British and American navalists of the era saw things differently, and they
distinguished their brand of navalism from that of the naval militarists. Pax
Britannica ensured that the trade of all nations could pass unmolested on the
high seas and that the independence of the former Spanish colonies was
preserved. American navalists saw the emergence of the United States as a
great power wielding the “big stick” of naval force as a positive development
for the world. Ensuring the security of the nation first and foremost, U.S. sea
power would bring the blessings of free trade and democracy to the former
colonies of despotic regimes and help modernize the undeveloped world.15
According to Sir Julian Corbett, the British Empire’s promotion of free trade
and protection of the ocean commons was a mark of its legitimacy: “For an
Empire to endure it must be felt by the rest of the world to be a convenience.
Let it once lose hold of this fundamental secret and sooner or later the
nations will combine to remove it as a common nuisance.”16 This
“fundamental secret” separates the navalists of the West from the naval
militarists of authoritarian regimes. Western sea power has been more than
just a convenience; it has been the protector of the free world. British, U.S.,
and Allied sea power helped secure victory in two world wars. Postwar, U.S.
sea power peacefully assumed the mantle of leadership from the Royal Navy
and has maintained the freedom of the seas to the present day.
However, the authoritarian regimes of the world’s two great continental
powers, China and Russia, now seek to challenge the West’s leadership. In
particular, the rapid transformation of the People’s Liberation Army Navy
(PLAN) into a large blue-water force threatens to upset the current order in
the Indo-Pacific. China’s command economy has been able to finance and
build new warships on a scale beyond that needed for the reasonable
defense of its national interests—and without the need for public approval.
The geopolitical outlook of the ruling Communist Party and President Xi
Jinping is based on a centuries-old Sino-centrism of obeisance to the central
state by vassal clients. Non-Chinese states may benefit from the relationship,
but only if they conform to the desires of the central power.17
The parallels between Wilhemine Germany’s sea power gambit and China’s
creation of a huge blue-water fleet to challenge U.S. dominance at sea are
striking. Germany’s effort ultimately failed because of the British public’s
resolve to bear the cost necessary to maintain naval supremacy—a resolve
built by British navalism.18 If the United States and its allies want to maintain
the current rules-based world order, they must show a similar resolve.
Maintaining their sea power will require a massive and sustained
reinvestment. The political support for this effort can be obtained through a
thoughtful application of a New Navalism for the 21st century.
The New Navalism
The U.S. Navy was an important contributor to the West’s Cold War victory;
however, the “peace dividend” that followed began a process of
disinvestment, and U.S. naval supremacy was taken for granted.19 The “pivot
to Asia” that began in the Obama administration was a response to the rise of
China as a global competitor, but even before then strategists were sounding
the alarm.20 The work of directed navalism has been ongoing, working to
develop a strategic vision to meet the new challenges. The Naval War College
and the U.S. Naval Institute have been in the forefront of this effort, and the
current American Sea Power Project is an outstanding example of the
intellectual firepower they bring to bear.
The work of “soft” navalism, however, has not kept pace. There is no strategy
to engage public opinion. Recently, Representative Elaine Luria (D-Va.),
speaking about the lack of details in the October release of the
Pentagon’s Battle Force 2045, said:
We want to do more, but I really feel like the Navy should do a better job
communicating—not just to us, who are going to put the pieces together in
the National Defense Authorization Act, but to the American public about
why this is so essential to our national defense. . . . You need to build a Navy. A
Navy to do what?21
Answering “what” the Navy intends to do, and explaining it to policy-makers,
is the job of directed navalism. Communicating that to the American public
falls into the category of soft navalism.
Soft Navalism
Hell Divers (1931), filmed with cooperation of the Navy Department, showcased carrier-based aviation and
demonstrated the impact of “soft” navalism. The film was a box office hit, and its aviation sequences thrilled
audiences. Credit: Dr. Macro
The explosion in new avenues of communication in the late 19th and early
20th centuries, including print and then film media, was fully leveraged by
the navalists of the time to spread the gospel of sea power and preach the
importance of naval defense.22 Modern navalists will do well to follow their
example.
In 1929, the Chief of Naval Operations created a Motion Picture Board for the
specific purpose of engaging with Hollywood producers to reach the
American public. By 1941, no less than 40 films had been made that displayed
the Navy’s latest technology: submarines and carrier-based aircraft. The films
successfully portrayed the service as a modern and exciting organization with
a vital mission.23
Soft navalism in the 21st century must use the proliferation in new forms of
digital communication to promote sea power, with messaging tailored to a
variety of diverse audiences. The Navy needs to broaden its messaging to
reach not only those inside the Beltway, but also the general public, to
educate them on why the Navy is critical to the well-being and prosperity of
the nation and the world.
