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  On Wargaming

  Matthew B. Caffrey Jr.

  Wargames are as old as civilization—and perhaps older. In his informative and entertaining Public Broadcasting series Connections, James Burke argued that the first invention, the one that enabled all later inventions, was the plow. It allowed agriculture, and as agriculture permitted denser populations, the frequency of inventions increased, due either to “connecting” with new applications or combining with other inventions to create one that was greater than the sum of its parts.

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  Taiwan’s Offshore Islands, Pathway or Barrier?

  Bruce A. Elleman

  This Newport Paper will examine the role of offshore islands in twentieth-century East Asian history, in particular those islands in the Taiwan Strait that were disputed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC) during the 1950s and afterward, and how these apparently insignificant islands impacted Cold War history.

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  Navies and Soft Power

  Bruce A. Elleman and S.C.M. Paine

  Navies and Soft Power: Historical Case Studies of Naval Power and the Nonuse of Military Force, edited by Bruce A. Elleman and S. C. M. Paine, presents nine historical cases of the use of navies in nonmilitary missions. These studies, by established and emerging scholars in a wide variety of fields, support current U.S. Navy attempts to balance war fighting with an ever broader array of nonmilitary missions. They remind us that naval "soft power" concerns date from antiquity and that those facing the U.S. Navy have now become remarkably diverse.

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  Writing to Think

  Robert C. Rubel

  The purpose of this volume is to honor the work and thought of Robert C. Rubel, Captain, U.S. Navy (Ret.). Since his retirement from the Navy, Robert (a.k.a. “Barney”) Rubel has held senior positions in the Center for Naval Warfare Studies (CNWS), in the Naval War College, in Newport, Rhode Island—first as deputy dean, then as chairman of the War Gaming Department, and finally (since 2006) as dean. During this period, not only has he presided effectively over a complex (and in many ways anomalous) institution, but he has found the time to create a substantial body of published writings about naval warfare and war, or strategy generally. In the process, he has quietly established himself as one of the Navy’s most innovative and wide-ranging thinkers.

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  Commerce Raiding

  Bruce A. Elleman and S.C.M. Paine

  The sixteen case studies in this book reflect the extraordinary diversity of experience of navies attempting to carry out, and also to eliminate, commerce raiding. Because the cases emphasize conflicts in which commerce raiding had major repercussions, they shed light on when, how, and in what manner it is most likely to be effective. The authors have been asked to examine the international context, the belligerents, the distribution of costs and benefits, the logistical requirements, enemy countermeasures, and the operational and strategic effectiveness of these campaigns.

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  Influence without Boots on the Ground

  Larissa Forster

  Military intervention always has been and always will be an important part of foreign policy, a tool to further national interests and influence world events. Many scholars have tried to explain the intervention behavior of states in crises, conflicts, and wars. When and why do states intervene, and what are reasons for nonintervention? What conflicts and crises are more likely to call for intervention, and why? When is intervention successful? The explanations are manifold and include political, military, economic, social, environmental, domestic, and humanitarian factors. The theoretical literature covers a gamut of realist intentions, ranging from security, power, and national interests, as guides to state action; to emphasis on international trade and economics; and to domestic politics. Some argue for explanations based on idealistic aspirations, such as democracy and human rights. Many studies focus on a mix of different reasons. From this vast field, the author has selected international crises involving any form of U.S. activity in the years 1946-2006. Within these U.S. activities, the author distinguishes between crisis response with and without naval forces, as this study intends to advance the knowledge of the use of U.S. naval forces as a response to international crises and to contribute to a better understanding of when and how the U.S. Navy is deployed.

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  High Seas Buffer

  Bruce A. Elleman

  Following its defeat on the mainland in 1949, the Nationalist government retreated to Taiwan. Although the Nationalist navy was comparatively large, to many it seemed almost certain that the People's Republic of China (PRC) would attack and take Taiwan, perhaps as early as summer 1950. The Korean War began on 25 June 1950, however, and the possibility of a PRC invasion of Taiwan was countered when on 27 June President Harry S. Truman ordered the Seventh Fleet to "neutralize" the Taiwan Strait. Mao Zedong at first postponed and eventually canceled altogether his planned invasion of Taiwan.

