 Well, our lecturer tonight, Dr. John Maurer, serves as the Alfred Thayer Mahon Distinguished University Professor of Seapower and Grand Strategy at the Naval War College. He's a graduate of Yale University and holds an MALD and a PhD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He's the author and editor of numerous books examining the outbreak of the First World War, military interventions in the developing world, naval rivalries, and arms control between two world wars. And a study about Winston Churchill's views on British foreign policy and grand strategy. He has served on the Secretary of the Navy's advisory committee on naval history as chair of the strategy and policy department, and now teaches an elective course on Winston Churchill as statesman and war leader. Please welcome Dr. John Maurer to the stage. John. Thank you, John. Thank you, John, for that introduction. And welcome to this lecture series. You will have an opportunity over the next few months to get a sense of what goes on here in the way of learning at the Naval War College. Now this evening, I'm going to speak about Alfred Thayer Mahon. He was the second president of the Naval War College and was the author of numerous books and articles about strategy, naval warfare, and naval history. The reputation of this college rests in large part on the reputation of Alfred Thayer Mahon. Now this morning, this evening, I'm going to talk, I'm so accustomed to speaking in the morning that I went into automatic, there must be morning, OK. I'm going to speak about the context of Mahon's life and times as well as about Mahon. And first I want to speak about the Naval War College, where he came to teach. He was brought here by Stephen B. Loos, the founder of the Naval War College. Loos had a vision for this institution as a place of higher learning on strategy and war. And what he had to say was that this place is a place for the study of war, but also, as he said, for all questions of statesmanship and the prevention of war. Statesmanship today, we would say, means international relations to understand world affairs, to study not only how wars are fought, why they come about, and how to prevent war. This is what the first year's classes look like. Here are his orders. As you can see, it's written out and handwriting. And it says order. Lectures will begin on September 7. The working days are Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, every day. The lectures on international law, daily at 10 AM. The lectures on military science delivered at 11 30 AM. Those are the lectures that Alfred Thayer Mahan gave, more on that in a moment. Additional lectures on naval and military science will be delivered at 1 PM in the afternoon. Again, from the beginning of the college, Loos was setting out an agenda for learning for the officers here, where they would hear lectures, where they would engage in conversation with each other in seminar, and also read. Reading is a vital part of education and learning. The Admiral talked about lifelong learning. The way you do that is, of course, by reading. We say we live at an information age. We have to take advantage of that by doing reading, reading widely, and thinking deeply about what we read. And here at the college, we've always had a tradition of a heavy reading mode for the students that are here. Well, Mahan, he was a captain in the Navy. He was brought here to be the professor of strategy, or first professor of strategy here at the Naval War College. He was chosen by Loos to be the lecturer here, the professor of strategy at the college, because he already had a reputation for writing books and studying war. He was a veteran of the American Civil War. He graduated from the US Naval Academy just as the American Civil War was beginning in 1861. He wrote a book about his experience. His experience as a naval officer during the Civil War. It's called The Gulf and Inland Waters. It's a very good book. It's a wonderful book, if you're interested in the American Civil War, to understand the role of the US Navy in that conflict. So Loos, from very early on, recognized that in Mahan, he had a scholar sailor, someone who would be a teacher here at the college. In addition, Loos also knew that Alfred Thayer Mahan's father was Dennis Hart Mahan, who was a teacher for many years of engineering and strategy at the US Military Academy in West Point. So at West Point, you will see a Mahan Hall. It's not for Alfred Thayer Mahan, but for his father, Dennis Hart Mahan. Mahan was a teacher of many of the generals who fought in the American Civil War, both the North and the South. He taught not only engineering, but also what we would call tactics and operations, battlefield studies. And Mahan, Alfred Thayer Mahan, came from this tradition that his father had also been a teacher in professional military education. Well, Mahan, when he came here, lectured over in the old schoolhouse. And if you haven't been to the museum over there, you should visit it. Mahan lectured there, and he wrote out his lecture notes and then would read them in a very formal way to the students. These lectures were then captured and published as his books on the influence of sea power upon history. The first volume came out in 1890, and the next two volumes came out in 1893. Like many a great book, like many a classic book, it started in the classroom as a lecture, like Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. And so Mahan took what he was teaching and to the audience here of students and put it in publication form so it could reach a wider audience beyond the confines of Newport and the Naval War College. Well, what did Mahan have to say about strategy? Strategy, he said, is the queen, the queen of the military sciences. It's