4 Mahan’s treatise was that trade is the source of national power, and a strong, blue-water navy was essential to a stable trade. Whilst some analysts have summarised8 9the individual works of these two authors, others have undertaken a MAHAN'S NAVAL STRATEGY es sea power is the key to national greatness—Mahan and his contribution to the American century has been largely forgotten. Mahan’s treatise was that trade is the source of national power, and a strong, blue-water navy was essential to a stable trade. ©2000-2021 ITHAKA. Americans can be grateful that their Navy is sturdier than current naval doctrine. Protecting ports and sea lines of communication, and extending state power, required ocean going fleets rather than coastal defense forces. It is not to serve as a Mahan -style world ranging commerce protector. SAGE remains majority owned by our founder and after her lifetime will become owned by a charitable trust that secures the company’s continued independence. For much of the Administration's new naval strategy doesn't hold water. Control of the sea, or lack thereof, determines the rise and fall of a nation. Recognizing that miscalculation and hubris are not beyond America's capacity, the editors wish more than anything else to debate and clarify what America faces on the world stage and how it ought to respond. The ultimate expression of naval power was Entscheidungsschlacht, or the grand battle (or its threat) as the perfect employment of fleets. His theories have a timeless appeal, and Chinese analysts now routinely invoke Mahan’s writings, exhorting their nation to build a powerful navy. This aspect of Mahan’s teaching is largely responsible for the neglect by many blue-water navies, and the U.S. Navy in particular, of so-called ―defensive‖ tasks, such as defense and protection of merchant shipping and mine warfare. Alfred Thayer Mahan has been called America’s nineteenth-century ‘evangelist of sea power’ and the intellectual father of the modern US Navy. Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany ordered Mahan’s books to be translated and stocked on board his navy’s ships. Request Permissions. strong blue water navy as Admiral Mahan first surmised for America more than. Select the purchase All Rights Reserved. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 5,000 articles originally published in our various magazines. Mahan was cited by many for fueling the great naval race between Germany and Great Britain, but the charge was speculative. Our leaders challenge convention, and our engineers respond with innovative solutions — both in the shop and on the water. Haushofer’s closet navalism proves how ubiquitous was the sway of the American Naval War College Professor A. T. Mahan. option. Central Proposition: (Pg 95) "Naval Strategy has for its end to found, support, and increase, as well in peace as in war, the sea power of a country." World Affairs is a small journal that argues the big ideas behind U.S. foreign policy. Naval strategy is the planning and conduct of war at sea, the naval equivalent of military strategy on land. strategy employed by China to secure both its land and sea lines of communication, safeguard its energy supplies, and diversify its economic resources Alfred Thayer Mahan, a prominent theorist on seapower and early geopolitician, encapsulated his ideas in his classic book The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660–1783, published in 1890. China’s “turn to Mahan” is similar to India’s, as is Japan’s. World Affairs, which, in one form or another, has been published since 1837, was relaunched in January 2008 as a new and improved publication. If Mahan Ran the Great Pacific War: An Analysis of World War II Naval Strategy - Kindle edition by Adams, John A.. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. World Affairs But, as strategists like Halford Mackinder pointed out in replying to other navalists like Alfred Thayer Mahan, none of these blue-water arguments avoided … To access this article, please, Access everything in the JPASS collection, Download up to 10 article PDFs to save and keep, Download up to 120 article PDFs to save and keep. In the case of China, Bernard Cole defines brown water as roughly 100 miles from shore. Mahan was born in 1840 on the banks of the Hudson River, at the United States Military Academy at West Point, where his father was a respected instructor in military engineering and strategy. Beijing’s maritime strategy is now guided by the current geopolitical situation and regional trends and thus, it is trying to create a balance between developing a blue water economy while trying to create its heavy weight in the maritime sphere. Dragon’s Naval Strategy: From Mahan to Corbett. Our "whiteboard-to-wet in six months" mantra inspires our team to reach new heights (and depths), to the benefit of our customers. ... 38 Mahan, Naval Strategy, p. 111. The first cycle of Navy strategic leadership began with Alfred Thayer Mahan. It has been, and continues to be, an extension of the land-based defense force. Blue Water navy is power projection which is necessary” for a “power like India.” 