NEW INSIGHTS FROM OLD BOOKS - The Case of Alfred Thayer Mahan, de Jon Sumida.

8/10/2019 NEW INSIGHTS FROM OLD BOOKS - The Case of Alfred Thayer Mahan, de Jon Sumida.

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NEW INSIGHTS FROM OLD BOOKSThe Case of Alfred ThayerMahan

Jon Sumida

Alfred Thayer MahansThe Influenceof Sea Power upon H istory, 16601783,which appeared in 1890, is widely regarded as the first import ant study ofthe relationship between naval affairs and international politi cs. Mahan subse-

quentl y publi shed twenty-odd addit ional volumesthat extended and elaborated

theviewspresented in thisbook. On thepresent occasion, an art iclebased upon

the tradit ional summary of Mahansmain ideascould bejustified asan obliga-

tory nod to the U.S. Navysintellectual heri tage, or as an act of faith i n the ca-

pacit y of patr isti c wr it ing to inspire strategic

insight. Recent scholarship, however, has demon-str ated that Mahans thi nking about sea power has

been fundamentally misunderstood. This art icle

will thus examine three areas where the new inter-

pretation of Mahan affects considerati on of prob-

lemsthat areof interest today. The first isnaval and

military cooperation when fighting in inland or

coastal waters; the second is the nature and role of

naval supremacy with respect to a complex world

system of trade; and the third arises from the re-

quirements of higher naval educati on in a peri od ofrapid technological change. In other words, Mahans

work will be related to jointness and power projec-

ti on from the sea, the expansion of the global econ-

omy, and the revolution in naval affairs.

There are thr ee main arguments. First, Mahan

believed that when one side in a confli ct possessed

Jon Sumi da received hisB.A. (1971) from the University

of Californi a, Santa Cruz, wi th honors, and his M.A.(1974) and Ph.D. (1982), thelatter with honors, from the

Un iversit y of Chicago. He hasbeen a fellow-commoner

of the Archives Center at Churchill College, Cambridge

Universit y (1983); a fellow of the Wilson Center twi ce

(1986 and 199596) and of theJohn Simon Guggenheim

Foundati on (199091); and Vi sit ing Di sti nguished Pro-

fessor in t heDepartment of Mil it ary Strategy and Opera-

ti onsat theNati onal War College, in Washington, D.C.

(2000). Of his numerousart icles, two won theMoncado

Prize from the Society for M il it ary History (1993 and

1995); in 1997 he received theNaval H istory Author of

the Year Award for 1996 from theU.S. Naval Insti tute.

HisbooksincludeInventingGrand Strategyand Teaching

Command: TheClassic Worksof Alfred Thayer MahanReconsidered(1997 and 1999), In Defence of Naval

Supremacy: Finance, Technology, and Brit ish Naval

Policy, 18891914 (1989 and1993), andThePollen Pa-

pers: ThePrivately Circulated PrintedWorksof Arthur

Hungerford Pollen, 19011916(1984). Dr . Sumida is

associateprofessor ofhistoryat theUniversity ofMaryland.

Naval War College Review, Summer 2001, Vol. LI V, N o. 3


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absolute sea command or in special cases even temporary local contr ol, naval

operationsi n dir ect support of land forcescould beof decisiveimportance. Sec-

ond,Mahan maintainedthat naval supremacy in thetwenti eth century would be

exercised byat ransnati onal consort ium actingin defenseof amult inati onal sys-

tem of freetrade. Third, Mahan wasconvinced that the transformati on of naval

materi el by radical technological changehad not eli minated tacti cal and str ate-

gic uncert ainty from the conduct of war, and that the improvement of executive

abili ty through theri gorousstudy of history should thereforebethe basis of na-

val officer education.

Mahan is often portrayedbecauseof misreadingsof fragments of his wri t-

ing, or all too often upon no reading of theoriginal textsat allasa purveyor of

truismsabout naval strategyand doctr ine. Theresult ing cari catureis frequentl y

eit her misappli ed or dismissed asoutdated. This art icle, which i s informed by

the study of all of Mahans major publicati ons and survivi ng correspondence,should remind usof the meri ts of the adage, When you want agood new idea,

read an old book.