fundamental. It must be studied by officers. And why is that? Well, as he said, the fortunes, the outcome of every campaign, military operation is determined by the strategy. And he highlights something that we should take to heart today, which is to say that if the strategy is wrong, no matter how good the tactics, no matter how good the operations, the results will be disappointing. This is important. You can win the battles and still lose the war. When Admiral Stansfield Turner was president of the Naval War College in the early 1970s, when he came here in his famous speech to the students at Convocation, he said that in the Vietnam War, the United States had performed well in the battlefield in its tactics and operation. And yet, we didn't get the results that we wanted. Our ally, South Vietnam, was defeated by North Vietnam. How is it that you can win the battles and still lose the war? Well, what Mahan talked about is something that we want to examine today. Why is it? How do we best harness military power to achieve enduring objectives? We don't want to win the battles to end up losing the war. And as he said, no matter how valorous the soldier or brilliant the victory on the battlefield, however decisive those battlefield results will be, if the strategy is wrong, then it will fail in its effects. We like to talk about what is called the strategic effects of operations. How do you translate operations tactics into larger, enduring outcomes? Well, Mahan's book, when it first appeared in 1890, was a sensation. It was a big hit. It was being reviewed and read around the world. One of the persons who reviewed the book was none other than Theodore Roosevelt in the magazine, The Atlantic. And this is what Roosevelt had to say. Captain Mahan has written distinctively the best and most important book that's out there, most interesting on naval history. Again, giving it a glowing review. Theodore Roosevelt and Mahan correspond in a great deal during their lifetime. He went on to say that Captain Mahan's book is a study of naval history, but it's not history for history's sake. It's a book that can inform the current estimate about how navies should be used in the present day. In other words, it's history to inform today's policy and strategy. What Mahan was talking about was trying to give guidance to naval officers, political leaders of how the US should develop its sea power. Now, Mahan was popular not just in the United States, but around the world. And one of his great admirers was Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, the grandson of Queen Victoria of England. Being the grandson of Queen Victoria, he was fluent in English. And so he wrote to one of his American correspondents that he had just read Mahan's books and he's trying to learn it by heart. We ask your spouses to learn Mahan by heart too. Well, this is what the Kaiser had to say. It's first class, it's classical in all of its points. It's on board all of his ships and constantly quoted by his officers. You can find over in the museum the German translation of the influence of sea power upon history, a copy of it over there. The Kaiser was so taken by the book that he did have it translated into German and distributed widely. Again, here's a country, Germany, that's going to be the enemy of the United States in two world wars. Its naval leaders though are informed by American strategic theory. Mahan's book was read around the world in France, Germany, Japan. Japan wanted to hire him as a teacher of strategy. Mahan's influence was huge at this time. Now when we read Mahan today and your spouses read Mahan, they have a hard time reading it. It's very much late 19th century prose. A lot of commas, long sentences, long paragraphs. It's very difficult to read. So have pity on your spouses if you see them reading Mahan. Again, I tell my students that remember it started as lectures. So I say if you're having trouble reading Mahan, go off by yourself and read it out loud to yourself. So if you hear your spouses speaking Mahan, you'll understand where that advice comes from. Again, when you hear it, it actually makes more sense. You can absorb it better. Again, today we have more trouble understanding Mahan. It is a difficult book. Like many books of theory, theory is harder to read than narratives, news reporting and the rest. But the challenge of it is that it is a rewarding book to read because it is so rich. There is so much in it that can help inform not only naval officers, but also those concerned about international relations and politics. Well, some other people that read Mahan and internalized him. Franklin D. Roosevelt, president of the United States in the Second World War, was an avid reader of Mahan. As a teenage boy, he was given a copy of Mahan's influence of sea power upon history by his mother. For a present, he devoured it. I just can't imagine giving Mahan to a teenage boy. But nonetheless, Roosevelt was taken with it and read everything Mahan wrote. And when Roosevelt was assistant secretary of the Navy during the First World War, he corresponded with Mahan. He said to Mahan, your voice matters more than anyone else in informing public opinion about what America's strategy should be. Winston Churchill was also an admirer of Mahan and read his works. And it informed his thinking about British naval strategy in two world wars as well. Behind Roosevelt and Churchill, you see two admirals. To the right, Admiral Harold or Betty Stark, his nickname. He was chief of naval operations at the beginning of the Second World War. He was a student here at the Naval War College and you can read his paper on strategy and that he read Mahan while here. Over there to the left is Admiral Ernest J. King, who would become chief of naval