HOW HAVE LAND POWERS ENDEAVOURED TO GAIN STRATEGIC ADVANTAGE OVER SEA POWERS: DOES HISTORY HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY?

Introduction

In his book ‘The Influence of Sea Power upon History: 1660-1783,’ Alfred Thayer Mahan defines sea power in a broad sense as “which Iincludes not only the military strength afloat, that rules the sea or any part of it by force of arms, but also the peaceful commerce and shipping from which alone a military fleet naturally and healthfully springs, and on which it securely rests.”¹ In simpler words, sea powers are those nations that derive their strength and prosperity from the control and dominance of maritime trade routes and naval forces. Land powers, on the other hand, focus on building strong land-based military capabilities to enhance their global standing and influence. Historically, sea and land powers have often been caught in fiercely contested rivalries with many periods of intense and long-term competition. The considerable advantages that sea powers could have over land powers in these competitions, be it greater access to others’ resources or the ability to project military power at great distances, are a matter of generally common understanding.

Much has also been written about the role that seapower has played in the classic ‘Whale vs Elephant’ (an interpretation derived from Biblical description) contests played out in history right from the Peloponnesian Wars to the Cold War. These studies, mainly carried out through sea power lenses, have benefitted maritime strategic thinkers and practitioners immensely. Within the naval fraternity as ours, it is also vital we study some of these cases from the perspective of land powers, that have toiled hard to reign supreme over superior maritime rivals. This paper has attempted to analyse some trends that land powers have followed historically, to seek strategic advantage against sea powers in such long-term competitions. In the main, two such approaches stand out and are discussed here. First, land powers have adopted a continental approach with interwoven economic and coalition strategies to strengthen their supply lines whilst forcing their maritime adversaries to overstretch. Secondly, they have resorted mainly to innovative asymmetric military strategies to counter the rivals’ naval superiority.

Continental Economic and Coalition Strategy

If the enemy is to be coerced you must put him in a situation that is even more unpleasant than the sacrifice you call on him to make.

- Clausewitz²

As a Mahanian concept, seapower is primarily based on the pillars of commerce, ships, and bases.³ Its constituents i.e. production, military and commercial shipping, and colonies, or alliances, offer excellent strategic tools to further the application of national instruments of power.⁴ However, along with the strengths, sea powers do offer certain vulnerabilities, the primary one being the sustenance of their economic model which often depends on a system of alliances for maintaining supply lines. Maritime forces and forward bases or colonies can be by themselves highly resource- intensive offering further weaknesses along with positives. Thus, land powers have mostly sought to gain an advantage by exploiting sea powers’ vulnerabilities that lay in their supply lines. Towards achieving this, land powers have often adopted a continental system with interwoven economic and coalition strategies.

During the Peloponnesian Wars (431-404 BC), Sparta, a land power, was involved in severe competition with Athens, a sea power. Based on its maritime prowess, Athens had developed significant superiority over Sparta in the availability of resources as well as an economic power. Sparta focused on targeting Athens’s naval superiority had also Athens’ supply lines critical to been crucial in gaining significant a maritime empire’s prosperity diplomatic strength under the Delian League. On the other hand, Sparta, led by Archidamus, resisted significant investments in its navy due to the severe financial and time implications of raising and maintaining a strong fleet.⁵ Instead, Sparta focused on targeting Athens’ supply lines and choke points critical to the economic prosperity of the maritime empire and its allies.

Highly vulnerable against the seapower of Athens, Sparta continued to stick to the strength of its continental army under Brasidas to achieve crucial victories against the Delian league allies such as the city-states of Acanthus and Amphipolis in 424-423 BC.⁶ Such land-centric or continental 6 campaigns significantly disrupted the supply lines of Athens and reduced its diplomatic strength considerably, whilst winning crucial allies under the Sparta-sponsored Peloponnesian League. Frequent targeting of its supply lines and the attack on its allies compelled Athens to invade Sicily to regain resources for its economic growth and attract new partners into the Delian League. The Sicilian campaign conceived and executed to counter the pressure from the Spartans’ land campaigns, proved to be an overstretch for Athens.

