The Struggle for Sea Power: Lessons from the Great War

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The Struggle for Sea Power: Lessons from the Great War February 20, 2018 By John H. Maurer John H. Maurer is the Alfred Thayer Mahan Professor of Sea Power and Grand Strategy at the Naval War College and a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. The views expressed in this article are his alone.

Abstract: The history of the contest for naval mastery during the Great War has particular resonance for today because the United States now faces a serious threat from China’s increasing capabilities to wage war at sea. China’s naval challenge calls into question America’s continued command of the maritime commons. The stakes at risk for the United States in today’s contest are just as high as they were a hundred years ago for Britain. Defeat at sea would wreck American global leadership in the twenty-first century just as surely as it would have meant the collapse of British power in the twentieth. What, then, can we learn from past struggles for sea power and America’s entry into the First World War that offers guidance for understanding our current strategic predicament?

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ne hundred years ago, President Woodrow Wilson summoned the American people to “fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts—for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.” The United States, in choosing war, was fighting for the high moral purpose of creating a new, more secure and liberal international order: “The world must be made safe for democracy.”1 Waging war would, in turn, reshape the United States, its government, institutions, society, economy, culture, and politics: fighting “over there” would forever change who we are as a people “over here” at home. The American decision for war was triggered by, what Winston Churchill called, “a life-and-death struggle” at sea between the navies of Great Britain and Imperial Germany.2 Germany, a rising challenger, with aspirations to world power, President Woodrow Wilson, “Address to a Joint Session of Congress Requesting a Declaration of War Against Germany,” April 2, 1917, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=65366. 2 Winston S. Churchill, in James W. Muller, ed., Thoughts and Adventures (Wilmington: ISI Books, 2009), p. 134. 1

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was contesting the command of the maritime commons against Britain, the reigning superpower, which was accustomed to thinking of itself as the indispensable leader of the international system. On the outcome of this fight for naval mastery rested nothing less than the fate of empires. To whom did the future belong—the rising power or the keeper of the system? The stakes of the naval war were high. The winner at sea would win the war. The war at sea would decide the question of world power or decline for these competing empires.

President Woodrow Wilson

This clash at sea propelled the United States into the war and to take on the role of a superpower on the world stage. When war broke out in Europe during the summer of 1914, President Wilson aimed to preserve American neutrality. Wilson also sought to act as an intermediary, to broker negotiations among the warring states of Europe, to end the fighting. Even as the war at sea escalated—in particular, a German submarine sinking the great British ocean liner Lusitania in May 1915, involving the loss of American life—Wilson maintained: “There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight. There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right.”3 Wilson, however, could not keep the United States neutral as Britain and Germany escalated the fighting for command of the sea. It was not only Britain and Germany that had high stakes riding on the outcome of the naval contest: so, too, did the United States. American security and wellbeing were being challenged by Germany’s rising power. German submarines acting as predators to disrupt the global maritime commons. The young journalist Walter Lippmann, writing in the President Woodrow Wilson, “Address to Naturalized Citizens at Convention Hall, Philadelphia,” May 10, 1915, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=65388.

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New Republic, maintained: “The safety of the Atlantic highway is something for which America should fight.”4 The hundredth anniversary of American participation in the Great War is a fitting occasion to look back on this turning point in both world history and that of the United States. The Great War struggle to command the maritime commons offers insights into the strategic predicament facing the United States in the twentyfirst century. Looking back at past wars is always a valuable exercise for peering into the future. This history affords an opportunity to take stock of where we as a people stand in the world, to imagine the future direction of the United States in the international arena, to assess looming strategic dangers, and to think creatively about ways to construct a global order benefiting American interests and promoting its ideals. What are the elements of a grand strategy that will make the world a safer place for American democracy in the years ahead? That was the problem confronting Wilson and the United States a hundred years ago, and it still confronts us today. Struggle for Naval Mastery The struggle at sea during World War I formed part of a longer great power naval competition that stretched back some twenty years before the United States entered the fighting. At the end of the nineteenth century, when Queen Victoria celebrated her diamond jubilee, an observer of world affairs and naval developments would have been hard pressed to imagine that the navies of Britain, Germany, and the United States soon would be slugging it out in desperate sea fights on the world’s oceans. The naval historian Andrew Gordon writes: “The visible aura surrounding Britannia in 1897 remained one of serene, unassailable supremacy. . . . With 360 major fighting ships the R[oyal] N[avy] was equal to the next five navies combined.”5 This “serene, unassailable supremacy” would soon face determined challenges and was not destined to last.6 At the beginning of the twentieth century, several great powers undertook major increases in their naval strength. As the world’s leading sea power, a global empire linked together by long sea lanes, Britain faced a daunting problem in trying to defend its leadership in the maritime domain against challengers building up their navies. Gerard Fiennes, a major, well-informed commentator on naval matters in Britain, lamented: “The task before the [British] Empire is colossal. We, with about fifty-seven millions of white men, have to impose our peace on sixty-three millions of Germans, forty-five millions of Japanese, and a hundred million Americans, not to mention other Powers.”7 Would Britain continue Walter Lippmann, “The Defense of the Atlantic World,” New Republic, Feb. 17, 1917. Andrew Gordon, The Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1996), p. 317. 6 John H. Maurer, “A Rising Power and the Coming of a Great War,” Orbis: A Journal of World Affairs, Fall 2014, pp. 500-520. 7 Gerard Fiennes, The Ocean Empire: Its Dangers and Defence (London: Sampson Low, Marston, n.d. [1911]), p. 159. 4 5