Some of the following suggestions could help the New Navalism succeed:
Show the Fleet. Fleet Weeks are popular events. The Los Angeles Fleet Week
draws a quarter million visitors every Labor Day weekend.24 This should be
replicated in as many locations as possible, including on the Great Lakes and
the nation’s inland waterways. The launching and commissioning of new
ships should be another cause for public celebration.
Celebrate Navy Day. Established in 1922, this event was a public relations
success in the interwar period, generating a great deal of popular support.25 It
should be reimagined and relaunched on its 100th anniversary.
Support the U.S. Naval Institute. The Institute continues to enjoy great
success with its traditional publishing efforts and its online presence. USNI
News enjoyed a large increase in its reach in 2020.26 Every person reading this
should be a member. Every career officer and civilian who believes in sea
power should consider becoming a Life Member.
Support the Museums. There are more than six dozen warships preserved as
museum ships across the country, as well as many other museums devoted
to the Sea Services and naval aviation. They tell the Sea Services’ story like no
other source and are great places to promote sea power to a receptive
audience.
Support the Navy League. Military members and civilian employees are
prohibited from lobbying. The Navy League of the United States, however,
can and does educate the public and Congress on the importance of sea
power to the nation’s defense and economic well-being. With a large
membership and hundreds of local chapters, it is well placed to promote the
Sea Services.
Engage the Midwest. The Navy needs to think strategically about how to
win broader public support. One way is by creating more jobs in the Midwest,
an area with little defense-related work.27 Fincantieri has obtained the
contract to build the frigate Constellation and nine additional sister ships in
its Marinette, Wisconsin, yard, and it has indicated that if more work follows, it
might open a second yard.28Locating another shipyard on the Great Lakes
would garner support from the key congressional delegations. Job creation
and the presence of the Navy’s ships in the waters of the Heartland are ways
to gain public and political support.
‘A Compelling and Enduring’ story
For New Navalism to succeed, support for it must extend over successive
presidential administrations and be funded by successive Congresses,
regardless of which party has the White House or control of the House and
Senate. The late Rear Admiral Wayne Meyer, referring to the Aegis program,
said that for a new vision to succeed, the visionaries must be able to tell a
“compelling and enduring” story to the decision makers.29
If the Navy’s plans to meet the challenges of the future are to be successful,
they must gain the approval of the ultimate decision-maker, the American
taxpayer. All the new technologies, operational genius, and grand strategies
devised by hard navalism cannot come to fruition without the political will to
make it happen, and that depends on broad public support. Building that
support through the communication of a “compelling and enduring” story
will be the task of the New Navalism.
1. Arthur J. Marder, The Anatomy of British Sea Power: A History of British Naval Policy in the
Pre-Dreadnought Err, 1880–1905 (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1940), 4.
2. Bradley M. Cesario, “The Admiralty, Popular Navalism, and the Journalist as Middleman,
1884–1914” (doctoral dissertation, Texas A&M University, May 2016), 13. I am indebted to Cesario
for the concepts of hard and soft navalism. In this paper, “soft navalism” includes the use of
mass market media aimed at the general public.
3. W. T. Stead, “What Is the Truth about the Navy,” The Pall Mall Gazette, 15 September 1884,
www.attackingthedevil.co.uk/pmg/navy.php. Stead was editor of the Gazette and a
crusading journalist. Using information provided by the navalists and serving officers such as
Jackie Fisher, he alleged that the Royal Navy was weak and technologically inferior, especially
compared to France.
4. Roger Parkinson, The Late Victorian Navy, The Pre-dreadnought Era and the Origins of
the First World War (Woodbridge, UK: The Boydell Press, 2008), 102–5. The French Minister of
Marine in 1886 ordered the construction of new classes of fast cruiser and oceangoing
torpedo boats—the first aimed at British commerce, the second at attacking British
ironclads.
5. Parkinson, The Late Victorian Navy, 94–99. Beresford was a member of Parliament and was
appointed Junior Sea Lord. In that position he advocated for the creation of the Naval
Intelligence Division using a combination of aristocratic connections and press
sensationalism. His allegations of naval weakness proved crucial in passage of the Naval
Defence Act.
