Sea Control - Sea Control 548 - Maritime Competition in the Mediterranean with Dr. Sebastian Bruns & Dr. Jeremy Stöhs

Episode Date: September 15, 2024

Links1. "Mare Nostrum Revisited: Maritime Competition in the Mediterranean," by Dr. Jeremy Stöhs and Dr. Sebastian Bruns, War on the Rocks, June 13, 2024.

You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Aloha, shipmates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control. My guests today are Dr. Sebastian Bruins, Dr. Jeremy Stoves, and we're going to be discussing their article for War on the Rocks on renewed maritime competition in the Mediterranean Sea. Sebastian, welcome back. Could you tell the audience a little bit about your background, please? Absolutely. Hey, it's great to be back on SimSec on the Sea Control Podcast. I'm Sebastian Bruns. I currently work as a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Policy at Keele University, focusing on sea power, naval strategy, maritime security. And before that, I was inter alia inaugural McCain Fulbright visiting professor at the Naval Academy and a congressional staffer in the House of Representatives. Well, thank you. I should tell the audience, these two, they are both sea control veterans. They've appeared here multiple times. So this is the first time you're appearing together.

But Jeremy, could you remind the audience about your background, please? Happy to be on the show. Thank you very much for the invitation. My name is Jeremy Stoess. I'm an Austrian-American security and defense analyst. I head a security company here in Austria focused on domestic security. but I also co-head a center that focuses in intelligence, propaganda, and security studies here, as well as being a non-resident fellow, senior fellow at the Institute for Security Policy in Kiel. And here, shameless plug, just right off the bat, I just published a book titled European Naval Power from Cold War to Hybrid Wars with Calgary McMillan. So, of course,

European naval power has been something I've been dealing with for some time. Well, thank you both for coming back. As a reminder, all opinions today are our own and not reflective of any institution with which we might be otherwise associated. Jeremy, I'll ask you this completely off script. It's like, do you get a lot of traction with your maritime stuff in Austria, or do you get a lot of confused looks when you go to the intra-Austrian security meetings? Yeah, a lot of confused looks. I mean, Austria has a rich maritime tradition because of its history, of course, and its

role that it used to have in world history. But nowadays, of course, there is a different focus. And in general, Austria as a still neutral state has some issues with, you know, dealing with security and defense in general. And there, of course, there are different focuses. However, I'm looking to further this discussion in Austria, and there are some individuals who have put out some very interesting work on naval issues. So it's interesting to find landlubbers like myself that then mingle in that area and work on that stuff. So maybe there will actually be a conference on maritime security and Austria's role in maritime security in the 21st century, not too long in the future. I like it. Sebastian, did you have something to add there? Yeah, absolutely. A few years ago, I was in Vienna speaking to a brigadier general of the Austrian army who said Austria is currently not a sea power. So I don't know about any aspirations sort of military wise, but certainly the mindset is still there in some circles.

And I think Jeremy is filling a very critical gap both in Austria as well as in central European understanding of sea power. Well, Jeremy, I'll come right back to you then. How are you defining the Mediterranean region for the purposes of this discussion? Yeah, thanks for the question. And I actually just returned from a trip to Italy. I was invited by our Italian colleagues to discuss exactly this topic in what is the Mediterranean, how do we define the region, what role does it have for, and of course the focus was on Italy, but of course I also brought in the, if you will, the European perspective and then a Western and international perspective. I didn't raise the point of our history and our shared history with Italy and the sea and at times contested history. So to your question, I define it as as the wider Mediterranean region or enlarged Mediterranean region. Many people actually do so because both Sebastian and I found that just to look at the Mediterranean from the Straits of Gibraltar in the west to its eastern shores and the Turkish Straits and the Suez Canal. doesn't do the region justice and also doesn't grasp the complexity of the region, all the power and the influence that shapes this region. So I look at it as the greater Mediterranean,

which also encompasses the shorelines of the African continent, both on the west down to the Gulf of Guinea and in the east through the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea. And of course, and this is something that we discussed in Italy to a great degree, also, of course, the Black Sea as inherently part of the Mediterranean. And of course, with the war against Ukraine, in my opinion, it should be perceived as part of the region. Sebastian, did you have anything to add as far as the definition of the Mediterranean?

