The U.S. Navy and Britain’s Royal Navy are different organizations. Although Americans have repeatedly tried to emulate the Royal Navy—at first due to the threat it posed, then later for the wisdom sailors and politicians could glean from British naval experience—they always fell afoul of American geographic realities, national culture, and other differences that set the two navies apart. The United States ultimately requires a bespoke navy to suit its unique needs. Continental nations like America have a far more troubled understanding of the role of the sea and maritime connections in their national life than do island peoples, who have no choice but to be the best at sea. Several American naval officers and civilians throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have recognized this, not least those who faced intense defense reform problems such as defense unification. American navalists have learned from the Royal Navy’s hundreds of years of experience at warfare, crafting strategy, and adapting to changes in policy and technology throughout history. This begs the question: in order to create its bespoke service, what can the U.S. Navy learn from the Royal Navy of today?
The Royal Navy is the world’s most successful fighting force at and from the sea. It is one of recorded history’s most battle-honoured, victory-centric military forces. By comparison, American navalists rejoiced when they could utilize the Battles of Midway (1942) and Leyte Gulf (1944) in the Second World War to claim the U.S. Navy had come of age, delivering the long-awaited equivalent of the Royal Navy’s 1805 victory at Battle of Trafalgar. However, some Americans recognized that the aspirational promise made to American leadership and constituents of a U.S. Navy ‘second to none’ had fallen short. Whereas the Battle of Trafalgar was fought to stop an invasion of England, continental America was relatively secure regardless of the outcome of individual battles in the Pacific during the Second World War. It was challenging to make the political argument for a new naval policy in a world many were convinced would henceforth be governed by atomic bombs, rockets, and air power rather than naval warfare as had been prior to them.
This is important because how either navy approached the relationship between sea, state, navy, and nation would be vital to their future. Neither navy secured ‘perfect’ policy post-1945, but the Royal Navy, with its distinct advantage from the underlying geographic arguments of its islands, ironically ended up in the worst position.
The U.S. Navy can learn from the Royal Navy by analysing mistakes it made in educating -or not educating- the British government about seapower. Across all naval, maritime, and wider defense and security debates, the baseline fact is that if education on the relationship between the sea and state is not carefully managed, all the efforts of seapower can be quickly undone. From that sea-state nexus flows political discussion, policy, funding, and direction. In short, why do nations invest in these costly, complex organizations known as navies? Land and land-based air perspectives have always been easy paths for policy; this is perfectly natural, as humans are land-dwellers who cannot see over the horizon. Consider how outer space was and remains such a challenge, maritime in nature but resistant to mastery due to vast distance. Shortsightedness is why the perpetual, pernicious and permanent challenge of ‘seablindness’ exists. It cannot be defeated, nor overcome, but it can be tamed.
Managing this challenge requires a mindful eye to the past. The Royal Navy entered 1946 with its head held high. Maritime power had soundly defended Britain from invasion in wartime, and the fate of the nation was tied to the outcome of Battle of Atlantic, in which the efforts of sailors, civilians, and marines together at sea made the crucial difference. However, post-war, it faced an adversary in the form of domestic issues for Britain was financially broke but determined political and extremist military theorist views who wanted to cast aside efforts at sea from future policy and strategy discussions. Some politicians, informed by extreme army and air force theorists, rejected the underlying maritime culture and strategy that Britain had developed and relied on since at least the 1500s. By deconstructing understanding of national strategy from the highest offices down and twisting historical narrative, they made navies look old, tired and irrelevant. They put a halt to building a Royal Navy more relevant to the times when seapower was a vital tool in government arsenals. These efforts were further supported by twisting wartime tactical engagements to make it look like Britain must, fraudulently, be a land-based power instead. As past Admiralty Secretaries pointed out, those who want to throw national strategy in the trash for service pride and ideology are they themselves the threat to sound policy and strategy.
Meanwhile in America, the efforts of great minds, from Secretary of Defense James Forrestal to Chiefs of Naval Operations King, Denfeld, and Burke to Admiral Hyman Rickover, redesigned the U.S. Navy with great accuracy through the reading of the political ‘tea leaves’. Their takeaways: never stand still, take risks, and always keep building. They had firsthand experience that showed them that for all the might and the power that the U.S. Navy had built by 1945, it had been shattered politically within a few years because of the transition to peace, defense unification political battles, and the Cold War, which bought into question the roles, missions and capabilities of all the military, particularly the navy. Thus is the relationship between defense and political decision-making where while in one circumstance support can be forthcoming to the military, it can as easily be taken away when other agendas and issues, domestic and foreign, shape the political debate. In Western civilization, defense is rightfully under the control of civilians, who are sceptical of its use and hopeful that it is not required. The adage ‘speak softly and carry a big stick’ rings true, and navies are better placed for this duty than any other military service. These great minds knew the U.S. Navy was steps from extinction, for America was not sea-dependent thanks to its ocean buffers. They knew that America’s security instead required an ironclad relationship between the navy and the nation’s foreign policy.