3. Mahan credits the ancient Syracusan, Hermocrates, for being an intuitive genius of sea power—for fashioning a naval strategy that could have balked the Athenian invasion of … supported cost effective bulk transportation of goods and resources. Secondly, Mahan contends that at certain times it may even be a good idea for a state to encourage its competitors to build a blue-water navy independent of a commercial fleet. In doing so, India’s own ‘blue water’ drive is coming up against the similar ‘blue water’ drive by another rising power, the People’s Republic of China. In The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future (1897), Mahan sought to arouse his fellow Americans to a realization of their maritime responsibilities. But while the tactical aspects of sea warfare underwent a fundamental change after the Mahanian era, his basic doctrine of control of the sea was validated in World War II. By the time he published his sequel in 1892, The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire 1793-1812, Mahan had become an international celebrity and sought-after advisor by heads of state. SAGE is a leading international provider of innovative, high-quality content publishing more than 900 journals and over 800 new books each year, spanning a wide range of subject areas. JSTOR®, the JSTOR logo, JPASS®, Artstor®, Reveal Digital™ and ITHAKA® are registered trademarks of ITHAKA. Douglas MacArthur, U.S. general in World War I, World War II and Korea. It is no coincidence that he began to write at the same time the U.S. Mahan was strongly influenced about the importance of sea power while reading the history of the Roman Empire, and ironically, several of Mahan’s maxims of sea power appeared in some form within young Theodore Roosevelt’s well-received The Naval War of 1812. Alfred Thayer Mahan has been called America’s nineteenth-century ‘evangelist of sea power’ and the intellectual father of the modern US Navy. Although Mahan never used the phrase command of the sea, his description of the essence of naval warfare nonetheless describes it: Mahan on Naval Strategy Central Proposition: "Naval Strategy has for its end to found, support, and increase, as well in peace as in war, the sea power of a country." The Kaiser and his naval minister Tirpitz embraced Mahan’s thesis because it showed how a numerically inferior fleet could overcome a stronger fleet like England’s, even in a stronger enemy’s home waters. Even with its de-emphasis of a blue-water fleet, "forward presence" and "power projection" are main themes, for most 20th century battles have been no more than 200 miles inland. Such a navy will likely have the appearance of strength, but will be short-lived and financially precariousbut all the more so if the rival simultaneously seeks to dominate on land and at sea. Mahan was the institution’s first lecturer on strategy, and his history-based approach informed much of the curriculum, as attested by his address at the opening of the 1888 academic year. Maritime Strategy of any nation resonates with two underlining facts, one is the objective of carrying out warfare at sea to affect outcomes on land and that the success of maritime … The struggle for control of the Mediterranean, the North Atlantic and the Pacific, won by Great Britain and the United States, proved essential in defeating the Axis powers. To the 'blue-water' school of strategy in late- Victorian and Edwardian Great Britain, to Cabot Lodge, Teddy Roosevelt, and other advocates of US expansionism into the Caribbean and the Pacific, and to Tirpitz Navy strategic leadership has waxed and waned in three long cycles since the Civil War. Admiral Gorshkov waited patiently for his opportunity to transform the Soviet Navy from a submarine-dominated, sea denial force with a coastal and defensive orientation into a blue water fleet – though still a sub-centric one – that had strategic strike, power projection, and global presence missions. To begin with, let me compare the ideas of the two ‘blue water’ Western thinkers who are, arguably, also the best known of the lot 7— Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan and Sir Julian Corbett . Each was a representation of the same compelling naval strategic impulse. With discussions of what insights turn-of-the-century theorists such as Alfred Thayer Mahan and Julian Corbett would have on modern maritime strategy so popular right now, ... geared for blue water conflict, is not geared to fight the actual naval combat for which we must prepare i.e. This is really a book about Chinese military thought at the tactical and operational level. 31 Generally speaking, “blue water” connotes maritime operations far from shore, while “brown water” refers to littoral operations. He formalized the naval missions of forward presence, sea control and power projection. Sara Miller McCune founded SAGE Publishing in 1965 to support the dissemination of usable knowledge and educate a global community. Naval Institute was founded. Read your article online and download the PDF from your email or your account. With a personal account, you can read up to 100 articles each month for free. Naval strategy, and the related concept of maritime strategy, concerns the overall strategy for achieving victory at sea, including the planning and conduct of campaigns, the movement and disposition of naval forces by which a commander secures the advantage of fighting at a place convenient to himself, and … The industrial revolution took place best where cheap water transport by canal, ocean going shipping, etc. Access supplemental materials and multimedia. tactically and strategically. The two-thirds of a Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading If Mahan Ran the Great Pacific War: An Analysis of World War II Naval Strategy. 39 Mahan, Problem of Asia, p. 135. 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