operations, succeeding Admiral Stark during the Second World War. He also was a student here at the Naval War College, read Mahan and wrote a strategy paper as well that exists in our archives here. Mahan had a deep influence on these four leaders, naval and political, in the Second World War. You can see, you can see the intellectual DNA, the ideas of Mahan in their strategies. Well, how about the Navy? I've talked about the college and Mahan's influence. How about the Navy and which Mahan served? Well, Mahan as a naval officer didn't get the respect from other naval officers at his time. After he served here at the Naval War College as president, he went on to command the cruiser Chicago, which led a squadron of American ships on a tour to Europe. He was the flag captain. His superior officer was Admiral Henry Urban and this is what Urban had to write about Mahan. If you will, Mahan's fitness report as skipper of the Chicago. As you can see, you're gonna see it's not very flattering. Mahan's interests are entirely outside the service for which he cares but little. He doesn't really care about the Navy. He's not a good officer. He's not observant with regard to the officer serving him or to the ship's general welfare or appearance. He doesn't inspire people or suggest anything in the way of being a good skipper of a ship. In fact, in the first few weeks of the cruiser of the Chicago over to Europe, he was positively discreditable and in fact, Mahan, his interests are wholly in the direction of what? Literary work. He's a geek. He's a geek and in no other way connected with the service. I like to say to the students, would you like to have this as your fitness report? No, no, of course not. But again, within the service, Mahan was looked upon as being an odd person standing out, a maverick, because he was interested in higher studies of war strategy and also as a teacher and a writer. Well, Mahan would save the Naval War College. As it turned out, 10 years after the college was founded, the Navy department decided that is Newport worth the money? Should we be sending officers to Newport for a year to study? And there were doubts about that. And so the uniformed leadership of the Navy convinced the secretary of the Navy, a man by the name of Hillary Herbert, that he should close down the Naval War College. Lewis had had his experiment in setting up a school of higher learning for officers, but that it has been a failure. It's not worth the resources dedicated to it. So, Hillary Herbert aborted a ship from Washington, the secretary of the Navy, coming up to Newport. His intention was to close the college. But on the way up here, he was handed a copy of Mahan's book, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History. And he said, this book alone is worth all the money that has been spent on the college. When the secretary of the Navy, the second act, started up here, he intended to close the college. But now he said he intends to do everything he can and his power to sustain it. So this college survived in part because of Mahan's books and their influence. It was hard for the secretary of the Navy after reading The Influence of Sea Power Upon History to say, no, this is very important for educating not only officers, but also the wider American public about the international scene and also about naval matters. How about the nation that Mahan lived in? What about his times? Well, he grew up as a young man, serving in the American Civil War, the bloodiest war in American history, almost 700,000 Americans killed in the fighting of the Civil War. Mahan went through this, serving in the Navy during this time. Here you see a painting of the Battle of Spotsylvania in 1864. And of course, naval warfare also was part of the American Civil War. We remember the monitor fighting against the ironclad monitor against another ironclad to Virginia. The first time two ironclad ships fought against each other. And here you see Lincoln, president of the United States, with Admiral Porter on the right, with General Sherman and Grant, discussing how this war is going to end in 1865. This is a wonderful painting because you can see the war is coming to an end. Lincoln is listening to his generals and admirals, how best to close down this war to end the fighting. And behind, of course, you see a rainbow, a rainbow of hope, a hope that once the war is over, a stable peace can be established. Well, General Lee, the most important general of the Confederacy, signing the surrender of his army to General Grant at Appomattox Courthouse in April of 1865, ending the conventional fight that took place during the American Civil War. Now, one way to get into another time period, to experience another era, because as historians like to say, the past is another country. How do you understand another country, another time period? Well, one way I have found is to know about the music of the time. What did people sing? What did they listen to? Well, at this time, the United States did not have an official national anthem. The Star-Spangled Banner was not the official national anthem until the 1930s. And indeed, the most popular patriotic song of the time in which Mahan lived was Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean. Now, what I want to do this evening is all of us sing the first verse together so that we get into the spirit of Mahan's times. Are you ready? Oh, Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean. No one's singing. No one's singing. Come on. Anyway, again, this is a very patriotic song, a very patriotic song. You know, it's about liberty, standing up, banners make tyranny tremble. Again, it's a beautiful, very patriotic song. This is the era in which Mahan lived in the 1860s, 70s, 90s, into the early