This overstretch was aggravated further by Sparta through an interwoven diplomatic campaign wherein it supported the state of Syracuse militarily against the invading Athens. As a result, Athens received a humiliating defeat in Sicily.⁷ Eventually, it was the conclusion of a Spartan treaty with Persia that undermined Athens’s interests and led to the termination of long-term competition. The continental military campaigns to undercut the adversary’s economic prowess with an interwoven coalition strategy had overstretched the sea power of Athens and ultimately reigned supreme in the long-term competition.

The early Nineteenth Century again witnessed a land power trying to undercut a rival sea power’s economic strength through a continental economic and alliance system. After the defeat at the Battle of Trafalgar, French maritime forces had depleted significantly, and the country was reduced to being mainly a land power. This led Napoleon to adopt a unique economic strategy called the Continental System to gain a strategic advantage in the long-term competition with Britain.⁸ Announced in November 1806, the system was designed to prohibit all British trade from continental Europe.⁹ The objective was to  The Continental System burden the British economy by prohibiting its impacted British trade access to goods and critical materials, significantly stretching the sea power for resources. The Continental System of Economic Measures was suitably augmented with the coalition strategies of France, wherein it found allies to strengthen its supply chains whilst prohibiting the British from gaining access to seaports throughout continental Europe. The Continental System impacted British trade significantly, especially in the first year of its implementation. However, in the long run, the economic strangulation of Britain through this uniquely interwoven continental economic and coalition strategy proved to be a failure.¹⁰ As per Mahan, the wisdom of the strategy for imposing economic costs on British sea power through such a system could not be questioned as it nearly destroyed Britain.¹¹ The failure was rather attributed to the incorrect assessment and absence of timely re-assessment by the French of the long-term effects and repercussions of the blockade on continental Europe and France itself.

At this point, one cannot help but notice similarities between the Continental System of Napoleon and the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which has been largely continental in its design and implementation until now. The BRI system could be a natural response of a land power to strengthen its supply lines for resources whilst also using it as a tool for attracting allies, simultaneously reducing the economic and diplomatic influence of the US in the current world order. The success of China’s combined continental economic and coalition strategy in gaining a strategic advantage against the US remains to be seen. However, it can be safely inferred from the Peloponnesian Wars to the contemporary era, that land powers have often sought to gain strategic advantage over their rival sea powers by evolving an integrated economic and coalition strategy that drove the national instruments of economy, diplomacy, and even military effectively to achieve political objectives.

Asymmetric Military Strategies

Thus, what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy’s strategy.

- Sun Tzu¹²

Land powers have often found themselves in an inferior military position in the long-term competition against sea powers. Professor Sally Paine describes the situation of land powers as “the continental world is a place without insurance policies.”¹³ Under these circumstances, rather than aiming to gain superiority or parity of maritime power with their rivals, land powers have focused on developing strategies to exploit sea powers’ vulnerabilities as well as disputing their command of the sea, a concept that Corbet had advocated.¹⁴ They have effectively countered sea powers’ desire for a decisive battle/ campaign at sea by adopting alternative or smart strategies for generating deterrence as well as creating a favourable asymmetry of military power in the contest. These innovatively crafted strategies aimed to generate a swift and decisive strategic advantage of asymmetry over its maritime rivals referred to hereinafter as asymmetric strategies, have been based on accurate net assessment of the situation, relative strengths and weaknesses of the military means, and contemporary technological advancements.

Germany and Britain were caught in fierce competition right from the close of the nineteenth century till World War II. Britain, a global sea power, enjoyed considerable maritime superiority against the land power, Germany, during the period. The British Navy drew its strength from one of the Mahanian concepts of the command of the sea, and the decisive naval victory that it could rather comfortably achieve against an inferior German Navy.¹⁵ However, it was the innovative German approach of developing and employing U-boats that helped erode the seapower advantage of the Royal Navy. German U Boats disrupted British advantages (or disputed the command of the sea as Corbett would have explained) of stronger Royal Navy ships, and almost threatened British survival.

This could be seen even in the Great War until the British counter- blockade greatly began impacting Germany in economic terms including widespread starvation.¹⁶ Germans were thinking of such a strategy again during the Inter-War period; however, this time, to gain a significant advantage if so needed in years to come. From the mid-1920s, the Germans had succeeded in concealing the development of their military aviation assets from the British. The deceptive induction of air power on a large scale by the Germans changed the balance of power in the land power’s favour and contributed significantly to the adoption of the policy of appeasement by the British.¹⁷ Apart from strengthening deterrence, German air power threatened the British mainland and challenged sea power’s ability to keep battle away from its shores. The concealed development of air power when its capabilities were still doubted by many, generated an effective asymmetry of military power, serving a significant strategic advantage to Germany.

