From the Editors

 

As we noted in the Winter 2010 Review, the Navy’s new maritime strategy places a premium on maritime security cooperation, which in turn suggests that the Navy has a heightened requirement to understand the maritime capabilities and outlooks of its various security partners. That issue addressed the important cases of the United Kingdom and Australia. In the present issue, the Republic of Korea Navy is the subject of an informed and searching analysis by Vice Admiral (Retired) Yoji Koda of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force. Admiral Koda may seem an improbable choice as author of a piece on this subject, but in fact he played an important role personally in initiating navy-to-navy staff talks between his country and the ROK in the late 1990s and has remained a close observer of Korean maritime affairs since that time. Admiral Koda provides an overview of the modern evolution of the ROK Navy from a modest coastal force in the 1950s to the increasingly blue-water-capable fleet of today. His discussion of Japanese-ROK interaction at sea provides valuable insights into what might be called “third party” maritime security cooperation—something the United States needs to be keenly aware of as it seeks to strengthen its own bilateral relationships with foreign navies.

 

The U.S. Navy has been highly attentive to the possible implications of global climate change. The Arctic region has been a special focus of this attention, given the magnitude of recent changes in the climate there and the opportunities they afford for increased access to the waters and resources of the north. In their article “Arctic Security Considerations and the U.S. Navy’s Roadmap for the Arctic,” Rear Admiral David W. Titley, USN, and Courtney C. St. John explore these issues, their potential impact on the Navy, and steps the Navy needs to consider in dealing with them. Rear Admiral Titley is Oceanographer of the Navy and Director, Task Force Climate Change.

 

Robert C. Rubel, in “The U.S. Navy’s Transition to Jets,” tells the important and neglected story of the Navy’s struggle to adapt to jet aircraft beginning in the late 1940s. He argues that this transition was in fact not finally complete until the late 1980s, when accident rates in the Navy finally declined to a level approximating those in the Air Force, and explores in detail the reasons this was so. Rubel, a retired naval aviator, is dean of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies at the Naval War College.

 

We return again in this issue to the seemingly intractable problem of Somali piracy. Lesley Anne Warner, of the Center for Naval Analyses, argues in “Pieces of Eight: An Appraisal of U.S. Contemporary Options in the Horn of Africa” that the key to success in countering piracy off the coast of Somalia lies in conceptually linking the positive elements of current sea-based counterpiracy methods with approaches designed to remedy the underlying instability ashore that produced piracy in the first place. This very comprehensive analysis strikes us as a useful contribution to an ongoing debate.

 

“China’s Oil Security Pipe Dream,” by Andrew S. Erickson and Gabriel B. Collins, gets to the heart of an issue that, perhaps more than any other, seems to be driving China’s ambitious naval-modernization efforts. The authors argue that overland pipelines will never prove to be a serious alternative to seaborne transport of oil and gas for China, in spite of the strong support for them in some quarters, and that the Chinese would be better advised to explore cooperative steps to safeguard free energy markets and the seaborne flow of energy imports. Erickson is currently, and Collins was formerly, an associate of the Naval War College’s China Maritime Studies Institute. Readers may want to consult in this connection an article by Collins and William S. Murray, “No Oil for the Lamps of China?” in the Spring 2008 Review.

 

Finally, W. Brad Johnson, of the U.S. Naval Academy, and Gene R. Andersen, of the College of Operational and Strategic Leadership (COSL) at the Naval War College, offer an extended analysis of a key issue in naval and military leadership, “Formal Mentoring in the U.S. Military: Research Evidence, Lingering Questions, and Recommendations.” Our next issue will feature an (overdue) discussion of the important and innovative work being carried out by the recently created COSL organization in Newport.

 

The next (and thirty-fifth) in our Newport Papers monograph series, Piracy and Maritime Crime: Historical and Modern Case Studies, edited by Bruce A. Elleman, Andrew Forbes, and David Rosenberg, is in press and has been posted on our website. Dr. Elleman, of the Naval War College Maritime History Department, and his coeditors have collected twelve case studies that allow conclusions to be drawn on uses and limitations of naval antipiracy operations in the context of new technology and modern national policy goals.
 

Also in press, and soon to be available for sale online by the U.S. Government Printing Office, is Nineteen-Gun Salute: Case Studies of Operational, Strategic, and Diplomatic Naval Leadership during the 20th and Early 21st Centuries, edited by John B. Hattendorf and Bruce A. Elleman. This collection of brief biographies of nineteen U.S. Navy admirals, from W. S. Sims, to Joseph W. Preuher, with conclusions by the editors focusing particularly on leadership skills in the operational and strategic arenas, is sponsored by the Naval War College’s College of Operational and Strategic Leadership and has been jointly produced by the Naval War College Press and the Government Printing Office.
 

The Press editorial offices are on the second floor, west wing, of Founders Hall in the Naval War College complex.