Today the United States Navy stands the strongest sea fighting force in the world. The position of dominant power which in the nineteenth century was held by England, the foundation then of a world balance of power, and in ancient times by Rome, the foundation of the ancient Pax Romanies in the Mediterranean world, is held today by the United States. By dint of prodigious labor the American people have secured a position of world dominance at sea, which will, as they decide, be sacrificed or be utilized when the immediate emergency is past and the reconstruction of the world situation commences in peace.
The United States is, by original definition, a nation devoted to the rights of the individual; a nation also whose traditional and official world policy has been from its inception one of peace, and, insofar as practicable, isolation from the troubles of the world. The American people expressing itself in national policy has been devoted to the maintenance of individual rights and social improvement, rather than to an individual desire to dominate other peoples, or to a social ideology of revolutionary fanaticism. There have been few exceptions to this general policy of nonintervention: more than any other great power the United States has held to the ideal conception of a government existing solely for the benefit of its own people and society; the improvement of its own internal structure. It is indicative, then, of the force of the idea behind the present use of the United States Navy that this American people should have brought into being so immensely powerful a machine of coercion and destruction.
The Navy in World War II was pledged to victory over the Axis powers, and waged an unrelenting war toward that end for over three years; and today that end has been achieved. The United Nations navies gained a full and three-dimensional control of the world’s sea lanes, forbidding the enemy on, over, or under the sea.
American productive might gave the many resolute foes of the Axis the deciding superiority in weapons, a superiority made effective on the battlefield by the work of sea power. The passage of time worked only for Allied victory, although every moment of war until victory was won demanded continued patience, unfaltering courage. The resolution of the United Nations armies gained the victory which material superiority made possible.
With the United States Navy today the world’s strongest, decisively superior to any power in the battle line of capital ships, whose verdict in battle is final; in the squadrons of cruisers, whose task is the maintaining of sea power; in the hordes of flotilla craft and aircraft, whose strong support is essential to command at sea: with this superiority the United States Navy stands in a category by itself, only the British Royal Navy approaching it in might. The Anglo- American team is supreme at sea today.
The attainment of victory renders more imminent the problems involved in the building of the peace. What use is to be made of this immense aggregation of power, now that the immediate, pressing task at hand is at last completed? Having found it necessary to bring into being the world’s strongest fleet, the United States should not, in justice to itself, cast that weapon away, surrendering the dominant position the emergency had made it necessary to assume, without serious consideration of the possibility that the world conditions which thrust it into that dominant position may go deeper than the conflict just over, may continue to obtain to some significant degree when the emergency is past. The issue is, simply, whether or not the United States has a future as a great sea power. Only by the will of the American people can America remain a great naval power.
Although the problem is thus essentially a civilian concern, the science of naval warfare is a complex and highly technical one. The superficial simplicity of the idea of coercive violence is deceptive. From that simple idea spring innumerable subtleties and complications which the technical side of warfare confuses to a still greater degree. The final downfall of French sea power in the period of the Revolution and the Napoleonic Empire was largely due to the government’s handling of its Navy. Of the first reorganization and reindoctrination of the Navy under the republic, Mahan says:
To a service of a very special character, involving special exigencies, calling for special aptitudes, and consequently demanding special knowledge of its requirements in order to deal wisely with it, were applied the theories of men wholly ignorant of those requirements. . . .1
Napoleon fell into this same error, and, abandoning the indecisive conflict at sea, turned his back on England and came to eventual ruin because this neglected opponent had, through its commercial wealth and great strategic mobility, turned from desperate defense to an overwhelming offensive. It was not that Napoleon lacked the means to challenge English sea power; it was rather that, as Mahan goes on to say, “He had scarcely any appreciation of the factors conditioning efficiency at sea; nor did he seemingly ever reach any such sense of them as would enable him to understand why the French Navy failed.” Hitler evidently imagined himself capable of performing the miracle Napoleon failed to accomplish, and showed himself equally deceived in almost parallel circumstances. The Italian fleet, for example, a serious threat to British control of the Mediterranean in 1940, was frittered away piecemeal in futile and demoralizing activities, and yet it had evidently been relied upon to support Hitler’s African adventures and to protect the southern flank of Festung Europa.
Sea power is not to be built simply by building and manning warships. Even a basically sound policy of building up the bases of sea power in a nation cannot succeed in creating sea power where an arbitrary turn of policy can destroy the work begun. Thus the splendid growth of the French Navy under Louis XIV’s minister, Colbert, could come to grief in a relatively short period of time, whereas the slower, more deliberate growth of British sea power was of an enduring significance; the bases and the will for power at sea already existed.2 The American Navy is the tool of the people, authorized and built by the people in their fight for survival. It is evident that, whatever the complexities of the subject, a philosophic understanding of the nature and uses of naval force, and of the American Navy in particular, will prove necessary to any consideration of its disposition after the war.