No, I think it's important that for the purpose of analysis, we move beyond the pure Mercatorian geographical limitations of a certain sea. I think there's still a lot of strategists, a lot of military people, policymakers, We look at a map and, you know, they look at the Mediterranean and they have this this conception of what the Mediterranean is. And, you know, there's a there's a strict boundary that runs through the state of Gibraltar, Suez and the Turkish Straits. And that's that. And I think we're doing our strategic analysis and our thinking about sea power and maritime security.

It does serve us when we limit ourselves to that. At the same time, of course, you know, we all know everything is connected with everything else. So there needs to be sort of an understanding that for the purpose of analysis, you've got to set some boundaries as well. But I would encourage everyone to sort of look beyond the purely geographical traditional boundaries of such maritime theaters. How was the Mediterranean treated during the Cold War and how did the Western approach change once the Cold War ended? So, you know, imagine in 1945, the fascist Italian Navy and the German Kriegsmarine are no longer, and the Mediterranean really is a place where emerging U.S. sea power, because the U.S. Navy stays after 1945, and the remnants of the British sea power basically have what we would call full command of the sea. The U.S. Navy soon creates what would then later become the U.S. 6th Fleet, first based in France, but then later moved to Italy. In 1946, you have the USS Missouri, a big battleship making a round to Turkey, a cruise to Turkey, also as a political statement. And so in the Cold War, the Mediterranean soon became both the soft underbelly of Central Europe, but also what some individuals, some Navy leaders even described as a NATO lake.

Now, I'm sure our listeners have heard that description in a different context recently. And it really was a NATO leg until it was no longer, because the Soviet Navy came to be built up from 1970s onwards and created bases or basing agreements, rather, with some of the Warsaw Pact and non-aligned nations in Eastern Europe, as well as in North Africa. There were some issues, of course, some crisis that the U.S. Navy was, together with its partners, well poised to respond to. Think about Lebanon 1958. Think about the crisis, the plural crisis in the Middle East, the Yom Kippur War. And of course, when the US Navy created the Maritime Strategy, capital M, capital S, in the 1980s, which was designed to be offensive and forward presence and sort of rolling back the Soviet navies globally, that also had an effect on the Mediterranean. For instance, a very strong, very powerful U.S. Navy fighting against Libya and then dictator Muammar Gaddafi, his attempt to create zones of influence around Libya. So that was possible because of a strong forward-based, forward-present U.S. Navy, which also made incursions into the Black Sea freedom navigation operations, as we would call it today. It was a theater that, of course, was part of the Cold War, but also relatively stable as compared to other parts of history.

Germany, anything to add on the discussion about the Med during the Cold War and the Western approach afterwards? Yeah, I mean, especially because my focus, as I'm not a historian, but a political scientist, I focus in my work mostly from the 1980s till modern day, till today. So I find the 1980s and the end of the Cold War, the final decade of the Cold War, is a very good starting point to show the difference in how national maritime policies and naval policies changed. And they changed dramatically in many cases as a response to the end of the Cold War. And there's a very interesting map that was part of the maritime strategy, and I also have it in my book that depicts the regional responsibility of the U.S. Navy and its allies and partners globally. And if you look at the Mediterranean, it's very clear that Italy has this sliver part only of the Mediterranean that is its responsibility, and then other NATO navies further east and France further west and so on. But then if you look at the documents of individual states, it looks very different. So, you know, one thing is, of course, what NATO says and what NATO wants, but most states found fidelity, found it quite comfortable and developed themselves within this dualism of especially NATO taskings as well as national responsibilities.

And in particular, Italy being, of course, maybe the most prominent Mediterranean state in terms of naval power and also focusing on the Med itself. And it was very interesting to look at this development in how smaller states, medium powers were released into being able after the end of the Cold War and doing more to going further afield. And that is something that we touch upon in our article in how the Mediterranean became this petri dish, this maritime area where states could develop their maritime strategies without necessarily having to focus on the high end as they had to do during the Cold War. and therefore had more ability to shape events, to use naval and sea power to further their interests in a broad spectrum. And then we, of course, move into this era of global war and terrorism and so on. So I think that is something that we need to keep in mind, especially how the Mediterranean was shaped in the perspective of European leadership, nature leadership and also during a period of land wars that you know uh ensued after the attacks of 9-11 and we touched on that in our in our article and to juxtapose uh the maybe the