A COMPLEX PICTURE OF THE I NTERRELATED DYNAMICS

Alfred Thayer Mahan wasan officer in theUnion navy during theCivil War. He

was never a part icipant in a major battl e, but his activeservi ce included many

months of inshore work in small warships enforcing the blockade of the Con-

federatecoast. Nearly two decadesafter theend of hosti li ti es, Mahan accepted a

commission to writea book about naval operationson theCari bbean coast and

up the Mi ssissippi and Red Rivers in the war. In additi on to drawing upon hisown experi ence during this conflict, Mahan studied memoirs and documents,

and corresponded wit h veterans from both sides. The completed work, whi ch

wasentitledTheGulf and InlandWaters, waspublished in 1883. Several years af-

ter theappearanceofI nfluenceof Sea Power upon Historyand itstwo-volumese-

quel, The Influenceof Sea Power upon the French Revolut ion and Empire, which

came out in 1892, Mahan produced a biography of the admiral who had com-

manded most of the Union operations descri bed in his f irst book.Admiral

Farragut, which was published in 1897, gave Mahan another opportunity to

present hisviewson fightingi n li ttoral and interior watersthat involved cooper-

ati on between the army and navy.Duri ngtheAmeri can Civil War,thel ack of afleet meant that theConfederacy

could not mount an effectivechallengeto Union control of thehi gh seas. More-

over, the naval weakness of the southern states exposed their vital internal

riveri ne communicationsand major ports to seaborneassault. Over the course

of the four-year conflict, the terr itorial integri ty and economic vitali ty of the

South were compromised by the integrated acti on of the Union army and navy,

SU M I D A 101


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which established Federal control of t heMississippi and captured New Orleans

and Mobile.Mahanstwo accountsof thesecampaignsdemonstr atethat hepos-

sessed considerable knowledge of the special characteristi cs of brown water

fighting, appreciated the necessity of connecting the activi ty of land and naval

forces, and recognized that thesuccessof joint operationshad been amajor con-

tri butor to the ultimate Union victory.

In books wri tten before and after the Farr agut biography, Mahan criti cized

Admiral Horatio Nelsonsadvocacy of amphibiousoperationsin support of l and

campaigns and, in general, opposed overseas expediti ons. But these viewswere

applied to circumstancesi n which

the opposing side possessedor

wassupposed to possessthe ca-

pacity to dispute sea command.

Mahan reasoned that in such acaseany attempt to project power

from water to land risked naval assets that were needed to preserve the general

control of theoceans, upon which all depended. When the maintenanceof mar-

it ime li nesof communicati on wasnot an issue, hehad no objection to using na-

val force in combination with an army to achieve a mil itary objective, and he

well understood that such action could havegreat str ategic value.

Indeed, Mahan attributed his ini ti al inspirati onfor the idea that naval su-

premacy was of much l arger historical significance than was generally recog-

nizedto his reflections on a historical case involving the use of uncontested

command of the sea to achievedecisivemil itary success. In his memoirs, here-called that in 1885hehadchanced upon Theodor Mommsenshistory of ancient

Rome. While reading thisbook, Mahan had been struck by the thought that the

outcomeof thewarsbetween Romeand Cart hagewould havebeen dif ferent had

the latter possessed the abil it y, asdid the former,of using the seaasan avenueof

invasion instead of moving its armi esover land.

After somereflection,Mahan decided to apply theexampleof the victory of a

state that could usenaval forceeffectively over onethat could not to the history

of European wars in the lateseventeenth and eighteenth centur ies. Thisresulted

in the fir st of the influence of sea power volumes, in which Mahan closed the

introduction with al engthy examination of thenaval aspectsof Romesdefeat ofCarthage. He ended the main narrativeofThe Influenceof Sea Power upon Hi s-

torywith an account of the Brit ish defeat at Yorktown in 1781. The outcome of

thi s batt le had been determi ned by the reinforcement of Ameri can and French

armies by sea, and also by French naval control of surrounding waters, which

had prevented a Bri ti sh fleet from reli eving the besieged Bri ti sh army. The

Yorktown disaster had prompted negotiati onsthat ult imately ended thewar and

1 0 2 N A V A L W A R C O L L EG E R EV I E W

When dealing with Mahan, the focus of in-quiry should not be his statement of pr inciplebut his choice of issues, and the complexities of

the historical cases that were his main subjects.


