Among the officers who have studied and applied the lessons of history, few can rival Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840-1914). Through a study of history, Mahan articulated his concept of sea power in three works: The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783; The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire; and Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812. In his time and today, these works cemented Mahan’s enduring influence as a strategist and navalist. In his most recent book Sea Power, Admiral James Stavridis amusingly asks “WWAMD (What Would Alfred Mahan Do)?” Stavridis contends, “Mahan’s point of view—adapted somewhat for today’s world — still presents a timeless message.”[1]

Others have less affectionately commented on Mahan’s enduring influence. Ruefully recalling his time in Washington, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson ribbed that the Navy “frequently seemed to retire from the realm of logic into a dim religious world in which Neptune was God, Mahan his prophet, and the United States Navy the only true Church.”[2] That he continues to inspire such passionate support and derision speaks to the power of Mahan’s ideas. While best known as a navalist and strategist, Mahan’s example has yet more lessons to offer. A less appreciated facet of Mahan’s thinking was as a historian.

Mahan’s initial forays into history were self-guided. Having written throughout his naval career, his publication of a short work on Civil War naval history entitled The Gulf and Inland Waters helped earn him a spot at the newly founded Naval War College. There, Mahan juggled administrative duties while organizing his lectures into the books that would eventually propel him to global acclaim. Along the way, Mahan commented extensively on the methodology that underwrote his historical inquiry. In the introduction to The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, Mahan argues, “there are certain teachings in the school of history which remain constant, and being, therefore, of universal application, can be elevated to the rank of general principles.”[3] Elected president of the American Historical Association in 1902, Mahan expanded on this idea in a speech entitled “Subordination in Historical Treatment.” Likening them to artists, Mahan suggests the historian’s method is to “study the facts analytically, to detect the broad leading features, to assign them to their respective importance, to recognize their mutual relations, and upon these data to frame a scheme of logical presentation.”[4] In this way, the historian can achieve an “artistic grouping of subordinate details around a central idea.”[5] For Mahan, this central idea was the preeminence of sea power and command of the sea to national power and prosperity.

The Mahanian approach to history reminds us of political theorist and philosopher Isaiah Berlin’s hedgehogs. In Berlin’s conceptualization, the hedgehog knows one big thing and it is this big thing that gives his reality coherence and a unifying shape.[6] The hedgehog is defined by this relatively coherent vision, system, or organizing principle which gives meaning to all he thinks, sees, or feels.[7] The hedgehog is in contrast to the fox, one who pursues truth through many unconnected and even contradictory ways. A fox’s thinking is scattered and diffuse, it moves on many levels to derive meaning from a variety of experiences with little need to fit them into any single and unchanging unitary inner vision of the world.[8] Berlin readily acknowledges that when pressed, this classification is artificial and facile. All great thinkers—be they strategists, historians, poets, artists, or otherwise—embody elements of both hedgehogs and foxes. Neither is better or worse, they are simply differing intellectual approaches that can lead to differing conclusions. Each can yield insights and useful interpretations in different contexts. The point is therefore not rigid classification, but rather a vantage point from which we may look and compare.[9] As the “evangelist of sea power,” Mahan was a hedgehog of the first order, marshalling history to equate command of the sea with victory.[10] The details and vagaries of history are subordinated in service of this central idea. Applying the distinction to Mahan affords us an opportunity to consider: What does Mahan’s approach to history teach us about how to use history today? What lessons can we learn from his successes and failures so that we as a force may more clearly understand what history is and how we can use it to greatest advantage?

