 The U.S. Naval War College is a Navy's home of thought. Established in 1884, NWC has become the center of Naval seapower both strategically and intellectually. The following issues in national security lecture is specifically designed to offer scholarly lectures to all participants. We hope you enjoy this upcoming discussion and future lectures. Good afternoon. I'm Professor John Jackson and it's my pleasure to serve as the coordinator for the Issues in National Security Lecture Series and your MC for today's event. This series was originally conceived as a way to share a portion of the Naval War College's academic experience with the spouses and significant others of our student body. Over the past four years, it has been restructured to include participation by the entire Naval War College extended family, to include members of the Naval War College Foundation, international sponsors, civilian employees, and colleagues throughout Naval Station Newport. As a result of the campus closure brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, we have transitioned to delivery of the lectures on the Zoom video delivery system, and here we are. My new nickname of Zoom Master Jay apparently seems appropriate these days. We will be offering 18 lectures between now and May 2021 spaced about two weeks apart. An announcement detailing the dates, topics, and speakers of each lecture has been posted by our public affairs office. Each event will consist of three parts, a scholarly speaker's presentation, a question and answer period, and then a brief pause before we proceed to the family discussion group session. This final segment is of primary interest to family members residing here in Newport, and it will feature guest speakers from various support activities and organizations on base. OK, enough background and admin. Let's proceed with the main event. It's my pleasure to turn the screen over to the college's president, Vera Admiral Shoshana Chatfield. Over to you, ma'am. Hello. Good evening. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm here with my husband, David Scoville, and we are delighted to support the issues in national security lecture series. I'm so grateful to our talented faculty, our events team, and technical team that have worked so hard to create this webinar format. And I'm also pleased to welcome our command ombudsman, Amanda Monofsky. Thank you so much for being here this evening with us. And I would like to turn the mic over to David Scoville, my husband, who will say a little bit about our benefits partners, our aspirations for our discussion after this event. Great. Well, thank you so much, Vera. It's nice to be back doing this again. We were very proud and felt we had a very successful run last year as well. So first one, kicking it off. And tonight we've got some great representative benefits partners to put forth. And that's going to be a representative from the Fleet and Family Support Center, as well as Dean Weidman from the MWR and also Pamela Martin, our school liaison officer. And I just want to reach out to Ann Champney. She's normally the person who's front and center with all of our matters dealing with Fleet and Family Support Center. But tonight I don't believe she's going to be with us. So we're going to have somebody else speaking in, jumping in and taking that spot. So sit back, ask some great questions, and enjoy the lecture as well as the family portion. Thank you all. Great, Admiral, thank you very much, David. Thank you. During the speaker's remarks, each of the attendees is welcome to ask questions using the Q&A function here in this webinar. It's a little different than what we did last year with our Zoom meetings, but basically use the Q&A function and ask your questions. If you see a question that you really like, give it a thumbs up, and that'll make sure that it works its way to the top of the list when we start answering questions. So now to turn to today's speaker. Professor John H. Maurer is the Alfred Thayer Mahon Professor of Seapower and Grand Strategy and previously served as the chair of the Strategy and Policy Department. He holds an undergraduate degree from Yale College and both a master's degree and a PhD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. We wanted to kick off this series with one of the college's best speakers, and you will soon see why he holds that stellar reputation. Dr. Maurer, over to you, sir. Thank you, John. I'm going to now share the screen and pull up my PowerPoint slides. There we go. I want to add my voice to the chorus of welcome to all of you who are now newly arrived at the Naval War College. This evening, I'm going to talk about Alfred Thayer Mahon. He was the second president of the Naval War College and the first professor of strategy brought to the Naval War College. He was a renowned thinker on strategy and indeed the Naval War College's reputation as being one of the great centers of learning when it comes to the study of strategy is due to Mahon. What I want to do is talk about the context in which Mahon lived, the Navy, the college, the nation, the international environment, and then I want to talk about Mahon's theories of strategy. What are the big takeaways? What are the most important facets of his thinking? Thinking that he enunciated in his own time, but we continue to study his works today. And so I'm going to look at Mahon, his time, and also to look at what's enduring in his strategic theories. First of all, I want to look at the college, the Naval War College that was established back in 1884. The founder of the Naval War College is Stephen B. Loose. He was a great naval hero. He was one of the most remarkable sailors of the 19th century. He was a veteran of the American Civil War and had a reputation as being one of the Navy's great leaders. And he believed that the Naval War College needed to be established. There needed to be a graduate, we would call a graduate level school where naval officers could be educated in the questions of operations, strategy, but also of international politics. Here you see the old school house, which is now the house for the museum. And Amro Loose created what it is, what we would call a mission statement. He said that the Naval War College was to be a place for the study of war and all questions of statesmanship related to the prevention of war. So the Naval War College is not just about studying war, but it's also about studying international relations and how wars can be prevented. From the very beginning, this was part of the mission of the Naval War College. Well, he brought