part of the 20th century. And you see, after the Civil War, the country being knitted together by a big infrastructure project, transcontinental railways, railways being built across the country, knitting it together. The country had been united by war. The Confederacy, the secession had been defeated. The country was united. Now the country is being united economically as well by putting together this transportation network, linking the country from the East Coast to the West Coast. This is a famous illustration from 1872 by the Brooklyn artist, John Gast. And it shows Columbia, Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean. She's striding across the country, going from the East Coast and the cities of the East Coast, the harbors of the East Coast, marching across the country, railways being built, prospectors there to find the wealth under the land, farmers, land being put under plow. And you can see, what is she doing? She's building the internet there, laying cable communication. The latest, think how quickly information can now travel instantaneously. And in her arm, in her arm, she has a book, it's called a school book. Because if you have information, you also have to have education to be able to read that information, to be able to translate it, to understand it. You have to be well educated. And so Columbia here, it's a sign of American progress, of American manifest destiny. The country is being united together. It's growing economically. It's growing in population. Bethlehem Steelworks in Pennsylvania, the United States is becoming a great industrial power. When Mahan's book, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History came out in 1890, it's around that time that the United States passed Great Britain as the world's leading industrial power. America's place in the world from the 1890s down to our own day has been based upon the strength of the American economy. It's at this time that the United States is surpassing Britain as the workshop of the world. And Americans are very proud, very proud of what's happening in industry as well. A big international world's fair is held in Chicago in 1893, the great Colombian exhibition. Again, this is the time when Mahan's books are coming out. The United States is putting on display to the world American industry, American technology. And if you go to the floor of the Colombian exhibition, you see Westinghouse, Tesla, General Electric, big names in American industry. Here, the United States is growing into a great power, into a world power. And Mahan's books are resonating because that's what it's about. Struggles between great powers on the international scene. Well, Mahan wrote at a time when there was growing international tension and rivalries among the great powers. The United States and the Western Hemisphere are planners, are military naval planners, looked at the threats to the United States in the Western Hemisphere. And they identified three major rivals, potential enemies, and they gave color codes to each of these countries. Red is Great Britain. Black is Germany. Orange is Japan. Blue is the United States. The United States came close to war in 1895-96 with Britain over Venezuela. Mahan drew up, worked up a war plan for war against Britain. Today we think a war between Britain and the United States, that seems unthinkable. But at the time, planners thought that a war could happen between these two countries, the United States and the British Empire. And American planners continued to plan for war against Great Britain until the 1930s. So that was one country that the United States felt threatened by. The other countries, Germany and Japan. So American planners are looking to the future and saying, here are the potential enemies of the United States that pose a threat to the U.S. position in the Western Hemisphere. Today we like to call it anti-access scenario denial. A strategy that protects a region of the world. You develop your forces to try to protect a region. Well, this is what American planners were thinking of in Mahan's time. How do you defend the Western Hemisphere? What they would call hemispheric defense against these rival Great Powers. So what you find is that the United States develops war plans against Britain, against Germany, and against Japan in this era. Now what did Mahan have to say about how do you meet these threats? Well, he wrote that every danger that the United States faces, it's best met outside of our territory. Don't invest in Ford Adams, forlifications on the coastline. Instead, invest American resources into a navy. Keep the fight far away from the coastline at sea. Don't fight at home, fight far away. A navy, naval power, enables the United States to keep these enemies at bay away from the United States. And here's a cartoon of the time that captures this. Here you see the European Great Powers looking on, now Columbia has become Lady Liberty. And what's protecting the Monroe Doctrine? The US position in the Western Hemisphere? Protecting the new world from the old world? It is a battle fleet, warships, a powerful American navy. And the caption says, let it be written so it can be read. How do you get someone's attention? Well, it's by having power. In this case, naval power, so that adversaries won't be tempted, tempted to fight you, to challenge you, where your core, vital interests are at stake. This is part of Mahan's message, and you can see the message is now being translated into cartoons. Well, is he a teacher of strategy, or is he a propagandist? Is he teaching people strategy, or is he trying to rally people behind a big navy? A bigger budget for the navy? Well, does it have to be one or the other? It's actually both. Mahan was a propagandist for a big navy. He tried to influence