OCOM: The United States Needs an Oceanic Command

This article argues that the current poor state of the U.S. Navy reflects a larger problem: the lack of a global maritime security portfolio in the United States’ defense schema. It examines the example of Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King’s organizational and strategic leadership atop the U.S. Navy during World War II as providing both context and a way ahead toward a more unified approach to maritime strategy. A key finding in the article focuses on the problem of unified (formerly geographic) combatant commands (COCOMs) in the current U.S. security architecture. By dividing maritime strategy into “demand signals” from the continentally focused COCOMs, such as the U.S. Central Command and U.S. European Command, the Unified Command Plan has removed, decentralized, and deunified a global way of thinking about maritime strategy. This article proposes to ameliorate the problem by creating an Oceanic Command, much as Admiral King was commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet during World War II. The author further argues that there is already organizational precedent for the shift with the existence of both the U.S. Space Command and the U.S. Strategic Command.