Three Questions: Congressional Guidance for a National Maritime Strategy
The MOC
By
Samuel Byers
May 17, 2024
Last week, a bipartisan, bicameral group of Congress members released a document outlining their vision for a U.S. National Maritime Strategy to “reverse the decline of American maritime power and our susceptibility to coercion from strategic competitors on the world’s oceans.” Their effort is a welcome first step and an important signal of bipartisan Congressional backing for a major effort to revitalize America’s maritime industry and maritime national security; however, much more work remains to be done by both the legislative and executive branches.
The “Congressional Guidance for a National Maritime Strategy”, authored by Senators Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Representatives Mike Waltz (R-FL) and John Garamendi (D-CA) plants a flag, declaring America to be a maritime nation whose “way of life depends on safe, open, and reliable access to the oceans” before outlining the multi-decade decline of America’s maritime workforce, shipbuilding capacity, and merchant fleet. For the authors, the problem is equally one of national as well as economic security and is grounded squarely in the context of geopolitical competition with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). To reverse the decline of America’s maritime industries and naval power and to effectively compete with the PRC are two sides of the same coin.
Taking the Congressional Guidance as a jumping-off point, three questions should guide our thinking about how to approach a comprehensive maritime strategy for the United States:
Defining End Goals
All good strategy-making begins with the definition of a discrete goal or objectives towards which to aim. The Congressional Guidance lays out a list of useful strategic objectives for an American maritime strategy—ranging from strengthening the maritime workforce and American shipbuilding to promoting energy innovation at sea. These disparate objectives will need to be prioritized and brought into harmony in the process of devising a comprehensive maritime strategy and building a set of public policies (likely on the state and local as well as the federal level) to implement it. Clarifying up front what the United States aims to achieve will be essential to this process.
Competition with China is a key theme of the Congressional Guidance. The People’s Republic is mentioned no less than four times on the first page of the document alone, followed by a full-page spread contrasting China’s burgeoning maritime industry with its anemic American counterpart. This focus befits China’s explosive growth in the maritime domain; last year the PRC’s shipbuilders logged 59 percent of global construction orders and the Belt and Road Initiative has secured partial or full control of a network of nearly 100 ports around the world which offer Beijing opportunities to surveil and influence global shipping.
But China’s dominant maritime position begs the questions: what is the goal of a comprehensive maritime strategy for the United States? To secure a minimum-viable industry to support the U.S. military overseas in wartime? To seize a larger share of the market for American firms? To comprehensively undercut or break up Beijing’s fast-consolidating control of the global maritime industry? The prioritization of the Congressional Guidance’s strategic objectives, the shape of the national maritime strategy, and the structure of subsequent legislation and government policy hinge upon the answer.
Scope & Scale of Bureaucratic Changes
A second useful question to consider is: how comprehensively is Congress willing to alter the bureaucratic and regulatory superstructure to “reassert America’s maritime power”?
Perhaps unique among issue areas, responsibility for America’s maritime policy is split between numerous government agencies spread across a swath of cabinet departments. Law enforcement and many regulatory powers are exercised by the Coast Guard out of the Department of Homeland Security. Responsibility for the U.S. Merchant Marine and other areas of maritime policy lies in the Department of Transportation with the Maritime Administration. The largest, most visible, and best-funded element of American maritime power is, of course, the Navy, which must play its own bureaucratic and budgetary game against the Army and Air Force within the Pentagon. The list goes on, with the dissipation of authority across the federal bureaucracy having a deleterious effect on the U.S. government’s ability to promulgate a comprehensive maritime policy and contributing to Washington’s perennial seablindness.
Are the authors of the Congressional Guidance—and the Congress at large—willing to entertain the possibility of moving funding and authorities between various departments, or even consolidating offices and agencies? This would not be unprecedented. The Coast Guard, for instance, has been moved multiple times in its history, most recently from the Department of Transportation to the newly formed Department of Homeland Security in 2002. At one extreme, some have gone so far as to call for the creation of an independent, “cabinet-level Maritime Department with a mission of integrating applications of national power to ensure maritime security and prosperity.”