the American public into making investments into naval power, as well as to educate Americans about how that power, that growing power that the United States has, how it can best be used. But there was controversy about this. Should the United States be spending so much on a big navy? Doesn't a navy imply imperialism? Won't that lead to a corruption of the republic? Is the United States to be a militarized nation? Isn't this vanity? And so you hear, you see here in this cartoon, the arguments against Mahan. Here you see Columbia now looking in a vain way into the mirror. And what's she wearing on her head? Her bonnet, as it says. It's a battleship. And coming out of that battleship is dirty smoke, expansion. At this time, there's a great debate in the United States. Is the United States embarking on an imperial adventure? Something that will overextend American power, lead the United States into wars that shouldn't be fought? By having great naval power, does that become an enabler for aggression by the United States? This is being debated at that time. It's being debated in ways that pit Theodore Roosevelt and Mahan on one side and Mark Twain on the other side. Americans are concerned about their place in the world. How should America relate to the rest of the world? Well, again, Mahan is at the center of controversy at his time. Mahan himself doubted whether the American people would fund the Navy adequately. And in that way, he is a propagandist or another word for it, an advocate for naval expansion. He says, will an economic, a peaceful, gain-loving nation, in other words, a country that is committed to economic well-being? Will they be farsighted? We would say, have the vision to understand that the world is a dangerous place at times and that there has to be adequate military preparation in peacetime. As he says, democracies or popular governments are generally not favorable in peacetime to military expenditure. No matter how necessary naval planners or military planners might think that that commitment of resources is necessary. Well, how about his teachings on strategy? What are some of the main elements of Mahan's works that you can find in what he wrote? By the way, Mahan wrote numerous books and hundreds of articles. He's an incredibly prolific author from the 1890 when influence of sea power comes out until his death in December 1914. He's also very highly paid for his articles, his journalism. He is a public intellectual in this time. Well, the very first sentence of the influence of sea power of history tells you what the book is about. He says the history of sea power is a narrative, a story of contests between countries, of rivalries, war. That's what the history of sea power is about. He looked back at the history, ancient history, the ancient Greeks, the ancient Romans, but also the wars of the 18th century that saw France and Britain fighting each other for colonial empire. The other thing that he teaches is that when you look at the oceans, the seas, he says when you look at it from this political and social point of view, it's a great highway, a great highway. And then he goes on and coins this phrase or a wide common. The maritime domain is a common. This concept has proved long lasting. Today we think not just about the maritime commons, but we also think about the aerospace commons. We also think about the information domain in commons. And what my hand is writing about is that if you can dominate a commons, that that translates, it gives you big strategic advantage over adversaries in wartime. By commanding the commons, be it the maritime commons or the aerospace commons or the information commons, by dominating those commons, you get a big advantage. And so what he's writing about is how you take that advantage from the commons and then translate it into winning wars. Well, he also lays out at the beginning of his book on the influence of sea power, what is sea power? And he comes up with six elements of sea power. We might use the word sources of sea power rather than elements. And what he highlights is that three of the elements of sea power deal with geography is a country and island country like Japan or Britain. Or is it more of a continental state like Russia that has a hard time getting access to the seas? The United States is in a position where its borders with Mexico and with Canada are relatively secure and it fronts out on the two big oceans, the Atlantic and the Pacific. The United States is a continental sized island state with access to the world's oceans. In other words, the United States has a favorable geographical position relative to other countries that have difficulty getting access to the maritime commons. He also talks about the confirmation as he calls it, are there rivers, waterways, bays that lead into the country? The United States again is in a favorable position because the Mississippi, the Ohio, the Chesapeake Bay, the Delaware Bay, all of these waterways open up into the United States. And American leaders were conscious of this. Thomas Jefferson, one of the Louisiana Purchase so he could have New Orleans so that that gateway into the interior could be developed and then goods and products could be shipped down waterways out through New Orleans to the rest of the world. In addition to that extent of territory, how much coastline do you have? More coastline, again, generally enables more ability to trade with the rest of the world. Again, geography is an important element of Mahan's teachings and he tries to highlight that a strategist, a military leader, one of the first things they should do is look at a map and say where does that country fit in relation to other countries and to the maritime commons. So for Mahan, geography is important. By the