to the Naval War College, Alfred Thayer Mahan to be the first professor of strategy, to talk about strategy and international relations, about how history unfolds. What are the dynamics on the world scene, on the international scene, on the national scene that drive events? How is history made? Well, he chose Mahan in part, Alfred Thayer Mahan in part, because his father, Dennis Hart Mahan, was a great teacher at the US Military Academy in West Point in the period before the American Civil War. You can say that Alfred Thayer Mahan was born into a teaching family. And here you see Alfred Thayer Mahan right alongside his father. You can certainly see the resemblance there between these two men. Well, Dennis Hart Mahan was known as a great teacher, and Alfred Thayer Mahan was as well. Now Mahan took his lectures that he gave to the students of the Naval War College, and he used those lectures as the foundation for three books that were entitled The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, and they came out in the years 1890 to 1893. These books have been in print since that time. They've never gone out of print. These books were highly influential in their own time, and again, down to our own day. These books, which started as lectures, continue to be used by the Naval War College, the students that study here right now. They are part of the strategy curriculum that we have at the college. Well, when the book came out, it was an immediate success. A young Theodore Roosevelt, who had become president of the United States, eventually become president of the United States, wrote a review of these books on The Influence of Sea Power. And as you can see, Roosevelt is saying this is the best, the most important, and also by far the most interesting book on naval history that had been written in quite some time. He went on to say that Mahan shows what? The practical importance of the study of history. Not for studying history for history's sake, but the study history to show its practical importance to those who are operators, strategists, policymakers today. History provides guidance for the policymaker. Again, the application of history has been part of the studies at the Naval War College from its very beginning down to our own day. But it was not just in the United States that the book had great appeal. The book was also read around the world by leaders around the world, including Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany. And as you can see, he wrote to a friend saying, he's not just reading Mahan's book, but he's devouring it. And he's trying to learn it by heart. You'll be pleased to know that we don't ask your spouses to try to learn the book by heart. Kaiser Wilhelm though, thought the book was so important. He wanted to have it translated into German and it was translated into German and a copy of Mahan's books appeared on all the ships of the Imperial German Navy. The museum, the Naval War College Museum has a copy of the German translation of Mahan from this time. It was not just in Mahan's generation though that his book had influence. Here you see a photograph from August 1941 during the Second World War. And the photograph shows President Franklin D. Roosevelt sitting next to Prime Minister Winston Churchill. And behind him are two famous admirals from the Second World War. On the right, Admiral Harold Betty Stark, Chief of Naval Operations. And right behind President Roosevelt is Admiral Ernest J. King who would become Chief of Naval Operations. All four of these leaders read Mahan. Franklin D. Roosevelt read everything written by Mahan. He corresponded with Mahan while Mahan was still living. Winston Churchill read Mahan and thought that Mahan was the foremost thinker on sea power. Behind him, the two admirals, Admiral King and Admiral Stark, they were both graduates of the Naval War College. While they studied at the Naval War College, they also read Alfred Thayer Mahan's books on the influence of sea power upon history. So Mahan's books influenced not only his own generation, his own generation of leaders but also subsequent generations of leaders. In fact, you can't understand the history of the Second World War, the strategic decisions made by Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt if you haven't also read Mahan. Both of these leaders, the president and the prime minister were deeply influenced by Mahan's writings on sea power, naval strategy, naval warfare. Well, how about the Navy? I've talked about the college and the impact that Mahan had, but what about the Navy? The Navy of Mahan's times. Well, Mahan was a captain in the Navy when he became president of the Naval War College. After leaving the Naval War College in 1893, he was the skipper of the cruiser USS Chicago that led a squadron of American warships on a year-long tour of European waters. Now, while skipper of the Chicago, he ran afoul of the admiral in command of the squadron, Admiral Urban. And what I wanna do is show you what Admiral Urban had to write about Mahan. And you will see it is not a flattering portrait that he had to write about Mahan, the captain. There's Admiral Urban. Admiral Urban was a hero of the American Civil War. And what he wrote about Mahan is, Mahan's interests are entirely outside the service and he cares little about the Navy. Mahan's therefore not a good naval officer. Wow, that is quite a striking blow. He's not observant of all of regarding officers to the ship's appearance or welfare. He doesn't inspire confidence in his command aboard the Chicago. In fact, what Urban has to say about it, Mahan's being the captain, his performance was positively discreditable. These are harsh words. Urban concludes by saying Mahan's interests are solely in the direction of literary work. And in no other way is he connected with the service. In other words, Mahan is a geek. He wants to write books. He doesn't wanna go to sea for Irving. This is quite castigating Mahan as an officer. But nonetheless, Mahan's works had great influence and were very important for the history of the Navy and for the history of the Naval War College. In 1893, the Navy's leadership in Washington had determined that they were going to close the Naval War College. It had been an experiment. They had worked the Naval War College for 10 years and they didn't believe that they got a return on investment. They didn't see the value of the education being offered at the War College. The Navy's leadership convinced the secretary of the Navy, Hilary Herbert, that he should go to Newport and close down the Naval War College. Well, on