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  Innovation in Carrier Aviation

  Thomas C. Hone, Norman Friedman, and Mark D. Mandeles

  This study is about innovations in carrier aviation and the spread of those innovations from one navy to the navy of a close ally. The innovations are the angled flight deck; the steam catapult; and the mirror and lighted landing aid that enabled pilots to land jet aircraft on a carrier’s short and narrow flight deck.

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  Defeating the U-Boat

  Jan S. Breemer

  In Defeating the U-boat: Inventing Antisubmarine Warfare, Newport Paper 36, Jan. S. Breemer tells the story of the British response to the German submarine threat. His account of Germany's 'asymmetric' challenge (to use the contemporary term) to Britain's naval mastery holds important lessons for the United States today, the U.S. Navy in particular.

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  Piracy and Maritime Crime

  Bruce A. Elleman, Andrew Forbes, and David Rosenberg

  As modern nation-states emerged from feudalism, privateering for both profit and war supplemented piracy at the margins of national sovereignty. More recently, an ocean enclosure movement under the aegis of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982 has granted states access to maritime resources far beyond their territorial limits.

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  Somalia...From the Sea

  Gary J. Ohls

  From January 1991 through March 1995, the United States conducted numerous incursions into Somalia, undertaking a variety of missions and objectives. All of the actions had humanitarian elements, yet the operations that made up this mosaic of American involvement ranged from benign to aggressive, from purely humanitarian to clearly combative. Somalia...From the Sea is an account that attempts to explain and analyze these actions and place them within the overarching strategic and operational concepts developing in the first years following the end of the Cold War.

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  U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1980's

  John B. Hattendorf and Peter M. Swartz

  This volume is designed to complement and extend the previously published history of The Evolution of the U.S. Navy’s Maritime Strategy, 1977–1986, and to present publicly for the first time the detailed changes and developments that occurred during the decade in the five (now declassified) official versions of the strategy and three directly associated unclassified public statements by successive Chiefs of Naval Operations that were made in the years between 1982 and 1990.

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  Perspectives on Maritime Strategy

  Paul D. Taylor

  In September 2005, fifty-five chiefs of navies and coast guards, along with twenty-seven war college presidents from around the world gathered in Newport for the Seventeenth International Seapower Symposium. We shared perspectives on a broad range of issues important to the global maritime community and individual countries through the mechanism of regionally oriented seminars (eight of them). The two days produced comprehensive lists of key concerns from each region, the similarity of which was remarkable.

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  Major Naval Operations

  Milan Vego

  In generic terms, a major naval operation can be understood as a series of related major and minor naval tactical actions conducted by several naval combat arms and combat arms of other services, in terms of time and place, and aimed to accomplish an operational (and sometimes limited strategic) objective in a given maritime theater.

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  Waves of Hope

  Bruce A. Elleman

  In Newport Paper 28, Waves of Hope: The U.S. Navy’s Response to the Tsunami in Northern Indonesia, historian Bruce A. Elleman provides the first comprehensive history and analysis of what would become known as Operation UNIFIED ASSISTANCE.

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  U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1970's

  John B. Hattendorf

  This work is part of a four-volume set of studies within the Naval War College Press’s Newport Paper monograph series. A broad introduction to the history of strategic and doctrinal thinking within the U.S. Navy in the period between 1970 and 2000 is found in these Newport Papers; it may be useful to read them in the order in which they appeared rather than in the chronological order of the periods that they cover. Thus, the basis of this series begins with The Evolution of the U.S. Navy’s Maritime Strategy, 1977–1986. That work is followed by the three separate volumes of documents, including this one, each devoted to one of three decades of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.

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  Shaping the Security Environment

  Derek S. Reveron

  Newport Paper No. 29, Shaping the Security Environment, edited by Derek S. Reveron, makes an important contribution to an unfolding debate on the global role of U.S. military forces in an era of transnational terrorism, failed or failing states, and globalization. Reveron, professor of national security decision making at the Naval War College, looks beyond the current conflicts in which the United States is involved to raise fundamental questions concerning the regional diplomatic roles of America’s combatant commanders (COCOMs) and, more generally, the entire array of non-warfighting functions that have become an increasingly important part of the day-to-day life of the American military as it engages a variety of partners or potential partners around the world.