Considering this question is critical if we as a force hope to use history to establish and maintain maritime superiority. Writing in Proceedings, Milan Vego of the Naval War College argued, “neglect or ignorance of history by naval officers, and flag officers in particular, has had adverse effects on preparations for war, development of doctrine, and performance in combat.”[11] If we believe Vego’s concern is legitimate and we should be using history, addressing it requires considering the next logical issue which is how history should guide contemporary decision-making. Too often, the singular lessons of history obscure more than they illuminate.[12] Such lessons, often disguised as unhelpful analogies, are highly pernicious because “invoking them often substitutes for thinking hard about things as they are.”[13]

Mahan’s example suggests we should consider an alternative approach to instrumentalizing history. That is the approach of the fox, articulated and advanced by another Navy man Ernest May. Rather than looking to history for generalizable lessons to be applied today, history and time should be approached as a “stream” that provides a framework and context for making contemporary decisions. In May’s conceptualization, the lessons of history come not from generalized rules based on prior cases but rather a continuous comparison which oscillates back and forth in time. These comparisons only survive so long as they are fruitful to the issue at hand. The user always remains mindful of the inherent limitations of insight any single analogy can ever yield.[14] So conceived, history guides not through discrete lessons generalized into prescriptive axioms but rather as an ever-present habit of thought and mental framework which buttresses and checks contemporary decision-making.

Mahan’s Hedgehogs

Interrogating Mahan’s approach to history does not denigrate his contribution to naval strategy or the value of his ideas. As a navalist, Mahan’s studies did for the sea what Clausewitz and Jomini had done for the land. His emphasis on the need for command of the sea was underwritten by a clear articulation of the six principal conditions that affect nation’s ability to militarily employ sea power; gveographical position, physical conformation, extent of territory, number of population, national character, and the character and policy of governments.[15]^, Like the Clausewitzean “trinity” and Jomini’s “decisive points” these precepts and their attendant concepts have become truisms for navalists and strategists around the world. While they may today seem commonplace, these ideas were only made apparent by Mahan’s writings.[16]

Indeed, it is because Mahan’s ideas have become nearly axiomatic that we should turn a skeptical eye to their provenance. Mahan wrote during a time when those who studied social or human phenomena (e.g. war) aspired to adopt methodological elements of the natural sciences. Contemporary with Mahan was French sociologist Émile Durkheim. Durkheim along with Karl Marx and Max Weber was part of an emerging ‘positivist’ intellectual tradition which applied this scientific approach and gave rise to modern social sciences like political science, economics, and sociology. This positivist tradition rippled through society and can be seen not only in Mahan, but in his mentor Rear Admiral Stephen Luce who founded the Naval War College. In a lecture during the 1885 opening session of the college, Luce suggests “science is contributing so liberally to every department of knowledge…it seems only natural and reasonable that we should call science to our aid to lead us to a clearer comprehension of naval warfare.”[17] Thirteen years later, Luce would write that this approach “appeared in the person of Captain A. T. Mahan.”[18]

It is this positivist tradition Mahan was articulating in his speech to the American Historical Association and earlier writings on sea power. As a historian, Mahan conceived of his study as concerning regular, underlying principles which could be drawn from the past and applied to the present and future. This inductive approach meant principles understood in a particular historical period and circumstance were presumed to be valid in the present and future as well.[19] Yet, these generalizations drew almost exclusively from a naval history of Britain from 1660-1812 in sea battles fought against the Dutch, Spanish, Danish, and French.[20] Case selection aside, recent scholarship suggests that other factors beyond command of the sea like land operations, European alliances, and diplomatic balance-of-power politics are severely underweighted by Mahan.[21]

Naval War College historian Philip Crowl compellingly argues this underweighting shows Mahan was consistent guilty of the ‘reductive fallacy’.[22] The reductive fallacy exists when a historian overly reduces complexity to simplicity in their causal explanations. Of course, historical interpretation requires such reduction lest the discipline devolve into merely fact collection. Nevertheless, when such reduction distorts reality to the point that it compromises the causal explanation, the fallacy is operant.[23] It is characterized by the confusion of a necessary and sufficient causes for a given phenomenon. In the Mahanian reading, command of the sea is sufficient to account for British hegemonic dominance. Consequently, establishing command of the sea and all it requires, should be the overarching concern of national policy. Nevertheless, a more contextualized understanding of the period from which Mahan drew his axioms suggests sea power was a necessary but not sufficient condition to account for British hegemonic dominance during The Age of Sail.