way, geography can be changed. You can change geography by building infrastructure. You can develop ports and bases. If you take the Hawaiian islands, you can develop it into a base for the projection of American power across the Pacific. This is also an era of canal building, the Suez Canal linking the Mediterranean to the Red Sea and to the Indian Ocean. The Kiel Canal linking the North Sea to the Baltic Sea that the Germans are building and of course the Panama Canal that the United States is building at this time as well. Again, these canals have commercial but also strategic importance for the movements of fleets. For the United States, the Panama Canal is important because you can move more rapidly warships from the Atlantic to the Pacific and you don't have to sail around, steam around South America. So geography can be changed. Mahan also wants to highlight people, the people dimension of this, the number of the population, how large is a country, demographics, but also when you look at a country, how are people employed, what do they do? At this time in the United States in 1900, half the population still works on farms. Industry is growing in importance and the farming population is going down as farm become more efficient. A big transformation is taking place in industry growing up. Much like today we see a great transformation taking place in the American economy where you see industry declining in the number of people who are employed by it and service industry is growing. And we know that the United States population, of course over the 20th century, went from 50% of the population on farms down to what is it today, three or 4%? Again, a great transformation is taking place in our time but also in Mahan's time. Will a people be committed to trading with the rest of the world? Are they open to what we call globalization or do they wanna be self-sufficient? They wanna cut themselves off from the rest of the world. Again, these are important elements for Mahan. Are people willing to compete economically with the rest of the world and knit together the world economy? At this time the United States has high tariff barriers to protect its growing industry against industries in other countries. And finally, Mahan talks about the character of government. Will public leaders and in the United States, democratically elected leaders, will again they have that vision, that foresight as he calls it, to develop the country economically, to promote the well-being of the people, develop its wealth and by developing its wealth also undergird the military power of a country, make that country stronger because there's a connection between economic power and military power. Will that popular government, as Mahan calls it, will it devote the resources needed to building up a navy? Well, here Mahan was following in Luce's footsteps. Luce said, the study of history is the way to study strategy. And Luce laid out for people, he said it's our purpose here at the Naval War College is to develop what he calls the science of naval warfare. Today we would talk about critical analysis, analytical frameworks, ways of thinking, organizing thoughts about international relations and about warfare. He would call it a science. Again, the purpose here of this college is to develop our capacity to think through complex problems and provide some answers. Well, Mahan, following in Luce's footsteps, said yes, yes, it's history, especially in the field of naval strategy that history has value. And hence, his books on the influence of sea power upon history are about historical case studies, not about his own time, but talking about events of 100 years before. Now at the time, people said, no, why are you studying history? Technology is changing everything. Mahan was born in 1840, and that's the naval technology of 1840. When he died in 1914, when he died in 1914, this is what navies look like. It's a big change is taking place. And the big change that's taking place, people are saying history is bunk, as Henry Ford said. You don't learn anything by studying history. The world is all new. The new technologies are transforming everything. The study of history makes you backward-looking, less innovative. You've got to get with it. And so, Mahan is writing against authors who are saying that history has no value. You should be studying something else. You shouldn't be studying history. Instead, you should be involved with technology and the rest. Well, this is what the navy looked like, the U.S. Navy looked like in 1840. On a good day, I might add. You see the battleship, ship of the line, Pennsylvania, followed by the North Carolina. This is in the year that Mahan was born. Those age of wooden ships, it's coming to an end. Here's a famous painting by the great painter, British painter, J.M.W. Turner. And it shows the battleship Temeraire, the battleship Temeraire wooden battleship that took part in a number of battles during the Napoleonic Wars. This battleship that saw much action. The men aboard it saw much combat. Now look what's happening to it. It's being taken to the breaker's yard. And how is it being taken to the breaker's yard? By that little tugboat spinning out cold dust. Yucky. Look at that. And in the background, you can see that wonderful sunset there that Turner is known for. It's that end of an age. A heroic age is coming to an end, being replaced by technological change. This painting captures the type of change that's taking place in Mahan's time. You thought you were going to get a lecture on Mahan and instead you're getting an art history lecture, right? Again, this is a great painting. Next time in London, go to the National Gallery and see it. Well, what is the change? Big armored cruisers, steel navy. Submarines