post-cold war early post-cold war period of 20 years after the end of the cold war to current times and how that actually differs in in strategic calculus that decision makers have It was interesting that you brought up Italy, and I'll just ask this as a follow-up, and you can take it whatever way you want, or we can just move along. But you brought up Italy. That might be one of NATO's most capable navies at this point, like right after the United States, because it seems like the Italian navy since the end of the Cold War, I can't speak to the numbers, but the capabilities seem to have grown since the end of the Cold War. You're talking about aircraft carriers, you're talking about a pretty robust amphibious capability, and now you're also seeing some very high-end warfighting capability that they deployed into the Red Sea as part of Operation Prosperity Guardian. Yeah, just maybe two or three sentences, and then Sebastian, just jump in here if you want to. Of course, probably Italian naval leaders will say they have too little and they need more, but that is quite natural. Also, Jeff Till wrote a book about naval decline and that navies tend to decline. And we always have this perception of decline. But if you look at the Italian Navy and how it has moved from the end of the Second World War, Sebastian just mentioned it, it actually rose from the ashes, if you will, and is now a very, very capable force. And they are very prudent, very smart in their procurement policies, in their defense policies, in their vision of a greater Mediterranean region, and that it is essential for their prosperity and their security.

And I think they add very smart assets to their entire maritime approach, including having the agencies and other state agencies working very closely with them to spread the workload, if you will. Well, and they have a vast variety of maritime security issues they have to deal with. So they I think they are very prudent in their defense and security policy. And, you know, what strikes me about Italy is that they have legislation. I think it's even called the Navy, which governs procurements and all these these things that decision makers, you know, or military leaders are always worried about. And certainly as sea power specialists and analysts always, you know, we point our fingers at that. you know i don't i mean i've never met an admiral who said i have too many ships um and i have too many people enough please and no more uh there's always you know there's always that kind of uh

challenge to uh to do more with less or to do more with more and and i think that's sort of the era era we're moving in now but uh when it comes to italy i think you know they are a very useful case study in itself moving from a uh a sort of a regional i wouldn't even say power projection navy in the in the late cold war to really a a power projection regional power projection force uh a very capable one you know that routinely exercises and incorporates in nato frameworks multi-carrier operations with the french and with the u.s navy indeed in the wider mediterranean because i i also understand italy considers things like the gulf of guinea the wider mediterranean which might you know sound sound interesting um to uh to put it put it

But of course, they seem to understand that things are connected with one another and that navies are really the Swiss army knife of policymakers because they offer so many strategic opportunities to influence events ashore, to create meaningful relationships, training and exercise, and also to deter. But at the end of the day, people in Rome seem to understand and seem to practice that it requires a strategic approach. You can't just simply say, I need more ships and then wait for more ships to drop. A country like Italy, with its, of course, also the rich history and its maritime traditions and everything, it's an interesting way that they move forward. Which events in particular cause you to posit the West needs a new approach to the Mediterranean and why? Well, you know, after the end of the Cold War, the U.S. 6th Fleet, along with the U.S. 2nd Fleet, which was responsible for the North Atlantic, were targets of opportunity for everyone who wanted to get the peace dividend from the U.S. point of view. So the U.S. Navy 6th Fleet was dramatically reduced for many, many years. It basically just consisted of the USS Mount Whitney, an aging command ship, which will soon be decommissioned in two or three years. And there's no talk about a replacement. And because the Mediterranean became more or less indeed a NATO lake, not that people would call it that anymore, but a place where there was no issues for sea control, Western command of the sea was more or less full, as demonstrated in the Adriatic operations in the 1990s against Yugoslavia and in the Kosovo War 25 years ago.

