Inventing Grand Strategy and Teaching Command: The Classic Works of Alfred Thayer Mahan Reconsidered

by Jon Tetsuro Sumida

2005 Selection for the Marine Corps's Professional Reading List Between 1890 and 1913, Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan published a series of books on naval warfare in the age of sail, which won a wide readership in his own day and established his reputation as the founder of modern strategic history. But Mahan's two principal arguments have been gravely misunderstood ever since, according to Jon Tetsuro Sumida. Instead of representing Mahan as an advocate of national naval supremacy, Sumida shows him asserting that only a multinational naval consortium could defend international trade. Instead of presenting Mahan as a man who adhered to strategic principles, Sumida shows that he stressed the importance of an officer's judgment and character formed by the study of history. Inventing Grand Strategy and Teaching Command includes a subject index to all Mahan's published books and an extensive bibliography. This is a book for scholars and students of military and strategic thinking and is a natural for libraries of U.S. service academies and U.S. armed services agencies and organizations.

Genres: History, Military History, Military Fiction

184 pages, Paperback

First published September 30, 1997

Reviews

[Billy · Rating 2 out of 5]

John T. Sumida’s Inventing Grand Strategy and Teaching Command reinterprets the classic works of the naval historian Alfred Thayer Mahan. Mahan’s books make up a considerable body of work that most readers today—even those interested in naval tactics, their implementation, or grand strategy—will find arduous and prolix. For this reason, Sumida’s concise appraisals of these many books will help readers get familiar with Mahan’s oeuvre. Sumida’s book is more than a Mahan summary, however; it also provides a new, almost eastern-themed interpretation to Mahan’s overarching arguments. Sumida’s argues “ that proper engagement with Mahan’s writing can provide an understanding of his work that differs fundamentally from previous studies,” but unfortunately “for the most part [scholars] have portrayed Mahan as a simplistic partisan of sea power and a proponent of mechanistically applied strategic principles.” (7)
Sumida implies that previous readers should read Mahan’s books in a historical context. This naval strategist was imploring the United States and Great Britain to maintain a special relationship and to divvy the responsibility of maritime law, sound advice in the quickly rising threat of a bellicose Germany. But policymakers and generals should not should not misconstrue his strategic and tactical advice as an overtly-technical or mechanistic approach to naval war or grand strategy. Sumida proposes for a more nuanced reading of Mahan, one that endorses an embrace of chance and chaos, all the while rejecting a strict doctrinaire approach to conducing warfare. The ordeal, argues Sumida, is far too complicated and unpredictable for a strict, unwavering approach to revising grand strategy or teaching command.
Sumida utilizes a trinity for comparisons which includes musical performance, naval strategy and Zen enlightenment. By endorsing this tripartite approach, Sumida closely mimics Clausewitz’s famed trilogy of warfare, sometimes read as “the people, the army, the government,” and more recently interpreted by Hew Strachan in the July-August edition of The American Interest as “reason, hate and chance.” (30) His example of musical performance holds some weight. Musicians must first have a technical mastery of their instrument(s), but at that point the ordeal becomes one of artistic expression, and not simply technical prowess. The third corner of this triad, Zen Enlightenment, offers an intriguing approach to command, one that pushes for the abilities of commanders in warfare not to simply follow guidelines but to be able to think and act utilizing intuition and judgment. Previous readers, argues Sumida, have overlooked this crucial point of Mahan’s in favor of technological precision and statistical certainty. The point is well taken, although one wonders if west point cadets will take to Zen Enlightenment theory as applied to naval warfare. Readers should be thankful, however, that Sumida’s editors did not suggest the title Zen and the Art of Grand Strategy.
Sumida’s brief monograph summarizes Mahan’s works in an easily digestible manner, but he seems to overemphasize commanders’ seemingly innate ability to command and react without technology. Maritime technology, and all military technology for that matter, has advanced to a point where it provides an almost overwhelming amount of information to military decision makers. Put simply, one could argue that wars fought on instinct and intuitions are probably sloppy affairs that lead to more deaths than necessary. Sumida’s points are well taken, but his emphasis on art should not completely overshadow the scientific aspects of the application of warfare.

[Benjamin Phillips · Rating 4 out of 5]

The introduction is a good article.
The rest of the book is contextualised close readings of Mahan’s book in chronological order, proving the initial point that Mahan’s theory of strategy was intuitive rather than analytical.

A decent book, very skimmable.

[Al · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sumida’s purpose for this book is to examine whether Mahan’s books represent a coherent body of thought, and the nature of that thought. He points out that Mahan has been the subject of preconceptions based on the difficulty of his writing, which limited the focus on Mahan’s main naval theme of grand strategy. However, Sumida argues that another theme runs through Mahan’s works, which is the art and science of command in dealing with the nature of operational decision making in war. Sumida argues that in properly engaging with Mahan’s works, one can come away with an expanded understanding of the complexity of Mahanian thought.

Sumida organizes his examination around the “Influence of Sea Power” series, to include Mahan’s “The Life of Nelson” and groups his examination under two types of arguments: Political, Political-Economic, Governmental, and Strategic and Professional. The meat of Sumida’s argument is contained in the Strategic and Professional arguments, where he examines Mahan’s views on the principles of strategy, uncertainties peculiar to sea service and the professional implications of uncertainty and the importance of individual leadership and initiative. Sumida shows that, contrary to conventional wisdom, Mahan more closely resembled Clausewitz, rather than Jomini. Like Clausewitz, Mahan believed that command had to be exercised in the face of uncertainty and required moral and intellectual qualities in the commander. Mahan also followed Clausewitz’s views on theory, believing that while theory was useful as a guide to train judgment and avoid pitfalls, theory’s purpose was education and guidance. Theory can facilitate application, but it cannot take the place of application, where a commander learns judgement. Sumida points out that Mahan finished his last volume of the “Influence of Sea Power” series before his first encounter with the writings of Clausewitz, which would indicate that his similarity to Clausewitzian thought may be attributed to individual discovery. So while in form, Mahan may appear to be a Jominian, in substance he was a Clausewitzian. In this aspect, I am in complete sympathy with this argument, because in spite of the abundance of technology available to the 21st century warfighter, the commander’s judgement is still paramount.

It is clear that Sumida mastered the Mahanian corpus through close reading and research. His bibliography is exceptional and deep. After reading this book, I went back to the two volumes I own in the “Influence of Sea Power” series and read through the pertinent passages, and I believe that Sumida has made his case. Mahan’s prose is dense, and Sumida provides an excellent guide to mine Mahan’s works. Anyone reading this can skip the preface.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good if not anything earthshattering. Felt a bit padded in places and promised perhaps more than it actually delivered, but it contains a very clear explanation of Mahan's main theses in his major and minor works, as well as a sort of concordance to his works in the back. I found the explication of Mahan's ideas on the use of history vs. theory to prepare leaders for operational decision making -- and naval leadership as art vs. science -- to be even more useful than the synopsizing of his work. I particularly enjoyed the material on Mahan's criticism of engineering and technical education at the expense of training in seamanship and tactics. Sumida also makes the interesting argument that, though Mahan conceived of himself as a Jominian in some sense, many of his ideas about strategy, theory, principles, art vs. science, etc. were identical to those of Clausewitz.

[J Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best book I've read in 2012. Sumida distills the essence of Mahan's writing and makes his ideas fresh and accessible. Strongest recommendation.