The political appetite on Capitol Hill for bureaucratic restructuring will govern how the National Maritime Strategy will be implemented, whatever its final form. Therefore, it should inform the crafting of the strategy itself.
Further Legislation
Finally—and relatedly—what kind of legislation is going to back up and implement a comprehensive national maritime strategy? There is much room for policy change within the executive agencies that oversee America’s maritime interests, but any substantial modifications to budgets, lines of authority, or the structure of bureaucracy will have to be driven by the legislative branch. Whether these efforts come incrementally through the regular legislative process or if there is appetite on Capitol Hill for major piece of comprehensive maritime legislation will also define the shape of what is possible.
The concluding section of the Congressional Guidance outlines ten key areas where Congress can take steps to improve American economic and national security in the maritime domain, ranging from establishing new programs to grow the U.S.-flagged merchant fleet to investing in America’s inland waterways and cutting-edge maritime applications for nuclear energy. One recommendation stands out as a low-cost way to build momentum for more significant reforms. The Guidance recommends that Congress “[e]stablish a Presidentially appointed position to synchronize all national maritime affairs and policy” and to oversee a new National Maritime Council on the model of the National Security Council or National Economic Council. A “National Maritime Advisor” answering directly to the president and with the authority to coordinate maritime policymaking across the federal government would give maritime policy a permanent seat at the table in the White House and could go a long way to alleviating the government’s chronic seablindness. A new National Maritime Council would need significant presidential buy-in to get off the ground; however, Congress could do worse than starting here to get the ball rolling for larger changes down the line.
Conclusion
Regardless of who wins the 2024 presidential election, the Congressional Guidance for a National Maritime Strategy comes at an opportune time. Even when incumbents win reelection, there is often a significant turnover of senior political appointees, creating opportunities to shift policy focus within the administration. Either a second Biden or a second Trump administration will need to promulgate new National Security and National Defense Strategies in the coming year, a process which could be leveraged to jump-start interest in an accompanying National Maritime Strategy.
Congress has taken an important first step; now is the time to follow through.
Samuel Byers, Sr. National Security Advisor
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.
Center for Maritime Strategy
By Samuel Byers
Last week, a bipartisan, bicameral group of Congress members released a document outlining their vision for a U.S. National Maritime Strategy to “reverse the decline of American maritime power and our susceptibility to coercion from strategic competitors on the world’s oceans.” Their effort is a welcome first step and an important signal of bipartisan Congressional backing for a major effort to revitalize America’s maritime industry and maritime national security; however, much more work remains to be done by both the legislative and executive branches.
The “Congressional Guidance for a National Maritime Strategy”, authored by Senators Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Representatives Mike Waltz (R-FL) and John Garamendi (D-CA) plants a flag, declaring America to be a maritime nation whose “way of life depends on safe, open, and reliable access to the oceans” before outlining the multi-decade decline of America’s maritime workforce, shipbuilding capacity, and merchant fleet. For the authors, the problem is equally one of national as well as economic security and is grounded squarely in the context of geopolitical competition with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). To reverse the decline of America’s maritime industries and naval power and to effectively compete with the PRC are two sides of the same coin.
Taking the Congressional Guidance as a jumping-off point, three questions should guide our thinking about how to approach a comprehensive maritime strategy for the United States:
Defining End Goals
All good strategy-making begins with the definition of a discrete goal or objectives towards which to aim. The Congressional Guidance lays out a list of useful strategic objectives for an American maritime strategy—ranging from strengthening the maritime workforce and American shipbuilding to promoting energy innovation at sea. These disparate objectives will need to be prioritized and brought into harmony in the process of devising a comprehensive maritime strategy and building a set of public policies (likely on the state and local as well as the federal level) to implement it. Clarifying up front what the United States aims to achieve will be essential to this process.
Competition with China is a key theme of the Congressional Guidance. The People’s Republic is mentioned no less than four times on the first page of the document alone, followed by a full-page spread contrasting China’s burgeoning maritime industry with its anemic American counterpart. This focus befits China’s explosive growth in the maritime domain; last year the PRC’s shipbuilders logged 59 percent of global construction orders and the Belt and Road Initiative has secured partial or full control of a network of nearly 100 ports around the world which offer Beijing opportunities to surveil and influence global shipping.
