The new plan calls for six fundamental—and badly needed—changes to America’s ailing shipbuilding sector.
America is no longer a maritime nation—but the Trump administration wants it to be. Last week, the White House released its long-awaited “Maritime Action Plan,” a document intended to set in motion a thoroughgoing renaissance in nautical affairs. Of course, the United States has not evacuated the oceans and seas. It still deploys the world’s premier—though no longer its largest—navy. But a navy is only part of a much larger enterprise involving domestic industrial production, construction of fleets of merchantmen as well as warships, and access to foreign harbors.
Naval, then, is a subset of maritime. Maritime strategy is an all-consuming pursuit. The Maritime Action Plan aims at revivifying the maritime industrial base and the much-shrunken US-built and -flagged commercial fleet, not just to help America prosper economically but to supply US expeditionary forces sealift without which manpower and firepower cannot reach distant battlegrounds in sufficient quantity.
It’s heartening that the White House has taken charge of the nautical effort. Not so long ago, responsibility for the manifold segments of the maritime project was fragmented among a multitude of US government agencies and private industry. No one was in charge of the whole endeavor. Only the White House wields authority over such pertinent agencies as the Departments of Homeland Security, Transportation, and Defense, along with the power to shape incentives among private shipbuilders and suppliers. The country now has the rudiments of a truly maritime strategy for the first time—a strategy that is long overdue.
What Would Mahan Think of America’s Naval Culture Today?
To get some purchase on what the Maritime Action Plan is all about, you could do worse than to review the discourse on the six “elements of sea power” from fin de siècle maritime sage Alfred Thayer Mahan. These are determinants of a nation’s fitness to go to sea. Three in particular are worth zeroing in on: the “number of population,” “national character,” and “character and policy” of the government.
The number of population does not refer solely to brute demographics, as it might sound. Mahan did regard it as beneficial for a country to have a sizable populace relative to its geographic size, but the main thing was to have an adequate corps of maritime-related tradesmen within the populace. A country with a smaller population made up of the right people could compete against a rival boasting a larger but more land-oriented population.
That spells trouble for the United States, because its corps of skilled labor is in precipitous decline today. Since World War II, official policy has let mercantile seafaring atrophy along with the supporting industrial base. China, America’s foremost geopolitical rival, accounts for about half of world shipbuilding. The US industrial complex accounts for a fraction of 1 percent. With the withering of US-flagged commercial shipping, the base of welders, pipefitters, and specialist trades of all kinds withered as well. Demand for their services was too meager. The Maritime Action Plan seeks to regenerate the workforce necessary to reconstitute US commercial sea power.
There’s a cultural dimension to sea power as well, which is what Mahan means by national character. A people not intrinsically given to marine pursuits—seaborne trade in particular—does not possess the right stuff for high-seas exploits. Mahan feared the United States of his day wouldn’t develop a seagoing ethos. It might turn inward rather than venture out to sea. One imagines he would be horrified at how that aspect of American culture has wilted in recent decades. Nurturing an oceanic culture anew has to be part of any effective US maritime strategy.
And then there’s the character of the government. By that, Mahan meant that a saltwater-minded government must enact wise laws, policies, and regulations to foster marine industry, shipbuilding, and commerce. This is how the government grooms the necessary corps of shipbuilders and mariners, and it’s how the government inflects the national culture toward oceanic endeavors. Mahan thus furnishes a set of standards for evaluating the Maritime Action Plan and the many actions the plan outlines to rejuvenate US sea power.
What the Maritime Action Plan Calls For
A few passages in the plan stood out to me in particular.
First, the directive espouses instituting one hundred “maritime prosperity zones” to encourage shipbuilding in regions “outside traditional coast shipbuilding and ship repair centers, including river regions, the Great Lakes, Alaska, Hawaii, and US territories.” This is wise. Not only does it bolster the United States’ prospects for constructing new merchantmen in large numbers in a reasonable timeframe, it also enlists more of the populace in seafaring pursuits—while alerting people in the continental interior to the importance of sea power. The sea will no longer be an abstraction for inhabitants of the hinterland when they see nautical industry in daily life. In turn, prosperity zones could nudge the national character in a healthy direction.