the way to Newport, he was given a copy of Mahan's book, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History. Herbert changed his mind. He said, this book alone is worth all the money that had been spent during the previous decade on the Naval War College. Herbert said he had embarked. When he went up to Newport from Washington, he was going to close the college. But now after reading Mahan's book, he intended to do all in his power to sustain the institution, to keep it open. Without Mahan, the college would have been an experiment that lasted 10 years and had been closed and would have been closed. Mahan's work was seen as so important by the Navy's leadership, by the secretary of the Navy, Hilary Herbert, that the college survived and has last down to our own day. Well, what about the nation, the country in which Mahan lived? What was going on there? Well, Mahan was a veteran of the American Civil War. He fought in the American Civil War. He served upon warships in the rivers that the Union armies used to advanced into the Confederacy, into the South, to suppress the rebellion. He also served aboard ship on the blockade of the coasts of the Southern States. So Mahan saw firsthand the horrors of war. He saw the face of battle because he was a veteran of the American Civil War. One of the great turning points in American history. If that war had gone the other way, the US would have broken apart and the democratic experience that President Lincoln talked about would have been ended. Well, the war featured not only war on land, the bloody battles on land, but also warfare at sea. This famous engagement captured here in a painting of the Union ironclad monitor fighting the Confederate, the Southern ironclad, the Virginia in a naval engagement in 1862. Well, the war was coming to an end in the spring of 1865. And here you see a famous painting called The Peacemakers in which President Lincoln is listening to his generals, general Grant immediately to his right, General Sherman to the left and Admiral Dixon Porter to the right. As you can see, there's a rainbow in the background that the war is coming to an end and the scourge of war will end the promise, the promise of a rainbow of peace. This painting, by the way, is famous and hangs in the White House today. In another famous painting that shows the end of the war, the Confederacy, the South's best general, leading general Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Grant at Appomattox Courthouse in April of 1865, bringing an end to the Civil War. The Civil War was formative in Mahan's lifetime, his experience of his generation, a veteran of the war. Well, in the aftermath of the war, the United States had to rebuild from the scourges of war and almost 700,000 Americans died in the American Civil War. It's the single bloodiest war that the United States fought. Here you see the building of the transcontinental railroad, the great infrastructure projects of railroads knitting together the United States, bringing together in this infrastructure the ability to unite the country. Not only was the country being united during the Civil War, being brought together, being held together as a union of states, but also now economic developments taking place that's knitting together the country, a transportation network that brings together the country from coast to coast. In a famous painting from the artist John Gast from 1872, you see Columbia, the female personification of the United States. You see a young Columbia, a young country being knit together and you can see her striding across the countryside from the East Coast of the United States, where the ports are that connect to the rest of the world, railways being built. And what you see here too, is she's putting down an information network, the telegraph, electricity, information being able to flow across the country. You know, we take for granted to gay, of course, the network that we can zoom together on the internet and talk with each other, well, here she is knitting together the country, not only with railroads, that infrastructure, but also an information network as well. And in her hand, she grasps in her hand a book and it's the book of education. People need to be educated as well. It's not enough to have infrastructure projects to link the country together from East to West Coast, to land into agriculture farming, linking together to the cities of the East to finance and trade. It's also important that people be educated. Education is the foundation of national greatness and wealth. And this famous painting from 1872, highlights the aspirations of Americans of rebuilding the country after the Civil War, improving the country, making it a better place to live after that horrible experience of war. The United States in this period of time is growing as an industrial power. And here's a painting of the Bethlehem Steel Plants in Pennsylvania. This is a painting from the time of Mahan of 1890, 93. The United States was growing as an industrial power at this time. By 1890, historians calculate that the United States surpassed Britain as the world's leading industrial power. In the 19th century, Britain had been the pioneer of the industrial revolution of manufacturers. Britain was seen as the workshop of the world. Well, by 1890, when Mahan was writing his books, publishing his books on the influence of sea power, the United States had emerged as an industrial power on par and surpassing Britain. The United States was becoming an even greater industrial power than Britain at this time. In 1893, the United States showed what the technology and the industry in a great world's fair, the so-called Colombian exhibition held in Chicago. And on the floor, here's a painting of the outside showing this great exhibition that was put on for the world to show the world American technology and industry. And what you see is inside one of the great pavilions halls. You can see how technology and industry is being showcased here, Westinghouse, Tesla, General Electric, all being shown to the world that the United States has become a great industrial power. Again, this Colombian exhibition is taking place at the same time that Mahan's books are coming out. It's no coincidence that's that happening. Mahan is writing for a country that's growing as a trading state and as an industrial power. Well, what about the international scene in Mahan's time of the early 1890s? What did that look like? We've looked at the college, we've looked at the country. Now let's look at the international scene. Well, that time was a period of rising