Admiral Lisa Franchetti, America’s chief of naval operations or top uniformed naval officer, recently released her first Navy Professional Reading List. The list is solid on the whole. The books listed fall into three bins. Start with “Foundations,” a category concerned mainly with the industrial and engineering prerequisites for sea power. Works by Paul Kennedy and Arthur Herman lay the substructure for comprehending sea power and maritime strategy.
Next move on to “Warfighters,” selections that illuminate how U.S. Navy mariners can build cohesive teams, develop doctrine so they act in unison while doing business in great waters, and seek out ways to innovate. Among my favorite works of the past decade in any genre, and included in this category, is Daniel James Brown’s Boys in the Boat. I defy you to find a better guide to how to construct a team fit to pursue a common purpose and prevail.
Last comes “Warfighting,” whose works review how to bring combat power to bear in embattled marine theaters such as the Western Pacific. Works such as retired admiral Michael McDevitt’s profile of China’s navy cover contemporary opponents’ strategies and force structures. Strategies and operations of the past on such battlegrounds as Leyte Gulf and the Korean Peninsula also feature prominently.
There is much goodness here.
Yet CNO Franchetti’s list feels strangely partial compared to past lists. The works listed have much to say about the mechanics of executing strategy. They dwell on the how’s of strategy, operations, and tactics, which is doubtless crucial, but they say little about the why’s. That’s an important deficit. Naval folk need to know why they do what they do on a daily basis—not just how to carry out routine tasks—to truly flourish in the seaborne profession of arms.
Think about it. Strategy is the art and science of using power to fulfill purposes. That being the case, maritime strategy is the art and science of using sea power—defined, in rough terms, as a “chain” connecting domestic industrial production with merchant and naval fleets plying the main with access to foreign seaports—to fulfill purposes relating to the saltwater realm. In other words, it’s up to executors of strategy to devise ways to put the diplomatic, economic, and military means on hand—or additional means that can........