Naval War College Review
Volume 69
Number 2 Spring
Article 9
2016
National Interest and Moral Responsibility in the
Political ought of Admiral Alfred ayer Mahan
omas F.X. Varacalli
Louisiana State University
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Naval War College Review: Vol. 69 : No. 2 , Article 9.
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T
he political thought of Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan was a response to two
particular waves of American progressivism. Social Darwinism, the first
wave, in its most secular, conservative, and unadulterated form, claimed that the
human race is constantly progressing, that the survival of the fittest is embedded
in the historical unfolding of history, and that morality is conditioned by the
contingencies of one’s historical epoch. Social Darwinism led to an emphasis on
human selfishness, competition, and the following of one’s interest.
1
The second
wave, influenced by a variety of factors including Kantian ethics, European social
policies, and the American Social Gospel, focused on the more positive aspects
of progressivism. The state, according to this worldview, existed to better the
world and to promote moral responsibility in both the domestic and interna-
tional spheres.
2
Herbert Croly, one of the most influential progressive thinkers,
believed that “the promise of American life” could be achieved through various
internal social, political, moral, economic, and constitutional reforms that would
both redress a perceived loss of individual liberty and further the common good.
3
Mahan combined both of these strands of American progressivism to provide
his country a new and reinvigorated foreign policy. Nations, Mahan argued, had
to be self-interested. The United States needed
to protect itself from the possibility of European
encroachment against the Monroe Doctrine. Un-
like many of his contemporary social Darwinists,
however, Mahan balanced his emphasis on interest
Thomas F. X. Varacalli
Thomas F. X. Varacalli is a doctoral candidate in
political science at Louisiana State University. His
research interests include political theory, American
politics, and history.
Naval War College Review, Spring 2016, Vol. 69, No. 2
NATIONAL INTEREST AND MORAL
RESPONSIBILITY IN THE POLITICAL THOUGHT
OF ADMIRAL ALFRED THAYER MAHAN
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NATIONAL INTEREST AND MORAL
RESPONSIBILITY IN THE POLITICAL THOUGHT
OF ADMIRAL ALFRED THAYER MAHAN
with a genuine concern for moral responsibility� The United States had a duty
not only to ensure its national interest but also to improve and better the world�
American armament, for example, not only protected the United States from
foreign encroachment but protected the sovereignty of South America from
European imperialism—an objective distinct from national interest� American
armament, therefore, promoted a moral tenet: the right of South American na-
tions to self-determination�
Mahan was not a comprehensive thinker� By profession he was a historian
and essayist� His comments and ideas about progressivism are sporadic, pep-
pered throughout writings concerning particular moments of history or specific
policy issues� Mahan never created any overarching theory about the interplay
of national interest and moral responsibility� The absence of any grand theory is
intentional: Mahan, like his most important intellectual source, baron de Jomini,
made universal claims only through the study of particular situations� Examining
multiple historical and contemporary events, Mahan emphasized the supremacy
of national interest in American foreign policy, but he balanced this position with
a genuine concern for moral responsibility� Although America had to follow its
own interests, Mahan argued, he never advocated any action or social policy that
he believed to be evil�
Progressive expansionist tendencies did not begin with Mahan, but he was
one of the best exponents of this outward movement in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries�
4
The uniqueness of Mahan’s thought stemmed from
his integration of thorough strategic and military knowledge, shrewd political
analysis, and the academic vigor of two burgeoning fields of his time, economics
and history� Mahan’s career as an intellectual began with his study of sea power,
The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783 (1890), which was based on
the lectures he delivered as President of the newly founded Naval War College�
Although Influence of Sea Power is largely a technical and terse account of sea
power, its most celebrated parts—the introduction and first chapter—provide an
outline of his political philosophy� Nations, he argues there, are concerned pri-
marily with their own survival� They follow their own interests, creating a com-
petitive international environment based predominantly on force and strategic
calculation� They employ various forms of coercion, including outright war, to
pursue their interests� The study of history, Mahan holds, demonstrates that the
development of sea power is one of the most influential elements in the forming
of a great nation�
5
Mahan’s concept of sea power was broader than the mere military possession
of a navy� Rather, for him “sea power” was an economic term, one that explained
how a nation became dominant at sea, in three steps: the production of goods,
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the building of a navy to protect and transport these goods, and the creation of
colonies, which provided the raw materials necessary to produce more goods
while simultaneously creating other markets for trade.
6
Sea power, then, was fun-
damentally tied to expanding economic markets. For nations such as the United
States to grow in influence, they had to expand economically as well as militarily.
The political implications of Mahan’s thought—the centrality of national inter-
est in international affairs, the reality of competition, the imperative to maintain
a strong home market and economy, the importance of strategic military and
naval force, the necessity of constant economic and military expansion, and the
benefits of colonialism—were not lost on Mahan’s contemporaries. Influence
of Sea Power upon History, as well as its acclaimed sequel, The Influence of Sea
Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793–1812 (1892), produced a sig-
nificant splash on both sides of the Atlantic. Many Europeans were enamored of
Influence of Sea Power upon History because they thought it defended their own
nations’ policies on armament and imperialism. It was translated into several
languages and placed in all the naval ships and schools of Germany and Japan.
7
Kaiser Wilhelm owned two copies of the book, one in English and the other in
German, and claimed that he was “trying to learn it by heart.”
8
In Great Britain,
Mahan received an audience with Queen Victoria and honorary doctorates from
Oxford and Cambridge.
9
The nation that most effectively employed Mahan’s
ideas, however, was Japan. Several Japanese theorists, such as Akiyama Saneyuki
and Sato Tetsutaro, read Mahan religiously. Many of Mahan’s books were trans-
lated into Japanese.
10
In America the book’s reception was a bit less sensational,
except in the Republican Party. The William McKinley administration picked
Mahan, by then retired, to serve on a board formed to advise on naval strategy
during the Spanish-American War and, then in peace, as a delegate to the first
Hague conference, where he was noted as the only representative to vote against
the ban on asphyxiating gas in war.
11
Owing to Mahan’s forty-year naval career, the subject matter of his histories,
his philosophical emphasis on the competition of nations, and his staunch op-
position to arbitration, his name has become synonymous with the promotion of
war, force, and imperialism. This unfavorable association began with several of
his contemporaries. The noted British pacifist Norman Angell considered Ma-
han’s political thought “a doctrine of savagery.”
