Developing international partnerships and opening up dialogue among navies is becoming more important to combat everything from piracy to ballistic missile threats, according to the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO).
Adm. Gary Roughead has spent significant time traveling to nations with maritime interests, to regional gatherings of naval leaders and international symposiums, maintaining, or in some cases, improving the relationship the United States has with other navies.
“I think it’s extraordinarily important,” Roughead said in a recent interview with sister publication Defense Daily. “The dialogue that we have been able to put in place is really quite a network. And it goes beyond just some of the HA [humanitarian assistance] stuff. For example, when North Korea fired their missile, we had what I would call some of the higher- end partnerships in play with the [South] Koreans, us, and Japanese bringing Aegis.”
More recently, French aircraft were flying off of a U.S. aircraft carrier, he added.
A major sign that naval partnerships are gaining traction has been the increase in attendance at the International Seapower Symposium held every two years. The event, which will be held at the Naval War College in October, has grown from 67 attendees to 98. Roughead added it appears this year’s symposium should hit 98 attendees again.
But it’s not so much the symposiums themselves, as what happens afterward, he added.
For example, shortly after the Russia-Georgia conflict, Roughead was in Italy for a regional symposium.
“My Russian counterpart was there, and, obviously, we had some issues. But they were also heading into the piracy area and I said ‘you have ships coming down, we need to talk,'” Roughead said. “We talked, and the next day there were people from his navy and people from my Navy who got together. And it was a few weeks later…[we] had a U.S. cruiser and Russian helicopter chasing down pirates.”
Roughead pointed out the same discussions occurred when the Chinese were looking to embark into the waters off eastern Africa.
“My South African counterpart, who I first met at the International Seapower Symposium…since that time, I visited him there, he’s visited me here, and for the first time ever, a nuclear carrier visited South Africa last year,” he added. “It is really becoming a global maritime partnership.”
That global partnership is leading to contributions and support, often times without the U.S. Navy in the lead. And that’s OK with Roughead.
It is really more about addressing the issue, and how can the U.S. Navy help in a collaborative and cooperative way, he noted. “I think things have been made better that way.”
“I just look at the collection of countries that are operating in the area around Somalia. It’s the strangest bunch of bedfellows you have ever seen, but I think it is having an effect,” he added.
“It doesn’t mean there isn’t going to be disagreements, but what the partnerships allow us to do is have a dialogue about those areas where you disagree, but at the same time those areas you do agree, work together,” Roughead said. “I really do like the term of the things we are doing, the relationships that we have, and the way our sailors are able to interact with one another.”