That Mahan committed the reductionist fallacy is unsurprising from his writings. Not wanting the “passion for certainty to lapse into indecision,” Mahan made little pretense of scientific objectivity.[24] Likening them to troops, Mahan marshaled facts in the manner most expedient to communicating his central idea with little regard for vagaries, contingency, or nuance. It would seem Mahan wanted to have his cake and eat it too. His writings suggest he sought to use elements of the scientific method derive axiomatic laws about the role of sea power, but was unwilling to adopt the mental skepticism required for such scientific inquiry. He was hedgehog whose perspective on and approach history was defined by his original insight on the importance of sea power. Legitimate though it may have been, this central insight was to color and predetermine his approach historical understanding in a manner that is fraught if emulated today.

May’s Foxes

If the Mahanian approach to history is fraught, what alternative approach should those who hope to instrumentally use history consider? In this section I will articulate an alternative approach, one which eschews the pursuit of axiomatic laws in favor of a nimbler approach. I begin briefly discussing the what ‘history’ is and how members of the Sea Services can meaningfully conceptualize it for greatest advantage. I will then build on this conceptualization to argue for an approach engages with history as a stream for decision-making. Much like Berlin’s fox, this approach engages with historical lessons in a de facto, tentative manner oscillating between historical examples to guide contemporary decision-making. In this sense, history becomes a contextual framework which allows decision-makers to constantly check and probe their assumptions or interpretations.

The positivist approach, to which Luce and Mahan aspired, conceptualizes history as something external to the observer like a forest. As with the study of a forest, insight begins with a collection of data through observation. Once these historical facts are collected, general propositions can be induced based patterns or consistencies across time and space. The positivist approach requires a separation between the observer and the object being observed. This separation is problematic because it neglects the issue that history does not exist beyond the minds of individual people. While the gathering of empirical evidence is necessary, it is only relevant to the extent it informs a given person’s interpretation. Conceived as such, the word ‘history’ comes to have two meanings – first is the inquiry conducted by the historian and second is the series of events into which he inquires.[25] Any discussion about the nature of history must therefore consider both the person and the series of events he engages with because it is at this nexus that meaning, insight, or lessons are derived.

It is precisely this nexus that historian William Inboden considers. The taxonomy of historical experience he articulates considers history not as an externalized series of events, but rather as a product of engagement between a person and these events. For naval officers hoping to instrumentalize history throughout the force, considering this interplay is essential. When considered in this manner, history becomes a much more tactile and approachable for everyday use. Four types of history are salient to the decision-maker: experience, memory, tradition, and study of the past.[26] Experience is understood to be the first-hand experiences of a decision-maker that shapes future understanding and choice. This is an intensely personal type of history as it is frequently where people learn lessons, often through painful or humiliating mistakes. A related variant is memory, history that a person has had first-hand impressions of but was not involved in shaping. These are highly formative and often the most powerful occur during childhood, whereby individuals see in others what they should or should not do. Third is tradition which is a history transmitted through culture or sub-culture. As an institution, we the Navy, are intimately familiar with the stories of valor and character of our forbearers. In practical terms, this tradition is the means by which the institution teaches members of the Sea Services ‘lessons’ about how to be behave in a variety of situations. The fourth variety is the most conventional which is study of the past through the reading of historical scholarship or original research.