great power competition. And Mahan knew that and that's why he was writing his books. He was trying to alert naval officers at the Naval War College, but also a wider reading public that the world, the international scene was becoming much more competitive and that the great powers were vying with each other for mastery of the international system. Well, for the United States, what threats did American naval planners see at this time? Well, there's three that stood out to American naval planners and they codenamed the countries that they thought were the most threatening. Red, red stands for Great Britain. American naval planners at this time saw Great Britain as representing the greatest threat to the security of the United States. Remember, the United States had fought two wars against Britain, the War of American Independence at the end of the 18th century and the War of 1812 at the beginning of the 19th century. Planners thought that there was always the possibility that the rising power of the United States might make British leaders jealous and there could be a showdown, a war between Britain and the United States. That didn't happen. Nonetheless though, planners took that seriously enough that they thought about what would a war between Britain and the US look like. Mahan himself wrote up a war plan for what a war with Britain might look like. But it was not just Britain that American naval planners were concerned about. They were also concerned about black. Black stood for Germany. That Germany might pose a threat and also in the Pacific, orange, Japan, another rising power could threaten American interests and security. For the generation of Mahan's time, planners, leaders, what they wanted to do was defend the Western hemisphere from incursions from outside. The United States saw itself as being the protector of the Western hemisphere of the new world, the protector of the new world from the old world. Today we would call this anti-access area denial that American naval planners wanted to protect, protect the United States and the Western hemisphere from security threats emerging from outside. This period though too, was also a time of great transformation in technology. Mahan was born in 1840 and he died in 1914. In 1840, if you look to the left, you'll see that that's what navies look like. They were sailing ships made of wood. Guns didn't have much range. It was really only one weapon and that was the gun. There was no electronic communication, no radio, no signaling that you could do other than by flags and packet ships. And coal was the main fuel. Fast forward to 1914, the year of Mahan's death. And you see that a lot has changed. Sail has gone to steam. Now there's longer range gunnery and later aircraft. And also more weapons, not only guns, but torpedoes, submarines, mines, aircraft. And you also have electronic communication. You have the beginning of the radio age where you can now communicate ship the shore and ship the ship by radio. And oil is becoming the main fuel for warships. Well, here's a painting of what the Navy, the U.S. Navy look like in 1840. And what you see is a sailing ship, the battleship, ship of the line, USS Pennsylvania, followed by the ship of the line, the North Carolina. This is what the Navy look like in 1840 when Mahan was born. But the age of the sailing ship was going away. And here's a very famous painting that sits in Britain at the National Gallery in London. It's by the famous painter, J.M.W. Turner. And it shows a wooden warship from the early part of the 19th century, the battleship Temeraire. It's being taken away by a tug, a dirty little tug, carrying this great warship off to the breaker's yard. It's going to be destroyed. The ship that had fought battles had been involved in protecting Britain against its enemies was now going to be destroyed. This great warship that had so many stories and tales to tell of heroism was now being towed away by this dirty little coal-driven tugboat. And as you can see in the background, a sunset, how melancholy it is that this great warship with this illustrious history is now going to be destroyed. Well, this is the age in which Mahan wrote an age of transformation and naval warfare as technologies are changing greatly. Instead of the wooden warships, you have now a steel Navy, cruisers. You have submarines below the surface. It's no longer just surface warfare. You also have ships operating under the surface that are dangerous. Naval warfare is becoming more lethal at this time. You have small craft that can launch torpedoes, mines. All the great big warships, the big surface platforms are now vulnerable to torpedoes, to mines, to submarines. The question of Mahan's time was, how much do you invest in the smaller craft that had carried very lethal weapons or into the bigger surface ships, the battleships that had been the backbone of the fleet? Well, the controversies of that time, what platforms, what naval forces do you invest in? What should your force structure look like? Those same debates from Mahan's time are the same debates that we're having today. Should we be investing a great deal of money in aircraft carriers or should we be investing in other platforms, smaller platforms? So today, the same type of discussion is going on that was going on in Mahan's time about naval warfare and force structure. Now, Mahan not only was a teacher of strategy, but he was also an advocate of a big Navy. And it's important to keep in mind that Mahan believed that it was so important for the United States to invest heavily in its Navy, to provide for its security and wellbeing by having a powerful Navy. Now, when Mahan wrote in 1890, if you look at the naval strength of the great powers of that time, what you see is that the United States lags behind the other major powers. If you measure tonnage of warships, what you find out is the United States is sixth with a Navy, you could say only one fifth, almost one sixth of Britain's Royal Navy, that the German Navy is stronger than the US Navy. So Mahan is trying to highlight to an American public how important it is that American naval power be built up. The United States is a great industrial power, becoming a much more stronger state economically, becoming an economic superpower, is also going to have to have more military power. For Mahan, what the United States had to do was build a fleet of powerful surface ships, battleships. For him, this was key. These battleships would provide security for the United States. It's not that he didn't want smaller ships as well, but these expensive