Sea Power

As the U.S. Navy enters the twenty-first century, many of the ships, aircraft, weapons, and tactics it employed so successfully during the Cold War will no longer be cost-effective or even effective. Future battlefields will shift the locus of naval action from the high seas into littoral waters, demanding sustained operations in relatively narrow, shallow waters. Naval forces in the twenty-first century must not only meet the traditional requirements of command of the sea--ships, planes, troops, and bases--carrying out forward presence, crisis response, strategic deterrence, and sealift. They must now put these together to obtain the four key operational capabilities of littoral warfare: command, control, intelligence and surveillance, and communication; battlespace dominance; power projection; and force sustainment. The core of the new U.S. strategic concept is power projection, and it envisions naval forces directly leading Army and Air Force elements to influence events ashore, most probably in the Third World. And this navy must be cost effective.

In the 19th-century classic, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, Alfred Thayer Mahan argued the paramount importance of naval superiority in peace and war. This work is still considered definitive today, but as Chester Starr, eminent historian of antiquity, points out in this thought-provoking volume, Mahan's theories have led to serious distortions in the way historians interpret the role of naval power in antiquity. Trade by sea was always important in providing raw materials as well as luxuries, but only rarely was it protected by an established navy. As Starr reveals, two nations that did protect their trade routes--Athens and Carthage--both fell after long duels with land-based forces, Sparta and Rome. And though Rome went on to create the most perfected and widely based naval structure in antiquity, when Rome fell it was due to invasions by land, not by sea. Starr describes major naval battles in fascinating detail, and he examines technological developments as they help to illuminate the limitations of galleys in warfare. Ranging from the Bronze Age to the fall of the Roman Empire, this innovative study provides an important corrective to Mahan's thesis, both as applied to ancient history and to modern strategic thinking.

Focusing exclusively on small navies, this study explores the roles and tasks undertaken by the nations bordering on the Northern waters of Europe. The contributors describe their special features, concerns, and differences to the larger US, Russian and British naval forces operating in the same region.

The naval world has been turned upside down and the United States is not prepared for it. According to Koburger, the growing importance of "narrow seas" and "lesser navies" has caused a major shift in the balance of sea power. Low intensity conflicts--insurgencies, terrorism, regional hostilities--are played out in landbound seas by smaller navies armed with ever increasingly potent munitions. Koburger examines the impact of these small navies on United States' maritime strategy. Past failures in narrow seas highlight the politico-military value of Koburger's volume.

Using a number of case studies based upon key Royal Navy operations in the 20th century, Ian Speller discusses the enduring principles of maritime power & examines the strengths & limitations of maritime forces as instruments of national policy.

This is the first book-length study of U.S. naval operations in the Mediterranean from 1945 to 1947, a period that is crucial to an understanding of the Cold War and its origins. Using extensive records of the U.S. Departments of Navy and State, Sheehy shows how an American squadron grew from skeleton size in 1945 into a powerful armada by the end of 1947. He examines decisions to assign naval vessels to the Mediterranean, governmental communications, the rationale for the naval presence in the area, and the working relationships between diplomatic and naval officials. This history demonstrates how the cautious, but effective, use of naval power was used to counter the Soviet Union's presence in the region.

Examines how and why the Australian navy has evolved to the type of force it is today.

"Analyses the diverse and sometimes conflicting interests in oceans including security, economic, scientific and legal issues and the role that navies, particularly the RAN, have and will play in protecting these interests."