Why new navies inherit old institutional habits

Even navies reconstituted after the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia inherited personnel and organizational habits from predecessor institutions. The Baltic states and Yugoslavia's successor states therefore began with legacies rather than a blank institutional slate. Changing platforms is only part of reform because training, education, weapons, communications, and shore infrastructure also carry inherited momentum. More deeply, the concepts tying those elements together determine how a navy organizes, operates, and expects to fight. Choices about sea control, blue- or green-water orientation, force balance, and professional or conscript crews form what the excerpt calls the navy's central identity or soul.