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established Ameri can independence. In the book that made his reputation,

Mahan thusused thesurvival of what wasto becomeimperi al Romeand thecre-

ati on of the United Statesaspowerful hi storical testaments to the transcendent

value of naval force in support of mil itary operations.

ButThe Influenceof Sea Power upon Hi storyalso introduced aset of proposi-

ti ons about the relati onship between the economic basis of national strength

and the development and effecti veuse of a navy. Seaborne tr ade, Mahan main-

tained in his first best-seller, was a cri tically important generator of wealth. In

the event of war, a nati on that could protect its own mari time commercewhil e

disrupti ng that of itsopponent could shif t the balanceof nati onal resourcesde-

cisively in itsown favor.A fleet capableof winning and keeping command of the

sea was required to accompli sh both of these tasks. In peace, therefore, a great

state was well advised to do everything it could to buil d the strongest possible

navy. Over ti me, the cumulati ve effect of sound naval policy and str ategy inpeace and war waseconomic prosperi ty and terr itorial aggrandizement.

Naval forcestructureand deployment were also important vari ables. Cruiser

attackson scattered shippi ng,Mahan beli eved, were incapable of inflicti ng pro-

hibi tive losses on a l arge merchant mari ne. Blockade of the enemys main

portsimplemented by afleet of batt leshipscapable of defeati ng any forcet hat

wassent against it wasthe only way to accomplish the completeor near com-

plete stoppage of overseas commercerequired to achievea signifi cant strategic

effect against agreat mari ti mepower.It wasfor thisreason that Mahan madethe

number of battleships the measure of naval potency, and the destr uction of the

enemy batt le fleet through decisive engagementfor the purposesof either se-curingor breakingablockadethe main operational objectiveof naval strategy.

These i nterrelated arguments addressed major concerns of Mahans own

ti me. From the 1880s, the general expansion of European navies in response to

increasing imperi al ri valr y was accompanied by intensive debate over the rela-

tive meri ts of a naval str ategy based on commerce raiding by crui sers, as op-

posed to one based on command of the sea by battleships. In addition, the

advent of steam propulsion and metal hull shadvastly increased theeffi ciencyof

mari ti met ransport, which in turn caused asharp upturn in overseascommerce

and the wealth generated by this kind of activi ty. Mahans choice of European

great power conflict duringthelateageof sail asthevehiclefor hisargument alsofavored discussion of the general struggle for naval supremacy in preferenceto

case studies of combined operations along coasts and ri vers. So although

Mahan clearl y recognized t he impor tance of power projection from sea to

land, it was his examination of the contest for command of the sea, and i ts

political-economic consequences, that created the immediateand wide audience

forTheIn fluenceof Sea Power upon Historyand later publicati ons. Theresult ing

SU M I D A 103


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association of Mahan with arguments exclusively about naval supremacy di s-

torted perceptionsof hisidenti ty asa strategic theorist, setting thestagefor mis-

leading compari sons wit h writers (such as C. E. Callwell and Juli an Corbett)

who focused more on the relationship of land and sea power. But a far greater

problem was created by the seri ousmisunderstanding of the basic character of

Mahansr enditi on of European naval hi story in the age of sail, a mispercepti on

that led to faulty inferencesabout Mahansfundamental viewson grandstr ategy.

The influence of sea power seri es began in the mid-seventeenth centur y

with asituation in whichthreemajor mari ti mestatesFrance, theNetherlands,

and Englandwere roughly balanced with respect to naval prowessand accom-

plishment. It ended in the early

nineteenth centur y with the wars

of theFrench Revoluti on and Em-

pire, during which Bri tainsRoyalNavy moreor lessruled thewaves.

In addition to the two works

named previously, which provided an overview of the entire peri od, Mahan

wrote two support ing case studi es: a biography of Admir al Nelson, and an ac-

count of theWar of 1812. In termsof plot, theenti reseri escould beread asthe

story of the ri seof Brit ainsnaval supremacyand it sconsequent achievement of

economic and polit ical preeminencein Europe. In terms of moral, the seri es

seemed to say that Britains sustained and aggressive useof alargef leet to obtain

terr itory, wealth, and power could be emulated by any state that had the mind

and will to follow its example.Mahan, it appeared to many, had intended hisanalyti cal history to bea grand

strategic primer for hi s own times, and in part icular for t he government of hi s

own country.Hewasindeed aproponent of amuch strengthened U.S. Navy. It is

thus not hard to imagine that he hoped that his homeland would become the

worldsgreatest power in the twenti eth centur y by the same meansthat Bri tain

had used to achieve thi s status in the peri od covered by his histories. The fact

that the United Statesultimately rose to thetop in large part through the effec-

tiveuseof naval supremacy hasonly reinforced the propensit y to draw such in-

ferencesabout Mahansunderlying motive.