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to rule the waves in the face of these challengers? The rising strength of these naval powers pointed toward a post-British international order, in which Britain would no longer dominate the world’s maritime commons. Of the rising challengers, Germany posed the most immediate and serious naval threat to Britain. Germany’s rulers made a conscious choice to challenge Britain at sea. A new generation of German leaders wanted their country to take a larger role in international affairs, to become a world power. Kaiser Wilhelm II championed this effort to transform the existing world order. As Germany’s supreme warlord, the Kaiser’s ambition was to transform the German Empire from a European continental state into a global sea power. To serve as the architect of Germany’s naval buildup, the Kaiser picked Admiral Alfred Tirpitz as his navy secretary in 1897. Tirpitz was an ambitious, forceful character, politically savvy in domestic, bureaucratic, and interagency politics. His views were that of a nationalist extremist, stridently anti-British in outlook: Britain stood as the principal obstacle to achieving the German dream of world power. Germany’s rulers were determined to break Britain’s dominant position in big-ship, surface-warfare capabilities. Germany’s economic development would provide the industrial, technological, and financial wherewithal to carry out a gigantic naval buildup. Germany’s leaders believed that their battle fleet’s growing strength would act as “yesterday’s deterrent” in their foreign relations with Britain, intimidating British governments so that they would concede rather than contest German aims in any test of strength between the two countries.8 The battle fleet was conceived as an instrument of coercion that would compel British appeasement of Germany in the international arena. But Germany’s rulers miscalculated Britain’s response. Instead of intimidating Britons, the German decision to build a powerful navy was an important driver in making Britain into an enemy and in bringing on the catastrophe of war. By 1908, alarmed British leaders could no longer ignore the threat posed by the German naval buildup. To British decision makers, Germany’s naval buildup appeared as nothing less than a short-warning, first-strike weapon. In response, the British government and people showed themselves determined to keep ahead of Germany in the ensuing naval arms race. A young Winston Churchill, who served as Britain’s First Lord of the Admiralty, called attention to the danger: “We should have ample margin [of superiority in warships because] . . . the consequences of defeat at sea are so much greater to us than they would be to Germany.” Further, Britain’s dependence on overseas sea lines of communication for critical supplies—including the most basic commodity of all, food—meant it could not afford to see naval mastery in home waters pass to a rival great power. In the matter of naval defense, Churchill maintained there could be “no parity of risk” between Britain and Germany.9

Jonathan Steinberg, Yesterday’s Deterrent: Tirpitz and the Birth of the German Battle Fleet (New York: Macmillan, 1966). 9 Speech by Winston Churchill, March 18, 1912, in Robert Rhodes James, ed., Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches, 1897-1963 (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1974), p. 1928. 8

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Winston Churchill Young Winston Young Winston Churchill

The Anglo-German naval rivalry stood out as a prominent feature on the international strategic landscape: Europe’s two leading great powers were vying against each other in an intense head-to-head struggle for command of the maritime commons; both countries going to enormous expense in building up their battle fleets for a trial of strength in the North Sea. British and German warships represented the latest technology and know-how. The navies trained for a coming test of strength at sea between the two countries. This war in the dockyards provoked the British journalist Norman Angell to write “at a time of panic” his famous tract The Great Illusion, which begins with the ominous sentence: “It is pretty generally admitted that the present rivalry in armaments with Germany cannot go on in its present form indefinitely.”10 Norman Angell’s fearful prediction would soon come to pass: the rivalry did come to an end, as the navies of Britain and Germany deployed to their war stations in the summer of 1914. To the surprise of many, however, these two powerful battle fleets did not rush to grapple with each other in mortal combat, in an attempt to score a decisive success in a major sea fight. Instead, both countries’ main surface fleets adopted a defensive stance. Naval commanders on both sides of the North Sea feared risking their big surface ships in fighting and exercised extreme caution in their fleets’ movements and actions. Once the war started, the huge prewar investment in capital ships seemed too valuable to risk in combat. After all, ships might get sunk if they fight!

Norman Angell, The Great Illusion: A Study of the Relation of Military Power in Nations to their Economic and Social Advantage (London: William Heinemann, 1910), p. 3.

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The defensive attitude of the admirals stood in marked contrast to the behavior of the generals on land. Whereas the armies of the great powers were immediately hurled against each other at the war’s beginning, fighting furious battles that proved hideously costly in lives, the main surface fleets of Britain and Germany avoided contact with each other. Whereas the generals proved profligate in their willingness to risk the lives of millions of soldiers in search of a decisive victory on the field of battle, the admirals feared losing a single capital ship, since warships could not be replaced as readily as could the poor, expendable infantrymen. Whereas the generals now stand accused of slavishly belonging to a cult of the offensive that killed and maimed millions of soldiers, defense dominance ruled in the minds of the admirals, who were deterred from bringing on a clash of battleships. Whereas on land an operational pause occurred on the Western Front (because the armies were running out of ammunition to hurl destruction at each other), at sea the fleets had plenty of shells in their magazines that their leaders were afraid to use. With the main fleets of Britain and Germany huddling in a defensive crouch, the North Sea became a watery no-man’s “land” in which the big ships dared not venture. A stalemate set in on the maritime chessboard, as the most valuable pieces, the queens of the British and German navies—the squadrons of modern battleships—kept far away from each other. German hopes of victory at sea rested on what today we would call a strategic offset of an anti-access, area-denial strategy. German naval leaders counted on Britain’s Royal Navy employing its traditional strategy of taking the offensive into the enemy’s home waters, instituting a close blockade of adversary naval bases. In the previous Great War—namely, that against Napoleon a hundred years before— Britain achieved success by following a forward-deployed naval strategy that resulted in the famous British victory of Admiral Horatio Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar. If Britain’s admirals in the early twentieth century emulated their illustrious forebears by repeating this hugely successful strategy from the past, the Germans believed they could defeat the British fleet in the North Sea. A British fleet attacking into the protected defensive bastion, formed by the first island chain of Borkum, Heligoland, and Sylt, would confront new and lethal weapons of naval warfare: mines, torpedoarmed submarines and small surface craft, and land-based artillery. Armed with these weapons, German forces would inflict heavy losses on British surface ships before the main battle even began. The attacking British battle fleet, weakened by losses, crippled and reduced in its fighting efficiency by damage, would then be finished off by German battleships in a major surface engagement.11 Germany’s offset strategy was to make the waters around the first island chain of the North Sea a highly lethal killing zone for British capital ships. Again, the actions of British leaders confounded German expectations. Much to the chagrin of the German navy’s leadership, the commander of Britain’s Grand Fleet, Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, was no Nelson. Indeed, Jellicoe was quite the reverse of Nelson when it came to calculating risk in naval operations. Nelson aimed Paul M. Kennedy, “The Development of German Naval Operations Plans against England, 1896-1914,” in Paul M. Kennedy, ed., The War Plans of the Great Powers (New York: Routledge edition, 2014), pp. 171-198. 11