The character of military force, in a political sense, can be seen to depend on the purpose for which it exists, or traditionally has existed, modified by the circumstances in which it finds itself in the political situation, and by its own strength and governing war thought or doctrine. This last consideration, summing the elements of the military character of war forces, has an influence over the other two factors insofar as it (the physical means) limits the philosophic purpose, and affects its real relations to the political situation. Military force, in general, is raised from among a people, voluntarily or by coercion, for defense, aggrandizement, or suppression of that people, for any of a variety of purposes.
In Nazi Germany the government sought to foster in the German people the complementary ideas that they were “encircled politically by enemies and were a Master Race,” whose destiny was to rule the inferior races of the world. In the poverty, moral and material, of the 1920’s the German people could readily be induced to subscribe to this brutal theory of national persecution and revenge by self-aggrandizement. It is evident, however, that within the German nation there was a group, in fact a combination of groups, working for its own ends, thus in reality suppressing rather than defending or enriching the German people as a whole. This Nazi Party was maintained in the face of opposition at home and abroad by military force, and in aggrandizing the German state and defending those gains can hardly be said to have represented the free will or true interest of the German people. The element of suppression by armed force was in the immediate background of the domestic situation.
The British war machine, for some time the primary opponent of Nazi Germany in World War II, was, on the other hand, of an entirely different character. British armed might has existed solely to defend Britain and Britain’s interests in the world, directed by a government designed to represent the expressed will of the people. By comparatively small yearly appropriations, England has maintained a naval force sufficient to contain European militarism and to command the world trade routes, giving it the world balance of power, which was used in peace for the increase of commerce and the incidental spread of the peaceful relations between the nations of the world that has proved so fruitful culturally to mankind. In internal affairs, England soon attained a position of wealth and stability where the democratic processes gained so great a strength that the earlier terrors of civil conflicts and press gang recruitment for unpopular wars could not again occur. A nation secure in its freedom and wealth, it is indicated, feels less of the compulsive need for armament and unanimous agreement for total action that has dominated so many nations.
In general, the character of military force has depended on the strategic position of the nation. England, having by her sea power obtained a degree of security, which, in the nineteenth century, grew to be very great, could develop as a nation of free people finding its own destiny. Prussia, devastated by recurrent invasions, could be nothing but a nation whose politics were dominated by military necessities; and in the formation and development of the German state, military considerations have repeatedly overridden the nation’s efforts at political development. In France, the peril of a growing Germany, on the other hand, undoubtedly contributed to the weakening of the free political institutions which are the real basis of democracy, and contributed to France’s great internal distress and its decline as a great power in the late nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. Napoleon III came as emperor into the home of modern republicanism, when the threat of a unifying Prussia grew to frightening proportions; a sudden ruin that could never befall the British or American democracies, whose democratic institutions are firmly planted in a free society.
It is evident, then, that the strategic insularity of Great Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries contributed to the good relation between its armed forces and the people. The armed forces never, save for comparatively brief periods of emergency, dominated society, and as Britain’s security grew greater, its armed forces grew more perfectly the tool of the will of the people. In fact, as Mahan pointed out,3 there was an unfortunate tendency, as the government of the nation grew more truly representative, for the armed forces protecting that democracy to be neglected; a significantly dangerous process.
Jealous of their freedom, Americans have long held to a mistrust of armed forces. The billeting of British garrisons on the civilian populace was one of the factors that precipitated the Revolutionary War. When it became necessary to take up arms the people themselves carried on the first resistance; Washington’s task in creating an American army was largely one of making effective a central control of the scattered militia of the colonies, and then of forming the masses of inexperienced volunteers into a regular army.
The colonial navy, too, grew up almost spontaneously, as an expedient means of injuring England. Indeed, the activities of the naval forces were seriously interfered with by competition for stores and personnel with private warcraft having governmental authorization to bear arms against the enemy— the famous privateers of the Revolution.4 The first pressure for the creation of a navy came, naturally enough, from mercantile New England. On August 26, 1775, the Rhode Island Assembly resolved that:
This Assembly is persuaded, that the building and equipping of an American fleet, as soon as possible, would greatly and essentially conduce to the preservation of the lives, liberty, and property of the good people of these Colonies and therefore instruct their delegates to use their whole influence at the ensuing congress for building at the Continental expence a fleet of sufficient force for the protection of these Colonies, and for employing them in such manner and places as will most effectively annoy our enemies, and contribute to the common defence. . . .5
The significance of this resolution lies in its phrasing: it marked an early recognition of the principle that naval power was an American affair, not to be built up primarily by the separate colonial states.
Washington had, by the fall of 1775, found it expedient to commission a fleet of armed schooners operating as a direct adjunct of his army, preventing valuable material from reaching the enemy at Boston, and increasing, it may be added, his own meager stores. The Congress’ letter of October 5, 1775, gave Washington authority only “to intercept . . . transports laden with ammunition, cloathing, or other stores, for the use of the ministerial army or navy in America. . . .”6 Under the famous Marine Committee appointed by the Congress a regular naval force was built up, through purchase and building; but the regular naval forces of the nation never grew to significant size, and were handicapped by problems political as well as strategic. The hard lessons of defeat were to bear fruit later in the foundation of a sound naval doctrine and a far more effective administrative system. Moreover, a number of first-rate officers were brought forth by the stern selection of war, and the beginnings of a fighting tradition were established.
