Mahan on naval warfare

by A. T. Mahan

In the Battle of the Japan Sea the attack again was on a flank, and that the van. Whether this was due to previous purpose of the Japanese, or merely arose from the conditions as they presented themselves, I do not know; but its tendency certainly would be to cause confusion. I do not wish, however, to argue here a question of tactics. My subject is strategy, and I am using tactics simply to illustrate the predominance, everywhere, under all conditions and from the nature of things, of the one great principle of concentration; and that, too, in the specific method of so distributing your own force as to be superior to the enemy in one quarter, while in the other you hold him in check long enough to permit your main attack to reach its full result. That necessary time may be half an hour on a field of battle; in a campaign it may be days, weeks, perhaps more.

... In any frontier line, or any strategic front of operations, or any line of battle, offensive effort may, and therefore should, be concentrated in one part, not distributed along the whole. This possibility, and a convenient way of conceiving it, Jomini expresses in an aphorism which may be commended to memory, because it sums up one important consideration concerning any military disposition whatever; whether it be the strategic front of operations in a campaign, or a tactical order of battle, or a frontier. Every such situation, Jomini says, may be properly regarded as a line; and every line divides, logically and actually, into three parts,—the center, and the two extremes, or flanks.

Guard yourselves, of course, from imagining three equal parts. We are not dealing here with mathematics, but with military conceptions. For practical results, let us apply at once to the United States of to-day. The United States has a long ocean frontier, broken at Mexico by the interposition of land, as the French maritime frontier is broken at the Pyrenees; yet the coast lines, like the French, possess a certain maritime continuity, in that ships can pass from end to end by sea. In such cases, it may be said without exaggeration that an ocean frontier is continuous. At present, the United States has one frontier which is strictly continuous, by land as by water, from the coast of Maine to the Rio Grande. There are in it, by natural division, three principal parts: the Atlantic, the Gulf, and the Straits of Florida. I do not deny that for purposes of study further convenient subdivisions may be made; but it may fairly be claimed that these three are clear, are primary, and are principal. They are very unequal in length, and, from the military standpoint, in importance; for while the peninsula of Florida does not rank very high in the industrial interests of the nation, a superior hostile fleet securely based in the Straits of Florida could effectively control intercourse by water between the two flanks. It would possess central position; and in virtue of that central position, its superiority need not be over the whole United States navy, should that be divided on each side of the central position. The supposed enemy, in such position, would need only to be decisively superior to each of the divisions lying on either side; whereas, were they united, superiority would require to be over the whole. It was this condition which made Cuba for the first century of our national existence a consideration of the first importance in our International relations. It flanked national communications, commercial and military. We know that there exists in our country an element of wisdom which would treat such a situation, which geography has constituted for us, as two boys do an apple. This would divide the fleet between the two coasts, and call it fair to both; because, so it is reasoned,—or rather argued,—defending both. It certainly, however, would not be concentration, nor effective.

Before passing on, note the striking resemblance between the Florida peninsula and that of Korea. Togo, at Masampo, was to Rozhestvensky and the Russians at Vladivostok just as a hostile fleet in the Straits of Florida would be to American divisions in the Gulf and at Hampton Roads. In like manner at an earlier period Togo and Kamimura, working apart but on interior lines, separated the three fine fighting ships in Vladivostok from the Port Arthur division.

The United States, however, has an even more urgent situation as to frontier in its Atlantic and Pacific coasts. If my claim is correct, in the instance of France, that a water frontier is continuous when passage from end to end by water is practicable, this is also continuous; and the battle fleet has demonstrated the fact within the past few years. The United States, then, has a maritime frontier line from Eastport, Maine, to Puget Sound; and, like other military lines, it divides into three principal parts immediately obvious,—the Atlantic Coast, the Pacific Coast, and the line between. This summary will not be any more true, nor any more useful for reflection, when the line passes by Panama instead of the Straits of Magellan; but it certainly will be more obvious. It then will be seen easily, as now may be seen certainly, that the important part of the long line in the present case, as in the future, is the center, because that insures or prevents passage in force from side to side; the transfer of force; in short, the communications. This reproduces again the Danube position, and also the chain of Spanish positions from Genoa to Belgium. It is once more the central position, which we have met before in such varying localities and periods; but the central position of Panama has over that now open to us, by Magellan, the advantage of interior lines, of which class of lines indeed the contrast between the existing and the future of routes offers a notable illustration.

6. Strategic Positions[^[24]]

The strategic value of any place depends upon three principal conditions:

1. Its position, or more exactly its situation. A place may have great strength, but be so situated with regard to the strategic lines as not to be worth occupying.

2. Its military strength, offensive and defensive. A place may be well situated and have large resources and yet possess little strategic value, because weak. It may, on the other hand, while not naturally strong, be given artificial strength for defense. The word “fortify” means simply to make strong.

3. The resources, of the place itself and of the surrounding country....