Maritime Trade Warfare in the 21st Century

Abstract

Policy makers and operational commanders continually find themselves searching for alternatives to the direct use of force in order to accomplish strategic and operational objectives. Historically, one option available to policy makers in times of peace to coerce an adversary has been trade sanctions, normally enforced by maritime interception operations, denying some critical import to affect his decision-making. During wartime, operational commanders think in terms of blockading an enemy to directly attack a critical vulnerability thereby assisting to defeat the enemy's center of gravity. Regardless of whether wartime or peacetime, executing a strategy of deprivation against an adversary poses a challenging problem for the operational commander. This paper explores the factors that must be considered by the commander when employing maritime trade warfare and how new and emerging technologies may provide new options for the operational level commander.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 04, 2011
Accession Number
ADA546134

Entities

People

  • Michael H. Toth

Organizations

  • Naval War College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Cyber
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Space
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aircrafts
  • Artificial Satellites
  • Center Of Gravity
  • Commerce
  • Computer Networks
  • Cyber Warfare
  • Deprivation
  • Global Positioning Systems
  • Marine Transportation
  • Military Operations
  • Naval Operations
  • Naval Warfare
  • Navigation
  • Shipping
  • Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
  • War Colleges
  • Warfare

Fields of Study

  • Political science

Readers

  • East Asian Political and Security Studies within the Soviet Union
  • Irregular Warfare and Special Operations Cyberspace Operations against Adversarial Threats.
  • Joint Military Operations and Doctrine.