The exploits of John Paul Jones were not merely spectacular, they set standards which endure today; and the energy of his spirit helped the growth of the conception of the American Navy as an offensive fighting force of considerable value. The chart of his cruises around the home of the world’s greatest naval power was alone an argument of the effectiveness of naval force and American ability to make successful use of it.
Although sea power played a decisive part in the American Revolution, it was French rather than American sea power which provided the strategic naval support of the struggle for independence. In Mahan’s words,
... It must be affirmed again that its successful ending, at least at so early a date, was due to the control of the sea—to sea power in the hands of the French, and its improper distribution by the English authorities.7
He goes on to cite Washington’s statement that
in any operation, and under all circumstances, a decisive naval superiority is to be considered as a fundamental principle, and the basis upon which every hope of success must ultimately depend.
The naval forces vanished after the war; by 1785 not a single naval vessel remained in commission, the new ship-of-the-line America having been given to France, and the three surviving vessels of the Revolution sold off.8
In 1794, however, a new constitutional naval force was established under the Congress’ “Act to Provide a Naval Armament.” The purpose of the rearmament was made clear in the first provision of the Act: “. . . The depredations committed by the Algerine corsairs on the commerce of the United States render it necessary that a naval force should be provided for its protection.” The act authorized the President to provide four 44-gun frigates and two 36’s, “provided always that if a peace shall take place between the United States and the regency of Algiers, that no farther proceeding shall be had under this act.” Three frigates were completed under this act, among them the still extant Constitution and Constellation, this fortunately being authorized by the Congress, in spite of the intervening peace with the Dey of Algiers, the materials for the building of the other frigates “to be safely kept for the future use of the United States.”10
Sufficient cause for the completion of these ships was found in the quasi-war with France, and in 1798 an “Act to Provide an Additional Armament for the Protection of the Trade of the United States; and for Other Purposes” was approved, which authorized the acquisition of twelve sloops or light frigates. The cause for this action was not explained in the text of the act: its title argued a somewhat broader conception of naval power than had obtained before. A constitutional U. S. Navy had been established under the “Naval Armament” act of 1794. An effective administration was at last made possible by the establishment in 1798 of the office of the Secretary of the Navy and the Navy Department.
The new U. S. Navy could draw on a backlog of experienced personnel, although the last of the continental naval forces had been over a decade vanished from the seas, and throughout the war with France the navy operated with considerable efficiency. Captain Truxtun in the Constellation showed in battle standards of seamanship, gunnery, and tactics far in advance of those of the French Navy. The newly centralized naval administration was able to organize a strong naval effort, not hampered by the interference of excessive privateering. Not only was the Atlantic coast cleared of the enemy, but a strong offensive was mounted in the West Indies.
By this conflict the heavy influence of the powerful French Navy was lifted from the young American Navy; a fortunate result, since it left the American naval power free to develop on its own ideas, which were more English than French, and far more suited to a fighting Navy.11 The “Act for the Government of the Navy” guaranteed the right of the seaman to good living conditions and justice in discipline, making the rights of the seaman complementary with rather than opposed to the necessities of the service; and it was concluded with the seaman-like provision that “every commander in chief and captain, in making private rules . . . shall keep in view also [besides the provisions of the act] the custom and usage of the sea service most common to our nation.”12
The war of 1812 was, from the naval point of view, an inevitable sequel to the Revolution: a practical affirmation of the commercial and strategic independence and national integrity of the United States. It found the naval forces of the country very slight: undertaking to challenge the world’s greatest sea power, the United States could present not one capital ship fit to fight in the line of battle. The naval arm that existed, however, built mainly about a few heavy frigates, was to prove itself of a battle efficiency higher than that of the Royal Navy; an arm whose officers proved themselves seamen, administrators, and tacticians of the first order, and whose personnel and fighting traditions were of the highest quality. The veterans of the Revolution or the wars with the Barbary pirates had established in their small navy a high order of service, and a doctrine which gave the United States a highly loyal and efficient personnel, and the best gunnery and tactics of the time.