But careful consideration of Mahansactual writi ng in the influence of seapower seri es, of his polit ical-economic outlook, and of his punditr y about the

future course of world poli ti cs makes it impossibl e to accept the foregoing

characteri zati onsof his account of naval warfare in the lateageof sail and of its

intended applicati on to the twentieth century. The first i nstallment of the in-

fluenceof seapower seri esi sabout t hefailure of Franceto exploit itsmarit ime

assets properly, a failure that in Mahansview allowed Bri tain to achievemajor


From the start, most wr iters on naval historyand strategy misperceived his work, and suc-

cessive generations compounded the errors oftheir predecessors.


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successes in war vir tually by default. Mahan chose to close the book with a dis-

proport ionately lengthy account of the Ameri can Revoluti on, a conflict in

which sound French policy and deploymentsresulted in Bri tainsdefeat and the

lossof avast and rich colonial terr itory.In thewarsof theFrench Revolution and

Empire, in contrast, the navy of Francewascompromised from the start by po-

litical upheaval and institutional disintegration. The second installment was

thus about Brit ains use of naval supremacy to contain a mil itari ly preeminent

France through a str ategy of attr it ion. Mahan di d not hold that the ult imate

outcome had been preordainedthat is, that naval supremacy assuch guaran-

teed victory. Thetr iumph of Bri tain, given the evennessof the balancebetween

the opposing sides, he argued in both the second and the thi rd install ments,

depended upon extr aordi nary operati onal naval leadershipin the person of

Nelson. In the concluding fourth installment, Mahansmain themewast hat in-

adequate Ameri can naval strength was the fundamental explanati on of dipl o-matic failure before the War of 1812 and of naval operational impotence, with

all its attendant seri ousstrategic drawbacks, duri ng the conflict.

Britain and British naval strategy did not, in short, represent thefocusof the

influence of sea power seri es. Mahans histori es did not constitute a simple

moralit y playabout asinglestateacti ngaccordingto aprescribedgeneral course

of action; they offered instead acomplex pictureof theinterrelated dynamicsof

naval and mari ti mecommercial activit y on theonehand, and international pol-

it ics on the other. Mahans essenti all y li beral polit ical- economic views, more-

over, led him to reject the mercanti li st conception of a world consisting of

competi ng players wit h mutually exclusive interests. Mahan beli eved that freetrade between nations promoted increases in the volume of international ex-

changes of goods, which worked to the benefi t of all participants. The great

expansion of French overseasshipping after the War of theSpanish Succession,

he argued in the first installment of t he influence of sea power seri es, wasat-

tr ibutable to peaceand theremoval of restr ictionson commerce, not to govern-

ment initi ati ves. In the second installment, Mahan observed that sea power was

an organism that included not only organized naval forcebut freemari ti meen-

terprise. While theformer depended upon statefunding and direction,thelatter

thr ived in the absence of government interference. During the wars of the

French Revoluti on and Empire,Mahan maintained, the Bri ti sh statewasable toexploit theprosperi ty produced byan internati onal sea-based mercanti lesystem

that i t could protect but did not possess. Brit ain was not, in other words, the

owner of sea power but i ts custodi an.

Mahan beli eved that Brit ain had been both the defender and main benefi-

ciary of seabornetradei n the lateeighteenth and early nineteenth centuriesbe-

cause it s parl iament had been domi nated by a small group of men wi th close

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ties to mariti me commerce. Such an oligarchy had been predisposed to heavy

spending on the navy, producing a fleet strong enough to defend a merchant

mari ne that carr ied a large proport ion of the worlds overseas trade. Over the

course of the nineteenth centur y, however, the democrati zati on of the Brit ish