12
Charles Beard, in a sensational
piece, characterized Mahan as a “bookish” manufacturer of American imperial-
ism and one of “the four . . . most powerful agitators that ever affected any na-
tion.”
13
A generation later, Richard Hofstadter dismissed Mahan, claiming that
“[Mahan] believed that every nation like every schoolboy was bound to come to
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blows with its fellows�”
14
By midcentury, many historians had labeled Mahan a
social Darwinist�
15
These interpretations not only are uncharitable but purvey a certain caricature
of Mahan’s political thought� It is true that Mahan was not afraid to use force to
protect American interests� In his books, essays, and articles, he supported the
annexation of Hawaii, the creation of the canal across the Central American
isthmus, the Open Door policy in China, the Spanish-American War, the taking
of Cuba, the colonization of the Philippines, and increases in naval armament�
Above all, Mahan urged his countrymen to uphold the Monroe Doctrine� Mahan
defended these positions primarily as imperatives of national interest� On several
key issues, however, Mahan entwined his position with a moral responsibility
that he perceived Western nations to have with respect to non-Western nations�
That emphasis on moral responsibility, which many of Mahan’s critics either flatly
ignore or dismiss as ethnocentric cultural and religious imperialism, is pivotal to
an understanding of the depth and balance of Mahan’s political thought� Mahan
is neither Hofstadter’s rambunctious schoolboy nor Beard’s trigger-happy im-
perialist� He did not desire war for its own sake� In fact, he thought that various
elements of his political thought, such as economic reciprocity, military and naval
armament, and the European balance of powers, would help reduce the likeli-
hood of war�
16
At first glance, it may seem that national interest and moral responsibility are
incompatible, in that the former deals with the appetites while the latter focuses
on morality� Mahan attempted to wed these two concepts by claiming that the
ultimate arbiter of both national interest and moral responsibility is the nation
itself� Nations, he argued, are sovereign and independent� As there is no universal
and impartial arbiter of justice, every nation has the right to form its own subjec-
tive understanding of moral responsibility� Only the individual nation is able to
decide whether its policy is based on national interest, moral responsibility, or a
combination of both� Even when a nation realizes that it has made an error in pol-
icy judgment, it is better that it err than allow another nation or arbiter to decide
what is moral or in the interest of that nation� Ultimately, the radical subjectivity
and nationalism of Mahan’s thought make his distinction between national inter-
est and moral responsibility less apparent and self-evident than Mahan seems to
have intended� In principle, however, there remains a substantive difference be-
tween interest and responsibility: in the latter, perceived charity and beneficence
are offered to non-Americans� Mahan, though, did not provide an example in
which national interest is absent from acts of moral responsibility� Recognition
of the interaction in his political thought between national interest and moral
responsibility is important in any evaluation of his public-policy positions�
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THE NATURE OF NATIONS: COMPETITION AND THE PURSUIT OF
NATIONAL INTEREST
There is little evidence that Mahan was exposed to the classics of Western politi-
cal thought� In the over two thousand personal letters that have been collected
and published by his most recent biographer, Mahan did not comment on Nic-
colò Machiavelli, Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, Georg Hegel, or Karl Marx�
17
These thinkers were
absent also from his published work, although he did quote Montesquieu on
the importance of commercial monopolies�
18
Rather, Mahan’s thought was in-
fluenced primarily by the military strategist baron de Jomini, by various works
of nineteenth-century high Anglican theology recommended by his uncle Milo
Mahan, and by a vast array of political and military historians, ranging from
Thucydides and Plutarch to Leopold von Ranke and François Guizot�
19
It was his
study of history that specifically led him to develop his sea-power thesis� Mahan
recounts in his autobiography how, while reading an account of the Carthaginian
Hannibal’s failed Second Punic War campaign in Theodor Mommsen’s History of
Rome, he came to understand the historical importance of the navy: “It suddenly
struck me � � � how different things might have been could Hannibal have invaded
by the sea, as the Romans often had Africa, instead of the long land route�”
20
From
this insight, Mahan argued that the study of history demonstrated that Hannibal’s
undoing—failure to deploy naval power equal to that of the enemy—was not an
isolated event but a fault that had plagued many campaigns� In the preface of
Influence of Sea Power upon History he compares the failure of Hannibal (and the
concomitant success in that war of the Roman general Scipio) with the failure in
the nineteenth century of Napoleon and the success of the Duke of Wellington�
Although these cases were over two thousand years apart, they manifested a uni-
versal principle: in both, “mastery of the sea rested with the victor�”
21
Mahan’s sea-power thesis and his political philosophy were based on a his-
toriographical approach called “subordination�” The composition of history,
Mahan asserted in his 1902 presidential address to the American Historical As-
sociation, begins with a “multiplicity of details often contradictory” that “do not
readily lend themselves to a unity of treatment�”
22
Like that of an artist, the task
of the historian is to find unity within the multiplicity of human affairs� Banal
curiosities need to be discarded and the important facts of history “subordi-
nated” to “a central idea�”
23
The central ideas of history, like the tension between
freedom and slavery, are motivated primarily by conflict� In Mahan’s histories,
the tension among nations in international affairs and the appropriate means
through which to handle conflict and war in particular situations receive the
most attention�
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Many of Mahan’s ideas about war, particularly about strategy and tactics, are
influenced strongly by Jomini’s Art of War� Jomini was not a political philoso-
pher� Though Jomini recognized the importance of politics, especially the roles
of diplomacy and statesmanship in war, many moral ambiguities arise from his
work� Jomini, like Mahan, was not an adherent of the traditional just-war theory�
He recognized that nations go to war for a variety of reasons, some of them
more defensible than others� He openly admits, in the first chapter of his work,
that many wars arise from “so many doubtful and contested rights�”
24
Whereas
just-war theory holds that war can be waged only for a just reason, Jomini does
not make the pursuit of justice a necessary prerequisite of warfare� Wars that
according to just-war theory must not be waged can still be fought according to
Jomini’s work, with its moral ambiguities� In the interplay of national interest and
moral responsibility, it is clear that national interest dominates Jomini’s thoughts;
Mahan, nevertheless, owing to the limitations of Jomini’s work, often focuses on
the role of conflict in human affairs�
The prevalence of conflict in both human and international affairs guided
Mahan’s emphasis on the impulses, sentiments, and feelings of nations and their
citizens�
25
Although these elements of human behavior are volatile, Mahan pos-
ited a fairly static view of human nature: “It must be remembered that, among