The Navy has since passed through many vicissitudes of policy, but this doctrine of quality has held firm throughout, and has given the United States today a Navy the world’s strongest, not alone by virtue of massive proportions, but basically by the individual quality of its ships and men. To Truxtun and Preble, Hull, Decatur, Bainbridge, the nation owes more than a series of splendid victories; it owes, in the last analysis, a vital tradition of skill and daring, of service to a navy which has never failed to rise equal to the cause of American independence. “In fact, by every route, we are driven to a consideration of tradition if we are to understand what the Navy is and has done, what sets it apart from the other navies of the world.”13
Tradition, a thing by its indefinite nature difficult to analyze, can, to a certain extent, be seen reflected in the more persistent factors of naval doctrine. In the first building of a constitutional navy under Adams, there was established a principle of building well- found ships large enough and strong enough to support their armament. The Humphreys frigates were a splendidly successful application of this principle. The armament of a fighting ship is her raison d’être, and it was recognized that a more effective gunpower results from well-mounted guns on a protected, seaworthy hull than can be obtained by overgunning the ship at the expense of seaworthiness, safety, and battle efficiency. An accurate gunfire was also regarded as the main reliance in action: the British ideal of extreme rapidity of fire has never been considered of primary importance, nor has the Japanese notion of a “smothering” hail of high explosive. These ideas can be seen to be part of a larger principle, the principle of individual superiority. As the United States Navy has usually sought to a greater degree than any other to secure effective gunpower by accuracy rather than by quantity of fire power, so it has on the whole sought to build naval strength through individually superior ships rather than through more numerous squadrons.
This principle of individual superiority has to a great degree formed the material basis of the Navy’s fighting tradition. With the conviction of individual superiority, American seamen have fought with the sound confidence essential to victory; and American captains and admirals have planned in their battles, great or small, always to destroy the enemy. The sterile economy of force which ruined the French naval power was as far from the American purpose as the superabundance of fire power which, bought at the expense of balanced ships and squadrons, was the weakness of the British cruiser arm in 1812 and, to a certain degree, the Grand Fleet at Jutland in 1917.
The great American naval leaders have always planned for the one true aim of battle: destruction of the enemy force. Supplementary to this offensive principle has been a principle of intellectual superiority; an understanding among officers not only of the means but of the principles of war, an ability to plan for victory and then to achieve it. There has been maintained among American naval officers understanding not of their duties alone, but of the whole nature of war; and a philosophy of war can encompass the whole scope of human life. As Mr. Fletcher Pratt has put it:
It is the legitimate glory of the American Navy to be the most intellectual service in history. No other navy, no army has produced so much literature or of such a uniformly high content of ideas.14
Mahan is today among the most honored and universally recognized of American naval men, his name being remembered as that of a philosopher and historian.
The free criticism of all aspects of the naval profession has existed as a principle complementary to that of intellectual quality. Exposed to the full current of searching analysis, few parts of the naval science have been permitted to stagnate in sheltered waters. Such aberrations as the Jeffersonian “gun boat mania,” the dangerously prolonged period of “coastal defense” thought and building, or the disastrous reduction of Anglo-American naval force in the 1920’s have been the result rather of an immature national politics than any weakness of naval thought, although naval men have undoubtedly shared to some degree the nation’s apathy to world affairs and its often unwarranted sense of security.
The principle of freedom of thought which has so excellently rewarded the naval service in its officer corps finds reflection in the principles which have given the Navy a first-rate personnel. From the foundation of the Navy the standards of pay and living conditions have been higher than those of the European navies, and have attracted a personnel of high quality. The rights of the individual have been firmly stated and protected by the system of justice which grew from the original “Act for the Government of the Navy,” in which excessive punishment was forbidden and the rights of the sailor regarding food, pay, and religion were established. While no attempt was made to create democracy in a service which to be effective must be based on a hierarchy of command, the seaman has been considered as an individual whose service was freely contracted, and in accordance with the extraordinary nature of his service certain privileges came in time to be granted him, although never such as to oppose his interest to that of the civilian population which he protects.
In military character the Navy is thus a force relying on a sound doctrine of material quality, offensive spirit, and a first-rate personnel. It is, today, a strongly centralized and unified service; every branch of it is bound into the system, permeated with the tradition and basic doctrine of the Navy. Thus it was possible for a navy which in the summer of 1944 had a personnel of which only 12 per cent was in service before the war, to rely as ever on the strength of its individual units. In the words of its Secretary, “The success of the Navy in the war to date is a direct result of the high state of training of its officers and men.”15 Thus in the early stages of the war in the Pacific the new battleships of the North Carolina and South Dakota classes were rushed to completion and the battleships built for World War I rearmed to meet the conditions of modern sea warfare, while light forces slowed and contained the expansion of the enemy, and the new battleships came into action in time to meet and turn back the advance of the Japanese before it reached the vital bases and lines of communication. In the night battles of November 15-16, 1942, two of these new ships saved the vital island of Guadalcanal; and in 1944 the older battleships, rebuilt to first-line strength, played an important role in protecting the invasion of Leyte from the grand attack by the Japanese Navy, and contributed greatly to the annihilating character of the victory. Thus the United States Navy gained command in the Pacific in spite of the great initial advantages of the Japanese, by virtue of those principles which had been its basic doctrine and tradition since its foundation.
The political character of the Navy is that of a tool of the will of the American people. It has stood a prime protector of American territory, commerce, and national integrity since the foundation of the union; and today it stands the people’s Navy, the world’s strongest.