If American navalists cannot accept these facts about ‘seablindness’ and their maritime forces, then they should learn from the experience of the Royal Navy. Past glories do not guarantee that a military can meet present challenges, let alone adapt to meet future demands and threats. The Royal Navy entered the post-war era filled with arrogance and naïveté fuelled by centuries as a seapower state. The end of understanding of the centrality of seapower was believed to be an impossibility. However, there was a vulnerability in the system. Understanding of the sea’s role in national strategy and hence the navy’s rested on the organizational culture of British defense. Yet, the organisation that had supported that was purposefully destroyed by the end of the 1960s. This parachuted the future communication and education of national strategy, the navy, and what it means to be an island, into the hands of naval personnel who were entirely unequipped to handle the task and uninterested in trying. Royal Navy personnel were never as politically savvy as their American counterparts due to differences in government structure and the fact that responsibility for national strategy and strategic literacy, of which the sea cannot be ignored in our ocean planet, had rested with dedicated civilians in the Admiralty since the 1500s.
The Admiralty, and today the Department of the Navy, should be a place of institutional memory and corporate knowledge, adept at utilizing archives to garner insight for the decision-making of today and tomorrow. When independent service ministries and military departments were abolished under the regime of post-war defense unification, the task of rebuilding was lost to the 1980s. This happened because future generations were not taught to work the problem and were disinclined from educating themselves.
In short, when American’s ask today ‘why has the Royal Navy declined?’ it is not due to culprits such as the end of Empire or budgets. Ultimately, it is because few in Britain communicate why the Royal Navy exists, and even fewer do it effectively. Those who attempt to do so, usually from outside of government or military, are not understood by those in search of the tools and training to talk to government. They are even met with hostility or suspicion despite all parties’ shared goal. Those in search of the answers lack the willingness to learn -or have not been provided the basic means to understand- from those with answers to share. Elsewhere, interest in tackling this problem has evaporated due to operational tempo, ever-changing political and financial landscapes, and the exhaustion of sailors and marines who juggle tasks that take priority over combating matters like ‘seablindness.’ This position was reasonable pre-1945, when the most fundamental questions of the relationship between nation and its navy for the highest offices were handled elsewhere, but that system no longer exists. The desire to get the job done at sea is more complicated, and the risk of defeat increases when policy, strategy and doctrine have failed to secure the necessary resources. A self-fulfilling prophecy: all fails when a problem is going unaddressed from which all issues flow.
By the end of the 1980s, Britain had completely rejected centuries of experience or any understanding of its navy. When answers were needed, none were forthcoming where they had been before. To some, it was almost like 500 years of strategic experience never happened. Mediocre ‘public relations’ tactics deployed over the past few decades have failed to deliver, and deep-rooted problems were shored up temporarily only for stopgap efforts to fail. The British public retains pride in the White Ensign, but public relations is generally ineffective, and policy engagement time after time fails to result in a change of course. This all stems from the fact that understanding of the Royal Navy hangs by a thread in Government and Parliament.
Today, the fact that continental nations who are economically equivalent to islands like Britain often field fleets that best the capabilities of island nations. A stunning reality to consider. But if an island nation like Britain rejects seapower, doubting its relevancy and resisting maritime spending even though it is sea-dependent, imagine that vulnerable countries with navies like America could experience the same fate. In fact, it is easier for them to do so. Continental nations should not consider themselves above the risk of disinterest in naval investment. Britain illustrates what U.S. naval thinkers have known to be true since the late nineteenth century: pathways to extinguishing American sea power are plausible threats for the future of the U.S. Navy. It would be easy for American navalists to avoid this thorny problem, yet their forebears did not. Diligently communicating the importance of the navy and maritime power will be a continual task, as it always has been in the continental country, for this generation and the next generation of Americans.
No military or defense service is perfect. There comes a time where rot sets in, and an organization must choose to think wisely and act boldly, or else resign itself to circling the buoy on problems. Today, the Royal Navy claims to be a thinking navy, though its best fighting sailor Lord Horatio Nelson would have mused that there is only so much thinking to be done before you need to get on with the job. In his time, the Admiralty did the thinking for the Royal Navy, freeing sailors to do what the nation needed most: to be the very best at sea.