all changes, the nature of man remains the same�”
26
He provided neither a stage
of human history in which the flaws of human nature are overcome nor the pos-
sibility that human nature itself can change� Since he believed that human nature
was constant, Mahan was able to make a universal claim about humanity: “All
men seek gain and, more or less, love money; but the way in which gain is sought
will have a marked effect upon the commercial fortunes and the history of the
people inhabiting a country�”
27
Humankind is, was, and always will be moved by
a universal principle: the pursuit of interest� The nation does not differ from the
individual in its pursuit of interest� Rather, the pursuit of interests is amplified in
the nation, especially in the realm of international relations�
Successful nations, Mahan posited, adhere to what he called the “national will,”
or “popular will�” The national will is different from that of the government� It is
best defined as the opinion of the majority of the citizenry�
28
Nations are simply
agents of the people� “Governments,” Mahan claimed, “are trustees, not prin-
cipals; and as such must put first the lawful interests of their wards, their own
p e o p l e �”
29
The policies of a strong government will need to be congruent with the
national interest, because the most successful policies of a nation are grounded in
“the sentiment of the people�”
30
Thus, statesmen who wish to push certain policies
that are currently against the wishes of the people must somehow convince the
people to convert to their positions�
31
While Mahan himself was an intellectual
and not a statesman, he took his own advice� In order that America might expand
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its commercial interests and become a sea power, Mahan attempted to convert
the American people through his own writings to support his main political
project—the expansion of America’s sea power�
The opening line of Influence of Sea Power upon History boldly states, “The
history of Sea Power is largely, though by no means solely, a narrative of contests
between nations, of mutual rivalries, of violence frequently culminating in war�”
32
Embedded in this thesis is Mahan’s view that conflict is a natural part of human
nature� Human nature, moved by various feelings and impulses, is volatile and
avaricious� History, he argues, has shown that the course of human affairs is a
narrative of competition� Whether at peace or at war, nations act out of both
impulse and calculation of profit� Tension arises naturally among neighboring
nations, because they often have the same pursuits� “Clashing interests” lead to
“angry feelings” over various economic concerns, and then to attempts by na-
tions “to exclude others, either by legislative methods of monopoly or prohibi-
tory regulations, or, when these failed, by direct violence�”
33
Successful nations
have to find ways to procure their interests while simultaneously protecting
themselves against their competitors� War is just one possible solution to such
predicaments, but Mahan defended adamantly a nation’s right to wage it: nations
have a “right to insure by just means whatsoever contributes to natural progress,
and correlatively to combat injurious action taken by an outside agency, if the
latter overpass its own lawful sphere�”
34
The basis for international relations is
national interest� The impulses, sentiments, and feelings of a nation dictate its
relationship with other nations� Peace, nevertheless, can be found, if there exists
mutual profit in attaining it� Nations invade other nations (or indigenous groups)
only if there is something to gain from the conquest or occupation� Sometimes
interests encourage nations to invade; in other cases, interests encourage nations
to negotiate treaties�
35
The pursuit of interest stems from self-preservation, which Mahan defined
quite broadly� “The first law of states, as of man,” Mahan wrote, “is self-preservation
—a term which cannot be narrowed to the bare tenure of a stationary round of
existence�”
36
Self-preservation is not simply a reaction against an external threat
but something more comprehensive: it is the right to defend the nation’s inter-
ests, whether in direct response to provocation or not�
37
Self-preservation is not
merely instinctual but also strategic and calculative� The use of reason, not just
instinct and the passions, is necessary to preserve the nation� A nation ought to
realize that it may not possess tomorrow what it does at the current moment�
Preparedness for defense is legitimate, because it is prudent for a nation to take
precautions against future disasters� When not at war, the most appropriate act of
self-preservation is economic expansion� A healthy nation needs to engage eco-
nomically with other nations and to compete with its neighbors� Mahan’s study
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of history even suggests that competition often has positive, constructive, and
moral qualities� The prosperity of the Western world derives “from the fact that
our present world of civilization consists of strong opposing nationalities, and is
not one huge, consolidated imperium � � � [where] the individual declension [i�e�,
decline] of the Roman citizen had destroyed the material from which the more
healthful organism of earlier days could have been reconstituted�”
38
The defeat of
Carthage, for example, provided Rome with no antagonism; instead of flourish-
ing, Roman mores faltered�
39
Mahan defended competition by imagining what
the world would look like if there were no competition� Behind his argument is
the belief that creativity and innovation need some sort of impetus; complacency
breeds stagnation� Likewise, from a moral perspective, the absence of perceived
evil or actual struggle fosters decadence� It is vigorous, antagonistic competition
—the need to overcome something or someone—that molds great men and
nations� Without Napoleon, there would have been no Nelson� Competition
provides the necessity that forges the tools and means by which progress is made�
The closest synonym to “progress,” in Mahan’s understanding, is “growth�”
Nevertheless, Mahanian progress is a vague concept, best defined as the “onward
movement of the world [that] has to be accepted as a fact, to be advantageously
dealt with by guidance, not by mere opposition, still less by unprofitable bewail-
ing of things undesirably past�”
40
Progress is a fact not because nature itself inher-
ently progresses but because a particular nation is bound to take advantage of
another’s weaknesses� Progress, in other words, occurs through human activity
and effort� Unlike Herbert Spencer, in whose thinking progress happens natu-
rally, through evolution, from homogeneity to heterogeneity, Mahan argues that
progress is achieved laboriously, from human toil and experience�
41
It is possible,
for instance, for progress to slow down and even, theoretically, to falter entirely�
Progress is “dependent upon each man’s thorough, consummate knowledge of
his own business, supplemented by an adequate understanding of the occupa-
tions and need of his neighbors�”
42
Progress is the result of human reason, not
the movements of the natural order� Mahan admits that the “raw materials” of
progress often come from geographical and physical conditions, but, just as a
nation must touch a sea if it is to develop a navy, the success of a nation often
depends on its geographical, cultural, and racial characteristics�
43
In the modern
age, Mahan argued of his time, progress advances by looking outward and is
achieved through interaction with the outside world� The aforementioned three
determinants of sea power—production, shipping, and colonies—involve con-
stant motion and growth� This growth intensifies when other, opposing nations
are also expanding, thereby creating competition�
Mahan’s focus on development and competition affected the way in which he
understood the nature of human rights� Mahan defined natural rights as those
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“that result from the simple fact of being born�”
44
Natural rights differed, for him,
from political or legal rights in that the latter “depend upon other fitnesses than
that of merely being a man�”
45
Using this distinction, Mahan defended the impe-
rialism, colonialism, and expansion of Europe over the less developed parts of the
world on the ground that the indigenous peoples of those regions did not have
natural rights to the lands they occupied, whatever legal or political rights they
might have enjoyed� No nation, he argued, has a natural right to its land� Territory
is held by fitness� Mankind at large has a natural right to the unused goods of idle
lands; hence, Mahan asserted, the raw materials of Africa, Asia, and the Middle
East belonged to those who could develop them� The strongest, most progressive
nation is the most likely to use and to develop a region’s natural goods most ef-
ficiently; the strong, then, should rule over those resources�
46
As the historian Walter LaFeber has noted, Mahan defined “colonialism” dif-
ferently from the seventeenth-century mercantilists� Sometimes Mahan’s use of
the term centered on created settlements, such as in Hawaii, but most of the time
he associated it with purely strategic points of trade and military forts�
47
For ex-
ample, Gibraltar, an English possession, was considered by Mahan to be a colony
although it was primarily a strategic naval fort� Colonialism, then, fundamentally
involved two things for Mahan� First, it brought wealth for the nation� Second, it
provided a base for further expansion and acted as a check against hostile move-
ments of foreign nations� Mahan used the example of India, the possession of
which had given England both wealth and a strong military position in the Indian
Ocean� Protecting India required England to have a strong navy and, to create a
highway to India, colonial and strategic possessions in the Mediterranean� It was
for this reason that England possessed both Gibraltar and the Suez Canal�
48
The
constant development of the navy, ever larger in response to England’s own needs
(and to the challenges posed by its neighbors and competitors) was necessary for
the successful administration of colonial India�
Mahan constantly stressed the importance of naval armament because a
navy represented not only power to protect but power to rule� Navies, Mahan
remarked, “can be felt where national armies cannot go�”
49
More sophisticated
than ever before, navies provided defense, communication, transportation, and
the protection of trade� Most important of all, navies gave their nations a chance
to secure peace� For this reason, Mahan applauded the military buildup of the
Western powers, convinced that it was diminishing the likelihood of inter-
European combat� With their gaze on colonialism and imperialism, the Western
nations were able to participate in healthy competition without destroying each
other� Armament—not the pacifism of men like Norman Angell—created true
humanitarianism�
50
Mahan wrote, “The most beneficial use of a military force is
not to wage war, however successfully, but to prevent war, with all its suffering,
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expense, and complications of embarrassments�”
51
Mahan’s balance of powers,
however, did not adequately deter violence in non-Western states�
MORAL RESPONSIBILITY, CONSCIENCE, AND THE LIMITS OF
LAW
Throughout his writings, Mahan argued consistently that there is a strong cor-
relation between national policy and public opinion� As a nation follows a certain
interest because its citizens demand it, so will a nation carry out a certain policy if
the people think it has a responsibility to do so� Moral responsibility stems from
a conviction that a certain position is morally right� It moves the nation to tran-
scend politics based solely on calculation and instinct, to rise to questions of right
and wrong� Mahan stated that “to regard the world as governed by self-interest
only is to live in a non-existent world,” adding that the causes of war were now
based on convictions of good and evil, though interests certainly remained�
52
At
first glance, this statement seems to contradict the centrality of national interest
in international affairs as outlined in Influence of Sea Power upon History� Mahan
resolved this ambiguity by explaining that an issue of national interest, especially
one concerning tension with other nations, “gradually assumes the aspect of a
right and a wrong�”
53
There are two important points to be made here� First, ques-
tions of right and wrong are based on the feelings of the citizenry and are decided
by a majoritarian consensus; right and wrong, therefore, are not necessarily ab-
solutes� Second, questions of right and wrong are sometimes not independent of
national interest� Hence, part of the tension between national interest and moral
responsibility is resolved by the fact that both derive from the sentiments of the
people�
Mahan’s moral subjectivity and the importance he gives to public opinion are
products of his Protestantism� Mahan believed in the supremacy of the individual
conscience in questions of what is right and wrong� He argued further that the
individual has not only the right to hold a belief but also a moral duty to act on
that belief� Mahan begins his spiritual autobiography, The Harvest Within, by em-
phasizing the relationship between the roles of exteriority and spiritual interior-
ity� In particular, he emphasizes the role of intentionality: “the moral and spiritual
value of acts depends upon the motive�”
54
This point is central to Mahan’s political
writings� If individuals or nations are to make a moral decision, they must do so
freely and without coercion� Morality cannot be forced by an alien, exterior force;
rather, an act is moral only when it is deliberated and acted on freely and without
compulsion�
Although Mahan did not articulate the distinction, he used the term “moral
responsibility” in two different ways: the moral responsibility a nation has to
itself, on one hand, and on the other, the moral responsibility a nation has to the
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human race� First and foremost is the duty the nation has to itself, to maintain
its own conscience� On these moral matters, which are especially prominent in
international affairs, the nation needs to stand by its own understandings, its
own reasoning capacities, not allowing other nations to interfere with its policies
and beliefs� The nation’s exercise of reason forms the basis of Mahan’s condem-
nation of international arbitration and, more generally, his reservations about
international law� Second, the nation has a moral responsibility to contribute to
the progress of humankind� Western nations, like America, ought to act out of
beneficence toward weaker nations, peoples, and indigenous groups that “re-
quire” exposure to Western culture and Christianity� The single greatest example
of this perceived feeling of responsibility was the divine and covenantal charge
that many Americans, including Mahan, believed they had assumed in acquiring
the Philippines�
To actualize moral responsibility, force often is needed� Force in and of itself is
neither innately evil nor incompatible with Christianity� “Force,” Mahan argued,
“must be used for the benefit of the community, of the commonwealth of the
w o r l d �”
55
Since there is no ultimate earthly arbiter or judge to determine the right-
ness of an action, it is the right of the nation itself to decide what it ought to do�
Like individuals, nations have consciences, and although the conscience of any
