US navy's emphasis on a cooperative strategy lacks necessary emphasis on international law it will need to succeed

“Sea power” encompasses both naval power and maritime power. Naval power combines strategy and doctrine with warships and aircraft in order to de- ter maritime threats, win war at sea, and project power ashore. The more inclusive concept of “maritime power” applies all components of diplomatic, in- formational, military, and economic aspects of national power in the maritime domain. The expanded notion of sea power as against purely naval power is de- pendent upon the regimes created by progressive maritime law. The primary beneficiaries of this phenomenon in the United States are the Coast Guard and Marine Corps, which share a history of maritime constabulary opera- tions—positioned at the seam between peace and war and embracing the geographic dimensions of land and sea. In contrast, for decades the Navy marginalized amphibious warfare; only in the last decade has this mind-set changed. It is no coincidence, however, that while the Coast Guard and Marine Corps have become more relevant, the Navy still struggles to find its place amid a network of new regimes that enable coalition maritime constabulary operations and the building of maritime security capacity and partnership. The Cooperative Strategy of 2007 attempts to serve as a framework to fill this void, but problems of adapting to the new approach persist. Four years after in- troducing the “thousand-ship navy” concept and a year after soliciting inputs from American embassy posts, the Pentagon still has yet to implement its vi- sion for the Global Maritime Partnership.17 Furthermore, the new legal net- works and partnerships that facilitate maritime coalitions should have been central to the Cooperative Strategy; instead, the document barely mentions in- ternational law, obliquely noting that “theater security cooperation” requires, among other things, “regional frameworks for improving maritime gover- nance, and cooperation in enforcing the rule of law,” at sea.18 Although the strategy correctly suggests that “trust and cooperation cannot be surged,” it fails to promote America’s great strength in broadening the rule of law in the oceans. The lack of a specific reference to the global network of international laws that implicitly underlie the Cooperative Strategy represents a missed op- portunity to play to the core U.S. strength, focus the purpose and goals of na- tional maritime security, and reassure states skeptical of American intentions.