In seeking to explore the future prospects of this force, it becomes necessary to consider the real power situation which will obtain in the world after the defeat of the Axis; the situation of war power which will be the foundation or the destroyer of the peace the world has now achieved. Arbitration has a real place in the settlement of international disputes, and as the world population becomes more civilized and world popular opinion grows more important, arbitration will become of more determining importance; but the real basis of the world situation must never be forgotten. “Let us not deceive ourselves,” counsels Mahan,
by fancying that the strong material impulses which drive those masses of men whom we style nations, or races, are to be checked or guided, unless to the argument of a reasonable contention there be given the strong support of organized material power.16
As all politics is subject to the precipitant of war, so
... in war there are many ways to its aim; that is, to the achievement of the political object; but . . . the only means is the engagement and . . . consequently everything is subject to a supreme law: which is the decision by arms; . . . when this is actually claimed by the enemy, such an appeal can never be refused. ...17
Thus, the basis of the peace must be a balance of force; and this force must be war force, ready for the supreme test of battle.
In summarizing the world situation which will obtain after the war it is thus necessary primarily to consider the balance of world power. For the past century Great Britain has held the key to that balance of power in its Royal Navy. It has also derived its wealth in peace and its power in war from its command of the sea.
Britain is thus a great power through its sea power: merely to survive it must be the strongest naval power in Europe. Undoubtedly the Royal Navy will continue to be by far the strongest navy in Europe after the war; when this ceases to be the case there will almost certainly be another war as the next strongest power asserts by force Britain’s right to control of the world sea lanes. Abroad, by its many possessions and intermediate bases which support air power now as well as numerous cruisers, Britain will undoubtedly continue to control and protect the sea lanes, although the necessity for keeping the main force of the battle fleet in home waters will probably continue to obtain. British power in the Mediterranean will also undoubtedly be supported by a battle fleet, but in the South Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans this power will probably consist only of cruiser squadrons.
The Royal Navy’s superiority and the extent of its command rate it a primary naval force. Besides the United States there is no other naval power which could be called a primary sea power, whose power extends throughout the world.
There is, however, one power whose strength promises to command certain highly significant areas—the U. S. S. R. It is reported that this power has under construction a battle squadron of three 35,000-ton 16-inch-gun battleships. Operating from the important bases held by Soviet Russia these ships, supplemented by a growing fleet of modern and powerful cruisers and the old battleships of the Marat class, could constitute a naval power of considerable importance; in no manner comparable to the Royal Navy, but being what might be called a secondary sea power, commanding certain areas vital to the world interests but not extending throughout the world. The significance of this revival of Russian naval power is obviously great. Undoubtedly Soviet naval power will command the Baltic, an area vital to the commerce of northern Europe and Scandinavia. The relations of Sweden, Germany, and probably the new Poland will undoubtedly be tied up in the Soviet-controlled Baltic. The possibilities of a Soviet sea power in the Pacific have also to be considered. The growth of Imperial Russian Pacific power was frustrated by the Russo- Japanese War of 1904 and its demoralizing consequences, but the interests of Russia in that area should not be forgotten. Japan’s strangle hold on the Russian seacoast has been eliminated by the destruction of Japanese naval power, and the industrial development of Siberia will undoubtedly add to the weight of Soviet commerce in that area, especially if Japanese competition is weakened through the ruin of Japan’s industry. There is a strong possibility that Soviet naval power will dominate in the Sea of Japan and even the South China Sea and the North Pacific Ocean. There is every probability, at any rate, of a Soviet sea power supreme on the north and eastern Asiatic coast. The importance this power will have in maintaining stability in those areas is apparent. The Philippines and the Aleutians may, for instance, lie in the area of Soviet dominance, and Vladivostok may to a considerable extent replace Singapore as the key to the Indies trade route, since much of this trade may be northward and eastward as well as westward.
The rest of the world’s naval power will undoubtedly be divided among the various minor naval powers. In Europe, France and Italy may be the foremost of these powers, France to support its overseas possessions, and Italy to secure its vital overseas trade. Great Britain will doubtless insist on complete dominance on the Atlantic seaboard and in the Mediterranean. A repetition of the perilous Mediterranean position of Great Britain in 1939-40 is unlikely to be permitted to recur. Either a very strong Italian alliance or a very weak Italian Navy are likely to be considered vital principles of Mediterranean policy. The navies of Sweden, Spain, Poland, the Netherlands, Norway, Greece, and Germany, listed in a possible order of strength, will be forces effective mainly for protection of coastal and colonial territory and commerce, as will be the navies of the lesser Baltic, Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Black Sea nations, Such navies cannot oppose a major power, but can considerably hamper any attempt to invade their nations, and are thus a notably stabilizing factor.
The United States, to come to the nation whose sea power is today the world’s greatest, holds a central strategic position in world politics, gaining advantage by its interior position, suffering disadvantage by having to maintain force on two principal naval fronts. The United States is threatened by no power on either land frontier. Canada and Central and South America offer no immediate possibility of a major enemy. Even were a war to be fought with an enemy based in South America, it would be primarily a naval or amphibious war, decided in the Caribbean and West Indies.