given nation can—and may—be misguided, the nation still has a right and duty
to follow it� Mahan wrote, almost as a theologian might, that “even if mistaken,
the moral wrong of acting against conviction works a deeper injury � � � than can
the merely material disasters that may follow upon obedience�”
56
Consequently,
it is better to commit a wrong act with a good intention than to do a good act for
a wrong reason� This supremacy of conscience for Mahan undoubtedly derives
from his Protestantism, but whereas Christianity assigns conscience to the indi-
vidual, Mahan allocates it to the nation� Conscience, according to Mahan, is a gift
from God and cannot be violated� If a nation defiles its conscience, it abandons
its supreme reasoning tool�
57
This reasoning, however, has a tremendous social
and political implication: such emphasis on conscience leads to subjectivity�
The parallel and connection between Mahan’s conception of conscience and his
conception of national interest are unmistakable� They both rest on the presup-
position that a competing nation has no right to enforce its morality over another
nation except by means of force� Since different national consciences inevitably
disagree on important issues, disputes among nations are natural in and integral
to international affairs—hence, the need to arm, in case of war�
Since Mahan held that national conscience needs to be in accordance with the
judgment of an individual nation, his political thought was naturally suspicious
of international law and was opposed adamantly to arbitration� International law,
according to Mahan, did not guarantee moral decisions: “Law, itself, which its
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extreme advocates desire to see installed in place of war, is, in last analysis, simply
force regulated—a most desirable end—but inadequate for the very reason that
it is only a manifestation of a power which is manifold in its exhibition�”
58
If law
is only regulated force, it has no inherent moral value� Law, in general, is simply
conventional because the majority of its premises are utilitarian and arbitrary�
Though law may advance justice occasionally, it is not certain to pronounce the
correct verdict� Since international law cannot be changed easily, it is an unreli-
able arbiter in particular scenarios� Furthermore, Mahan claimed, “the positive-
ness inherent in the very idea of law, its lack of elasticity, renders it too frequently
inadequate to the settlement of certain classes of disputes, because in them an
accepted law exists, decision in accordance with which would simply perpetuate
injustice or sustain intolerable conditions�”
59
Positive international law, in other
words, is an inelastic universal principle unsuited for specific events� Conse-
quently, adherence to international law creates dysfunctional scenarios in which
a nation is hindered from doing what it thinks is moral�
Mahan was especially critical of arbitration, which many of his contemporary
American and European intellectuals desired to be required by international
law� His case against arbitration was twofold� First, Mahan argued from the
perspective of conscience� Conscience, not positive law, is the supreme medium
through which God communicates� Arbitration, then, is an act “of submitting to
an impartial third party a question, not of interests, nor of facts, but of right and
wrong, and therefore of conscience�”
60
Bluntly put, arbitration is the forfeiture of
conscience: “Fidelity to conscience,” Mahan wrote, “implies not only obedience
to its dictates, but earnest heart-searching, the use of every means, to ascertain
its true command�”
61
Conscience, therefore, sometimes prohibits following a law�
Mahan, drawing on then-senator William Seward’s famous denouncement in
1850 of the Fugitive Slave Act, stated that there is a higher law than the Constitu-
tion, one that must be interpreted individually� By extension, the Fugitive Slave
Act represented, for both Seward at the time and Mahan later, a grave offense to
the higher law and consequently was not to be followed�
62
If a citizen has a consci-
entious right to defy a positive domestic law, then surely a nation has the right to
defy a positive international law� Mahan used this line of reasoning to attack arbi-
tration� If an international arbiter or legislative body decreed an unfair verdict or
issued an unjust decree, a nation ought to have a right to disobey that law simply
on the grounds that acceptance would violate its conscience� This decision to
reject the arbiter’s judgment was unlikely to go unpunished by the international
community, leading quite easily to war—unnecessarily, in Mahan’s view�
Second, Mahan criticized arbitration from the perspective of sovereignty� Even
if a nation benefits from arbitration in the short term, it risks threats to its nation-
al sovereignty� Mahan wrote that “law, strictly so called, presupposes a lawmaker;
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and for international law the lawmaker has not yet come into existence�”
63
Mahan
feared that some sort of international body would have to be developed to give
arbitration teeth, causing American citizens to be subject in certain cases to for-
eign rule� Justice would not be guaranteed from this foreign rule; in fact, Mahan
doubted altogether the feasibility of justice in such a case, because all nations
have their own interests� In the modern world—interconnected even in Mahan’s
time—all nations have interests that could prejudice specific decisions� Arbitra-
tion, consequently, was hopelessly idealistic and naive; it does not erase the eter-
nal realities, constants arising from nature itself: competition, national interest
and self-interest, force, and greed� Proponents of arbitration, he argued, did not
recognize its potential for tyranny� To express the futility of arbitration, Mahan
compared it to the perceived tyranny of the medieval papacy over kingdoms—
a sharp jab from a devout high Anglican�
64
As in the Middle Ages, he claimed,
arbitration would be decided by an arbitrary power motivated by its own biases
and interests and overriding the consciences of nations�
After dismissing arbitration as an unreasonable assault against national sov-
ereignty and the denial of national conscience, Mahan proceeded to argue that
it would hinder America’s ability to make sound moral decisions� He used the
example of the Spanish-American War� Had a third party arbitrated between
Spain and the United States, he was sure, American intervention in Cuba would
have been condemned, because an arbitrator would likely have applied exist-
ing positive law�
65
Positive law, however, would have been unable to address
the many wrongs and injustices committed in Cuba by Spain, which according
to Mahan was an oppressive, feudal, and cruel power� Mahan held sincerely
that there was nothing unjust about America’s decision to intervene in Cuba—
freeing Cuba from Spanish tyranny was a legitimate end� To deny America
such an opportunity to follow its conscience and to liberate Cuba was to deny
America’s conscience and sovereignty� Moreover, it was more than likely that
international reprisals against American involvement in the Spanish-American
War would have stemmed from selfishness and various European interests, not
from moral concern for the oppressed�
THE APPLICATION OF MAHAN’S IDEAS TO THE AMERICAN
REPUBLIC
Mahan’s grappling with the problems of international affairs and geopolitics
pushed him to reject the policy of American isolationism in a world of rapidly
advancing imperialism� Mahan was an imperialist, but he was an American im-
perialist� He was well aware of the limits of his nation’s armed forces and of how
little interest his commercial-minded countrymen had in warfare� Mahan’s policy
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positions reflected the tension between following public opinion and promoting