are coming along at this time as well. Fast torpedo boats. The idea is this new technology is transforming naval warfare. We need the big surface platforms, the battleships. Instead, the smaller craft, the stealthy craft, can sneak up and hit the big ships and take them down. The way it was talked about at the time was it's David against Goliath, the great biblical tale. The Goliath is the heavily armored giant, the heavily armored battleship. But that ship is vulnerable, vulnerable to the David's, the precision guided munitions, the torpedo, the mine. All of those new weapons make the big surface platforms vulnerable. Why invest in battleships, in the big surface platforms when clearly these cheaper craft are just as powerful? Naval warfare is becoming more lethal, more lethal for the big ships. Why invest in the big ships when the smaller ships can do the job? Again, Mahana is writing at a time of this technological change where people are arguing about what should the force structure be? What type of navy do you build? Do you build a fleet, build around battleships? Or do you build a fleet around these new technologies and new platforms? Well, part of the theory is that these new types of technologies are good for disrupting the commons, the network. That you can go with a few cruisers and submarines and go out and raid and destroy the network. A pinprick will bring it all down. A few sinkings of ships will lead to the collapse of the global economy. That the sea will become too dangerous to traverse. Mahan argues against those who are making that argument. He says the harassment, the distress that will be caused by these attacks on sea lines of communication, he concedes it will happen, but it will only be a secondary operation. It will never be decisive. It will never be decisive because great sea powers will be able to defend well enough the sea lines of communication to protect themselves against these attacks. Now, his concern is that as a fundamental measure, this type of raids, it will never be decisive in war. And it's a delusion. And he calls it a dangerous delusion. And why? Because the American people through their representatives will invest in what? The small craft rather than the bigger surferships. Because the advocates of the smaller ships will say just as much combat power, much cheaper. Mahan is saying, no, that's wrong. That's wrong. The United States, if it wants to play a world power role, if it wants to be secure in the Western Hemisphere, it needs to build a powerful fleet. It has to go for what he calls command of the sea or in the influence of sea power he calls it overbearing power on the sea. What is that? It drives the enemy's flag off the sea. The enemy can't use the seas. It only appears, their navies, their ships only appear as fugitives, robbers. They can do some damage, but the damage that they can do will never be decisive. And by controlling the great common with a powerful fleet, it closes down that common, that highway to an adversary. An adversary won't be able to use the world's oceans. Well, how do you control the commons? Well, for Mahan it is build up a powerful fleet based upon the most powerful warships you can build surrounded in a balanced way with supporting vessels as well. Here you see a battleship, the Connecticut, in Mahan's time. But you build not just one of them. You have to have a whole fleet of them. You have to make a major investment in naval power is what Mahan is arguing for the United States to be secure. And this is the great white fleet of 1907, 1909, that President Theodore Roosevelt sent around the world, circumnavigated the world. Again, Theodore Roosevelt agrees with Mahan. He says, we shouldn't be building the cruisers, the smaller ships. Instead, we have to have powerful battleships that are the equal of any other nation. If you want to stand up, defend yourself, be secure against other powers, you have to measure your forces against theirs. To Mahan, offense in naval warfare is the stronger form of war. Again, his father, in some ways he's echoing his father, Dennis Hart Mahan in teaching generals, future generals at West Point, this is what he had to say, attack the enemy suddenly when he's not prepared to resist. Surprise, celerity, speed is the secret of success. Alfred Theer Mahan would echo the words of his father. The offensive, he says, has the advantage over the defense. And in fact, he says it's a fundamental principle of war that when it comes to defense, it's best to be on the offense. In other words, the best defense is a good offense. And how do you get that? By taking the offensive against the enemy's main forces, take the fight to the enemy's fleet and you beat it in major naval engagements. To Mahan, his great hero, the person he called the embodiment of sea power, was the great famous British naval admiral, Lord Nelson, who won three major fleet victories over the French, the Danes, and again, the French and Spanish fleet, the Battle of Trafalgar, again in the center of London, Trafalgar Square with the big column with Nelson atop of it. For Mahan, Nelson is the example of the naval leader, of how naval leaders should aspire to be like Nelson, aggressive on the offense, training up his people and his ships to take the offensive, to be aggressive, to win in the war at sea. Well, in conclusion, so what? What does this all mean for us today? What do Mahan's books, his writings, what value does it have for us today? Well, today Mahan is very popular in China. Here's just one article about Mahan. Again, who is the rising power with aspirations in the world scene? It's China. Who do you model yourself on? Well, the U.S. Mahan's theories of sea power, pressing forward, capturing forward bases, islands. China sees in Mahan's