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at nothing less than the annihilation of the enemy’s fleet. Jellicoe, however, was possessed of the spirit of safety first: he saw preserving his own ships from danger as the pinnacle of strategic wisdom. He had no intention of playing the role written for him by the German naval staff, even if it meant breaking with a strategic tradition that had served Britain well in the glory days of the Royal Navy.12 Jellicoe determined that the risks of an offensive in the North Sea far outweighed the rewards. Attacking into Germany’s home waters, in the face of the lethality of modern weaponry, made an offensive strategy a most hazardous proposition. Jellicoe refused to carry out an offensive that he feared would jeopardize Britain’s overall naval superiority. He warned: “The danger is very real and the disaster may occur in a few minutes without warning. It only requires the fleet to be inadvertently taken over one minefield for a reversal to take place in the relative strength of the British and German fleets. The existence of the Empire is at once in the most immediate and grave danger.”13 To Jellicoe, a North Sea offensive by his Grand Fleet would be an act of strategic folly. The Grand Fleet was not the Light Brigade, to be thrown in a pointless charge against the enemy’s guns. Jellicoe had good reason to be risk averse. The opening stages of the First World War underscored the danger to surface ships in operations at sea. The battleship Audacious, representing the latest generation of British capital ships, hit a mine and sank off the north coast of Ireland. In the naval assault on the Dardanelles, the attacking British and French fleet suffered heavy losses to mines. Six British and French battleships were sunk or heavily damaged by mines and Ottoman gun batteries when the Allied fleet tried to force its way past the defenses guarding the Dardanelles. Stealthy German submarines could also wreak havoc on surface ships. This danger was brought home by the loss of three British armored cruisers—the Aboukir, Cressy, and Hogue—torpedoed on the same day by a German submarine U-9 off the coast of the Netherlands. The British First Sea Lord, the uniformed head of the Royal Navy, Admiral Lord Fisher of Kilverstone lamented that “with the holocaust of the three cruisers” Britain had lost “more officers and men than in all Lord Nelson’s battles put together.”14 The lesson was clear: there was nothing heroic or strategically advantageous about pitting large surface ships against an anti-access strategy built upon mines, torpedoes, coastal defense artillery, and submarines. The age of Nelson was past, heroic virtues of command leadership made obsolete by weapons technology. Furthermore, no strategic imperative compelled Britain to attack into the German first island chain. Britain’s strategy of offshore control entailed imposing a naval stranglehold on Germany’s seaborne trade with the outside world. The Royal Navy could carry out this task by setting up a distant blockade. British warships— Admiral Viscount Jellicoe of Scapa, The Grand Fleet, 1914-1916: Its Creation, Development and Work (London: Cassell, 1919). 13 Jellicoe to Balfour, Jan. 25, 1916, Jellicoe Papers, Ad. Ms. 48992, Vol. 4, pp. 6-13, British Library. 14 Arthur J. Marder, ed., Fear God and Dread Nought: The Correspondence of Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher of Kilverstone (London: Jonathan Cape, 1959), Vol. 3, pp. 112-113. 12

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operating outside the second island chain, stretching from the English Channel, Britain, the Orkney, Shetland, and Faroe Islands, to the coast of Norway—could intercept German trade into the Atlantic. Britain’s advantageous geographic position meant that the British battle fleet could avoid the hazard of attacking into the heavily defended German home waters, or even risk fighting a major battle in the North Sea, while still inflicting serious damage on Germany’s economy and war effort. Germany’s expensive battleships built by Tirpitz were hemmed into the narrow waters of the first island chain near the German coastline. The stalemate in the North Sea constituted a British strategic victory. The combination of Britain’s geographic position, the superiority in large surface ships conferred by the prewar naval competition, and a defensive strategy in the North Sea prevented Germany’s battle fleet from breaking the British stranglehold on the German economy. Britain thus followed its own offset strategy of staying on the defensive in the North Sea to upset the German plan to defeat the Royal Navy.15 The famous Battle of Jutland, fought on May 31-June 1, 1916, demonstrated the inability of the German High Seas Fleet to overcome Britain’s advantages in the naval war. While the German fleet inflicted much heavier losses on their British opposite, Britain’s strategic stranglehold on Germany remained as strong as before the battle. The results of Jutland wounded British pride and rightly tarnished the reputation of the Royal Navy’s leaders. Germany’s battleships, however, had not broken the British blockade. Tirpitz had created a battle fleet to deter Britain from fighting Germany. If deterrence failed, then German navy planners hoped to defeat the British fleet in the littorals of Germany’s side of the North Sea. Tirpitz’s plan failed on both counts: yesterday’s deterrent did not deter Britain from fighting Germany, and British admirals chose to abandon a tradition of attacking the enemy fleet in favor of staying out of harm’s way.16 Germany Crosses the Red Line The failure of Germany’s High Seas Fleet to break the stalemate in the war at sea led to a reassessment of German naval strategy. The German people ardently wanted their navy to humble an arrogant Britain, which laid claim to commanding the world’s oceans and enforced the hunger blockade on Germany. But the German battle fleet had not delivered. Germany’s prewar strategy was bankrupt. On the eve of war, Tirpitz worried what might happen if the British did not attack into the German home waters. He asked the commander of Germany’s fleet: “What will you do if they [the British] do not come?” The answer given by the German navy’s leadership was the submarine.17 After the Battle of Jutland, Admiral Reinhard von Michael Epkenhans, “The Imperial Navy, 1914-1915,” in Michael Epkenhans, Jörg Hillmann, and Frank Nägler, eds. Jutland: World War I’s Greatest Naval Battle (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2015), pp. 117-142. 16 John H. Maurer, “Great War at Sea: Remembering the Battle of Jutland,” The Philadelphia Papers, Foreign Policy Research Institute, May 27, 2016, http://www.fpri.org/article/ 2016/05/great-war-sea-remembering-battle-jutland/. 17 Kennedy, “German Naval Operations Plans,” pp. 171-198. 15