China too has rather relied on asymmetric strategies against the sea power of the US to help tilt the competitive balance in its favour. In trying to match as well as counter the sea power of the US, one may keep in mind that China has historically been a great land empire, and it continues to retain that status to the present.¹⁸ The competition between the two countries has  stiffened considerably with China’s unprecedented rise as an economic and military power in the last few decades. With a natural inheritance of Sun Tzu’s concept of attacking the adversary’s strategy and Mao’s idea of guerrilla warfare, China has effectively employed the advantages of its asymmetry based on land and local naval superiority to strategically and operationally counter American sea power either in peripheral circumstances as well as in direct competition between the two sides. With Russia's help during the Cold War, China was successful in fuelling irregular warfare by the North Vietnamese forces against the US in the Second Indo-China War.¹⁹ China-backed guerrilla warfare innovatively 19 exploited the terrain and motivation of the North Vietnamese land forces to gain an advantage over American and South Vietnamese military forces. Arguably, this led to the first defeat of an established sea power (and a great power as well) for more than a century at the hands of a smaller land power. Consequently, American strategic influence in the region was reduced and it helped the two adversarial land powers, Russia and China to relatively expand theirs.

Apart from peripheral and proxy wars, China has gainfully employed asymmetric strategies against the US in direct competition as well. A sea power like the US draws its strategic dominance in a region through its freedom of manoeuvre and ability to control the seas as required. However, since 1974 China has, inter alia, utilised its fishing fleet to further its political objectives and restrict freedom of manoeuvre to its adversaries in the disputed South China Sea region.²⁰ With technological advancements, the capabilities and footprint of this Maritime Militia to affect the US maritime operations in the region as part of grey zone tactics have only increased. The induction of land-based ‘anti-carrier’ missiles such as DF21 The induction of land-based ‘anti- and DF26 to enforce Anti-Access carrier’ missiles to enforce A2AD and Area Denial (A2AD) has has enhanced deterrence against enhanced deterrence against the the challengers’ sea power challengers’ sea power, thereby giving it a potentially significant advantage in case of a conflict.²¹ Having these long-range missiles as part of its strategy of ‘Active- Defence’ is a paradigm shift from the earlier land powers’ concept of a Fortress Fleet.²² Rapid military technological growth since the Cold War period has further pushed land powers to go asymmetric in their approach against sea powers.

Such technological-tactical/ operational advancements in means of war have also been exploited by Islamic fundamentalist organisations, especially against the US during what the Americans have termed the Global War On Terror (GWOT). Countries such as Iran have successfully utilised the strategy of small and numerous patrol boats to impede/threaten US Carrier Battle Groups, other surface platforms, and even mercantile trade in the Persian Gulf.²³ The induction of unmanned platforms and drones in all domains of warfare has further enabled relatively weaker continental powers to deter and deny the freedom of manoeuvre to maritime forces. Ukraine’s success against Russian naval forces through the use of unmanned surface boats and drones has highlighted the effectiveness of such asymmetric means against more powerful maritime states. Further, China’s increasing prowess in the field of space-based surveillance through networks of its highly capable satellites is akin to the development of airpower by Germany to erode the adversary’s advantage. Overall, unable to match the maritime strengths of sea powers, land powers have time and again preferred asymmetric strategies to attack the adversary’s weaknesses, prevent a decisive defeat at sea, and gain a significant strategic advantage during peace and wartime in the long-term competition.

What about Symmetric Military Strategies?

Critics may argue that the land powers have tried to employ symmetric military strategies in long-term competition with sea powers. The essence of these symmetric military strategies would be to gain parity at sea with the rival sea powers. They may claim that the asymmetric military strategies employed by land powers have only aimed to buy time until they develop maritime capabilities. Some may Overall, land powers seek to gain turn back to Sparta to corroborate parity with sea powers by their argument as the continental developing their maritime prowess power did pursue efforts to enhance to gain a strategic advantage its sea power. The Germans also expanded their naval fleet considerably during the period before World War I in an effort to challenge, if not match the maritime capabilities of the Royal Navy and gain an advantage against them in a cataclysmic battle.²⁴ In more recent times, China has demonstrated a similar urge to establish overseas naval bases, strengthen its fleet and expand its maritime footprint globally to match its maritime prowess with the US. Some may argue that as land powers gain more and more economic strength, the need to be a sea power becomes critical for safeguarding growing national maritime interests. Thus, Mahan’s call for a strong navy remains the best way to win the strategic competition as it protects the resources a land power relies on for its sustenance and its overseas assets and alliances. Overall, land powers seek to gain parity with sea powers by developing their maritime prowess to gain a strategic advantage in the long-term competition.