platforms, these expensive warships had to be invested in for the United States to be competitive on the world scene with regard to other powers of the time. Mahan wrote that every danger that the United States is exposed to is best met outside its territory. Where's that at sea? America needed naval power to provide a shield to the Western hemisphere. In this, Theodore Roosevelt agreed. Here you see a cartoon drawn of Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt agreed with Mahan. The United States has to have not only a fleet of cruiser smaller warships, but also battleships strong enough to meet those of any other country. Here you see the beginning of advocates like Theodore Roosevelt and Mahan saying that the United States needs a powerful navy, a navy strong enough to be able to stand up to the world's strongest navies. Here's a cartoon from the time. And again, it illustrates that you need to have this battle fleet to protect the Western hemisphere from security threats outside the Western hemisphere. As you can see, Lady Liberty. You can see the Statue of Liberty in the background. And what's protecting Liberty? It's a fleet of battleships. And the protection of the Western hemisphere, the Monroe Doctrine. There it is emblazoned on those battleships so that any outside powers, here you see European powers being represented, looking at the Western hemisphere, trying to take away American liberties. What do they see? A powerful fleet there to protect American liberties, to protect the Western hemisphere. Well, Mahan, was he a teacher or a propagandist? Well, he was both. He was a great teacher, but he also believed that the United States had to build up its navy. And he had doubts. He had a big question mark was whether a peaceful economic country like the United States wouldn't have the vision, what he says is farsightedness to make adequate preparation in time of peace. In time of peace, will American democracy want to spend money, resources on military power? And what he highlighted in the Influence of Sea Power book was that popular governments, meaning democracies, they're not favorable commercial states, countries in which people want to advance their economic interests. They're not generally open, favorable to military expenditure, Mahan argued. Well, there were also opposition to Mahan. Remember Columbia from 1872, a young Columbia striding across the country? Well, now you see in 1901, another Columbia. Here's the counter to Mahan. In the United States, many people said, no, the United States shouldn't be building up its military power. By doing that, it's going to become like other great powers and want to engage in imperialism. It wants to expand. And this cartoon, famous cartoon from Puck, a magazine of the time, shows a different Columbia, a vain Columbia looking in the mirror and what does she have as a hat? A battleship, a battleship. And the steam, the smoke coming out of the stack of the battleship says expansion. In other words, if the United States ends up spending a lot on its Navy, the result will be that the United States will want to expand around the world and become an imperial power just like those powers that the United States fears. And so Mahan is part of a debate about how much should the US spend on military power capability? What is required for defense? And also the larger question, what is America's purpose and ambitions in the world? Is it more narrowly defined to defense? Or does defense have to be expanded to a global, a global environment, not just the Western hemisphere? So the questions that the United States was facing in the 1890s, 1900s, the beginning of the 20th century are the same questions that we face today about what role should the US play in world affairs? Should we be an offshore balancer? Should we stay back, avoid engagements in the old world? Or is it the case that our security in the new world depends upon America projecting power out around the globe? Well, what about Mahan's teaching on strategy? What are some of the big takeaways that Mahan tried to get across to students in his time and that you also see in his writings? Well, for Mahan's strategy is the queen, he said of the military sciences. What is strategy? Well, strategy has a number of definitions, but it's how you use the capabilities at your disposal to achieve your objectives. So strategy is about matching your resources, your capabilities to your ends. Strategy is about defining your ends in a realistic way. What do you want? What's your goal? And then with the capabilities that you have, how can you best get there? And if you don't have enough capabilities to achieve your goals, well, you have to build them up or you have to settle for something less. So strategy is about ends what you want, ways how you get there, and the means what you have at your disposal. Strategy Mahan said is critical for explaining the success of countries, both in peace and in war. As he says, it underlies the fortune of every operation that military forces take place. He writes, if the strategy is not right, if you don't get the strategy right, if you don't think through the strategic problem in a serious way, no matter how skillful your forces will be, the general on the battlefield, how brave your soldiers and sailors are, even if you win military victories, and there might be big victories, they will still fail of their effect. In other words, you can win the battle and still lose the war. And this is a lesson again that Americans have learned on a number of occasions. Think about the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War, our operations tactics, we generally want on the battlefield. And yet at the same time, we did not prevail in that war. Again, in recent years, it is that our operations are so successful. And yet at the same time, at the same time, why is it that we're not getting the results that we want, the stability and peace that we would want? So it's fundamental in studying strategy to think through what is the connection between what your aims are and what capabilities you have. And it can't just keep focused on tactics and operations. You have to have a broader perspective, hence the importance of an education and strategy in the hands time and then our own time. Well, what is the history of sea power? And Mahan highlights in his book on page one of the influence of sea power that the history of sea power is one of international competition. Of what he says are contests, struggles, rivalries, between great powers. And these rivalries often culminate in war, in violence. Now, what about the