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Scheer, commander of Germany’s battle fleet, reported to the Kaiser: “There can be no doubt that even the most successful result from a high sea battle will not compel England to make peace.”18 Germany’s battle fleet could not win the war at sea—a startling admission from its commander. Instead of the battleship serving as the decisive weapon, the German naval leadership turned to the submarine to deliver the knockout blow by an offensive to disrupt Britain’s control of the world’s shipping lanes. Scheer recommended: “A victorious end to the war at not too distant a date can only be looked for by the crushing of English economic life through U-boat action against English commerce.”19 While Britain had won the arms race with Germany in surface ships, another competition in naval forces had started on the eve of war that pitted a German buildup in submarines against British capabilities to defend trade. The British needed to stay ahead of Germany in meeting the submarine menace as much as it did the German surface fleet in the North Sea. Britain could not afford to lose against either threat. This stealthy undersea threat menaced Britain’s command of the seas. Before the war, Germany had lagged behind Britain in building a submarine force: Tirpitz favored putting his resources into increasing the German surface fleet of large armored ships. Britain (and not Germany) pioneered the development of long-range submarines, capable of carrying out offensive operations outside of home waters. Germany, however, did not lag behind for long in this new weapon. If Germany’s naval leaders were deterred from using their battle fleet, seeing the capital ships as too valuable to risk losing, they were not at all inhibited in their willingness to take the fight to Britain on the high seas with their submarines. The German naval offensive with submarines could range out from the North Sea to the Atlantic, to include the waters around the second island chain and beyond to the third island chain formed by Ireland. Germany was adopting a naval offset strategy of its own to defeat Britain at sea, using submarines to get around the British lead in capital ships and advantage of geographic position by undertaking a deep strike against the network of oceanic trade. The submarine force—not Tirpitz’s vaunted battleships— constituted Germany’s real high seas fleet. To be effective in disrupting Britain’s maritime trading network, German submarine skippers had to receive authority to fire without warning on merchant ships, neutral as well as Allied. Practically all shipping had to be treated as hostile. These permissive rules of engagement (known as unrestricted warfare) reduced the danger to German submarines of being attacked and increased their chances of sinking merchant tonnage. Indeed, once restrictions were lifted, German submarines would go on to inflict a stunning blow on world trade, just as Germany’s naval leaders predicted. In January 1917, before the unrestricted submarine campaign began, German submarines sank 145 British, Allied, and neutral ships, totaling 291,459 tons of merchant shipping. In April, German submarines sank 354 ships, Admiral [Reinhard] Scheer, Germany’s High Sea Fleet in the World War (London: Cassell, 1920), p. 169. 19 Scheer, High Sea Fleet, p. 169. 18

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totaling 834,549 tons of shipping.20 Losses of this magnitude, if permitted to continue, would bring about a German victory. German success in sinking merchant tonnage owed much, however, to the British Admiralty’s mismanagement of trade defense. In defending against Germany’s submarine offensive, the British Admiralty could not have been a more cooperative adversary, acting according to the script written for it by German naval planners. In charge at the Admiralty was Jellicoe, whose lackluster performance as commander of the Grand Fleet had not prevented him from being promoted to First Sea Lord. This choice would prove unfortunate. Jellicoe believed that, due to the German submarine offensive, the war was as good as lost. His pessimism stunned the commander of Britain’s main army on the Western Front, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig. At a high-level conference of political and military leaders to discuss future operations, Haig noted Jellicoe’s reaction to the shipping losses inflicted by German submarines that, “it would be impossible for Great Britain to continue the war in 1918. This was a bombshell for the Cabinet. . . Jellicoe’s words were, ‘There is no good discussing plans for next spring. We cannot go on.’”21 Jellicoe feared that losses in merchant ships would have “such a serious effect upon the import of food and other necessaries into allied countries as to force us into accepting peace terms.”22 Britain was losing the war at sea before its armies and those of its allies could win on land. Jellicoe’s failure to move quickly to adopt convoys magnified shipping losses. Ample evidence existed to show the value of convoys for the protection of trade. In this era, Britain was an energy exporter. British coal was exported to France, for example, and played a vital role in providing energy for the French wartime economy. The coal trade, which was convoyed across the Channel, suffered minimal losses, despite the active presence of German submarines. Jellicoe’s opposition delayed the widespread use of convoys.23 As First Sea Lord, Jellicoe was losing the war at sea to the German submarines—not in an afternoon, as he might have done in the North Sea as commander of the Grand Fleet—but in a protracted attrition battle involving merchant shipping losses. While unwilling to risk battleships, keeping them heavily defended by destroyers against attack by submarines, Jellicoe proved content to send merchant shipping into dangerous waters without adequate protection. Yet, Britain’s war effort depended on the protection of merchant shipping. Britain could no more afford to lose the Battle of the Atlantic than it could to suffer defeat in the North Sea. Jellicoe’s ineffectiveness and pessimism led Prime Minister David Lloyd George eventually to fire him on Christmas Eve 1917. He should have done it sooner. The prime minister complained: “Jellicoe has lost his nerve.” If attacked by political opponents for firing Jellicoe, Lloyd George was ready to make “disclosures that will Arthur J. Marder, From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), Vol. 4, p. 102. 21 Haig Diary, June 20, 1917, in Gary Sheffield and John Bourne, eds., Douglas Haig: War Diaries and Letters, 1914-1918 (London: Weidenfield and Nicolson, 2005), p. 301. 22 Jellicoe to Balfour, June 6, 1916, Jellicoe Papers, Ad. Ms. 48992, Vol. 4, pp. 61-74, British Library. 23 See Marder, Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, Vol. 4, pp. 99-192. 20

