ABSTRACT
This chapter explains rationalise the strategic roles of the Royal Norwegian Navy as a tailor-made navy for Norway’s specific strategic environment and strategic requirements, hereunder the balancing act between existential military-strategic requirements and other maritime and security interests that Norwegian naval forces must protect. It aexplores the subject through evaluating empirical data on the basis of existing concepts and theory, using a strategic thinking model. The most common approach to explain a navy’s role in strategy is by using sea power theory grounded in definitions from the late nineteenth century when naval thinkers developed similarly-minded, historical approaches to describe the broad roles and functions of navies by explaining sea power and its strategic role, use and purpose. The Norwegian Navy has been structured and thus evolved quite differently from most other navies in Europe in still maintaining a large fleet comparable with most other states, yet also a navy specialised for national requirements.
