Mahan on naval warfare

by A. T. Mahan

The general discussion of the strategic features of the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean ends here; but the treatment of the subject will not be complete, unless there be some further specific consideration of the bearing which the conclusions reached have upon the facilities of the United States for naval action in the region studied.

[The political developments between 1887 and 1911 are here considered, including the growth of the American Navy; the construction of the Panama Canal; the acquisition by the United States of strategic points along the line from Key West to Culebra Island, centering at Guantanamo and “most effectual for military and naval action in the Caribbean;” and, finally, our increased responsibilities arising from the growth of the German Navy and the consequent limitation of England’s co-operation in support of the Monroe Doctrine.—Editor.]

... The Caribbean Sea and the Isthmus of Panama furnish the student of naval strategy with a very marked illustration of the necessity of such cohesion and mutual support between military positions assumed; as well as between those positions and the army in the field,—that is, the navy. It affords therefore a subject of the first importance for such a student to master, and that in fuller detail than is expedient for a series of lectures, the object of which should be to suggest lines of thought, rather than to attempt exhaustive treatment. For an American naval officer, the intimate relation of the Isthmus and its coming canal to the mutual support of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts renders the subject doubly interesting. This interest is yet farther increased by the consideration that the general international importance to commerce of such a point as the Canal can scarcely fail to make the conditions of its tenure and use a source of international difference and negotiation, which often are war under another form; that is, the solution depends upon military power, even though held in the background. There are questions other than commercial dependent upon the tenure of the Isthmus, of which I will not here speak explicitly. To appreciate them fully there must be constant reading and reflection upon the general topics of the day.

One thing is sure: in the Caribbean Sea is the strategic key to the two great oceans, the Atlantic and Pacific, our own chief maritime frontiers.

12. Principles of Naval Administration

Opposing Elements[^[34]]

Administration being a term of very general application, it will be expected that that of the navy should present close analogies, and even points of identity, with other forms of administration; for instance, that in it, as elsewhere, efficiency of result will be better secured by individual responsibility than by collective responsibility. But, along with general resemblance, naval administration is very clearly and sharply differentiated by the presence of an element which is foreign to almost all other activities of life in countries like Great Britain and the United States. The military factor is to it not merely incidental, but fundamental; whatever other result may be achieved, naval administration has failed unless it provides to the nation an efficient fighting body, directed by well-trained men, animated by a strong military spirit. On the other hand, many of the operations connected with it differ from those common to civil life only in a certain particularity of method. This is true in principal measure of the financial management, of the medical establishment, and to a considerable though much smaller degree of the manufacturing processes connected with the production of naval material. The business routine of even the most military department of a naval administration is in itself more akin to civil than to military life: but it by no means follows that those departments would be better administered under men of civil habits of thought than by those of military training. The method exists for the result, and an efficient fighting body is not to be attained by weakening the appreciation of military necessities at the very fountain head of their supply in the administration. This necessary appreciation can be the result only of personal experience of good and bad through the formative period of life.

We find, therefore, at the very outset of our inquiry two fundamental yet opposing elements, neither of which can be eliminated. Nor can they be reconciled, in the sense of becoming sympathetic. In its proper manifestation the jealousy between the civil and military spirits is a healthy symptom. They can be made to work together harmoniously and efficiently; to complement, not to antagonize each other; provided means are taken to ensure to each its due relative precedence and weight in the determination of practical questions.

Historically, the institution and development of naval administration has been essentially a civil process, the object of which has been to provide and keep in readiness a national weapon for war. The end is war—fighting; the instrument is the navy; the means are the various activities which we group under the head of administration. Of these three, the end necessarily conditions the others. The proverb is familiar, “He who wills the end wills the means.” Whatever is essential to the spirit and organization of the navy afloat, to its efficiency for war, must find itself adequately represented in the administration, in order that the exigencies of fighting may be kept well to the front in governmental and national consideration. Since armies and navies have existed as permanent national institutions, there has been a constant struggle on the part of the military element to keep the end—fighting, or readiness to fight—superior to mere administrative considerations. This is but natural, for all men tend to magnify their office. The military man having to do the fighting, considers that the chief necessity; the administrator equally naturally tends to think the smooth running of the machine the most admirable quality. Both are necessary; but the latter cannot obtain under the high pressure of war unless in peace the contingency of war has dictated its system. There is a quaint, well-worn story, which yet may be new to some readers, of an administrator who complained that his office was working admirably until war came and threw everything out of gear.

The opposition between civil and military, necessitating their due adjustment, may be said to be original, of the nature of things. It is born with naval administration. Corresponding roughly to these primary factors are the two principal activities in which administration is exerted—organization and execution. These also bear to each other the relation of means to end. Organization is not for itself, but is a means to an ultimate executive action; in the case of a navy, to war or to the prevention of war. It is, therefore, in its end—war—that organization must find the conditions dictating its character. Whatever the system adopted, it must aim above all at perfect efficiency in military action; and the nearer it approaches to this ideal the better it is. It would seem that this is too obvious for mention. It may be for mention; but not for reiteration. The long record of naval history on the side of administration shows a constant predominance of other considerations, and the abiding necessity for insisting, in season and out of season, that the one test of naval administration is not the satisfactory or economical working of the office, as such, but the readiness of the navy in all points for war. The one does not exclude the other; but there is between them the relation of greater and less.