Admiral Alfred T. Mahan
For nearly the lifetime of a generation, American industries have been protected [by
tariffs] until the practice has assumed the force of tradition. At bottom, however,
the temperament of the American people is essentially alien to such a sluggish attitude. Independently of all bias for or against protection, it is safe to predict that,
when the opportunities for gain abroad are understood, American enterprise will try
to reach them. The importance of distant markets and their relation to our own production imply the recognition of the link that joins the products and markets - that is,
the carrying trade [use of merchant fleets]. We need not follow far this line of
thought before America's unique position becomes clear. Facing the older worlds of
the East and West, America's shores are lapped by the oceans which touch the one or the other
but which are common to her alone.
Together with these signs of change in our own policy there is a restlessness in the
world at large which is deeply significant, if not ominous. There is no sound reason
for believing that the world has passed into a period of peace outside the limits
of Europe. Unsettled political conditions exist in Haiti, Central America, and many of
the Pacific islands, especially the Hawaiian group. When combined with great military
or commercial importance, these conditions contain dangerous germs of quarrel, against
which it is at least prudent to be prepared.
Despite a superior geographical location, the United States is woefully unready to
assert its influence in the Caribbean and Central America. We have not the navy.
And, what is worse, we are not willing to have the navy that will weigh seriously
in any disputes with those nations whose interests conflict with our own. We have not, and we
are not anxious to provide, the defense of the Atlantic seaboard which will leave
the navy free for its work at sea.
Whether they will or not, Americans must now begin to look outward. The growing production
of the country demands it. An increasing volume of public sentiment demands it. The
position of the United States, between the two Old Worlds and the two great oceans, makes the same claim, which will soon be strengthened by the creation of the new
link joining the Atlantic and Pacific. The tendency will be increased by the growth
of the European colonies in the Pacific, by the advancing civilization of Japan,
and by the rapid peopling of our Pacific states.
The military needs of the Pacific states, as well as their supreme importance to the
whole country, are yet a matter of the future. But this future is so near that provision
should immediately begin to weigh their importance. To provide this, three things
are needed: First, protection of the chief harbors by fortifications and coast-defense
ships. Second, naval force, the arm of offensive power, which alone enables a country
to extend its influence outward. Third, it should be an unshakeable [sic] resolution of our national policy that no European state should henceforth acquire a coaling
position within 3,000 miles of San Francisco - a distance which includes the Sandwich
and Galapagos islands and the coast of Central America. For fuel is the life of modern naval war. It is the food of the ship. Without it the modern monsters of the deep
die of inanition. Around it, therefore, cluster some of the most important considerations
of naval strategy.
Adapted from Alfred T. Mahan, "The United States Looking Outward," Atlantic Monthly,
December 1890
Home U.S. History Course Material U.S. History Review Sheet: Chapter 20