poli ti cal system undercut the ma-

nipulation of government policy

by a mercanti le eli te. As a conse-

quence, M ahan argued, t he Brit -

ish stateof thelateni neteenth and

twenti eth century lost the wil l to

finance a navy capable of defending what had become a much larger and in-

creasingly multi national system of oceanic economic exchange. Moreover, in

Mahansview, no singledemocrati zed power would becapableof assumingsuch

aburden. For this reasonand becausehewasconvinced that freetr adecondi-tions provided large benefits to all major maritime countriesMahan con-

cluded that in the twenti eth century, naval supremacy would be exercised by a

tr ansnational consorti um of navies. The basis of such a system, he insisted,

would not beformal agreement but the absenceof important confl ictsof polit i-

cal interest, coupled to a common stake in the securi ty of a highly productive

form of economic activit y. Mahan was thus convinced that Bri tain and the

United Stateswould cooperatewithout recourseto at reaty and that in such are-

lationship thelatter would serveasthej unior partner. To play even thissupport -

ing role effectively, Mahan i nsisted, Ameri ca needed a larger navy. He did not

advocate the creati on of an American navy that was stronger than every otherunlessthe Bri ti sh navy wasweakened by inadequate financing or by war with a

European competi tor.

Mahan offered hi s viewson the future course of international affair s in sev-

eral book-length monographsand in peri odical articlesthat were later collected

and publi shed as books. In them Mahan contemplated a range of possible

coursesof events. Theseincluded the containment of an expansionist Russia by

an internati onal coali ti on, war between Britain and Germany, and even a cata-

clysmic colli sion between European and Asian civili zations. What hedi d not do

wasapply acrudereadingof thegreat-power contestsof the lateageof sail to the

industrial future and thereby imagine the rise of a hegemonic United Statesthrough offensive naval warfare and mercanti li st economic policy. While his

reali st temperament prompted him to arguethat war and the threat of war were

likely to befacts of l ife for theforeseeablefuture, Mahan did not ruleout either

the possibili ty or desir abili ty of general peacefounded upon the workingsof an

international system of freetr ade. In such aworld economy, he was confident,


Mahan devoted as much attent ion to the stra-tegic direction of naval operat ions as he did tothe relati onship between naval supremacy andthe course of international poli tics.


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the energy and entrepreneurial spir it of the Ameri can people would enable

them to compete successful ly.

In the second half of the nineteenth centur y, the onset of industr ialization

transformed naval materi el wit hin the span of ageneration. When Mahan wasa

midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy, just before the Ameri can Civi l War, he

was tr ained on wooden sail ing ships armed with muzzle-loading guns. By the

time he retired from the servi ce at t he end of the century, steel warships pro-

pell ed by steam and equipped with breech-l oading weaponsof much larger size

and power had become standard. The sudden obsolescence, asa result of rapid

technical change, of much of what had constituted traditional naval fighting

practiceand thevir tually worldwidesensethat what now really mattered in war

was the possession of the latest, and therefore most capable, naval armaments

undermined theself-confidenceof naval executivel eaders. Conversely,naval of-

ficer technicians could celebrate the wonders of technical improvement andclaim that the crit ical importance of quali tative advantage in materi el made

their activity centr al to t he effi ciency of t he Navy. Moreover, admini str ati ve

burdenshad been magnifi ed by the management needsof the new technology

and also by the expansion of t he American fl eet t hat had begun in t he 1880s;

thesefactorscreated a largeclassof naval offi cer bureaucratswith pretensions

to hi gher status not dir ectly connected to tr adit ional requirements for com-

mand at sea.

Therelativedecli neof naval officer executivesalarmed Mahan. By dint of i n-

tell ectual patr imony and personal experi encein the greatest conflict ever fought

byhisserviceup to histi me, hehad decided opinionson theparamount valueofeffectiveleadership in war and how it mi ght bedeveloped. Mahansfather, Den-

nisHart Mahan, a distinguished professor at the U.S. Mi li tary Academy at West

Point, had beli eved that great executiveleadership wasof crucial import ancei n

war. The elder Mahan had observed that at criti cal junctures, commanders

would beconfronted with complex,contingent, changing,and contradictory in-

formation, which meant that decision making could never be reduced to the

mechanisti c applicati on of rules or pri nciples. Development of the tempera-

ment required for sound judgment under such circumstances, Dennis Hart

Mahan was convinced, could be aided by the study of detail ed and analytically

ri gorousoperational history.There can belit tledoubt that thisoutlook wasi m-parted to hisson,and thereafter reinforced bytheyounger Mahansdir ect obser-