By framing the academic study of history as one of several varieties of history (to include, experience, memory, and tradition) the contrast to Mahan’s approach becomes more readily apparent. Consider one’s own interaction and approach to experience, memory, and tradition. In the case of experience, a self-reflective person can look to their past and infer certain regular patterns which guide contemporary decision-making. Say one hopes to avoid binge drinking. They come to see that over time, when invited out to a bar with a group of friends, they become increasingly likely binge drink. One infers over time that a specific group of friends in a specific context leads to undesired outcomes. If one makes some affirmative change, say spending less time with those friends or going to a coffee shop instead of a bar, that person can be argued to have ‘learned a lesson of history.’ This lesson did not come in the form of an axiomatic ‘law’ as Mahan aspired – for example ‘one must never spend time with those friends if they hope to avoid binge drinking’. Rather, one’s experience was a framework which guided present day decision-making. When it concerns direct experiences, the person is more sensitive to vagaries, contingency, or nuance of any situation that makes it resistant to axiomatic understandings. The same standards can be applied to history writ large. Nothing about the fact that some events happened before one’s birth, even well before, makes them more amenable to axiomatic understanding than any one person’s lived experience. The same habits of thought that guide one’s approach to understanding experience, memory, and tradition can be profitably applied to all of history. We strive not to establish regularities in history, but rather to use history to understand the possibilities any given situation affords us.

While there is nothing inherently different about events which predate one’s birth, there does exist an asymmetry of information. This asymmetry exists because people know less about past events since they were not personally there to form experiences or memories of them. The asymmetry limits our ability to understand what characteristics of a situation are applicable across time and how they change the decision space. It is through the process of studying history, reading historical scholarship and undertaking original research, that a person can to some extent ameliorate this asymmetry of information. Yet such study can only provide a necessary, but not sufficient, foundation for active historical thinking. Beyond just intuition, further habits of thought and mental heuristics are necessary to understand what aspects of historical experience apply in a given situation. Such habits of thought and mental heuristics are valuable to the Navy as an organization because they form the kernel of a more tangible process the bakes in historical thinking at all levels of the force.

In May’s words, the fundamentals of these habits of thought boil down to “Stop! Look! Listen!”[27] He is colorfully communicating both a sense of epistemic caution and a constant self-reflective skepticism about the extent to which any single analogy can inform decision-making. The sentiment is operationalized through a series of ‘mini-methods’ especially attuned to the needs of decision-makers. One such mini-method precedes even looking into history for analogues. It requires of the decision-maker to think about and clearly articulate what is known, presumed, or unclear in any given issue at hand.[28] The intent of this mini-method is to direct thinking towards the essence issue at hand rather than action, for which there is intense pressure. By clarifying this understanding, the decision-maker can later guard against seductive analogies that spring to mind as guides for decision. The second of these mini-methods is applied when a historical analogue has been proposed. Banal though it seems, the method of likeness and difference involves clear-sightedly comparing ‘then’ with ‘now.’[29] The intent is to make explicit what salient characteristics made the historical example appealing as an analogue in the first place.

Both these mini-methods are meant to marginally improve what May argues is the ‘usual’ practice in the use of history by decision-makers. [30] The six ingredients will be familiar to any officer who has either been staffed or worked on a staff. Usual practice involves first (i) a lurch toward action brought on the pressures and responsibility of decision. This is then followed by (ii) the invocation of fuzzy analogies to analyze or advocate. The group is then dependent on an analogy without having (iii) considered the particulars of an issue’s own past and (iv) a failure to consider key assumptions about an issue. This lack of clarity then fosters (v) an overreliance on stereotyped suppositions about people or organizations and finally (vi) little effort to consider contemporary choices as part of a larger historical series. By looking at the use of history from a process perspective, we can begin as a force to more robustly integrate historical thinking at all levels. Success will not come with the savant flag-officer locked away in the bowels of the Pentagon, but when historical thinking and habits of thought become as routine as ORM’s and Commander’s Intent from the deck plates to the E-Ring.

It is self-evident that our rich history has much to teach us on multiple fronts. It is imperative that learn these lessons in order maintain maritime superiority in a rapidly evolving geopolitical context. Believing there is ‘no new thing under the sun’ we can look fruitfully to the experiences of our forbearers in the Sea Services. In doing so our watchwords should be modesty, caution, and healthy skepticism.