Taxpayers should be mindful that it is easy to criticize uniformed personnel. The nature of defense unification means that they are easy targets for political deflection over complicated national decision-making. However, attention would be better directed towards big-picture political decision-making and culture. Within navies, history has shown that there could be conflict between sea-based and shore-based personnel, for the fleet must come first. Still, the only way to combat organisational stagnation is through a continual feedback loop between shore and sea; the Royal Navy’s age of sail and decentralization is a testament to the supremacy of this approach. Ultimately, both nations’ navies are structurally weak and depend on the efforts of civilians and veterans more so than armies or air forces. This needs to be understood to build the navy of tomorrow; a navy that has moved on from the post-1945 era, that can adapt to present and future technologies, and that stands mightier than all past navies combined.
Today, Americans must know that when it comes to their dearest ally at sea, there is still quality in the White Ensign. The Royal Navy focuses heavily on training; other navies should also embrace this ethos. Still, like any organization, demoralization from endless issues, political attacks, and even interservice rivalry can break it.
America cannot afford misplaced notions of sea power promoted by those who do not understand it. Nor can the nation afford to underestimate why the seas are important. If such matters are commonplace on Capitol Hill, as has happened with the Royal Navy in the British Government and Parliament, then the same fate beckons for the U.S Navy. Equally, security at sea and the oceans cannot be policed by the U.S. Navy alone. In fact, island nations may be more suited to acting as guarantors of good order at sea than the U.S. Navy, whose striking power remains comparatively more vital to foreign policy. Yet America should be candidly asking, what can other nations do across the spectrum of tasks at and from the sea, and why aren’t they doing it?
Education is the only tool for addressing ‘seablindness’ and the navy’s problems, both internal and external. If American sailors and marines and their partners learn one thing from the Royal Navy, it should be that complacence and overconfidence are invitations for ‘seablindness’. It is not a question of if, but when, and it is a threat more devasting than enemy fire. Decision-makers’ mastery of the relationship between sea and nation is about integrating education on naval and civilian activity into broader national maritime strategic posture. The price of failure has never been higher from seabed to space for nation and navy.
Dr. James W.E. Smith is the Laughton-Corbett Research Fellow at King’s College London. In 2021, James completed a 15-year study into the relationship between the higher organization of defense and its relationship with national strategy making in the U.K. and U.S.
The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.
By Dr. James W.E. Smith
The U.S. Navy and Britain’s Royal Navy are different organizations. Although Americans have repeatedly tried to emulate the Royal Navy—at first due to the threat it posed, then later for the wisdom sailors and politicians could glean from British naval experience—they always fell afoul of American geographic realities, national culture, and other differences that set the two navies apart. The United States ultimately requires a bespoke navy to suit its unique needs. Continental nations like America have a far more troubled understanding of the role of the sea and maritime connections in their national life than do island peoples, who have no choice but to be the best at sea. Several American naval officers and civilians throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have recognized this, not least those who faced intense defense reform problems such as defense unification. American navalists have learned from the Royal Navy’s hundreds of years of experience at warfare, crafting strategy, and adapting to changes in policy and technology throughout history. This begs the question: in order to create its bespoke service, what can the U.S. Navy learn from the Royal Navy of today?
The Royal Navy is the world’s most successful fighting force at and from the sea. It is one of recorded history’s most battle-honoured, victory-centric military forces. By comparison, American navalists rejoiced when they could utilize the Battles of Midway (1942) and Leyte Gulf (1944) in the Second World War to claim the U.S. Navy had come of age, delivering the long-awaited equivalent of the Royal Navy’s 1805 victory at Battle of Trafalgar. However, some Americans recognized that the aspirational promise made to American leadership and constituents of a U.S. Navy ‘second to none’ had fallen short. Whereas the Battle of Trafalgar was fought to stop an invasion of England, continental America was relatively secure regardless of the outcome of individual battles in the Pacific during the Second World War. It was challenging to make the political argument for a new naval policy in a world many were convinced would henceforth be governed by atomic bombs, rockets, and air power rather than naval warfare as had been prior to them.
This is important because how either navy approached the relationship between sea, state, navy, and nation would be vital to their future. Neither navy secured ‘perfect’ policy post-1945, but the Royal Navy, with its distinct advantage from the underlying geographic arguments of its islands, ironically ended up in the worst position.