And then after 9-11, Operation Active Endeavor was created, which was the idea was, OK, we need more maritime domain awareness, maritime terrorism, maritime enabled. 9-11 was all the rage at the time. And I think it changed with the Arab Spring 2011, some almost 13 years ago now, changed a lot of dynamics in the region, made a lot of countries more instable because the promises of the Arab Spring really turned into civil wars, into failing and failed governments and failed states, opportunities for countries like Russia and China to get a foothold in some of these crises. And at the same time, the US, the United States, as well as Europe were beginning to suffer from a banking crisis, the financial crisis, the refugee crisis, which also used the Mediterranean route quite, or still uses it, which in turn created the need for naval deployments into the Mediterranean

to try to steer and try to organize that kind of forced migration and illegal transfers. And, you know, the late Admiral Clive Johnstone, who was the commander of NATO Maritime Command, described the Mediterranean in the late 2010s, early 2020s as, you know, being governed by the three R's, the three challenges, the three R's, refugees, radicals, and Russia, which were different from how he described the northern flank, where he just said the three R's are Russia, Russia, Russia. So what I'm trying to say here is the Mediterranean became an area where a lot of diverse challenges and threats came to place, interacted with one with one another. And at the same time, the U.S. focus turned towards Asia.

So lots of European focus was still tied up in Afghanistan at the time. And so. After 2014 and 2022, the Russian campaigns and war against Ukraine, The Mediterranean is now getting a new understanding in the context of great power competition. There's been some hopeful decisions made on U.S. Navy forward deployments in Rota, Spain, which technically is not in the Mediterranean, but of course, part of our wider Mediterranean. I think decision makers in the U.S. are understanding that they cannot leave the Mediterranean alone. But at the same time, a lot of European, Southern European navies are still rebuilding their navies from having drawn down. And of course, you can read all about that in Jeremy's book.

And so there's a very, very strong dynamic now. What's the role of the Mediterranean in the wider Mediterranean security, in the European security system, but also in the global context of great power confrontation and rivalry? Yeah, if I may, I will jump in here because I agree with Sebastian that just international order and the return of great power competition needs a reassessment or requires then policymakers, strategists and so on to reassess the situation. And you can make an argument that things have not changed dramatically. Russia's footprint in the Mediterranean remains relatively small. China's making inroads in that region are also still relatively, if you will, at least in naval terms, rudimentary or small compared to NATO and to the West. But I think because the Mediterranean encompasses so many different areas of interest, of competition, energy, food, climate, commerce, we need to just take a better look at it and understand it more comprehensively and also draft policies according to that. My argument is even Austria needs an idea of what is happening in the Mediterranean because it directly affects, you know, if it's migration, if it's the Suez Canal being blocked, it directly affects us here in Austria. And from a naval perspective, from a security perspective, we have to take the long view, you know, and that's something that I argue in my work was missed. Yes, a lot of European states looked to the Mediterranean and operated in the Mediterranean over the last 30 years.

But under the premise that it would be a relatively permissive environment and would remain so indefinitely or more or less indefinitely and that there would be enough warning time. And, you know, many of us have written and have read about, you know, the decline of military capabilities across Europe. But that's now coming back to haunt them because there is no guarantee, and that's my argument, that the U.S. will remain so robust in its capabilities or be able and willing. There is no guarantee for many of those things. And I think that currently the Houthis present the threat that they do and that you more or less have a Mare Klausum, a closed sea, rather than Mare Nostrum, an open, free sea, both in the Red Sea as well as in the Black Sea, I think calls for a new response to that. Sebastian, you wanted to just? Sure. I think to add to your point, the two things, there's a lot of spillover effects from crisis in the wider Mediterranean that affect the Mediterranean.

And I'm not sure that policymakers are connecting the dots properly. You know, just to just to mention, you know, the Russian cargo ships that that did the route from from the Black Sea to Syria for some time. And so connecting these two theaters and, you know, now that the Russian maritime effort in the Black Sea is somewhat hampered, you know, it's it's it's changed the calculus. The other thing is, of course, what happens in the Red Sea has some very crucial dynamics, not least because the number of transits in the Suez Canal has dropped, significantly impeding Egypt's revenue from the canal. So suddenly you have a problem that seems to be far away that directly affects a littoral state. And my second point is, you know, I'm worried that despite the fact that we have so many data points from things that can happen at sea and in the wider maritime context, think about Chinese efforts to, you know, to get a grasp of port facilities in southern Europe and all these kind of things. You know, but I'm thinking about just in recent history, we had a big container ship that stuck sideways in the Suez Canal. Are we prepared in the West, you know, for something that might happen again like this, whether it's an accident or, you know, whether it's some sort of a some sort of a hybrid warfare scenario?