causes contrary to public opinion� Consistent with his philosophy, Mahan did not
call for any imperial project comparable to those of Britain or France, not only
because such a project would be beyond America’s capabilities but also because
it would not be in accordance with public opinion�
Having taken the pulse of the Republic, Mahan supported the principle of
reciprocity advanced by Secretary of State (1881 and 1889–92) James G� Blaine�
Mahan defined reciprocity as the abandonment of “exclusive interest, which is
the citadel of protection, to embrace that of mutual benefit, the cornerstone upon
which the advocates of freedom of trade rest their argument�”
66
At first glance,
the principle seems to be in sharp contrast with Mahan’s emphasis on competi-
tive national interest� Yet reciprocity is pursued not for its own sake but out of
national interest� It opens up markets, especially non-Western markets, and al-
lows competition among nations to flourish without risk of bloodshed� Moreover,
reciprocity permits a Western nation, such as the United States, to spread its core
values with other, less developed nations� Of America’s increased engagement
with foreign nations Mahan wrote that “what the nation has gained in expression
is a regenerating idea, an uplifting of the heart, a seed of future beneficent activ-
ity, a going out of self into the world to communicate the gift it has so bountifully
received�”
67
It was this understanding of reciprocity that later formed the basis of
his support for the Open Door policy, by which America benefited from trade
with China (national interest) while also fulfilling its duty to humankind by
promoting Western civilization and propagating Christianity (moral responsibil-
ity)� Reciprocity, in this light, is charity with interest� It does not imply equality
between the interacting nations or peoples, but it does provide—when the United
States is involved—material and spiritual benefit by virtue of economic access to
American goods and cultural access to Christianity�
As his adherence to the principle of reciprocity demonstrates, Mahan was
concerned with economic, cultural, and political influence but not necessarily
dominion� Mahan took different stances on how to promote American influence�
Owing to his emphasis on particularity, Mahan’s policy positions are not formu-
laic and rigid; his reasons for particular stances on given issues varied according
to the nuances of specific policy positions� On issues like the canal across the
Central American isthmus, influence in the Caribbean, the annexation of Hawaii,
and control over the Persian Gulf, Mahan’s concerns were based primarily on na-
tional interest� However, on two very important matters—the Monroe Doctrine
and the Spanish-American War—his policies were based on both national inter-
est and moral responsibility� These two examples highlight how Mahan’s stances
integrated the two concepts�
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The Monroe Doctrine
Mahan stressed, from the publication of Influence of Sea Power upon History until
his death, the crucial importance of the Monroe Doctrine� He stated bluntly that
the Monroe Doctrine was a “product of interest�”
68
Mahan valued particularly the
practicality of the Monroe Doctrine, arguing that it was the product of prudent
reflection on American security� Before its promulgation by President James
Monroe, the early Republic had suffered various assaults on both land and sea
by the European colonial powers� Mahan wrote, “Not reason only, but feeling,
based on experience of actual inconvenience, suffering, and loss—loss of life,
and loss of wealth, political anxiety, and commercial disturbance—conspired to
intensify opposition to any avoidable renewal of similar conditions�”
69
Although
its bedrock claim—that no European power was free to recolonize lost colonies
or gain new ones—had remained consistent in the nineteenth century, Mahan
argued, the doctrine had to be expanded and developed to address America’s
contemporary interests; it had been founded in part on the basis of interest, and
the interests of nations change�
70
Mahan asserted forcefully, especially in his writ-
ings on the construction of the isthmian canal, the importance of continuing to
assert the Monroe Doctrine in support of contemporary concerns� He warned
repeatedly that with the completion of the canal, Europe would be tempted to
attain new territories in the Americas that could threaten American superior-
ity in the Caribbean as well as control over the canal� It was, therefore, in the
American interest to have a navy strong enough to deter European colonization
in the region�
71
If national interest formed the (elastic) foundation of the Monroe Doctrine, it
was force that upheld its implementation� The Monroe Doctrine, in other words,
was only as strong as the American navy made it�
72
In Mahan’s thought, however,
force was not applied simply in the pursuit of interest but also in the promotion
of moral responsibility� First, Mahan argued that the Monroe Doctrine was a dec-
laration of America’s moral conscience� America, therefore, reserved the right to
intervene in Latin and South America if its conscience compelled it to intervene�
Mahan received worldwide attention on this issue while serving as an American
delegate at the first Hague conference� There, consistent with his political phi-
losophy, Mahan made a provocative stand against article 27 of the conference’s
declaration, which stated, “The Signatory Powers consider it their duty, in case a
serious dispute threatens to break out between two or more of them, to remind
these powers that the permanent Court of Arbitration is open to them�”
73
Mahan
perceived in this proposed language a clear violation of national conscience, in
that it called for third-party intervention in American affairs within South Amer-
ica, perhaps even paving the way for destruction of the Monroe Doctrine itself�
Mahan, with the support of the majority of the American delegation, requested
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and received an addendum explicitly stating that article 27 was not applicable to
the Monroe Doctrine�
74
Not a single nation at the conference dared to object to
the request�
75
Second, the Monroe Doctrine was based on moral responsibility in that it as-
sisted the nations of South America in maintaining their own self-determination�
America, Mahan wrote, has “a common sympathy with peoples struggling for
relief from a very real oppression�”
76
In opposition to those European nations
who desired to take back parts of South America, the U�S� position was “sustained
by policy and by a conviction of rightfulness�”
77
Legitimate concern for Central
and South America, Mahan insisted, did enter into America’s calculation in
upholding the Monroe Doctrine� Mahan’s view protected the self-determinism
of the various countries of South and Central America; with the notable excep-
tion of the lands annexed as a result of the Spanish-American War, it did not
call for American colonialism there� He did not claim that America had “quasi
suzerainty” over South America, as England did over its colonies�
78
By treating
South American nations as sovereign nations, Mahan claimed, the United States
occupied higher moral ground than its European competitors, who would have
disregarded South and Central American self-determinism altogether�
The Spanish-American War and the Acquisition of the Philippines
Mahan’s position on the Spanish-American War highlighted how a nation can
be motivated simultaneously by both national interest and moral responsibility�
Mahan claimed that Cuba’s “deliverance from oppression [had been] the object
of the war�”
79
America had had a moral goal in the war� While it may have had
certain interests in the possession of Cuba—an island only ninety miles away
