{"id":4897,"date":"2013-03-28T05:00:48","date_gmt":"2013-03-27T19:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=4897"},"modified":"2013-06-28T13:48:41","modified_gmt":"2013-06-28T03:48:41","slug":"australias-many-maritime-strategies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/australias-many-maritime-strategies\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia’s many ‘maritime strategies’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a>The combination of the rise of China, interest in new submarines and debates on the Army\u2019s future role has sparked a renewed interest in maritime strategy. There are several alternative maritime strategies in play, often with stark differences, but perhaps all have a similar fundamental shortcoming.<\/p>\n

But first what is a maritime strategy? Most quote the early 20th\u00a0<\/span>Century British naval strategist Sir Julian Corbett, who believed that a strategy is maritime when ‘the sea is a substantial factor’. Crucially, he stressed that such a strategy involved joint forces working cooperatively to win a conflict rather than fighting their own separate wars.<\/p>\n

Maritime strategies have loomed large in Australian strategic thinking, generally as part of someone else\u2019s maritime strategy or, relatively rarely, independently. In this debate, there are some (PDF)<\/a> who devise an Australian ‘continental’ strategic school to rail against, but in so labeling specific strategies they disagreed with, the sea remained a substantial factor. The fundamental reason for disagreement was that the Army didn’t have a role\u2014and thus a funding priority\u2014which they considered essential.<\/p>\n

So what maritime strategies are in play today?<\/p>\n