ABSTRACT
The naval expeditionary case studies presented in this book should be considered from an operational and strategic level of analysis rather than the tactical level. The operational level focuses on the deployment and coordination of multiple military units in a common theatre in pursuit of a common objective. The strategic level goes beyond military goals to focus on the achievement of the national objectives for which forces have been deployed. Attainment of the military objective should promote the achievement of the national objective, but in most cases the national objective requires the integration of operational success with many other non-military instruments of national power such as diplomacy, finance, intelligence, communications, transportation, production, energy, and so on. This is properly called grand strategy-“grand” because it integrates all the relevant military and non-military elements of national power and “strategy” because these elements of national power are marshaled within a coherent analytical framework to achieve specific national objectives. A national objective only very rarely is a military or operational objectivecommon national objectives concern the nature of the global or domestic order, or the global or regional balance of power. Not all countries have a grand strategy. Many countries do not go beyond tactical training and operational plans and so can easily mistake operational victory for strategic victory. Yet operational victory at best is a necessary but insufficient condition for strategic victory. Counter-intuitively, stunning operational success can prevent strategic victory if it conjures a countervailing hostile coalition. For instance, Germany’s and Japan’s initial operational successes in World War II brought into being a superior hostile coalition that defeated them both operationally and strategically. At the operational level, naval expeditionary warfare can be analyzed in terms of the factors of time, space, and force; the achievement of military-or operational-goals; and, more importantly, in terms of the contribution to the achievement of national-or strategic-goals. The categories of time, space, and force comprise the standard framework for analyzing military operations. Time addresses both the speed of execution and the duration of a military operation. Space concerns the size and geography of the theatre as well as the sea and land lines of communications linking the belligerents to it. Force refers to the military assets available for use in the theatre.
