Chinese Navy – Phase Zero: How China Exploits It, Why the United States Does Not

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– US Naval War College Review – In October 2006 General Charles Wald, Deputy Commander U.S. European Command, brought “Phase Zero” into the joint lexicon with the publication of an article, “The Phase Zero Campaign.” Over the last five years the concept of taking coordinated action in peacetime to affect the strategic environment has become widely accepted and is now integrated into theater campaign plans. These activities focus on building capacity of partners and influencing potential adversaries to avoid war. In contrast, Chinese strategic culture has encouraged taking actions to defeat an enemy prior to the onset of hostilities for two and a half millennia.

Geopolitics – Now Hear This the US Senate Should Ratify the UNCLOS

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– US Naval Institute Proceedings – The first draft of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) was completed in 1982. The treaty provided a broad legal framework governing movement on the sea and the proper handling of sea-based resources. By 1994, treaty revisions had alleviated U.S. concerns regarding deep seabed mining. President Bill Clinton signed and forwarded it to the Senate for advice and consent, but it was never ratified.

US Navy – The Aegis BMD Global Enterprise: A "High End" Maritime Partnership

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– US Naval War College Review – For more than three decades, beginning soon after the end of World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union faced off against each other. The concept of “mutual assured destruction”-MAD, the U.S. threat of massive retaliation to a Soviet first strike-became America’s Cold War de facto strategic defense policy. In March 1983, however, President Ronald Reagan asked whether ballistic missiles could be destroyed before they reached the United States or its allies, thus catalyzing efforts for a national ballistic-missile-defense program that would undermine the need for MAD. That same year, the U.S. Navy commissioned USS Ticonderoga (CG 47), the first of what is to become a fleet of more than eighty Aegis warships. In 2012, these trends have converged, and Aegis ballistic-missile defense (BMD) is an increasingly important component of a robust national BMD System (BMDS).

US Navy – The New Normalcy: Sea Power and Contingency Operations in the Twenty-First Century

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– US Naval War College Review – In September 1994, the Caribbean nation of Haiti burst into political unrest that drove twenty-six thousand migrants out to sea on board overcrowded and unseaworthy craft in an unprecedented mass migration to the United States. Several months later, over thirty thousand Cubans followed suit, attempting to reach the mainland on literally anything that could float. On 31 August 2005, a “weapon of mass destruction” in the form of a category-five hurricane exploded in the Gulf coast city of New Orleans, killing over 1,300 citizens and forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands. Finally, on 20 April 2010, the Deepwater Horizon exploratory oil rig exploded, heralding an unprecedented environmental disaster whose final impact has yet to be determined. What these events shared, with their catastrophic nature and international impact, was a link to the sea. Although vastly different in cause, circumstances, and scope—ranging as they did from a man-made political event to recovery from the wrath of nature—these crises all saw a significant application of sea power in reaction and recovery operations.

US Navy – In the Pacific, new interest in war games

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– San Diego Union Tribune – The point of the Rim of the Pacific exercises every two years: to practice major naval maneuvers. As the Pentagon shifts its focus to the Pacific after 11 years of desert warfare, the number of nations attracted to these month-long international maritime war games has exploded. Twenty-two countries – notably Russia for the first time – paid their own way to Hawaii, even a 21-man contingent of Marines from tiny Tonga and a platoon of Malaysian army rangers. Two years ago the list was 14 nations long, and in 2008 there were 10.