By James R. Holmes
Our senior students took the Strategy and Policy final examination late last week and acquitted themselves well, as usual. One quixotic thing about the U.S. Naval War College is that few students or faculty – even mariners who go down to the sea in ships – take much interest in the history of the sea, let alone in sea-power theory. For a variety of reasons, students look at the writings of Alfred Thayer Mahan, the U.S. Navy’s intellectual father, much like Superman looked at kryptonite. Questions about martial enterprises like counterinsurgent warfare are far more popular, probably because that’s what the respondents have done for most of their careers. Such material has immediate use, especially for practical-minded U.S. Army and Marine students. It concentrates minds, and understandably so.
The maritime questions we offer on our exams attract few takers. True to form, one question was very lonely this term. It asked what strategic difficulties beset sea powers that ally themselves with land powers in wartime, and how these difficulties might be overcome. While we look to history to get some purchase on vexing matters, this question commands more than antiquarian interest. Distinguished pundits increasingly enjoin the United States to retire to a more “offshore” posture, shedding overseas entanglements while sparing itself the burdens and hazards such entanglements entail. As a corollary, Washington should loosen or terminate longstanding alliance commitments. Forced to it, an offshore United States would exert power by forming temporary coalitions with land powers in embattled theaters. The Eurasian rimlands would remain the most likely candidates for U.S. military action. Washington should get involved as late in the day as possible, letting prospective allies bear most of the costs of fighting a would-be “hegemon,” or tyrannical power.
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