Later on, the document puts the spotlight on robotic and autonomous systems, noting that “a host of commercial shipyards and manufacturing facilities throughout the country’s interior” as well as along the coasts can build such craft in whole or contribute modules for final assembly at another yard. It calls for working toward a common design derived from private industry in order to proliferate production facilities. Many smaller yards could mass-produce a common design, accelerating efforts to field inexpensive drone craft in bulk.
Second, the action plan calls for forging accords with close allies such as South Korea and Japan, both of which sport vibrant shipbuilding complexes. To speed up the shipbuilding process, the directive advocates letting foreign shipbuilders construct vessels for the US commercial sector in their home countries during a transitional period. It contemplates “a potential ‘Bridge Strategy’ [that] provides a multi-ship buy wherein the first ships in the contract are built in a foreign shipbuilder’s home shipyard while concurrent direct capital investments are made in a US shipyard they have purchased or partnered with to eventually onshore construction.”
If successful, such a phased strategy will deposit hulls in the water in fairly short order, all while helping rebuild the US maritime industrial base—making the United States more self-sufficient over the long haul.
Third, the plan prescribes a mass-production mindset. It calls for harnessing mature ship designs wherever possible. “With the exception of warships,” the document’s framers want to “use designs of existing mature or modular commercial or government (domestic and international) vessels that can be adapted to multiple agency mission needs with minimal modification.” Modifications needed for ships to perform dual-use service for the Department of Defense should be “reserved for the post-delivery period.” In other words, manufacture the hulls now and tailor them later.
Fourth, the Maritime Action Plan repeatedly and correctly notes that industrial capacity is a decisive determinant in protracted great-power competition and warfare. “During World War II,” it observes, “the United States produced thousands of naval and merchant ships and trained hundreds of thousands of new sailors and mariners, which enabled the Allies to win the war. By 1946, over 70 percent of oceangoing shipping was US-flagged.” This is both a cautionary tale and a benchmark for American maritime strategic success today. US industry started serial-producing armaments well before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. For instance, the Two-Ocean Navy Act of 1940 in effect authorized construction of a second complete US Navy from scratch. Transports, freighters, and logistics ships of all sorts accompanied the buildup of combatant ships.
We are roughly as far out from the purported time of maximum danger in the Taiwan Strait next year as the United States was from Pearl Harbor when the Two-Ocean Navy Act went into effect. There’s your standard for shipbuilding success. Time is short, and we are starting from behind compared to 1940.
Fifth, the action plan calls for creating a “Maritime Security Trust Fund.” Private industry hedges against risk and thrives on certainty. It is common knowledge that Uncle Sam is hard for private firms to work for. He moves slowly and has a habit of changing his mind about requirements in midcourse. “By securing stable, long-term funding,” contends the plan, the trust fund “would ensure consistent support for investments in shipbuilding, fleet expansion, industrial base resilience, and maritime workforce development.” The fund’s goal would be to guarantee steady demand for ships and maritime-related implements, while assuring a steady flow of funding to pay for them. That way, private shipbuilding firm chieftains could plan ahead, order construction materials ahead of time, and train and hire skilled labor, confident that the US government would not hang them out to dry if the political winds changed. Risk would abate.
And lastly, the Maritime Action Plan closes by acknowledging that Congress must be part of the maritime quest. Legislation is needed to rebuild mercantile sea power, and political support needs to be bipartisan. So much—and such fundamental—work is necessary to bring about a restoration that the effort will long outlast the Trump presidency. Accordingly, the cause of Mahanian sea power will need support from lawmakers, future presidents, and the electorate for many years to come if the cause is to flourish. As we should all hope it will.
Now—as Captain Mahan might say from beyond the grave—let’s execute.