But China’s dominant maritime position begs the questions: what is the goal of a comprehensive maritime strategy for the United States? To secure a minimum-viable industry to support the U.S. military overseas in wartime? To seize a larger share of the market for American firms? To comprehensively undercut or break up Beijing’s fast-consolidating control of the global maritime industry? The prioritization of the Congressional Guidance’s strategic objectives, the shape of the national maritime strategy, and the structure of subsequent legislation and government policy hinge upon the answer.
Scope & Scale of Bureaucratic Changes
A second useful question to consider is: how comprehensively is Congress willing to alter the bureaucratic and regulatory superstructure to “reassert America’s maritime power”?
Perhaps unique among issue areas, responsibility for America’s maritime policy is split between numerous government agencies spread across a swath of cabinet departments. Law enforcement and many regulatory powers are exercised by the Coast Guard out of the Department of Homeland Security. Responsibility for the U.S. Merchant Marine and other areas of maritime policy lies in the Department of Transportation with the Maritime Administration. The largest, most visible, and best-funded element of American maritime power is, of course, the Navy, which must play its own bureaucratic and budgetary game against the Army and Air Force within the Pentagon. The list goes on, with the dissipation of authority across the federal bureaucracy having a deleterious effect on the U.S. government’s ability to promulgate a comprehensive maritime policy and contributing to Washington’s perennial seablindness.
Are the authors of the Congressional Guidance—and the Congress at large—willing to entertain the possibility of moving funding and authorities between various departments, or even consolidating offices and agencies? This would not be unprecedented. The Coast Guard, for instance, has been moved multiple times in its history, most recently from the Department of Transportation to the newly formed Department of Homeland Security in 2002. At one extreme, some have gone so far as to call for the creation of an independent, “cabinet-level Maritime Department with a mission of integrating applications of national power to ensure maritime security and prosperity.”
The political appetite on Capitol Hill for bureaucratic restructuring will govern how the National Maritime Strategy will be implemented, whatever its final form. Therefore, it should inform the crafting of the strategy itself.
Further Legislation
Finally—and relatedly—what kind of legislation is going to back up and implement a comprehensive national maritime strategy? There is much room for policy change within the executive agencies that oversee America’s maritime interests, but any substantial modifications to budgets, lines of authority, or the structure of bureaucracy will have to be driven by the legislative branch. Whether these efforts come incrementally through the regular legislative process or if there is appetite on Capitol Hill for major piece of comprehensive maritime legislation will also define the shape of what is possible.
The concluding section of the Congressional Guidance outlines ten key areas where Congress can take steps to improve American economic and national security in the maritime domain, ranging from establishing new programs to grow the U.S.-flagged merchant fleet to investing in America’s inland waterways and cutting-edge maritime applications for nuclear energy. One recommendation stands out as a low-cost way to build momentum for more significant reforms. The Guidance recommends that Congress “[e]stablish a Presidentially appointed position to synchronize all national maritime affairs and policy” and to oversee a new National Maritime Council on the model of the National Security Council or National Economic Council. A “National Maritime Advisor” answering directly to the president and with the authority to coordinate maritime policymaking across the federal government would give maritime policy a permanent seat at the table in the White House and could go a long way to alleviating the government’s chronic seablindness. A new National Maritime Council would need significant presidential buy-in to get off the ground; however, Congress could do worse than starting here to get the ball rolling for larger changes down the line.
Conclusion
Regardless of who wins the 2024 presidential election, the Congressional Guidance for a National Maritime Strategy comes at an opportune time. Even when incumbents win reelection, there is often a significant turnover of senior political appointees, creating opportunities to shift policy focus within the administration. Either a second Biden or a second Trump administration will need to promulgate new National Security and National Defense Strategies in the coming year, a process which could be leveraged to jump-start interest in an accompanying National Maritime Strategy.
Congress has taken an important first step; now is the time to follow through.
Samuel Byers, Sr. National Security Advisor
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.