Those powers which have envied America’s wealth have been fought far from American territory. America itself has been happy in a virtual isolation from the envy of “less happier lands,” free under its own government to find its own destiny. In the period of the nation’s early growth this isolation was undoubtedly beneficial, giving the nation opportunity to grow in security within its own territory, to find its own political and cultural character. On rich and extensive farmlands the Jeffersonian ideal of a people living on the land could find reality, and in the growth of the great industrial and commercial centers the nation found great wealth, which gave it the advantages of civilization in a high material standard of living and an excellent public education.
Twice in a generation, however, the United States has found it necessary to throw its full weight into a world war, and the question as to the present validity of this isolation naturally arises. The sea is a highway of commercial traffic as well as “a moat defensive to a house,” and it has surely been shown in the recent war a great medium of military communication. Mahan’s passage describing England commanding the sea comes to mind: “Her power was everywhere that her ships could reach, and there was none to dispute the sea to her. Where she would she went, and with her went her guns and her troops.”18 It is evident that there was more to America’s isolation than the geographical fact, for it alone could no more have stemmed the tide of German and Japanese expansion than it did the original English colonizing.
The United States faces two oceans, but throughout the nineteenth century it was more an Atlantic than a Pacific power. In the Atlantic lay its commerce and military interests, and these both were protected from European aggression by one fact—that the Atlantic Ocean was a British ocean. The real basis of the American guarantee of hemispheric territorial integrity in the Monroe Doctrine was British sea power. As Walter Lippmann has pointed out:
In the long period from 1823 to 1898 the nation had lived in a state of illusory isolation: it was committed to the Monroe Doctrine, which rested upon the support of British sea power, without having been made to understand that the defense of the Western Hemisphere did in fact require the support of British sea power.19
Fortunately, however, the War of 1812 had to a certain extent awakened the public to the need for an American naval power, and in 1816 Monroe approved an “Act for the gradual increase of the Navy,” which, appropriating $1,000,000 annually for the increase of naval force, authorized the first building of capital ships in America.20 This navy, though never more than the proverbial “cockboat in the wake of the British man-o’-war” as regards fighting force, helped establish the United States as the dominant power in America and also, by its very existence, provided the continuity of service which seems to be a prerequisite to naval efficiency. The real security of America, however, lay in the supremacy of the Royal Navy. In 1910 Mahan noted that “The rivalry between Germany and Great Britain today is the danger point, not only of European politics, but of world politics as well.” In 1917 the United States went to war in recognition of this plain fact. England’s relatively small population could not support an army sufficient to conquer the world on the totalitarian Roman or German model, even had its people consented to support such an army, whereas “a supreme German army able to spare readily a large expeditionary force for over-sea operations” was considered by Mahan a possibility in the future of 1910; a possibility which it was obviously the interest of the United States to fight to prevent.
Thus, England’s interest in a world at peace and world sea routes open for commerce was identical with our own interest in military security. Mr. Lippmann points out that in framing the Monroe Doctrine “the two governments came very near making a joint declaration,” and that this community of interest went deeper than changing government policies: “The concert of the two nations in the Western Hemisphere,” he writes, “and in defense of their vital interests, lasted for a century and a quarter. As early as 1802 Jefferson had already seen the probable need for it.”21
In the Pacific no such protection has existed:
For the balance of naval power in Europe, which compels the retention of the British and German fleets in the North Sea, protects the Atlantic Coast of the United States—and the Monroe Doctrine—to a degree to which nothing in Pacific conditions corresponds.22
Our Pacific naval forces were adequate for the defense of our territory only because we had for some time no real opponent in the Pacific.
The rise of Japan as a naval power would have rendered the position of the United States in the Pacific bankrupt had it not been for the great growth of the Navy after the Spanish-American War through the World War. But the margin of Anglo-American superiority was not sufficient for the complete command of the sea, necessary to thwart Japanese imperialism. In Mr. Lippmann’s words,
Knowing that Japan was the only possible enemy we had to consider in the Pacific, we nevertheless turned on our natural partners, Britain and France, and treated them as rivals whose armaments it was a diplomatic triumph to reduce. . . . But the more we disarmed ourselves and our natural allies in the Pacific war, the more vehemently we committed ourselves to oppose Japanese expansion.23
Such a policy could have only one result: the laws of force are ineluctable. To quote again Mr. Lippmann:
This nation cannot, as Lincoln said, escape history. It can, however, at fearful cost, misread its own history. It can imagine, until it is smitten by the hard realities of life, that by some special dispensation of Providence or some peculiarity of geography it can be a great power without being involved in the order of the great powers.