vati on of command decision making in the Civil War. Alfred Thayer Mahans

first publication, in 1879, wasan essay on naval education in which heattacked

what heregarded asthe overemphasis on technical subjects and call ed for much

greater attenti on to the study of what amounted to the li beral arts. Such an ap-

proach, hemaintained, would develop the moral quali tiest hat officers required

SU M I D A 107


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to beable to makedecisionsin the faceof danger and uncert aint y. Thevital role

of moral strength with respect to executive command, along with the appropri -

ate means of improving i t in naval officers, became a theme in Mahans later

writ ing that wasno lessi mportant to him than his examination of therelation-

ship between naval affair sand international politi cs.

In TheInfluenceof SeaPower upon History, Mahan argued that although tacti cs

changed as the character of armaments altered, the vali dit y of the basic pri nci-

ples of str ategy were relatively unaffected by technical progress, and human

character wasan absolute, aconstant. Hi story, therefore,might havel it tleto say

of current applicability to tactics

but agreat deal that waspertinent

to strategy and operational com-

mand. M ahan devoted as much

attention in themain narrativeofthis work to the strategic direc-

tion of naval operationsashedid to hisgrandstrategic argument about ther ela-

ti onship between naval supremacy and the course of i nternati onal poli ti cs. He

also made a few observati onsabout the crit ical effect of indivi dual moral char-

acter on theexerciseof naval command.In later installmentsof the influenceof

sea power series, he remained no less attentive to str ategic questions and,

through histreatment of Nelsonsleadership quali ti es, wrote at length about the

moral di mensionsof executive decision making in war.

In several of his arti cles, Mahan maintained that the essenceof effectivecom-

mand compri sed rapid and judiciousr isk taking and full responsibili ty for out-comes. This set of characteri sti cs was alien to the scientif icmentalitof the

engineer, who dealt deli berately wit h the discovery of certainty about physical

matters through controlled experi ment, and to the bureaucrati zed mi ndset of

the administr ator, who countenanced delay and fragmented accountabil it y. In

peace, an executive leader had few if any opportuniti es eit her to display his ca-

pacity f or war command or to acquire experi encet hat would enable him to

develop it , while technicians and bureaucratsf louri shed in the pursuit of engi-

neeri ng innovati on or administr ativeexpansion. For Mahan, therefore, seri ous

naval history, of t he kind that he had produced in the influence of sea power

seri es, served two major practi cal functions. First, it reminded the navy of whatexecutive war command was and why i t was important; second, it provided a

sound educati onal basis for developing that capacity in offi cers who had no war

experience. The latter task wasaccomplished through stories about naval deci-

sion making in war,narr ativesthat prompted readersto imagine thepsychologi-

cal dynamicsas well as materi al circumstances that condit ion the dir ection of

operationsin real conflicts.


The study of all of Mahansmajor publi cationsand surviving correspondence should remindus of the adage, When you want a good new

idea, read an old book.


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Mahan lacked the powers of technical rati ocinati on that were needed to eval-

uate properly a complex engineeri ng problem, such as capital-ship design. Hi s

cri ti cismsi n the early twenti eth centur y of the all-big-gun battl eship, therefore,

failed to takeinto account several significant factors that exposed his analysis to

swif t and thorough destr uction. But neit her was Mahan a naval technological

Luddite. If he was a cri tic of many of t he claims made for mechanical innova-

ti on, it wasbecausehewasconvinced that such progresshad not eli minated un-

certainty from decision making in war, and that the decadence of the naval

executiveethosthat had resulted wasthusa dangerousweakness. Hi santidoteto

the technological determi nists of his ti me, however, washistory rather than po-

li ti cal science; hebeli eved that the veri simi li tude afforded by detailed narr ative

about thi ngsthat had actually happened could engagethe mindsand feeli ngsof

students of command in ways that summari zed l essons or abstractions could

not. M ahans preference for historical representation over the constr uction ofexplanatory systems when deali ng with the past is in line with much that has

been argued recentl y byproponentsof chaosand complexity theory. Further, his

remedy for moral dilemmasconfidencein intell igent intuit ionisone that i s

supported today by the findings of cognitive science. Viewed in l ight of t hese

modern, cutti ng-edgeinquir iesinto human learni ng and behavior, the writings

of Mahan may be regarded asnot just relevant but revelatory.