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  U.S Naval Strategy in the 1990's

  John B. Hattendorf

  The decade of the 1990s represents a distinctive period in American naval strategic thinking. Bounded on one side by the end of the Cold War in 1989-91 and on the other by the beginning of the era of the global war on terrorism after 11 September 2001, these were years in which the U.S. Navy of the 1990s found itself faced with a dramatically altered strategic situation. For the first time in at least four decades, the U.S. Navy had neither a peer nor a superior naval adversary; further, no credible naval adversary could be discerned in the foreseeable future.

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  Reposturing the Force

  Carnes Lord

  Reposturing the Force: U.S. Overseas Presence in the Twenty-first Century, is the twenty-sixth in the Newport Papers monograph series, published since 1991 by the Naval War College Press. Its primary aim is to provide a snapshot of a process--the ongoing reconfiguration of America's foreign military "footprint" abroad--that is likely to prove of the most fundamental importance for the long-term security of the United States, yet has so far received little if any systematic attention from national security specialists and still less from the wider public.

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  Naval Power in the Twenty-first Century

  Peter Dombrowski

  This anthology of articles from the quarterly, the "Naval College Review," is divided into three sections. The first section introduces the changing security environment facing the United States and, by extension, the U.S. Navy. The articles examine both the external position of the nation and the emerging internal political and institutional contexts that constrain military and naval policies and decision making. The second section looks specifically at the roles and missions of the Navy at the beginning of the 21st century. Its articles cover both long-standing issues, such as forward presence, and the new missions the Navy has assumed in recent years -- from projecting power far inland to providing theater and national missile defense, especially against opponents armed with nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons. The last section concentrates on military and naval transformation. The articles in this section provide some perspective on, perhaps even ballast for, the claims of proponents of the revolution in military affairs. Finally, the editor supplies a conclusion reviewing the main themes of the articles and the avenues to which they point.

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  China's Nuclear Force Modernization

  Lyle Goldstein

  Relations between Washington and Beijing improved swiftly in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, especially in comparison to the nadir that had been reached during the April 2001 EP-3 incident. This new tide of cooperation has included counterterrorism initiatives, regional partnership in such complex situations as Afghanistan and North Korea, and even some modest agreement on the importance of maintaining the status quo with respect to Taiwan's status.

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  The Atlantic Crisis

  William Hopkinson

  It would in any case have been desirable to review the transatlantic relationship more than a decade after the end of the Cold War, taking account of the interlinked processes of globalization and a changing security agenda. The events of 11 September 2001 and the publication of the U.S. national security strategy in September 2002 reinforced the need. A review was made imperative by the fissures opened up within Western alliance and security structures, as well as globally, by the action of the United States and United Kingdom against Iraq, and arguably the requirement was further reinforced by the reelection of President George W. Bush in November 2004. Whatever the longer- term outcome of that reelection and of Iraq, transatlantic relations have changed, as have intra-European ones. It is time, especially for Britain, to think hard about what has happened and what the next steps should be.

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  The Regulation of International Coercion

  James P. Terry

  The most significant discourse about serious threats to U.S. national security in the twenty-first century will likely concern the military capabilities and intentions of non state actors, acting either for themselves, for religious elites, or as surrogates for state sponsors.

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  Global War Game 2nd Series

  Robert H. Gile

  This report deals with practical issues and major themes identified during the second Global War Game (GWG) Series. Its focus is on various general topics, specific force employment issues, and discrete game events. Because of the interplay of themes and issues among several theaters, some repetition is necessary to provide a more complete discussion.

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  The Evolution of the U.S. Navy's Maritime Strategy

  John B. Hattendorf

  The Naval War College Press is pleased to republish and make more broadly available an essay that had become a standard reference work for those few fortunate enough to be both cleared for and fascinated by the evolution of postwar American strategy. This edition reproduces the Hattendorf analysis as it was first presented and published in 1989.