The recent war has made it clear that Britain alone cannot contain Europe in arms by virtue of its naval power. The immediate support of the vast American reserves of shipbuilding resources is vital to the control of the Atlantic. The Nazi submarine campaign to a considerable extent hamstrung Anglo-American efforts to maintain the flow of war force to the world battlefields. Unquestionably the United States must be strong enough at sea to command vital sea lanes of military communication against attack.
Being, as we claim, and as our past history justifies us in claiming, a nation indisposed to aggression, unwilling to extend our possessions or our interests by war, the measure of strength we set ourselves depends, necessarily, not upon our projects of aggrandizement, but upon the disposition of others to thwart what we consider our reasonable policy, which they may not so consider.24
Surely there could be found no truer statement of American purpose in armament than this of Mahan’s. The United States must trust in the structure of the peace, and lend to international organization for world security the support it failed to give the League of Nations; but it must also have the means to implement its national policy, to make its will felt abroad in a realistic sense—in short, to play its part in the order of great powers. The isolation of the United States is at an end, and the destruction of the German and Japanese powers will not alone suffice to prevent the recurrence of world war. It is evident that the U. S. Navy must be in immediate reserve to the British Navy in Europe, and that it must be the principal power in the Pacific.
This will involve the maintenance of a strong American fleet. Secretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal listed three principal measures vital to the maintenance of a strong and prepared naval force, which were: (1) “A year of compulsory and universal training for all American youth over the age of eighteen,” (2) the maintenance of an alert and effective system of military research, and (3) “the the creation of a group of competent and trained men for continuous service in the government.”25 The first of these proposals if effected would mark the abandoning of an important element of the people’s freedom; their freedom to shape their lives according to their own ideas. Whether or not, as suggested, such service would raise the standards of the people’s health and education is immaterial. It seems possible, however, that military service could be made desirable enough from the standpoint of pay and education to ensure the enlistment of enough men every year to provide a reserve of sufficient size. Freedom from compulsory service has not only preserved the United States from many of the weaknesses of European democracies, it has also encouraged the services to maintain their personnel in good conditions of fair employment and has maintained that relationship between discipline and individual rights which has traditionally proved so beneficial to the service. A nation trained in arms should hardly be necessary or desirable for the maintenance of the peace, if the United States can maintain a strong foreign policy.
Regarding the second point Mr. Forrestal said: “I think it is a fair statement that between World Wars I and II we did not spend enough, either in terms of time or money, on military research. We cannot afford such an oversight after this war.” The aggressor nations were able by technological advances to negate to a dangerous extent what force the democracies could muster in the early stages of this war; the defeat of a large French Army by a Wehrmacht superior in modern equipment and its uses in 1940 is being paid for today. In the organization of forces for world security “strategy must admit technologies to a position of equality with the classical categories of tactics and logistics,” as Captain Roop pointed out in an excellent article summarizing the prospects of an American military technology.26 Mr. Forrestal recommends the establishment of a “permanent agency to carry on the work of the Office of Scientific Research and Development,” formerly under the Office of Emergency Management.
As regards the last point, the creation of “a group of competent and trained men for continuous service in the government,” the necessity for such a body can hardly be denied if the United States is to maintain its forces under an able and efficient administration. This group, it is noted, must be in close contact with practical affairs, but must maintain its character as a government service, and attract good men to it by its advantages of monetary security and prestige.
The basic measure necessary to the maintaining of our sea power will be, of course, the building of ships. Today the United States battle line consists of 25 battleships: 6 new 45,000-ton Iowas, 6 new 35,000-ton North Carolinas and South Dakotas, and 8 battleships of the 1914-16 construction period, as well as several older vessels. The aircraft carrier forces of the Navy include over 20 fleet carriers built in this war, and 3 or more C V B of 45,000 tons, completing, as well as three older carriers and a great number of escort carriers. Twenty or more modern heavy cruisers and 30 or more modern light cruisers of the 10,000-ton type make up our cruiser forces, backed by perhaps three 27,000-ton battle-line cruisers of the Alaska type.27 The escort and torpedo-attack forces of the Navy are great, but it is the capital ships and cruisers that take the longest to build and are the real measure of naval strength; the flotilla forces can more readily be built up to support the battle and cruiser forces in time of war. The nation that commences with its own sea communications protected and force available for attack on those of the enemy, however, holds a considerable advantage in war. In the light of this fact the Bureau of Ships’ researches28 into the preservation of demobilized naval ships and equipment is of considerable significance. A reserve of some strength might be held demobilized in this manner and yet immediately available to the fleet.
This Navy is as it stands, then, a world sea power. The authorized construction of five 58,000-ton Montanas, suspended during the war, would guarantee complete naval mastery for years to come, but if their completion would stultify further construction it might be more desirable to forego their completion, and implement a program involving, say, the construction of a new group of battleships every five years, replacing the older vessels which might be demobilized and finally scrapped. At any rate it is evident that the nation must continue to build to sustain its sea power, although the cost of that building may be spread over many years.