sea as an environment, as a domain? Mahan and the influence of sea power says when you look at the sea, what you see is that from, he says, as a political social, we could say economic point of view, is the seas, the maritime domain, it's a great highway. It's a great highway. Or as he says, better yet, a wide common. This idea, this concept of commons took hold, not only Mahan's time, but down to our own day. And we think not just about the seas as a common, the maritime common, we think about the aerospace common. We think about, does a country have air superiority? Do they have access to space as a domain? And that these commons are contested, the maritime common, the aerospace commons, all of these will be contested in wartime. So strategy consists of trying to gain command of these commons because the country that can command the commons is likely to prove successful in war. So Mahan said, the goal for the naval planner is to command the sea. And what is commanding the sea? Well, he described it as being an overbearing power on the sea. What is overbearing power means? It means that you drive the enemy out from the sea, maybe not completely, not 100%, but where they can't do as much damage to you. They can't be decisive. You're making them a fugitive. They're running away from you. They can do some damage, but not damage that's going to prove decisive in defeating you. Again, this overbearing power, as he said, controlling the great common, in this case, the maritime common, closing out the highways. In other words, blocking the enemy from being successful in this commons. And again, air planners would look at this and say, yes, they want to command the air, just as naval planners want to command the maritime commons. That those, the command of the commons becomes a great enabler for success in war. Well, how do you control the commons? My hand is pretty straightforward. You have to have the superior force. Superior numbers, concentration of force. That's what leads to success in war. And so for him, it was to build the most powerful fleet that the United States could afford. That this was how you protect yourself. And also form coalitions with other countries that share your interests. In Mahan's time, Mahan increasingly came to see Britain as a partner of the United States in maintaining international order. And so for Mahan, it's have the most powerful navy, keep it concentrated, that force, but also work with partners to try to ensure the peace. And if the peace breaks down to be successful in war. Well, in war, how do you gain command of the commons? Well, for Mahan, he said in the maritime commons, you want to be able to go on the offensive. For Mahan, the offense was the stronger form of war. And in this sense, he took a lesson from his father, Dennis Hart Mahan. Dennis Hart Mahan taught all the West Point cadets, many of whom went on to become generals in the American Civil War, leaders in the American Civil War. And one of his maxims, Mahan's father was attack the enemy suddenly. Attack, celerity, speed. Speed is the key to success. Well, Alfred Thayer Mahan very much took on board what his father had to say. You see in Mahan's writing that the offensive has the advantage over the defensive in the maritime domain. Again, he calls it a fundamental principle of war in the maritime domain, is that defense is insured by offense. In other words, the best defense is a good offense. And the one objective that naval planners should be aiming for is to defeat the enemy's organized fleet, naval forces. By destroying the enemy's naval forces, you clean them out from the sea, get that overbearing power. Well, so what? What does this mean for us today? How can we think about Mahan in our own time in the 21st century? Well, Mahan's books continue to be read, not only at the Naval War College, but also in other countries around the world. One of the places where it's most popular is in mainland China. Here's what one Chinese naval analyst has to say about Mahan. That the US benefited from the guidance of Mahan's theories of sea power. That the United States, by building up its naval power, acquiring bases, spreading out from the Western hemisphere to Hawaii, to the Mariana Islands, that it expanded what he calls the strategic depth of the United States, and hence became a great world power. For China today to become a great world power, Mahan offers something of a script. And hence, Mahan's book in translation is read widely in China. When I talk to officers from the People's Republic of China, from Communist China, they are conversant about Mahan. Robert Kaplan, a journalist, writer on current affairs, his opinion on this is that the Chinese are avid readers of Mahan. The Chinese are Mahanians now. Well, we have to read our Mahan too. China is a great competitor of the United States on the world stage. We have to understand what they understand about Mahan, that for Chinese ambitions, as they go stronger in the world, as an economic power, as a naval power, that they want to expand in ambitions as well. Mahan looking at the current day would look at this and say, this would remind him of his own time. We talk about today about the return of great power competition. Well, it never went away. It never went away. Mahan would say that what we're seeing today in the 21st century looks a great deal like, a great deal like what he saw in his own generation. And for him, it was important that Americans understand the sources of power, this economic power, this trade, education of people, naval power, all of these elements of power are important to be able to preserve the peace, but also if the peace breaks down to be successful in war. Thank you very much. John, thank you very much for an outstanding presentation. We have a number of questions that came in and it seems like every time a question came in, you automatically addressed it, but we'll go back and touch on a few of them. So first question, and you touched on it, was submarine power. Granted, submarines were very in their infancy at that time, but did Mahan have any considerable thoughts about the potential power for submarines in a conflict? The submarine was just coming into its own at this time and the submarines at first were ships of relatively limited range and primarily useful for defense of coastlines. So it was more of a defensive weapon. Right before the First World War, however, submarines became much more powerful, more lethal weapons because they had extended range and could now range out into the world's oceans. And so Mahan didn't have much to say about submarines