A. T. Mahan (1840–1914)

This is a must read, but must read CRITICALLY. Mahan is basically toying with various ideas to try to cope with America's pre-panama canal two coast navy and thus takes up ideas like "decisive battle" / "battle of decision" and also thinks about commerce war (guerre de course). He correctly identifies that naval power would be core to the defense of the American Republic and the extension of its liberal democratic and capitalist ideas, thus three stars. But in fact wars are never won by one show more grand decisive battle, whether on land or sea. It is rather the accumulation of a series of victories in succession which seals the fate of a contending power. Meanwhile commerce warfare has repeatedly proven less than decisive, the one time succesfully executed was used by USN to cripple imperial Japan: no oil means no training means Mariana's turkey shoot. That was partly the result of Japanese strategic blindness. Many many other examples of FAIlEd guerre de course can be readily found and the ONE succesful example was in concert with surface superiority: by the time the USN submarines were strangling Japan the USN finally outnumbered the IJN in carriers. Finally, the USA has since dug the canal and appears so far to have checked Chinese efforts at building a nicaragua canal.
So.. the problems Mahan addressed are no longer there, the solutions he proposes are inexact, his ideas were entirely the basis of Japanese naval strategy which in fact failed to achieve victory despite one grand decisive battle called Pearl Harbor. And then what?
Oh. Defeat in a grinding war of naval attrition in which the Japanese empire had no chance.

Mahan is right that the navy is the most important power projection AND defensive tool and SHOULD be concentrated (principle of concentration of force). Most of his other propositions are contestable or even demonstrably false. Right strategy (large navy, concentrated) wrong tactic (seeking one grand decisive battle) as a solution to a no longer existing problem (coastal bifurcation).

Well worth reading, well written, but only partly apt to the current world. show less

First published 1890, this book now belongs on every Top 10 of military strategic thought, along with the works of a Clausewitz. Within purely naval strategy, it's a barely disputed Top 1. Light reading it isn't. Drawing mainly from the Age of Sail, Mahan's substance may (or may not) be partly dated. But his repetitive style, however nourished by sharp & fresh details, hints of a bygone age.

Still, it's a masterpiece. Mahan set himself a simple but definitive task: to explain why England's show more Royal Navy, from mainly 1660 to 1783, became the most effective maritime force in history. His answers circle, with hypnotic iteration, around 3 main points:

1) For ambitious nations (or any state hoping to defend itself against these), a credible naval policy is such a multiplier of strength that it has become fatal if not inconceivable to neglect this dimension.

2) An armed navy never rests on a vacuum, or on a merely militarist policy, but draws its resources & power from an even healthier, flourishing commercial navy. This insight, or instinct, is the innermost "secret" of England's maritime empire.

3) Yet to undermine an enemy sea power it won't do to attack only its trade. You must specifically engage its armed fleet, in bold, decisive battles. Not its commercial vessels, colonies, or even supply posts alone. Destroy, annihilate the warships that safeguard all that. Such was England's strategy, time after time. France stubbornly insisted on the opposite doctrine, & ended up as the also-ran.

To Mahan, a flamboyant exception proving these rules was French Admiral Pierre de Suffren. Almost alone among his compatriots he understood war in English terms, conducting it even better than his enemy. Yet without support from his peers & superiors, decisive victory kept eluding him. Precisely because his success was so obviously shackled, here he represents how further afar France or any nation might reach, the moment they more consistently imitate the English way. show less

Well sometimes a classic is book that is good to own, but not to read. Innovative as it might have been in it's day, it's more significant on reflection for creating history (arguably being an inspiration for the Japanese, German and US heavy investment in sea power in the early 1900's), than as history. At it's core it's an essentially tedious account of the projection of political power by the British navy in the days of sail and empire, and rather tediously makes a great deal of battle show more tactics rather than the influence of trade and communication. There is a theme here that is very relevant today - witnessing China's creation of a deep water navy - but this isn't the book that has much (any more) to say about it. show less

This is one of the foundational works of maritime strategy and puts Mahan in a category with history's other great strategic thinkers; Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, Moltke, Giap, Mao. Like those others, Mahan's tactical doctrines, and so the examples and illustrations taken from his writings, are obsolete and mostly irrelevant in the world of modern weaponry. Like the others, also, his strategic doctrine is suspect, but his influence is so great that everyone writing on maritime strategy gives him at show more least a hat-tip.

The Japanese, arguably, based their entire naval strategy during WWII on Mahan's ideas, and his work is cited increasingly by Chinese strategists as they hurry to build a blue-water navy, two facts which argue for Mahan's continued relevance. The period he writes of here was during the age of sail, and descriptions of maneuver can be hard to follow, but the combat operations he details can be read through quickly without losing sight of the strategic ideas.

Spoiler: A nation's strategic power rests on it's control of the seas. Control of the seas depends on production, commerce, and colonies (which provide friendly, foreign ports), and the purpose of a navy is to ensure these dependencies through an ability to destroy the enemy fleets. show less