Historically, however, adopting symmetric military strategies to match maritime power has seldom yielded positive results for land powers. Most of these attempts, such as by Germany in the pre-World War I period, did not produce the desired results due to a lack of maritime vision, culture, economic strength and the will to stay invested for a long enough period to outlast the competition. Despite concerted efforts and large investments for nearly two decades from 1898 to build its surface fleet, the German Navy led by Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz failed to gain parity with its British counterparts. The ‘Tirpitz Plan’ was responded to by the ‘Dread nought Leap’ by the British leadership increasing the size and capabilities of the Royal Navy Fleet further.²⁵ As a result, the Wilhelmine Navy's ambitions of matching the seapower of Britain remained a far-fetched dream. At the commencement of the First World War Tirpitz had to admit, “We can no longer build the ships we envisaged.”²⁶

The economic burden, as well as the substantial time for developing conventional sea power, has often precluded catching up with the sea power at all. The desire to match the capabilities, if pursued religiously for long periods has often led to an arms race between the two sides, and at best resulted in a strategic stalemate.²⁷ Even though Sparta enhanced its naval  strength with the help of the Persian Navy and defeated Athens at the battle of Aegospotami, it was their long-term strategy of targeting Athens’ supply lines and allies, that played a greater role towards making the sea power’s sustenance difficult and eventually led to the end of competition. With the advent of technology, asymmetric means such as utilising the space domain for surveillance and targeting are becoming more and more cost-effective to be sustained over the long term, even by relatively smaller continental powers. China as a great power seems to be investing heavily in building space and cyber-based ISR architectures. For bigger and economically stronger continental powers, investment in other domains has been an effective and viable option over the need for overseas basing and expeditionary warfighting for the protection of their maritime interests. China, however, seems to be doing much for both prongs. Through their innovative strategies, land powers can push sea powers towards continuing to incur considerable expenditure for the operation and maintenance of their fleets at the cost of absorbing advanced and latest technologies. Overall, adopting leveraging asymmetric advantages and alternate strategies by land powers would far outweigh the benefits of symmetric strategies towards gaining a strategic advantage against a sea power rival in the long-term competition.

Conclusion

History has been a witness to instances of fierce competition between land and sea powers. Though inherently with a disadvantageous maritime position, land powers have time and again managed to gain an advantage over their rivals in long-term competition. A continental system to strengthen its supply lines whilst distancing the sea power from its allies and supply nodes has been a natural response for a land power. By thinking differently and concentrating on targeting their rival’s strategy, land powers have been able to evolve asymmetric strategies to challenge sea powers’ freedom of manoeuvre. These trends continue to be witnessed even in the current geopolitical context in some form or another. The US-Russia competition may be seen as a classic ‘Whale vs Elephant’ contest that has pushed the Kremlin to go for continental expansionism in Ukraine to secure resources as well as target adversaries’ prospective alliances. The Russian empire, historically was imperially expanded on land to become the largest empire on Earth in terms of area.

At the same time, Ukraine’s success against the largely superior Russian naval forces through the use of unmanned air and sea platforms, land-based missiles, etc. points to the relevance of asymmetric strategies at sea. Absorption of low-cost and hi-tech unconventional means, especially in large numbers, is an effective option to deter a much stronger adversary at sea. Apart from attrition warfare, if these asymmetric attack options are directed at a sea power’s supply chains, the results could tilt the competition decisively in favour of land powers.²⁸ On the other side, from a sea power’s  perspective, it would be important to constantly reassess the threat and adopt suitable mitigation measures whilst avoiding an overstretch. Sea powers may benefit by keeping their continental rivals constantly engaged in their pursuit of matching conventional capabilities at sea whilst they shift their focus to more asymmetric strategies to nudge ahead in the competition.