ABSTRACT
For America and much of the rest of the world, the election of George W. Bush as 43rd President of the United States politically rang in the new decade. For a president who had underlined in his campaign that the military should not be used for nation-building, hailing the promise of transformation fit well into his idealistic outlook. After the shock of 9/11 and marginalization by the ground wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the sea service was energized by the trifecta of strategic capstone documents. This deliberately connected group of writing replaced the single line of documents of the 1980s and the more erratic, often isolated works which characterized Navy strategy-making in the 1990s. Throughout the 2000s, Navy budgets increased and the battle fleet inventory started to recover after years of reductions.