The U.S. Navy can learn from the Royal Navy by analysing mistakes it made in educating -or not educating- the British government about seapower. Across all naval, maritime, and wider defense and security debates, the baseline fact is that if education on the relationship between the sea and state is not carefully managed, all the efforts of seapower can be quickly undone. From that sea-state nexus flows political discussion, policy, funding, and direction. In short, why do nations invest in these costly, complex organizations known as navies? Land and land-based air perspectives have always been easy paths for policy; this is perfectly natural, as humans are land-dwellers who cannot see over the horizon. Consider how outer space was and remains such a challenge, maritime in nature but resistant to mastery due to vast distance. Shortsightedness is why the perpetual, pernicious and permanent challenge of ‘seablindness’ exists. It cannot be defeated, nor overcome, but it can be tamed.
Managing this challenge requires a mindful eye to the past. The Royal Navy entered 1946 with its head held high. Maritime power had soundly defended Britain from invasion in wartime, and the fate of the nation was tied to the outcome of Battle of Atlantic, in which the efforts of sailors, civilians, and marines together at sea made the crucial difference. However, post-war, it faced an adversary in the form of domestic issues for Britain was financially broke but determined political and extremist military theorist views who wanted to cast aside efforts at sea from future policy and strategy discussions. Some politicians, informed by extreme army and air force theorists, rejected the underlying maritime culture and strategy that Britain had developed and relied on since at least the 1500s. By deconstructing understanding of national strategy from the highest offices down and twisting historical narrative, they made navies look old, tired and irrelevant. They put a halt to building a Royal Navy more relevant to the times when seapower was a vital tool in government arsenals. These efforts were further supported by twisting wartime tactical engagements to make it look like Britain must, fraudulently, be a land-based power instead. As past Admiralty Secretaries pointed out, those who want to throw national strategy in the trash for service pride and ideology are they themselves the threat to sound policy and strategy.
Meanwhile in America, the efforts of great minds, from Secretary of Defense James Forrestal to Chiefs of Naval Operations King, Denfeld, and Burke to Admiral Hyman Rickover, redesigned the U.S. Navy with great accuracy through the reading of the political ‘tea leaves’. Their takeaways: never stand still, take risks, and always keep building. They had firsthand experience that showed them that for all the might and the power that the U.S. Navy had built by 1945, it had been shattered politically within a few years because of the transition to peace, defense unification political battles, and the Cold War, which bought into question the roles, missions and capabilities of all the military, particularly the navy. Thus is the relationship between defense and political decision-making where while in one circumstance support can be forthcoming to the military, it can as easily be taken away when other agendas and issues, domestic and foreign, shape the political debate. In Western civilization, defense is rightfully under the control of civilians, who are sceptical of its use and hopeful that it is not required. The adage ‘speak softly and carry a big stick’ rings true, and navies are better placed for this duty than any other military service. These great minds knew the U.S. Navy was steps from extinction, for America was not sea-dependent thanks to its ocean buffers. They knew that America’s security instead required an ironclad relationship between the navy and the nation’s foreign policy.
If American navalists cannot accept these facts about ‘seablindness’ and their maritime forces, then they should learn from the experience of the Royal Navy. Past glories do not guarantee that a military can meet present challenges, let alone adapt to meet future demands and threats. The Royal Navy entered the post-war era filled with arrogance and naïveté fuelled by centuries as a seapower state. The end of understanding of the centrality of seapower was believed to be an impossibility. However, there was a vulnerability in the system. Understanding of the sea’s role in national strategy and hence the navy’s rested on the organizational culture of British defense. Yet, the organisation that had supported that was purposefully destroyed by the end of the 1960s. This parachuted the future communication and education of national strategy, the navy, and what it means to be an island, into the hands of naval personnel who were entirely unequipped to handle the task and uninterested in trying. Royal Navy personnel were never as politically savvy as their American counterparts due to differences in government structure and the fact that responsibility for national strategy and strategic literacy, of which the sea cannot be ignored in our ocean planet, had rested with dedicated civilians in the Admiralty since the 1500s.
The Admiralty, and today the Department of the Navy, should be a place of institutional memory and corporate knowledge, adept at utilizing archives to garner insight for the decision-making of today and tomorrow. When independent service ministries and military departments were abolished under the regime of post-war defense unification, the task of rebuilding was lost to the 1980s. This happened because future generations were not taught to work the problem and were disinclined from educating themselves.
In short, when American’s ask today ‘why has the Royal Navy declined?’ it is not due to culprits such as the end of Empire or budgets. Ultimately, it is because few in Britain communicate why the Royal Navy exists, and even fewer do it effectively. Those who attempt to do so, usually from outside of government or military, are not understood by those in search of the tools and training to talk to government. They are even met with hostility or suspicion despite all parties’ shared goal. Those in search of the answers lack the willingness to learn -or have not been provided the basic means to understand- from those with answers to share. Elsewhere, interest in tackling this problem has evaporated due to operational tempo, ever-changing political and financial landscapes, and the exhaustion of sailors and marines who juggle tasks that take priority over combating matters like ‘seablindness.’ This position was reasonable pre-1945, when the most fundamental questions of the relationship between nation and its navy for the highest offices were handled elsewhere, but that system no longer exists. The desire to get the job done at sea is more complicated, and the risk of defeat increases when policy, strategy and doctrine have failed to secure the necessary resources. A self-fulfilling prophecy: all fails when a problem is going unaddressed from which all issues flow.