A COGNITIVE POINT OF DEPARTURE

For nearly a hundred years, Alfred Thayer Mahans pronouncements on naval

affair s and i nternati onal polit ics were too famous to be ignored but also tooextensive, di fficult , and complicated to be easily understood as a whole. From

the start, most writers on naval history and strategy misperceived his work, and

successivegenerati ons compounded the errorsof their predecessors, creati ng a

largeli terature whoseshortcomingsfurther obstr ucted accessto the meaning of

the ori ginal texts. As a consequence, Mahans basic ideas have been mi srepre-

sented asfollows: first, seacontrol wasalwaysthe central questi on of naval strat-

egy; second, the ideal of national grand str ategy was the achievement of naval

supremacy as the prerequisit e to international economic and poli ti cal pre-

emi nence; and thi rd, successin naval warfare depended upon the correct appli -

cati on of certain principles of strategy. These proposit ions add l it tle to currentnaval discussions, which consider the American possession of sea control and a

monopoly on superpower status virtually asgivens, and which are preoccupied

by t he tr ansformati on of fighti ng pr actice through radical technological

innovation.

The major arguments of Mahan that can be found t hrough comprehensive

and ri gorous cri ti cal examinati on, however, are very di fferent from what has

SU M I D A 109


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been supposed. Moreover, the issues that prompted him to put pen to paper

were remarkably simi lar to thoseof today. He began both his naval and writing

careers deali ng with joint operations in coastal waters. Mahan wasconfronted

by the rapid expansion of a global system of free trade; by uncert ainty about

what Ameri cas proper naval role under such condit ions should be; and by a

revolution in naval affairs that was occasioned by the replacement of pre-

industr ial by industr ial naval armamentsand that in turn raised largequestions

about the nature of wart ime command and the education of those who would

exerciseit.

Mahanscontemplation of these problemsproduced the following conclusions.

First, close cooperation between land and sea forces is essential for the success of

joint operations, whoseoutcomescan determinethevictor in amajor war.Second,

because the cost of building and maint aini ng a navy that is strong enough to

command theseasunilaterally will betoo high for any singlepower, sea control inthe twentieth century and beyond would be the responsibili ty of a transnational

consortium of navies. Third, great advancesi n technologydo not diminish reliance

upon thegood judgment of naval executiveleaders, who could best beprepared for

effectivehigh-level decision making in war by the proper study of history.

Identi fying Mahans true basic attit udes toward power projecti on from sea to

land, naval supremacy, and the relationship between technological changeand

naval officer educati on doesmore than correct academic error. What havebeen

beli eved to be Mahans ideas created a body of theory that sti ll whether

through acceptance, modification, or rejectionforms part of the thoughtprocesses of most senior naval officers. Changing what has for so long been a

cognit ive point of departure, therefore, has signifi cant implicati onsfor anyone

concerned wi th the future of naval poli cy. Mahan has been widely regarded as

the discoverer of what hesupposedly believed were universal truthsabout naval

strategy that wereto beapplied directly.Thefact is, however, that Mahansprop-

ositi onswere observati onsabout parti cular phenomena rather than general les-

sons. When dealingwith Mahan, thefocusof inquir y should thereforenot behis

statement of pri nciple or deli neati on of precedent but hi s choice of issues, and

the complexit iesof the historical cases that were his main subjects. The crucial

linkagesbetween hispast and our present, in other words, arenot to befound inhis conclusions but in his questions and his conduct of the inquir y. These are

sti ll worth engaging, because Mahan faced problems that were simi lar to those

that confront naviestoday, and hebrought to them a powerful intell igence that

was informed by ri ch experi ence and wide reading. Hi story was the venue for

Mahansscholarly labors, because he understood both the li mits of theory and

the power of narrative when it came to matters of human behavior and social



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organization under the conditions of war. There is much more that can and

should be wri tten about the general and parti cular aspects of naviesand naval

power, but approaching, let alone matching, the intellectual standard of Mahans

pioneering achievement will not be easy.

SU M I D A 111

NEW INSIGHTS FROM OLD BOOKS - The Case of Alfred Thayer Mahan, de Jon Sumida.

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