Bibliography

Berlin, Isaiah, and Henry Hardy. The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy’s View of History. Second Edition. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2013.

Carr, Edward Hallett. What Is History?: The George Macaulay Trevelyan Lectures Delivered in the University of Cambridge, January-March 1961. Princeton, N.J.: Penguin Books, 2007.

Carroll, Robert P., and Stephen Prickett, eds. The Bible: Authorized King James Version. Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Crowl, Phillip A. “Alfred Thayer Mahan: The Naval Historian.” In Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, edited by Peter Paret, Gordon Alexander Craig, and Felix Gilbert. Princeton Paperbacks. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1986.

Fischer, David Hackett. Historians’ Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought. 48th print of Harper Torchbook ed. publ. 1970. New York: Harper Perennial, 2014.

Inboden, William. “Statecraft, Decision-Making, and the Varieties of Historical Experience: A Taxonomy.” Journal of Strategic Studies 37, no. 2 (February 23, 2014): 291–318. https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2013.829402.

Kennedy, Paul M. The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery. London: A. Lane, 1976.

Khong, Yuen Foong. Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965. Princeton Paperbacks. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1992.

Luce, Stephen B. The Writings of Stephen B. Luce. Edited by John D. Hayes and John B. Hattendorf. Newport, Rhode Island: Naval War College Press, 1975. https://archive.org/details/writingsofstephe00luce.

Mahan, A. T. “Subordination in Historical Treatment.” In Naval Administration and Warfare: Some General Principles with Other Essays, 245–72. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1908.

———. The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783. Dover Publications, 2012. http://www.totalboox.com/book/id-8481177843363328314.

Neustadt, Richard E., and Ernest R. May. Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision-Makers. New York : London: Free Press ; Collier Macmillan, 1986.

Ricks, Thomas E. “Book Excerpt: WWAMD? (AKA ‘If Alfred T. Mahan Were Advising the President’).” Foreign Policy (blog), June 12, 2017. https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/12/book-excerpt-wwamd-aka-if-alfred-t-mahan-were-advising-the-president/.

Vego, Milan. “Learn and Use History’s Lessons.” Proceedings, February 2017. https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2017-02/learn-and-use-historys-lessons.

[1] Ricks, “Book Excerpt.”

[2] Crowl, “Alfred Thayer Mahan: The Naval Historian,” 444.

[3] Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783., 10.

[4] Mahan, “Subordination in Historical Treatment,” 264.

[5] Mahan, 264.

[6] Berlin and Hardy, The Hedgehog and the Fox.

[7] Berlin and Hardy, 2.

[8] Berlin and Hardy, 2.

[9] Berlin and Hardy, 3.

[10] Crowl, “Alfred Thayer Mahan: The Naval Historian,” 477.

[11] Vego, “Learn and Use History’s Lessons,” 2.

[12] Khong, Analogies at War.

[13] Neustadt and May, Thinking in Time, 89.

[14] Neustadt and May, 148.

[15] Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery, 5.

[16] Kennedy, 6.

[17] Luce, The Writings of Stephen B. Luce, 50.

[18] Luce, 47.

[19] Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery, 6.

[20] Crowl, “Alfred Thayer Mahan: The Naval Historian,” 449.

[21] Crowl, 451.

[22] Crowl, 454.

[23] Fischer, Historians’ Fallacies, 172.

[24] Mahan, “Subordination in Historical Treatment,” 261.

[25] Carr, What Is History?, 22.

[26] Inboden, “Statecraft, Decision-Making, and the Varieties of Historical Experience,” 7.

[27] Neustadt and May, Thinking in Time, 63.

[28] Neustadt and May, 35.

[29] Neustadt and May, 37.

[30] Neustadt and May, 32.