You know, what if the Suez Canal, what if there's some floating mines in the northern end, northern approaches of the Suez Canal? What does it mean for for how we do business, maritime and naval in the Mediterranean? And what does this mean for sea lines of communications? All these kind of things. I mean, you don't really have to look hard and far into the past. You know, you don't have to go back to the Greeks or the Romans to find a lot of things that can happen in the approaches as well as in the Mediterranean proper that could really create headaches for navies and for security and defense and deterrence. And I think we live in a time where there's so much going on, but also in the minds of decision makers that we forget about recent history, recent naval issues at our own peril. And then, you know, God forbid, but people will be surprised that some things happen that I think strategists and naval practitioners, I'm not saying could have foretold, but could have indicated that these are some issues that are not new or unique to the Mediterranean. Sebastian, before we move on to the final question, I would just point out an early contender for understatement of the years at the Russian maritime effort in the Black Sea has been somewhat hampered. it's been severely hampered uh resulting in the the destruction of like a quarter of the black sea fleet um but what are you arguing the uh western approach to the middle sea should be

well you know i think um there's there's uh there's a decision to be had um to be made about the uh the future of the u.s navy in the mediterranean um and that uh that incorporates It's both the capabilities, which, you know, the DGs that are stationed in Roja really make a difference. But also, you know, Mount Whitney has been in service as a command ship for quite some time. She was commissioned in 1967 or 68, 69, something like that. And she really is a, you know, she's a symbol of American naval diplomacy and naval presence. So, you know, you can do all the command ship activities from a shore or from a DDG, but the Mount Whitney pulling into a Mediterranean or Northern European port for Kiel Week or for some NATO activity really sends a sign. It's naval diplomacy. It's a platform that the U.S. Navy should think hard about replacing, you know, maybe with an amphibious assault ship or something like that, that the U.S. Navy really has a meaningful presence there.

I think the million dollar question here is, not just for me and Jeremy, but also on the minds of many in Europe, is what happens when the balloon goes up, if and when the balloon goes up in the Asia-Pacific, about U.S. presence in and around Europe? And, you know, will European navies be tasked, be drawn out into the Asia, into the Indo-Pacific? Will they have to hold down the fort around Europe's coastlines? So that's, you know, that's something that I, you know, should be, needs to be addressed without anticipating a clear, this is the plan kind of answer. And the third point is, you know, I mean, the current CNO, Admiral Franchetti, has a Sixth Fleet European history. So I don't think there's anyone better placed in the U.S. Navy at this point to understand how Europe works and things, how the Mediterranean works, how one operates in the Mediterranean. but also connected to both the wider Mediterranean as well as the global theaters. So from a U.S. perspective, the U.S. Navy shouldn't completely, and the U.S. Marines for that matter, shouldn't completely give up on the Mediterranean, but consider it a part of the integral picture of how they approach the world.

Jeremy, anything to add on the approach? yeah i mean i i always have my you know my my my rant if you will about capabilities across europe and and the the deployment of european naval vessels to the red sea uh to deal with the houthis uh added you know it was water on my mills i don't know if that's an english saying over i'm using a germanism here but you know what where you catch my drift it it really showed that There's still certain hurdles, certain levels of operations that many European navies have not taken or have not been willing to take or don't have the capability to take. And the deployment of the German air defense frigates in as part of of these operations or part of the EU operations speedest showed that, you know, it's the first time that a German frigate fired its air defense missiles in anger. I mean, Germany has had some air defense frigates and destroyed for many decades. And that's the first time. So it's the first time they do that. And then they, of course, had a little hiccup at the beginning at the expense of American and American drone.

um and but then you know they overcame that and and you know did a fabulous job of of defending uh the shipping in that region at the same time also ford uh read the re uh rearming their their their their ship there but then it's and that's my argument then then we have a problem because then we're european navies run have run out of missiles quite quickly and uh run out of ships quite quickly and if there is a really and i mean the houthis are uh are a threat but they're not nearly as big a threat as an any nation state that it would be willing to become hostile or turn hostile and there is no guarantee that not one of the littoral states would at some point you know turn hostile and then had land sea interdiction has just become so much more potent and so much

more dangerous so the what i see and what i've written about is is is and we sebastian i mentioned that in our article as well as this pressure on european navies to do more medium-sized european navies want to do more their their political leaders want to use naval power more to show what they have and these two medium-sized european and large european navies deploy further field which puts additional stress on you know both personnel as well as on material and now you know they want to also deploy to the pacific or you know out of area indian ocean or south atlantic and so on but there is only a limited number of of capabilities they have and as you mentioned also the decline and the lack of numbers, that really puts them in a hard place.