from American coastline—its actions had been based also on nobler sentiments�
In short, the United States had seen a nation suffering under an unjust authority
and, finding this tyranny repulsive, had followed its conscience and uplifted its
neighbor from the “generally iniquitous character” of Spain�
80
The war having culminated in the liberation of Cuba and the Philippines, Ma-
han believed that America was embarking on a new chapter in its history, one of
colonialism� Mahan reflected on the moral responsibility America had to its new
dependencies� Colonialism, Mahan wrote, is “novel to us; we may make blunders;
but, guided by [the example of British] experience, we should reach the goal more
quickly�”
81
Mahan did not shy away from the fact that the United States had been
formed as a result, in effect, of British colonialism� Moreover, he did not believe
that America’s experience with British colonialism provided a sufficient reason to
oppose colonialism� Rather, it had the potential to be a great colonial power itself
precisely because it had been ruled by a colonial power, making it more sensitive
to possible abuses� Mahan warned that if America “sees in its new responsibilities,
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first of all, markets and profits, with incidental resultant benefit to the natives, it
will go wrong� Through such mistakes Great Britain � � � lost the United States�”
82
Genuine care and consideration needed to be shown to the people of its new
dependencies� Mahan stressed that it would be bad policy to create unnecessary
tension with its colonies, especially the Philippines�
This newfound moral responsibility with respect to the Philippines certainly
was not without consideration of interest, for it was in the nation’s interest to have
a stable and productive colony� Mahan went so far as to declare that the two con-
cepts do not need to be separate: the “interest of the nation is one with its benefi-
cence�”
83
From the standpoint of interest, there are two clear reasons why he sup-
ported the acquisition of the Philippines� The first was that it was compatible with
the foundational propositions of his naval philosophy� Colonialism was a natural
corollary of production and naval power� Possession of the Philippines, Mahan
hoped, would stimulate the American navy to develop and expand� The second
reason was geopolitical� Mahan believed that “enlightened self-interest demands
us to recognize not merely, and in general, the imminence of the great question
of the farther East, which is rising so rapidly before us, but also specifically, the
importance to us of a strong and beneficent occupation of adjacent territory�”
84
Mahan both feared and respected the Far East, especially Japan� Hence, America’s
occupation of the Philippines would have a twofold effect� It would force the East
to recognize America as a formidable power; an Eastern power expanding its
territory would have to do so in light of America’s presence in the Philippines�
Moreover, the Philippines gave America better access to the Far Eastern markets�
REFLECTIONS ON MAHAN’S POLITICAL THOUGHT
With the advent of the United Nations and increased internationalism, Mahan’s
political thought seems to have been rejected by contemporary U�S� policy mak-
ing� Yet in fact Mahan’s influence may be today more pertinent than it may ap-
pear at a glance� By 1893, when Frederick Jackson Turner declared the end of the
American frontier, Mahan had already (in 1890) identified the new American
frontier: the sea�
85
The history of the twentieth century, with its world wars, and
of the early twenty-first, with its globalization, shows that Mahan was correct�
The sea is a perpetual frontier—there are always new markets and new modes
of expansion� For the most part, Mahan favored peace and negotiation (though
as the Philippines experience showed he was open to coercion and force)� This
point, however, needs to be tempered with the realization that had Mahan been
a British or German subject he most certainly would have given quite different
advice to his countrymen� Ultimately, the decision between acting from national
interest and acting from moral responsibility rested on the nuances of the par-
ticular moment�
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Mahan’s political thought was based on a combination of national interest
and moral responsibility� Although the former is concerned with calculation and
appetites, whereas the latter derives from principles of morality, Mahan was able
to reconcile the two concepts by arguing that both derive ultimately from the na-
tional will� Their actualization rests equally on the ability of the nation to make its
own decisions� Mahan held consistently that since there can be no earthly arbiter,
decisions about whether an action is just, moral, necessary, or useful must be left
solely to the individual nations making them�
However, a significant international problem emerges: if individual nations
are viewed as the only just arbiters, decisions from national interest might be
called—quite inappropriately—judgments of conscience� That is, there arises
the danger of national interest subsuming conscience� Under the banner of
conscience or moral responsibility, nations might declare war or commit acts of
aggression when, in truth, it is only their interests that are being served� Mahan
does not resolve this tension; his thought is based on the conviction that moral
truths of right and wrong can be determined only on the basis of the feelings of
individual nations� Mahan falls short of moral relativism, though, because he ac-
knowledges openly that nations may err� But nations have the right to err; other
competing nations hoping to interfere cannot speak infallibly or unbiasedly, are
motivated by their own selfish interests, and would object if other nations inter-
fered in their own business� By stressing the importance of determination by the
individual nation whether its own actions are moral, Mahan was attempting to
avoid the international tyranny of nations disguising their own interests as mat-
ters of conscience and responsibility� Mahan’s concern for the potential dangers of
arbitration is genuine and shows, contra the judgments of Hofstadter and Beard,
that Mahan was neither a trigger-happy imperialist nor a rambunctious school-
boy but a sober-minded observer of world affairs�
NOTES
1� Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in
American Thought, 2nd ed� (Boston: Beacon,
1955), pp� 3–12�
2� This theme is fleshed out in Daniel Rodgers,
Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progres-
sive Era (Cambridge, Mass�: Harvard Univ�
Press, 1998)�
3� Herbert Croly, The Promise of American Life
(New York: Macmillan, 1909)�
4� Richard W� Tuck, The Ambiguous Relation-
ship: Theodore Roosevelt and Alfred Thayer
Mahan (Westport, Conn�: Greenwood, 1987),
pp� 1–6, 101–108�
5� Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea
Power upon History, 1660–1783, 5th ed� (Bos-
ton: Little, Brown, 1894)�
6� Ibid�, p� 28�
7� Robert Seager II, Alfred Thayer Mahan: The
Man and His Letters (Annapolis, Md�: Naval
Institute Press, 1977), p� 215�
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8. W. D. Puleston, Mahan: The Life and Work of
Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1939), p. 159.
9. William E. Livezey, Mahan on Sea Power
(Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma, 1947), p. 13;
Charles Carlisle Taylor, The Life of Admiral
Mahan (London: John Murray, 1920), pp. 66,
70, 73.
10. Sadao Asada, From Mahan to Pearl Harbor:
The Imperial Japanese Navy and the United
States (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press,
2006), pp. 3–44.
11. Puleston, Mahan, p. 207.
12. Norman Angell, “The Great Illusion: A
Response to Captain A. T. Mahan,” North
American Review 195 (1912), p. 772.