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astonish the House of Commons.” He would demonstrate gross “negligence and incompetence” at the Admiralty.24 Nor was Lloyd George alone in viewing the British naval leadership as incompetent. The Admiralty’s failure to stem shipping losses also frustrated President Wilson. “From the beginning of the war, I have been greatly surprised at the failure of the British Admiralty to use Great Britain’s great naval superiority in an effective way,” Wilson wrote to Admiral William S. Sims, the commander of American naval forces in Europe. “In the presence of the present submarine emergency, they are helpless to the point of panic.” Wilson castigated the Admiralty, which “was very slow to adopt the protection of convoy and it is not now, I judge, protecting convoys on an adequate scale within the danger zone, seeming to keep small craft with the Grand Fleet.”25 As the United States entered the war, American leaders questioned the competence of the Britain’s naval leadership and sought to push it toward a better strategy. In Germany’s attempt to achieve a quick and decisive victory at sea, Berlin had no illusions that their actions meant a showdown with the United States. Unrestricted submarine warfare meant sinking American ships. Germany’s leaders harbored no illusions that a decision for an all-out submarine offensive would trigger war with the United States. If Germany did not win quickly, then the war would be lost once the United States mobilized and brought to bear its resources. Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg understood the stakes at risk in provoking the United States. In arguing against a submarine offensive, he reasoned that, “if certainty for the defeat of England exists, we have to dare it. Nobody can give such assurance and it remains a throw of the dice with Germany’s existence at stake.” He judged “submarine warfare the ultima ratio; such a challenge would mean finis Germaniae in case of failure.”26 The German admirals, however, disagreed. German leaders hyped the submarine as a wonder and vengeance weapon (much like the rocket program in the Second World War) that would bring Britain to its knees. The German people, suffering from the British naval stranglehold, wanted to hit back at Britain. Standing against the bullying from the admirals and domestic political opponents, Bethmann Hollweg tried to prevent Germany from undertaking a campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare. But by the end of 1916, time had run out for the chancellor. Admiral Henning von Holtzendorff, chief of the German naval staff, provided the strategic rationale for the immediate undertaking of the submarine offensive in a memorandum dated December 22, 1916. He argued that the war would end in mutual exhaustion for the belligerents and a disaster for Germany if victory was not won by the autumn of 1917. The only prospect for gaining victory before that date rested on the submarine force. The Allied war effort critically depended on merchant 24 Riddell Diary, Dec. 25, 1917, Ad. Ms. 62980; and Jan. 6, 1918, Ad. Ms. 62981, British Library. 25 Wilson to Sims, July 4, 1917, in Josephus Daniels, The Wilson Era: Years of War and After, 1917-1923 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1946), p. 85. 26 Konrad H. Jarausch, The Enigmatic Chancellor: Bethmann Hollweg and the Hubris of Imperial Germany (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1973), p. 281.

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shipping. Unrestricted submarine warfare would double the rate of merchant shipping losses and force Britain to make peace. He maintained: “An energetic blow delivered with all force against English merchant tonnage promises certain success.” American objections should not lead Germany “to recoil from making use at the decisive moment of a weapon that promises victory for us.” Furthermore, Holtzendorff argued that American assistance would not arrive in time to prevent Britain’s defeat. The Navy Minister Admiral Eduard von Capelle agreed, even telling Reichstag deputies that the American soldiers would not be able to reach Europe “because our U-boats will sink them.”27 Supporting the admirals were Germany’s highest generals, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and his staff chief General Erich Ludendorff. Hailed by the German people as saviors of the country for protecting the homeland from a Russian invasion, Hindenburg and Ludendorff were effectively in charge of Germany’s overall strategy from the late summer of 1916. Ludendorff foolishly maintained, “America does not count.” Hindenburg, as usual following Ludendorff’s lead, told the chancellor that there must be no more delay in starting the submarine offensive. Faced by this united front of the generals and the admirals, the chancellor stood no chance of winning the internal political battle over Germany’s foreign policy and strategy. On January 9, 1917, at the fateful war council of German leaders at Pless, Germany’s destiny, along with that of the United States, was sealed. Wilhelm chose unreservedly to come down on the side of the military and naval chiefs. The Kaiser believed: “Now the time has passed for negotiating with America! If Wilson wants war he must bring it about and then shall have it!” Bethmann Hollweg was forced to capitulate. The empress found the chancellor “a completely broken man.” Bethmann Hollweg resigned himself to the view: “When the military authorities consider submarine warfare essential, I am not in a position to object.” He predicted that the submarines would not end the struggle with a smashing German victory; instead, the war of exhaustion would continue, with Germany’s enemies “pushing us back in France and Belgium to the Maas, with the capture of many guns and the taking of a host of prisoners.”28 His forebodings would prove all too accurate during the second half of 1918. In taking the decision for unrestricted submarine warfare, Germany’s rulers were fully conscious that they were crossing a red line, an action that would bring the United States into the war. Germany’s actions on the high seas posed a direct test to President Wilson and his efforts to keep the United States out of the war. Over the previous two years, Wilson repeatedly warned Berlin that the United States would not Jarausch, Enigmatic Chancellor, pp. 298, 300, and 304; Dirk Steffen, “The Holtzendorff Memorandum of Dec. 22, 1916 and Germany’s Declaration of Unrestricted U-boat Warfare,” The Journal of Military History, Jan. 2004, pp. 215-224; and Fritz Fischer, Germany’s Aims in the First World War (New York: Norton, 1967), p. 308. 28 Müller Diary, Jan. 9 and 10, 1917, in Walter Görlitz, ed., The Kaiser and His Court: The Diaries, Note Books and Letters of Admiral Georg Alexander von Müller (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1964), p. 231. On the German submarine decision, see, Avner Offer, First World War: An Agrarian Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, paperback ed., 1991), pp. 354-367. 27