By the end of the 1980s, Britain had completely rejected centuries of experience or any understanding of its navy. When answers were needed, none were forthcoming where they had been before. To some, it was almost like 500 years of strategic experience never happened. Mediocre ‘public relations’ tactics deployed over the past few decades have failed to deliver, and deep-rooted problems were shored up temporarily only for stopgap efforts to fail. The British public retains pride in the White Ensign, but public relations is generally ineffective, and policy engagement time after time fails to result in a change of course. This all stems from the fact that understanding of the Royal Navy hangs by a thread in Government and Parliament.
Today, the fact that continental nations who are economically equivalent to islands like Britain often field fleets that best the capabilities of island nations. A stunning reality to consider. But if an island nation like Britain rejects seapower, doubting its relevancy and resisting maritime spending even though it is sea-dependent, imagine that vulnerable countries with navies like America could experience the same fate. In fact, it is easier for them to do so. Continental nations should not consider themselves above the risk of disinterest in naval investment. Britain illustrates what U.S. naval thinkers have known to be true since the late nineteenth century: pathways to extinguishing American sea power are plausible threats for the future of the U.S. Navy. It would be easy for American navalists to avoid this thorny problem, yet their forebears did not. Diligently communicating the importance of the navy and maritime power will be a continual task, as it always has been in the continental country, for this generation and the next generation of Americans.
No military or defense service is perfect. There comes a time where rot sets in, and an organization must choose to think wisely and act boldly, or else resign itself to circling the buoy on problems. Today, the Royal Navy claims to be a thinking navy, though its best fighting sailor Lord Horatio Nelson would have mused that there is only so much thinking to be done before you need to get on with the job. In his time, the Admiralty did the thinking for the Royal Navy, freeing sailors to do what the nation needed most: to be the very best at sea.
Taxpayers should be mindful that it is easy to criticize uniformed personnel. The nature of defense unification means that they are easy targets for political deflection over complicated national decision-making. However, attention would be better directed towards big-picture political decision-making and culture. Within navies, history has shown that there could be conflict between sea-based and shore-based personnel, for the fleet must come first. Still, the only way to combat organisational stagnation is through a continual feedback loop between shore and sea; the Royal Navy’s age of sail and decentralization is a testament to the supremacy of this approach. Ultimately, both nations’ navies are structurally weak and depend on the efforts of civilians and veterans more so than armies or air forces. This needs to be understood to build the navy of tomorrow; a navy that has moved on from the post-1945 era, that can adapt to present and future technologies, and that stands mightier than all past navies combined.
Today, Americans must know that when it comes to their dearest ally at sea, there is still quality in the White Ensign. The Royal Navy focuses heavily on training; other navies should also embrace this ethos. Still, like any organization, demoralization from endless issues, political attacks, and even interservice rivalry can break it.
America cannot afford misplaced notions of sea power promoted by those who do not understand it. Nor can the nation afford to underestimate why the seas are important. If such matters are commonplace on Capitol Hill, as has happened with the Royal Navy in the British Government and Parliament, then the same fate beckons for the U.S Navy. Equally, security at sea and the oceans cannot be policed by the U.S. Navy alone. In fact, island nations may be more suited to acting as guarantors of good order at sea than the U.S. Navy, whose striking power remains comparatively more vital to foreign policy. Yet America should be candidly asking, what can other nations do across the spectrum of tasks at and from the sea, and why aren’t they doing it?
Education is the only tool for addressing ‘seablindness’ and the navy’s problems, both internal and external. If American sailors and marines and their partners learn one thing from the Royal Navy, it should be that complacence and overconfidence are invitations for ‘seablindness’. It is not a question of if, but when, and it is a threat more devasting than enemy fire. Decision-makers’ mastery of the relationship between sea and nation is about integrating education on naval and civilian activity into broader national maritime strategic posture. The price of failure has never been higher from seabed to space for nation and navy.
Dr. James W.E. Smith is the Laughton-Corbett Research Fellow at King’s College London. In 2021, James completed a 15-year study into the relationship between the higher organization of defense and its relationship with national strategy making in the U.K. and U.S.
The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.