13. Charles Beard, “Giddy Minds and Foreign
Quarrels,” Harper’s Magazine 179 (Septem-
ber 1939), pp. 338–39, quoted in George
R. Leighton, “Beard and Foreign Policy,” in
Charles A. Beard: An Appraisal, ed. Howard
K. Beale (Lexington: Univ. of Kentucky Press,
1954), pp. 166–67 [emphasis added].
14. Richard Hofstadter, The American Political
Tradition and the Men Who Made It (1948;
repr., New York: Vintage, 1974), p. 446.
15. Walter LaFeber, The New Empire: An Inter-
pretation of American Expansion, 1860–1898
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1963);
Walter LaFeber, “A Note on the ‘Mercantil-
istic Imperialism’ of Alfred Thayer Mahan,”
Mississippi Valley Historical Review 48, no. 4
(March 1962); Charles D. Tarlton, “The Styles
of American International Thought: Mahan,
Bryan, and Lippman,” World Politics 17, no.
4 (July 1965); Barbara Tuchman, The Proud
Tower: A Portrait of the World before the War,
1890–1914 (New York: Macmillan, 1966).
16. Alfred Thayer Mahan, Some Neglected Aspects
of War (Boston: Little, Brown, 1907), pp. 25,
28, 30.
17. Alfred Thayer Mahan, Letters and Papers of
Alfred Thayer Mahan, ed. Robert Seager II
and Doris D. Maguire (Annapolis, Md.: Naval
Institute Press, 1975). The index is in the
third volume.
18. Montesquieu’s quote is in Alfred Thayer
Mahan, Sea Power in Its Relations to the War
of 1812 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1905), vol. 1,
p. 27.
19. Philip A. Crowl, “Alfred Thayer Mahan: The
Naval Historian,” in Makers of Modern Strat-
egy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, ed.
Peter Paret (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ.
Press, 1986), p. 450.
20. Alfred Thayer Mahan, From Sail to Steam
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1907), p. 277.
21. Mahan, Influence, p. iv.
22. Alfred Thayer Mahan, Naval Administration
and Warfare: Some General Principles with
Other Essays (Boston: Little, Brown, 1918),
p. 250.
23. Ibid., p. 25.
24. Baron de Jomini, Art of War, trans. G. H.
Mendell and W. P. Craighill (Westport, Conn.:
Greenwood, 1862), p. 16.
25. These three words are used in several of
Mahan’s books and often interchangeably.
26. Mahan, Influence, p. 89.
27. Ibid., p. 50.
28. Alfred Thayer Mahan, Retrospect and Pros-
pect: Studies in International Relations, Naval
and Political (Boston: Little, Brown, 1902), p.
84; Mahan, Neglected Aspects, p. 88. Mahan
discusses the will of the German people in
The Interest of America in International Con-
ditions (Boston: Little, Brown, 1910), p. 172.
29. Mahan, Interest of America in International
Conditions, p. 42.
30. Ibid., p. 168.
31. Mahan, Naval Administration, p. 137.
32. Mahan, Influence, p. 1.
33. Ibid.
34. Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Problem of Asia
and Its Effects upon International Policies
(London: Sampson Low, Marston, 1900),
p. 30.
35. Ibid., p. 58.
36. Ibid., p. 29.
37. Ibid., p. 30.
38. Ibid., p. 93.
39. Ibid., p. 103.
40. Ibid., p. 16.
41. See Herbert Spencer, “Progress: Its Law and
Cause,” in Seven Essays Selected from the
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VARACALLI 127
Works of Herbert Spencer (London: Watts,
1907), pp� 7–34�
42� Mahan, Naval Administration, p� vii�
43� Mahan, Problem of Asia, p� v� Mahan, like
certain of his contemporaries, believed that
“races” (the Latins, Germans, Chinese, etc�)
had different characteristics�
44� Ibid�, p� 98�
45� Ibid�
46� Ibid�
47� LaFeber, New Empire, p� 91�
48� Mahan, Influence, pp� 82–83; Mahan, Problem
of Asia, pp� 27–28; Mahan, Retrospect, p� 183�
49� Alfred Thayer Mahan, Armaments and Arbi-
tration: The Place of Force in the International
Relations of States (New York: Harper &
Brothers, 1912), p� 66�
50� See Angell, “Great Illusion,” pp� 754–72�
51� Alfred Thayer Mahan, Lessons of the War
with Spain and Other Articles (Boston: Little,
Brown, 1918), pp� 286–87�
52� Mahan, Armaments, pp� 153, 126�
53� Ibid�, p� 125�
54� Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Harvest Within:
Thoughts on the Life of the Christian (Boston:
Little, Brown, 1909), p� 13�
55� Mahan, Armaments, p� 117�
56� Mahan, Neglected Aspects, p� 31�
57� Ibid�, pp� 30–32, 36–37, 39�
58� Mahan, Armaments, p� 106�
59� Ibid�, p� 99�
60� Mahan, Neglected Aspects, p� 57�
61� Ibid�, p� 30�
62� Ibid�, pp� 27, 29�
63� Ibid�, p� 59�
64� Alfred Thayer Mahan, Interest of America in
Sea Power, Present and Future (Boston: Little,
Brown, 1897), p� 224�
65� Mahan, Armaments, p� 48�
66� Mahan, Retrospect, p� 19�
67� Ibid�, p� 17�
68� Mahan, Naval Administration, p� 372�
69� Ibid�, p� 360�
70� Ibid�, pp� 407–408�
71� Mahan, Armaments, p� 177; Mahan, Influence,
p� 42�
72� Mahan, Armaments, p� 105�
73� Seager, Alfred Thayer Mahan, p� 411�
74� Ibid�, p� 412�
75� Taylor, Life of Admiral Mahan, pp� 98–99�
76� Mahan, Armaments, p� 101�
77� Ibid�
78� Mahan, Naval Administration, p� 396�
79� Mahan, Lessons, p� 26�
80� Ibid�
81� Ibid�, p� 245�
82� Ibid�, p� 250�
83� Ibid�
84� Ibid�, pp� 245–46�
85� See Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Signifi-
cance of the Frontier in American History,” in
American Progressivism: A Reader, ed� Ronald
J� Pestritto and William J� Atto (Lanham, Md�:
Lexington Books, 2008), pp� 67–89�
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Naval War College Review, Vol. 69 [2016], No. 2, Art. 9
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