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tolerate the sinking of American ships by German submarines. Wilson, however, coupled his warnings against the aggressive use of submarines to Berlin with diplomatic efforts to mediate a negotiated settlement that would end the fighting. During the 1916 presidential election, Wilson campaigned on a record of keeping the country out of war. Wilson was forced to walk a fine line in reconciling his diplomacy with American domestic politics. On one side of Wilson stood hawkish critics of the administration (like former President Theodore Roosevelt), who thought the United States should take a much harder line against Germany, even if it led to war. On the other side were those like the prominent populist William Jennings Bryan, who served as Wilson’s first Secretary of State. Bryan resigned from office in protest against Wilson’s policies that, he believed, compromised the country’s neutrality by providing too much assistance to the Allies and by needlessly provoking Berlin. In standing up both to Roosevelt hawks and Bryan doves, as well as winning reelection, Wilson showed sure political instincts at home in taking the country into war. (Alas, in bringing the country out of war, Wilson would fail to demonstrate the same domestic political acumen in the making of the peace and selling it to the American people.) In the bid to beat Britain, Germany’s escalation of the war at sea demolished Wilson’s efforts to keep America above the fray and to achieve a negotiated peace. The German submarine offensive threatened American security. Walter Lippmann argued: “A [German] victory on the high seas would be a triumph of that class which aims to make Germany the leader of the East against the West. . . . If by any chance the submarine should succeed, the party of von Tirpitz would be invincible.”29 Germany’s aggressive behavior converted Wilson into a hawk, along with the American people. In asking Congress for a declaration of war, the president said: “The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind.” Wilson asserted “that the recent course of the Imperial German government to be in fact nothing less than war against the government and people of the United States.” War had been “thrust upon” the American people.30 In entering the war, the American aim was transformed from “peace without victory” to regime change, a struggle to topple Germany’s rulers from power and to remake the German state into a responsible democratic stakeholder within the international system. By crossing Wilson’s red line, Germany’s military and naval leaders changed the whole character of the conflict. Imagine if the United States had not entered the war: Germany stood to win a war of exhaustion over its continental enemies— France, Italy, and Russia—which were in imminent danger of collapse during 1917. Britain, too, was staggered by its heavy losses. Even the grimly determined British hawk Churchill believed, “the Allies would have been beaten if America had not come in.”31 Lippmann, “Defense of the Atlantic World.” Wilson, “Declaration of War,” http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=65366. 31 Admiral William S. Sims recorded Churchill’s comments about the war situation. Sims to his wife, May 10, 1917, Sims Papers, Box 9, Library of Congress. 29 30

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Instead, Germany’s rulers ensured their own defeat, transforming the American domestic political scene in favor of war, bringing the resources of the United States into the struggle for mastery at sea and for Europe. The massive deployment of American armed might and resources from the United States across the Atlantic Ocean, far from the homeland, tipped the scales in the struggle against Germany. American naval forces and shipping made a valuable contribution to the victory at sea over the German submarine peril. American financial resources also enabled the Allied Powers associated with the United States to undertake total efforts in mobilizing their armed forces and economies for the fight. And, in an incredible effort to encompass Germany’s defeat on land, the United States eschewed the role of offshore balancer and committed a force onshore of 2,000,000 boots on the ground, joining the Allied armies fighting on the Western Front in France. The American contribution in blood and treasure came just in time in the fight for Germany’s defeat. Lessons for Today? Today, we are witnessing a dangerous replay of past struggles for naval mastery between the leading world power and an international challenger whose rulers are determined to achieve their dream of national greatness. This current-day contest between China and the United States in naval, aerospace, and cyber weaponry is part of a high-stakes competition for global leadership. While China’s rulers have called for “a new type of great-power relationship,” the steady buildup of their armed forces looks more like a return to past struggles for leadership of the international system. The slogan “China Dream”—like the German demand to attain the status of world power, a place in the sun—might appear vague, but it nonetheless represents very real aspirations to achieve greater security and international standing, to dictate change in global affairs.32 As Imperial Germany’s rulers viewed a naval buildup as a precondition for furthering their geopolitical ambitions, so, too, do China’s leaders today.33 Economic development and increased armaments go hand-in-hand to rising challengers who harbor ambitions to remake the international system in their own image. New policy guidance from the Chinese government states, “the traditional mentality that land outweighs sea must be abandoned.” China’s naval buildup is an extraordinary manifestation of Beijing’s commitment to challenge American leadership on the maritime commons and on the world stage. Channeling his inner Kaiser Wilhelm, President Xi Jinping calls on China’s navy to “aim for the top ranks in the world. . . . Building a strong and modern navy is an important mark of a top ranking global military.”34

Liu Mingfu, The China Dream: Great Power Thinking and Strategic Posture in the Post-American Era (New York: Beijing Mediatime Books, 2015). 33 Maurer, “A Rising Power and the Coming of a Great War,” Orbis, pp. 500-520. 34 “China’s Xi Calls for Greater Efforts to Make Navy World Class,” The Asahi Shimbun, May 25, 2017, http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201705250028.html. 32

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President Xi Jinping These words are no empty boast. One recent assessment forecasts that China will possess a fleet of 500 combatants by 2030, including an undersea force of 75 diesel submarines and 12 nuclear attack submarines.35 China’s construction of a large carrier force also points to ambitions to play a larger global role. It is not just in numbers of ships but in technological sophistication and professionalism that China’s warfighting capabilities are improving. Paul Bracken, in an important article on technologies that are transforming force balances, argues that, “China is choosing its strategic posture based on a careful study of U.S. vulnerabilities. It fits the framework of a first striker trying to minimize the residual capability of U.S. forces.”36 The magnitude of the Chinese naval buildup presents a challenge at sea that the United States has not faced since the closing days of the Cold War. No doubt, China’s leaders would like to achieve their foreign policy ambitions without ever having to fight the naval contest with the United States. The ancient strategic wisdom found in the Art of War enjoins wise leaders, “To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.”37 Just as Germany’s rulers hoped that their growing battle fleet would deter Britain from fighting, China’s leadership can envision how their armed buildup will drive American leaders to the conclusion that contesting the global commons is too costly and potentially too dangerous. Policy analyst and commentator Michael Lind writes, “The United States should 35 Patrick M. Cronin, Mira Rapp-Hooper, Harry Krejsa, Alex Sullivan, and Rush Doshi, Beyond the San Hai: The Challenge of China’s Blue-Water Navy, CNAS, May 2017, p. 9, https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.cnas.org/documents/CNASReport-BlueWaterNavyFinalb.pdf. 36 Paul Bracken, “The Cyber Threat to Nuclear Stability,” Orbis: A Journal of World Affairs, Spring 2016, p. 200. 37 Samuel B. Griffith, translator, Sun Tzu: The Art of War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, paperback ed., 1971), III, 3; p. 77.