in his own lifetime. He certainly saw the danger that they represented to the big ships, but he didn't give much concern to the submarine. Of course, in the First World War, these longer range lethal submarines played a huge role. Of course, in the First World War's German submarines sank over 13 million tons of shipping during the First World War. So the submarine becomes a very, very dangerous weapon and the fight to defeat the submarine, to keep command of the maritime commons is something that was, of course, a major battle that was faced by the US and Britain during the First World War against Germany. So the submarine was a major weapon that was being developed this time, rapidly being developed. And Mahan saw the potential there as being a weapon to attack trade and also the larger searcherships, but it doesn't figure as prominently in his writings as we would put it in the history of the 20th century. Thank you. Did Mahan find opposing ideas in the Navy or did everybody buy his notions or were there people who did not take it aboard? He was part of a big debate that was going on about what type of Navy, what type of force structure to have. At the time that Mahan wrote, there was a group of naval officers, not only in the United States, but around the world, who believed that technology had so fundamentally changed naval warfare that countries were foolish to invest in big surface platforms, the battleship. Instead, they should invest in the submarine, they should invest in the fast cruiser, they should invest in the torpedo boat, that these new weapons were transforming naval warfare and they indeed were transforming naval warfare. But Mahan argued that if you invested in that type of Navy, it would be a defensive Navy and that type of Navy could not command the maritime commons. You had to have more powerful surface ships to be able to command the commons, to have that overbearing power. And so he was part of a debate that said, well, yes, we need the smaller ships, but we also need the bigger ships as well. That there was no substitute for the big powerful battle fleet. So Mahan did take part in quite a polemic, quite a discussion in his time and was an advocate for the big ship Navy, I guess you would say, and that naval power, you can't get it on the cheap. What he was afraid of was that those who said, oh, we can invest in torpedoes, we can invest in mines and submarines, that the Navy budget doesn't have to be that large because these weapons are relatively cheap. Mahan was arguing, you get what you pay for. If you don't spend enough money, you'll get a Navy with less capability, less defensive capability, and you'll be less secure. So Mahan's message was, you have to spend more. You get what you pay for and hence build that battle fleet, as well as the smaller ships. Good, thank you. Question on the impact that Mahan had on Imperial Japan, did they read it and how did it potentially shape the war in the Pacific? Fascinating question, because Japan, Mahan's works were translated right away into Japanese, Japanese naval leaders saw in Mahan's work a blueprint for their country as a rising power and that they would need to have a strong battle fleet. In fact, Mahan was invited to go to Japan to be a teacher there. He turned it down for a variety of reasons, but he was greatly admired by Japanese naval leaders who saw in his books about building up a battle fleet, trying to dominate your local environment, your region, the seas of that region. They saw Mahan as offering for them a model and the Japanese build up a powerful navy. In 1894, 95, they fought China in a war and defeated China at sea and on land. Modern day Taiwan, then Formosa, became part of the Japanese empire because of that war. And then in 1904 and five, Japan fought a war against Russia in which they defeated Russia and took over Korea at that time in the aftermath of that war with Russia. So Japan following Mahan's script, ended up fighting two major wars, one against China, one against Russia in Mahan's own lifetime. The Mahan influence stayed with the Japanese, imperial Japanese navy throughout the period of the two world wars. What you see is the Japanese navy being built up to fight the big fleet battle to command the commons. And so the Japanese navy throughout the second world war tried to aim for that big decisive battle at sea against the US. As it turned out, as we know from the history, the US built the stronger navy and built the overbearing power that they could defeat the Japanese navy in battle and did so in the famous battles, Midway, Guadalcanal, Philippine Sea and Leyte Gulf, those great battles of the second world war. So you see Mahan influencing not just the Japanese navy, but also the US navy at that time of building up these powerful fleets to fight each other in clashes at sea. And the side that wins those big battles will end up commanding the commons. So Mahan's script for how to win, you can easily see how that could be translated to explain what happened in the second world war. But yes, Mahan's influence was big in Japan. Thank you. Question, and we're gonna ask you to put yourself in Mahan's brain here and whatnot. What do you think he would feel about the aircraft carriers in today's environment? Mahan would say, if you wanna command the commons, you have to have the most powerful ships. And so I think he would come down on the side of those who want to continue to invest in carriers because they're the ones that not only can project power, but also command the commons around them. Now, that doesn't mean that he would say, neglect other types of warships far from it. He would call for what he called a balanced fleet, a fleet in other words, that has a range of capabilities and warships. I mean, he was a student observer of naval warfare and fought in the American Civil War. And while the Union navy had a larger surface ships, they also had a lot of cruisers and smaller craft as well. But he would say that I think he would come down on the side of those that say, you have to continue to build the aircraft carriers, even as you are investing in new platforms as well. He would tell you that you're going to have to have a big navy budget and a healthy shipbuilding program to keep in place the industries, develop the technology, also to train the personnel that you need, not only to be in the fleet, but also in the industrial infrastructure behind the fleet. He would also put emphasis on making sure that in wartime, you can surge capacity to be able to put more ships at sea by having a trained reserve and also adapting