message something of guidance for China today, aspiring to be a power moving into the world's first rank of powers. Robert Kaplan, the journalist, writer on International Affairs, says, tellingly, who reads Mahan today outside of the Naval War College here? It's China. As he says, the Chinese are the Mahanians today now. So reading Mahan really does resonate with us today. In an age when we talk about a return of great power competition, of states that understand the value of the world's oceans, for trade, for commerce, for well-being, Mahan's message is an important one for us to remember. It's especially important too because in China, you see today them reading the Mahan. We have to read what they're reading. And again, remember it was an American author over 100 years ago writing about the ascendancy of the U.S. and the world stage. Today, his message is one that we should remember. Thank you very much. I have one last slide. This is from over about 29 years ago. This is what historians do to their children. They take their two-year-old sons to the grave of Alfred Theer Mahan. My son, by the way, I'm very proud of him. He's a historian too. Yes, right here. Yes, the submarine turns into a very potent weapon for disrupting sea lines of communication in both world wars. And the Germans, of course, engage in two battles of the Atlantic. And it is essential that Britain and the United States win those battles of the Atlantic if they're going to be able to defeat Germany in both world wars. For the Germans, the submarine effort is one that ties down considerable British American Canadian resources trying to defeat that submarine menace. So the submarine is able to sink large amounts of tonnage. In the First World War, 13 million tons of shipping are sunk by German submarines. So Mahan didn't really see just how dangerous the submarine could be in commerce warfare. Now, the larger lesson, though, of Mahan, where he says it's a secondary operation and won't be decisive, so long as the sea powers protect themselves by convoys that ultimately it won't prove decisive. And so that is the case. And, of course, one of the most successful submarine campaigns was by the US Navy in the Second World War in the Pacific against Japan, where we do immense damage to Japanese shipping more in a way relatively than what the Germans do, in part because the Japanese don't protect their shipping effectively. They don't use convoys. And so it becomes, for the US, an ability to do immense damage to Japan's ability to move supplies back and forth in the Western Pacific. So, yes, the submarine is a very powerful weapon. Mahan understood it could be an important weapon, but he still fought, again, he died in 1914, just as the First World War is beginning. He didn't think it would ever be a decisive weapon. You know, you can argue about the relevancy of Mahan. That's one of the things about strategic theory in history. When you try to apply it to any given time, how do you apply it? And, of course, you can mislearn lessons, too, from the past. Again, it requires serious study. Thank you. Yes, here. I'm sorry, could you repeat? Oh, yes, the Mahan family still exists. He has descendants. In fact, his son said that his father was very remote and very sort of Victorian in being stern. And yet we have photographs of Mahan with his grandchildren where he looks like a very loving grandfather. So I'm sure he spoiled the grandkids, even if he didn't spoil his own children. New York, and I don't know where some of the other ones are today, but New York was Long Island. His home, that grave, is in Quogue, out toward the eastern tip of Long Island. His house is still there, by the way. If you go there, it's privately owned, and the people don't like to be disturbed. And believe it or not, there are enough Mahan groupies out there that sort of come along, go to his grave, and then you want to go and knock on the door, and you'll see when I was there, a sign that says, big ferocious dog, don't come, you know, anyway. But I was amazed, you know, when I'd gone there, first time I went there, I thought, no one's going to know where Mahan is. So I went into a real estate office, and I said, do you know where Mahan's grave is? And the woman said, oh, yeah, it's right over there. It's in the Episcopal Church yard, just a couple blocks away. And by the way, his house is over there, but don't knock on the door, because the people don't like him. So I was so surprised that the real estate agent knew right away what I was talking about. Yes. Yes. In the three Influences of Seapower books, he doesn't spend much attention on the War of 1812 and American naval developments. In fact, his Influences of Seapower books end with the Battle of Trafalgar, basically. So in other words, once you get control of the maritime commons, that's on October 21st, 1805, the war is basically over. Britain's going to win, even though Napoleon isn't defeated until Waterloo on June 18th, 1815, okay, 10 years later. But he then wrote a book about the War of 1812, and there he is critical of those like Jefferson who wanted to build smaller ships rather than build larger ships. Hamilton in the Federalist Papers is one of Mahan's heroes, because in the Federalist Papers, Hamilton says, look, we don't have to build a large fleet like France or Britain does. If we have six or seven big ships of the line, we will control the balance of power between France and Britain in the New World. And so Mahan very much favored Hamilton over Jefferson in this regard. Yes, so he was critical of the founding fathers who didn't see the value of building up a stronger navy. Any other questions? Dr. Maurer, thank you very much for the marvelous presentation. Thank you. Well, this concludes our first lecture.