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maintain its primacy in the global commons as long as it can do so for a reasonable cost. But at some point in the future it may be impossible for the United States to maintain its lead, without spending itself into bankruptcy, like the over-militarized Soviet Union.”38 China’s political and military leaders might view the point in time envisioned by Lind as getting quite close. As China gets stronger, and better armed, Beijing might expect that the “gamblers” in Washington will know when to fold, know when to walk away, know when to run.39 If that occurs, Chinese armaments will have played a major role in inducing American appeasement of China. The shades of Kaiser Wilhelm and Tirpitz can then congratulate themselves in thinking that their strategy worked in China’s case, even if it failed for Imperial Germany. If the United States is determined, however, to push out that point in time by making an effort to meet China’s naval challenge, it will require an increase in American shipbuilding because numbers, as well as advanced technology and training, will count. Why do numbers matter? Quite simply, if a future SinoAmerican clash at sea occurred, the United States Navy must expect to suffer losses on a scale that it has not experienced since World War II. The lethality and wide range of weaponry that China and the United States can employ in fighting at sea will result in heavy losses. In the Great War, at the Battle of Jutland, for example, Britain lost 14 surface combatants—including three battle cruisers—out of a force of 150 warships. What if the United States Navy were to lose between eight to ten percent of its surface warships in a single day of fighting with China, as Britain’s Royal Navy did at the Battle of Jutland? Major sea battles of the Second World War in the Pacific—Pearl Harbor, Coral Sea, Midway, Guadalcanal, and Okinawa—confirm the lethality of high-intensity, modern naval warfare. The fighting at sea around Okinawa, in particular, underscores the kind of losses and vulnerability of surface naval platforms to swarming air attacks from land bases. To maintain command of the maritime commons, a navy must be able to take losses and still keep executing its assigned missions. Recent studies recommend that the Navy’s strength reach around 350 ships.40 The history of the world wars would underscore that this recommendation represents a minimum force structure requirement for the Navy in the face of rising threats, not just from China, but from other countries determined to challenge the international status quo and American security. The United States Navy cannot expect that the fighting will end after the battle of the first salvo. Instead, the fighting will likely continue, despite initial losses. Expended stocks of weapons will have to be replaced to sustain combat operations. Commercial shipping will have to be pressed into service as naval platforms, as Britain did during the Falklands War, in an attempt to replace losses. A trained bench of manpower will also be necessary to keep ships at sea and in the fight. Michael Lind, American Way of Strategy: U.S. Foreign Policy and the American Way of Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 205. 39 The reference, of course, is to Kenny Roger’s famous song The Gambler, https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=gDwCMxPwJ_4. 40 Chief of Naval Operations’ White Paper, “The Future Navy,” May 17, 2017, https://news.usni.org/2017/05/17/document-chief-of-naval-operations-white-paper-thefuture-navy. 38

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A robust warfighting posture of this magnitude will prove costly, likely beyond the ken of today’s defense planners and the budget of those holding the purse strings. Before World War I, staying ahead of Germany in the naval arms race imposed high costs on Britain. The Royal Navy’s budget increased from £31,000,000 to £48,800,000 from 1907 to 1913.41 That represented an increase in naval defense outlays of over 50 percent. Britain’s experience indicates that, even if the United States adopts a grand strategy predicated on “restraint”—playing the role of an offshore balancer—it will come with a high price tag.42 Will the American government and people, for example, increase naval spending by a comparable amount over the next six years to stay ahead of China? Such a dramatic increase will be derided as alarmist, unnecessary, and even dangerous among American decision makers.43 But the naval struggles of the twentieth century underscore that the leading world power will no longer lead if it falls behind in an arms race to rising challengers. Of course, the world wars also showed the immense amount of commercial shipping losses that can occur when great powers trade blows at sea. While the German battleship fleet remained on the defensive for most of the war, Germany’s submarines went on the attack and inflicted an immense damage on shipping networks. Just compare the damage meted out by Germany’s navy during the war: while the High Sea Fleet at Jutland destroyed 111,000 tons displacement of British warships, German submarines sank nearly 13-million tons of merchant shipping.44 Defeating the German navy’s transformation and its unrestricted use of submarines to disrupt the global maritime network required an immense British effort. Inadequate numbers of destroyers and escorts hurt Britain’s ability to master the German submarine threat. Britain needed to build a whole new fleet of naval escorts to protect commercial shipping on the maritime commons, since many of the Royal Navy’s destroyers were tied down protecting large capital-ship platforms in the North Sea. The British navy’s leadership also had to reassess and adapt their tactics and operations to limit the damage being done to the shipping network. Much against their inclination and much too slowly, Britain’s naval leadership moved to implement convoys to protect critical shipping assets. In addition, new technologies—aircraft, depth charges, underwater listening capabilities, mines, signals intelligence—were spurred that provided enhanced capabilities to defend the network from attack. And, it must be emphasized, Britain and the United States built millions of tons of new merchant shipping to repair the damage inflicted on the oceanic transport network. The defense of the maritime network during the Great

David Stevenson, Armaments and the Coming of War (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), p. 7. Barry R. Posen, Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014). 43 Lawrence Korb, “Lack of Money is Not What Caused Fatal Ship Collisions,” The American Conservative, Sept. 7, 2017, http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/lack-of-moneyis-not-what-caused-fatal-ship-collisions/. 44 Niall Ferguson, “Sinking Globalization,” Foreign Affairs, March-April 2005. 41 42