platforms that might not have been warships, say, merchant ships of one form or another, adapt them for military use as well. And also, of course, make sure that you have commercial shipping to be able to move things in war as well. It's not just about warships, it's also about the ability to move stuff, people as well. I would think on balance though, he would be in favor of continuing to build big carriers. Of course we don't know, but I think that's the case. We'll take that, we'll take that. Yeah, yeah. John, he talks, Mahan talked about the commons, keeping the commons free, et cetera. What is the impact on today's commons, both in space and cyberspace, and how does the Navy have a role in those areas? Of course, where Mahan is so important is developing this idea of commons or domains and that by commanding these, having the overbearing power in these domains, that you're able then to be successful in war. That being successful in the maritime domain, the aerospace domain, the cyber domain, all of these are required to be successful. Now Mahan would tell you though, that you're never going to be in complete control of any of these environments, they're going to be contested. And so you'd have to have a combination of defensive and offensive capabilities to be successful in these domains. He would tend to lean more toward the offensive side in all of these domains, I believe. He was someone, as I tried to highlight, was someone who thought that in these commons, in these domains, the offensive was the stronger form of war. Now that doesn't mean that he doesn't think defense is important, he does. I mean, he was a believer in convoys, for example, to protect merchant shipping. So you have to have some defensive capabilities as well. You also believe that you have to have defended ports infrastructure as well. So again, you have to have a balance between offensive and defensive capabilities. But to be successful in these domains, Mahan would say you have to have strong offensive capabilities. So in the cyber domain, you have to be able to carry out cyber attacks. In the air domain, you have to get command of the air. You have to be able to protect your satellites, but also then use those things for communication and all the rest, intelligence to be able to direct your forces to be more successful in wartime. So he would favor the offense, but he would always call for balance and understand that there has to be some defense that works in the commons. And he would also tell you, you're gonna take some hits, you're not always gonna be successful. The enemy is going to have some successes in all of those domains. He will sink some of your ships. He'll sink some of your aircraft. He'll bring down some of your satellites. He'll be able to launch cyber attacks against you that will be successful. So he'll tell you, you have to be able to take some blows as well as give them out. Does that get to the question you think, John? I think so, I think that's good, John. I think we've got time for about one more and what we'll put out is, Mahan talks a lot about blue water operations. Did he talk much about sea power in the literals and maybe amphibious warfare? Mahan wrote about his civil war experience. Before he wrote the influence of sea power upon history, he had already written a book called The Gulf and Inland Waters about his experience and the Navy's experience in the American Civil War. Well, we might call the Brownwater Navy, in other words, in the Latorals, but also Riverine Warfare. Mahan experienced that firsthand. He thought it was very important. That painting that I showed to peacemakers that hangs in the White House, it shows Admiral Porter with the general Sherman and with General Grant. Mahan understood that you have to have these, what we would call joint operations, they would call combined operations of army and Navy working together. One of the reasons why Stephen B. Loos set up the Naval War College was because he had worked with General Sherman during the American Civil War. And he understood the importance of army-Navy cooperation in the war. As a consequence of that, Mahan too was of the mindset that you have to think about how these services operate together. So while he talked about blue water, how to command the commons, if you will, he also talked about how you then translate that success in the commons to victory on land, how you then translate your superiority at sea into how you then gain advantage on land as well. So one thing to take away from the commons discussion, by the way, is that all these commons interact with each other. The maritime commons interact with the aerospace. You have to be successful in one to be successful in the other. That if you fail in one, you're likely to fail in the other. Mahan also wrote about, again, land operations and commons operations, if you will. And again, we have to think about, well, how does aerospace dominance, maritime dominance, what role does that play for your operations ashore on land in supporting your ground forces where you put boots on the ground? So Mahan's work, he covered that as well from his own experience of the American Civil War and he saw great importance of that. And indeed too, he was an avid studier of classical strategy of war on land and tried to apply that to warfare at sea. So he was very joint, I would say, in that sense, that he sees how this all interacts, land and sea and commons and the rest. Well, that's terrific. John, we've got another dozen questions, and I'm afraid we're not gonna get a chance to get to them. Do you have any closing thoughts you'd like to share before we sign off? I just wanna say that this year at the Naval War College is a demanding year. There's a lot to study while here at the college, but at the same time, what great fun it is to study at the college. This is a year in which minds are broadened, not only the students, but of the faculty as well. We learn so much from each other. And so this is a great experience. And while it's a hard slog to read all the books that you're going to read and listen to all these gifted speakers that you're going to hear from, and yet at the same time though, it's just a wealth of information, a wealth of knowledge, and it's such a great experience. So I hope that not only are you challenged, but when you're here at the college, you also enjoy this experience as well. I think it's a great time because learning education is exciting. It's just wonderful opportunity here. And I wish everybody the very best during this year at the college. Thank you, John, outstanding as always.