6. Parkinson, 113. Parkinson argues that British weakness was exaggerated by the navalists.
7. Parkinson, 164.
8. Kenneth J. Hagan, This People’s Navy (New York: The Free Press, 1991), 180–81. In 1873, a
Spanish warship seized the Virginius, a U.S. registered former blockade runner smuggling
guns into Cuba, and some of the American crew were executed for piracy. The Navy
Department found itself without a serviceable ironclad and instead relied on diplomacy to
avoid a potentially disastrous war with Spain, which at that time had a more modern navy.
9. “We Cannot Fight the Chilean Navy,” Army and Navy Journal 23, no. 1 (1 August 1885): 24.
10. Scott Mobley, Progressives in Navy Blue (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2018), 267–
68. Mobley’s thesis is that the American naval officers of the Gilded Age transformed their
culture from “mariner-warrior” to “warrior-engineer” to meet the challenges of rapidly
changing technology.
11. Alfred Thayer Mahan, John B. Hattendorf, and Lynn C. Hattendorf, “HM 7: A Bibliography of
The Works of Alfred Thayer Mahan” (1986), Historical Monographs, 7.
12. See James R. Reckner, Teddy Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute
Press, 2001), 157–59. The success was tarnished somewhat by Henry Reuterdahl’s muckraking
article “The Needs of Our Navy” in McClure’s in January 1908. The article was written in part by
William S. Sims and exposed some serious design faults in the ships of the New Navy—a cas
of Sims and the progressives using soft navalism to promote changes in the internal
operations of the Navy.
13. See Mark Russel Shulman, Navalism and the Emergence of American Seapower, 1882–
1893(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1995), 159–61. Shulman describes how the
USS Bostonand her Marines were used to intimidate the Hawaiian royal house into
submission.
14. Jan Rüger, The Great Naval Game: Britain and Germany in the Age of
Empire (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 248–49. Rüger’s thesis is that the
intense Anglo-German naval rivalry was part of a greater “theatre of power and identity” that
fed German paranoia and severely limited diplomatic efforts to keep Great Britain out of the
war after Germany declared war against Russia on 1 August 1914.
15. Mobley, Progressives in Navy Blue, 67.
16. Julian Corbett, The Spectre of Navalism (London, UK: Darling and Son, 1915), 8.
17. David K. Schneider, “How China Sees the International Order: A Lesson from the Chinese
Classics,” War on the Rocks, 18 March 2021.
18. See Steven Wills, “The Hohenzollern Chines Navy?” Center for International Maritime
Security, 24 September 2015.
19. CDR Paul S. Giarra and CAPT Gerard D. Roncolato, USN (Ret.), “The American Sea Power
Project,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 147, no. 1 (January 2021).
20. Perhaps most effectively with the concept of “AirSea Battle” laid out by Jan van Tol et al. in
2010. See AirSea Battle: A Point of Departure Operational Concept (Washington, DC: Center
for Strategical and Budgetary Assessments, 2010).
21. Sam LaGrone, “Navy’s Vision for Future Fleet Is Blurry Say Seapower Members Luria,
Gallagher,” USNI News, 18 March 2021.
22. Cesario, “The Admiralty, Popular Navalism, and the Journalist as Middleman,” 331.
Navalism found expression in the profusion of inexpensive print media that flourished thanks
to high-speed presses, cheap paper, and colorful inks. The media could be cheaply
transported by extensive rail and shipping networks.
23. Ryan Wadle, “Sea Power Goes Celluloid: Lessons from Interwar Era Naval Publicity,” Naval
History 32, no. 1 (February 2018).
24. RADM Mike Statynski, USN (Ret.), “The USS Iowa Is Back in the Fight: How LA Fleet Week
and the Battleship Iowa Museum Contributed to USNS Mercy’s COVID 19 Mission to Los
Angeles,” Surface SITREP 36, no.2, (Summer 2020), 7.
25. Ryan Wadle, “First Rate Ideas: The Hidden History of Navy Day,” Naval History 31, no. 6
(October 2017). The event was amalgamated with Armed Services Day in 1948 and largely
forgotten. It was resurrected by Admiral M Elmo Zumwalt in 1972. Originally celebrated on 27
October, Theodore Roosevelt’s birthday, Zumwalt moved it 13 October, the date of the
founding of the Continental Navy in 1775.
26. U.S. Naval Institute Annual Meeting webcast, 19 May 2021. VADM Peter H. Daly, USN (Ret.),
reported a 46 percent increase in page views for USNI News and an overall growth of 37
percent in online page views for USNI.org.
27. “Defense Contract Spending: A State-By-State Analysis,” Bloomberg Government, 2015.
28. Megan Eckstein, “Fincantieri Wins $795M Contract for Navy Frigate Program,” USNI News,
30 April 2020.
29. AirSea Battle, 123.
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