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War forcefully illustrates the importance of having the ability to take losses and recover from them. Even with these herculean efforts to defend against the disruption caused by German submarines, the capacity of the shipping network was seriously degraded, confronting policymakers and planners with difficult tradeoffs in setting strategic priorities. Reduction of carrying capacity, for example, required strenuous measures to control the allocation of food supplies for the civilian population. Which was more important—shipping American soldiers as quickly as possible to take part in the fighting in France or ensuring a reserve of food supplies for the civilian population of the European Allies to prevent a drop in morale on the home front? The latter would lead to popular discontent, labor unrest, social turmoil, and political protest.45 The loss of shipping capacity also called into question the ability to sustain fighting theaters of war. At the height of the submarine crisis during 1917, the ability of Britain and France to keep their armies supplied on the Balkan front was very much open to question. The lack of shipping came close to compelling British and French leaders to withdraw their ground forces from the Balkans. Allied and American leaders had no easy strategic choices before them in responding to German depredations to the maritime network. U.S. Coalition Partners’ Vital Role Another important takeaway from examining the Great War is that a conflict with China will involve other countries in the fighting. A future Sino-American war—like the previous one fought out by China and the United States on the Korean Peninsula between 1950 and 1953—will be a contest of coalitions. American coalition partners can make an enormous contribution to a struggle for naval mastery with China. Just imagine, for example, if Australia, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan spent more on their naval defenses, with their navies possessing a combined total force of 100 modern diesel submarines. Such an addition to America’s naval strength would be a nightmare to Chinese naval planners and contribute to deterring conflict in the Pacific. Just as American naval strength and shipping made an important contribution to defeating Germany’s submarine offensive during World War I, our close coalition partners will play a vital role in meeting China’s growing warfighting capabilities. Washington and the Navy must also continue to develop partnerships with India and Vietnam in an effort to achieve common security interests in facing China’s growing political and naval ambitions. Beijing, too, will find coalition partners among those who want to hurry along a post-American world. China is currently doing a better job than Imperial Germany did in finding common ground for strategic cooperation with Russia. China would find it much more difficult, as did Germany, to compete on the maritime commons if it needed to devote substantial resources to defend a long land frontier against Russia. Tirpitz castigated Germany’s diplomacy for failing to cultivate closer strategic ties with Russia: “One single ally worth mentioning would have been of decisive influence [in the naval war]. . . . A reliably neutral attitude on 45

On strategy, food supplies, and navies, see, Offer, First World War.

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the part of Russia in the event of an Anglo-German war would have sufficed . . . to have left our navy free morally and actually for an offensive against England.”46 Like Germany, China needs at least a neutral Russia if it is ever to achieve the dream of overturning an American-led world order. Driving a wedge between Beijing and Moscow will thus better enable the United States to exercise control of the global commons. The Great War experience also highlights the danger of escalation once deterrence fails and fighting begins. The inability of the German surface fleet to break Britain’s economic stranglehold led Germany’s rulers to escalate the fighting, carrying out deep strikes against British and world shipping. China’s leadership today no doubt believes that, in case of a conflict with the United States and its allies, a maritime blockade will damage their country’s economy and put pressure on them to make concessions to end the conflict. Beijing has tried to counter this danger by developing overland infrastructure into the heartland of Eurasia to gain access to outside resources. Still, China will have great difficulty breaking a maritime blockade if other countries in the region join in supporting the United States. The island chains of the Western Pacific pose a daunting strategic challenge for China to overcome, just as Germany’s geographic position put it at a disadvantage in a war at sea against Britain. Fearing defeat, Germany’s naval and military leaders escalated the fighting. Germany’s rulers sought to turn the tables on Britain in the war at sea by unleashing an all-out submarine offensive. Germany’s naval leaders believed that this offensive could win the war. At first, Germany’s gamble seemed close to success: the immense losses inflicted by German submarines on shipping created a crisis that threatened Britain’s ability to continue the war. If that experience is any guide, the leadership of the Chinese armed forces might well call for vigorous aerospace, cyber, and naval offensive in response to a multi-domain blockade of China. Instead of resorting to negotiations, in search of a diplomatic exit ramp out of conflict, the Chinese military might first want to test the strength and resolve of the United States and its coalition partners. China’s panoply of ballistic and cruise missiles will enable it to carry out long-range strikes, hitting targets beyond the first and second island chains, just as German submarines could range out to attack shipping at a distance in the waters around the British Isles and the Atlantic. The growing Chinese submarine force offers another weapon to disrupt the maritime commons and inflict losses. Of course, China could attack the American homeland with cyber and missile weapons. In World War I, Germany’s rulers felt compelled by an inflamed public opinion to undertake offensive operations, to use the weapons forged by German industry and technology to take down the bullying international hegemon. They had stoked the popular passion of the German people, using nationalism as a rallying cry to bolster the regime’s legitimacy. National zeal now demanded aggressive action 46 Grand-Admiral [Alfred] Von Tirpitz, My Memoirs (London: Hurst and Blackett, [1919]), p. 180.

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and served as a propellant for escalation. The mantra of world power or decline pushed Germany’s rulers into pursuing a dream of hegemonic ambitions. To settle for anything less was to admit the bankruptcy of their claim to lead the German people. There could be no going back. Germany’s rulers, in their fight to stay atop the political and social pyramid at home, wrecked their country, killing and maiming many patriotic Germans along the way. Will China’s leaders prove any different in outlook if defeat in war was viewed as bringing about the downfall of one-party rule? The Great War, thus, presents us with a frightening scenario, with escalation tempting leaders to go another round in fighting in a quest for victory, to think that wonder weapons will prove decisive. It is truly terrifying to imagine where escalatory violence in a war between China and the United States might end. To prevent such a horrific clash of civilizations from unfolding, a renewal of American power in the Pacific is essential to deterring war and escalation. Prudence in grand strategy calls for a buildup of American power in the Pacific and not retrenchment. The United States, working with coalition partners, must aim at nothing less than to convince China’s political and military leaders that a decision to fight or to escalate fighting is a gamble they will surely lose.

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