CLASSIC WORKS offer strategists ample insights into the future. Although Cropsey puts Mahan’s face on his case for shoring up the sea services, his reading of Mahan is partial and fails to engage with much of Mahan’s corpus. For example, he writes, “If Mahan’s history had continued beyond the Treaty of Paris in 1783, he might have illustrated his explanation of naval power’s silent influence by pointing to England’s success following the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805,” when a close blockade applied stifling pressure on French seaports and shipping. In fact, Mahan continued his series with a two-volume account of The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793–1812,and a two-volume chronicle of Sea Power in Its Relations to the War of 1812.

That five-volume cycle brings the story up to 1815, even leaving aside his commentaries on later conflicts such as the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, the Boer War and the Russo-Japanese War. The bibliography of his works is itself a book. In his tale of the Napoleonic wars, Mahan waxed lyrical about the “far distant, storm-beaten ships, upon which [Napoleon’s] Grand Army never looked.” These ships purportedly stood between France and “the dominion of the world.” From his pen also issued a glowing two-volume biography of Lord Nelson, the victor of Trafalgar. Mahan styled Nelson “the embodiment of the sea power of Great Britain.”

Other theorists besides Mahan can help illuminate possible future strategies. His contemporary and occasional foil Sir Julian Corbett is eminently worth consulting to complete the picture. Whereas the American theorist writes about “overbearing power” wrested from rival navies, the Briton notes that an “uncommanded sea” is the norm. The oceans are too big, the biggest navy too small, to exert absolute sea command. Mahan urges battle on the high seas. Corbett observes that since men live on land, wars are settled there. For him, the art of maritime strategy is figuring out how to use navies in concert with armies to shape events ashore. Mahan concentrates on capital ships. Corbett gives capital ships their due while inquiring into how lesser craft exercise control of the sea once it’s in hand. Continental theories of sea power also may be worth exploring in this high-tech age, when the seaward reach of land-based combat aircraft, antiship cruise and ballistic missiles, and other weaponry can empower coastal states to influence events off their coasts without ever putting battle fleets to sea. Sea power is not just about navies. Increasingly, it is accessible to land powers. In any event, a fuller reading of maritime theory would help the United States mold its seaborne future.

It’s also important to establish appropriate benchmarks for fleet size. During the 2012 presidential campaign, Republican candidate Mitt Romney noted that the U.S. Navy is now the smallest it has been since 1917. True. And Cropsey draws that comparison as well. But how significant is the World War I tally? Numbers do matter, no doubt. But today’s threat environment, not that of some bygone age, is the proper yardstick for sizing the fleet. The navy may need more assets than it possessed during the Wilson administration if it hopes to ride out an increasingly stressful “antiaccess” setting and keep punching. I suspect that is the case. Nonetheless, the 1917 figure tells observers little, one way or the other.

During the same campaign, the Barack Obama camp emphasized that the U.S. Navy is bigger than the next thirteen fleets combined. But the reference was to aggregate tonnage—not firepower or any other meaningful measure of battle performance. Like raw numbers, tonnage matters. But it isn’t everything. Myriad factors determine how much it matters, just as many factors determine how many hulls is enough to accomplish operational and strategic goals. Unless, that is, you consider the 157,000-ton container ship Emma Maersk more powerful than the supercarrier USS George H. W. Bush. After all, the mammoth merchantman displaces one and a half times as much as the nuclear-powered flattop.

THE CHIEF strength of Mayday falls in its final two chapters, where the author mulls over future force structures. This is the ground where he seemingly feels most comfortable. Earlier on, Cropsey insists that strategy, not budgets, must determine the size and shape of the sea services. His position is both understandable and theoretically sound. It is also, alas, unrealistic. Policy makers and politicians have the final say in strategic decisions, and dollars and cents often dominate their deliberations. A fit of legislative absentmindedness could carry grave repercussions. That is the American way.

Nevertheless, the author explores several less expensive, ostensibly more battleworthy configurations for the U.S. Navy. He pays special heed to a 2009 Naval Postgraduate School report titled “The New Navy Fighting Machine.” The monograph was compiled by a team headed by one of my heroes, retired captain Wayne Hughes, who literally wrote the book on Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat. The Hughes report recommends boosting fleet numbers by introducing smaller, more numerous, less expensive platforms that still pack a wallop. One example among many: the team suggests gradually scaling back the number of big-deck aircraft carriers from the current eleven to six or eight. It would use the savings to construct eighteen smaller carriers. Such moves would expand the U.S. Navy’s geographic coverage, diversify its combat power and reduce the consequences of losing any individual ship.

Cropsey appears much taken with such ideas, and justifiably so. Mayday offers an excellent starting point for thinking through the vexing challenges before the United States and its maritime services—challenges that will confront the nation for a long time to come.

James Holmes is professor of strategy at the Naval War College and coauthor of Red Star over the Pacific, which is forthcoming in paperback later this year. The views presented here are his alone.

Pullquote: The benefits of policing the global system are remote and abstract, while the benefits of pulling back are concrete and quantifiable. No wonder naval proponents fret about what the future may hold.Image: Essay Types: Book Review