My argument is that, and we can see that, at least in my analysis, that in operational patterns, northern European states are less willing to deploy their surface combatants, their assets to the Mediterranean, unlike 20 years ago, where the Finns, the Norwegians, the Swedes were happy to deploy their assets off the coast of Somalia. that is no longer the case, because they need their few assets up north to deal with a potential threat from Russia. And I do believe that will hit also the medium-sized European navies more so in the future. And as Sebastian mentioned, we all have to think in 30, 40 years from now, and also in worst-case scenarios, which means, okay, the big one in the Asia-Pacific with China,

what does that mean for European navies? My argument would be we have too little capabilities And we need to both build new alliances and new partnerships with regional states to include their capabilities, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, which have quite good conditions, and also then, of course, be better at deterrence and denial, if you will, vis-a-vis Iran, vis-a-vis Russia, and vis-a-vis their proxies. well unfortunately that's all we have time for uh you saw my head down furiously scribbling earlier i was trying to capture all the times the two of you have appeared on this podcast so i want to highlight those those should appear in the link section of the podcast here for any listeners who want to go back if you're intrigued by this conversation you should hear what else these two have had to say so sea control 169 with sebastian and larry bond talking about uh the Game Harpoon, Red Storm Rising, and Tom Clancy.

Sebastian also joined us for Sea Control 202 during Regional Strategy Week and Sea Control 425, discussing Sweden's Navy and NATO. And Jeremy previously appeared on Sea Control 200, European Naval Procurement, and Sea Control 253, Future of European Seapower, alongside Dr. Henrik Breitenbauer. Quite a lot. Yes, you both have been extremely supportive of the podcast. I thank you very much. We'll timestamp it for the listeners, just in case there's something that occurs between

And this recording and publishing, we are recording this on Sunday, the 28th of July. So if there's some major maritime event that has happened in the Mediterranean that for some reason we aren't addressing, it's just because it's in the future. Jeremy, where can we find you online and what are you working on next? You can find me on LinkedIn and on X, formerly Twitter, on Facebook as well. But I'm trying to reduce my social media usage and action. Actually, that has worked quite well for me. And currently I'm not working on all too much because I have a lot of work in my day job. I hope to finish an article on the Mediterranean in the near future for our Italian colleagues, but we'll see about that.

So I'm happy to talk to anybody to reach out and discuss these issues, maritime issues, defense issues. And Jared, thanks a lot for having me on today. It was a real pleasure. All the best to you. Thanks. And Sebastian, same questions for you. Where can we find you and what's your next project? I'm I'm very happy to answer that. But I do want to address the current project because this is both a first and a last.

It's the first one that Jeremy and I are together on a podcast, which we just found out, you know, we've only known each other for eight years and work with one another for eight years. So, you know, some some good things just just take some time. So it's a real pleasure to be sharing the stage with Jeremy. But also, thank you to you, Jared, because this is the last recording that you do in this in this format. I understand you did hundreds and hundreds of episodes. So bravo, Zulu. You've really brought the community together. You've really given everyone a push to think about maritime and naval issues. And that's really invaluable.

And whatever you do next, good luck. And thanks again. Bravo, Zulu. So I'm still on Twitter. Well, X, I guess that's, Jeremy was right about that, naval gazing. And I am increasingly more fond of, you know, just shoot me an email if you're interested in talking. that's easy to find, ispk.org.

My current projects, if you sit in Kiel by the Baltic Sea, are obviously what's happening in the Baltic Sea with the Swedish and the Finnish accession now to NATO. What does it mean? Critical undersea infrastructure. The German Coast Guard is now interested in my work increasingly. And if I'm not too busy, I'm also interested in the Black Sea as well as working on a large research project

about NATO maritime strategies and naval operations. So good to be talking shop here. Well, thank you both again for joining us. To listeners, thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time. ¶¶