This, then, must be the contribution of the nation to the maintaining of world power: the service, voluntary or compulsory, of its citizens, the advances of its science, and the employment of its best citizens in civil service, as well as the contribution of its economy to maintaining its physical armament. The scale and character of this armament depend on the decision of the people.
America must forever look first to the sea for its defense. Commanded by an enemy, the world’s two great oceans are but highways to its invasion, but under American control they are the guarded lines of intercourse between nations in peace and mutual support in war; the only hope for a worldwide peace and security.
The United States can either assert its will and power in support of world security on all those sea lanes, as did England in the nineteenth century, or it can command only the lanes directly vital to its defense. The choice is between that of a primary American sea power and an adequate defense of possessions, a secondary sea power, exerted not for the general benefits of command of the sea but for its immediate military advantages.
In this turning point of American world policy the counsel of Mahan might well be heard, having been so long denied. He wrote, in 1893:
Let us not shrink from pitting a broad self interest against the narrow self interest to which some would restrict us. . . . Let us start from the fundamental truth, warranted by history, that the control of the seas, and especially along the great lines drawn by national interest or national commerce, is the chief among the merely military elements in the power and prosperity of nations. It is so because the sea is the world’s great medium of circulation.29
And upon the prosperity and peaceful intercourse of the nations, he might add today, depends the real security of the peace. An American Navy strong enough to command the world sea lanes, in co-operation with the other great sea powers, would guarantee a security in which a large standing army would be unnecessary, and through co-operation and immediate direct action violation of world security could be stopped. Today’s Secretary of the Navy concluded that “we must never forget that if we are to fight our enemies at the times and places of our choosing it will be because we maintain sea power.”
The personnel of a strong navy is too small to constitute any threat to American civil liberty; the maintenance of world sea power would constitute a comparatively small drain on the immense American industrial plant and rich economy. The prospect of an American sea power is open to the American people and the people’s Navy, today the world’s most powerful; “upon the sea primarily must be found our power to secure our own borders and to sustain our external policy,” and the American determination to obtain a world-wide security can be no better enforced than by an American sea power.
1. Mahan on Naval Warfare: Selections from the Writings of Rear Admiral Alfred T. Mahan, ed. Allan Westcott (Boston, Little, Brown and Co., 1941). P. 172 (from Types of Naval Officers).
2. A. T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History: 1660-1783 (Boston, Little, Brown and Co., 1890). See pp. 71-72 for an interesting commentary on this situation.
3. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History. P.67.
4. George R. Clark, etc., A Short History of the United States Navy (Philadelphia and London, J. B. Lippincott Co., 1927 ed.). P.41.
5. Journals of the Continental Congress: 1774-1789, ed. Worthington Chauncey Ford (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1905). Vol. III, p. 274.
6. Journals of the Continental Congress. Vol. III. P. 278.
7. A. T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History. P. 397.
8. Clark, etc., A Short History of the U. S. Navy. P.42.
9. The Public Statutes at Large of the United States of America, From the Organization of the Government in 1789, To March 3, 1845, etc., ed. Richard Peters (Boston, Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1845). Vol. I, p. 350.1
10. The Public Statutes at Large, Vol. I, pp. 453-54.
11. Clark, etc., A Short History of the U. S. Navy. P. 60.
12. The Public Statutes at Large, Vol. I, p. 717.
13. Fletcher Pratt, The Navy, A History: The Story of a Service in Action (New York, Doubleday, Doran and Co., Inc., 1941). Pp. 407-8.
14. Pratt, The Navy. P. 409.
15. “Statement of the Secretary of the Navy,” Bureau of Naval Personnel Information Bulletin, N. 331, October, 1944 (Bureau of Naval Personnel, Washington). P.11.
16. Mahan on Naval Warfare. Pp. 353-54 (from Some Neglected Aspects of War (1907)).
17. Karl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. O. J. Matthijs Jolles (New York, Random House, Inc., 1943). Pp. 30-31.
18. A. T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History. P. 329.
19. Walter Lippmann, U. S. Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic (Boston, Little, Brown, and Co., 1943). P. 30.
20. The Public Statutes at Large. Vol. III, p. 321.
21. Lippmann, U. S. Foreign Policy. Pp. 66-67.
22. Mahan on Naval Warfare. P. 299 (from the Interest of America in International Conditions (1901)).
23. Lippmann, U. S. Foreign Policy. P. 41.
24. Mahan on Naval Warfare. P. 133 (from the Interest of America in Sea Power (1896)).
25. Address delivered by the Honorable James Forrestal, the Secretary of the Navy, at New York City, September 11,1944.
26. Wendell P. Roop, “Technological Warfare,” The U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, Sept. 1944, vol. 70, No. 499.
27. Information on naval strength from James C Fahey, The Ships and Aircraft of the United States Fleet: 2d War Edition (New York, Gemsco, Inc., 1944).
28. See “Where Do All those Ships Come From?” BuPers Information Bulletin, Oct. 1944, No. 331.
29. Mahan on Naval Warfare. P. 28S [from Hawaii and Our Future Sea Power (1893)].