Nicholas A Lambert and WW1 - Everything old is new again.
Everything old is new again. The economics, politics, and conflicts of the early 20th century are looking familiar in todays headlines. Maybe we can learn something from a top notch economist and historian study of the first World War.
Nicholas Lambert received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Oxford University. The World War One Historical Association has twice awarded him the Norman B. Tomlinson book prize: Sir John Fisher's Naval Revolution (1999) and Planning Armageddon: British Economic Warfare and the First World War (2013).
Lambert discusses Britain's carefully planned grand strategy of economic warfare intended to bring about the rapid collapse of Germany’s financial systems through engineering a controlled implosion of the global trading system. As such, "economic warfare" constituted a national strategy of quick, decisive war comparable in function and objectives to Germany’s infamous Schlieffen Plan. After the commencement of hostilities, however, the scale of the global economic devastation wrought far exceeded all expectations. Within weeks, the economic warfare strategy was aborted.
It is perhaps the only strategic plan ever called off because it was too successful.
Presented November 7, 2014 as part of the National World War I Museum and United States World War I Centennial Commission 2014 Symposium, "1914: Global War & American Neutrality."
The Symposium was held in association with The Western Front Association East Coast Branch and the World War I Historical Association. Sponsored by Colonel J's, the Neighborhood Tourist Development Fund and Verlag Militaria.
Dr. Nicholas Lambert discusses his latest book, "The War Lords and the Gallipoli Disaster: How Globalized Trade Led Britain to Its Worst Defeat of the First World War"
- Globalized Trade and the Gallipoli Disaster: A Perfect Storm in the World Wheat Market In his book "The Warlords and the Gallipoli Disaster," Dr. Nick Lambert explores how globalized trade, particularly in wheat, played a crucial role in the decision-making process leading to Britain's worst defeat in World War I. Dr. Lambert, an economist turned historian, delves into the intersection of war, politics, and political economy, presenting a broad-based history that treats military leaders and politicians as equal voices in strategic policy-making. Central to the discussion is the importance of wheat in the Dardanelles campaign, as Russia was the world's largest exporter and Britain, the largest importer, in 1914. The closure of the Dardanelles due to Turkey's involvement in the war severely impacted global wheat supply, with Russia, Romania, and later, other major exporters like Australia, Argentina, India, and the United States experiencing various issues affecting their crops. This perfect storm in the world wheat market drove up prices sharply and quickly, creating a dire situation that influenced the war council's decisions and considerations regarding the Dardanelles campaign.
- The Dardanelles Campaign: A Complex Decision-Making Process
The Dardanelles Campaign was the result of a series of meetings and
studies authorized by the British War Council in early 1915, as they
sought alternatives to the Western Front due to the perception of
stalemate. However, the Commander of the Army in France disagreed with
this assessment, creating a political dilemma. The War Council then
invited General French to explain his views, ultimately leading to a
faux compromise of preparing for another offensive while exploring other
options.
Among these options were various landing sites, including Greece,
Anatolia, Syria, modern-day Yugoslavia, and the Dardanelles. The French,
who considered Syria within their sphere of operations, strongly
opposed the idea of landing in Alexandretta, leading to the displacement
of troops initially intended for Alexandretta and ultimately their
involvement in the Dardanelles operation. The Dardanelles Campaign was
not initially part of the plan for these troops, but they became
involved due to the complex decision-making process and the need to
allocate resources.
The Neptune Factor is the biography of an idea—the concept of “Sea Power,” a term first coined by Capt. A.T. Mahan and the core thread of his life’s work. His central argument was that the outcome of rivalries on the seas have decisively shaped the course of modern history. Although Mahan’s scholarship has long been seen as foundational to all systematic study of naval power, The Neptune Factor is the first attempt to explain how Mahan’s definition of sea power shifted over time.
Far from presenting sea power in terms of combat, as often thought, Mahan conceptualized it in terms of economics. Proceeding from the conviction that international trade carried across the world’s oceans was the single greatest driver of national wealth (and thus power) in history, Mahan explained sea power in terms of regulating access to ‘the common’ and influencing the flows of trans-oceanic trade. A nation possessing sea power could not only safeguard its own trade and that of its allies, but might also endeavor to deny access to the common to its enemies and competitors.
A pioneering student of what is now referred to as the first era of globalization, lasting from the late nineteenth century until the First World War, Mahan also identified the growing dependence of national economies upon uninterrupted access to an interconnected global trading system. Put simply, access to ‘the common’ was essential to the economic and political stability of advanced societies. This growing dependence, Mahan thought, increased rather than decreased the potency of sea power.
Understanding the critical relationship between navies and international economics is not the only reason why Mahan’s ideas remain—or rather have once again become—so important. He wrote in, and of, a multi-polar world, when the reigning hegemon faced new challengers, and confusion and uncertainty reigned as the result of rapid technological change and profound social upheaval. Mahan believed that the U.S. Navy owed the American people a compelling explanation of why it deserved their support—and their money. His extensive, deeply informed, and highly sophisticated body of work on sea power constituted his attempt to supply such an explanation. Mahan remains as relevant—and needed—today as he was more than a century ago.
What Is a Navy For?
Speaking to Congress, the Chief of Naval Operations recently argued that the purpose of the U.S. Navy hinged on the timeless missions of sea control and power projection.1 Perhaps so. But to most people, these phrases raise more questions than they answer.
Control at what cost, and to what end?
Power to do what, exactly?
Projected where and how?
Such declarations seem unlikely to induce taxpayers to fork over the enormous sums entailed, especially when so many think the money could be better spent fixing pressing domestic problems. But this is nothing new.
More than a century ago, the patron saint of the U.S. Navy grappled with similar difficulties. Alfred Thayer Mahan faced a U.S. public riven by deep internal disagreement and skeptical of the need to spend scarce public resources on the Navy. Looking back on his career, Mahan considered that one of his greatest achievements was providing “men in civil life” with a coherent answer to a simple but profound question: “Why do we need a Navy?” In his autobiography’s opening chapter, he observed:
Between the day of my entrance into the service, fifty years ago, and the present, nowhere is change more notable than in the matter of atmosphere; of the national attitude towards the navy and comprehension of its office. Then it was accepted without much question as part of the necessary lumber that every adequately organized maritime state carried, along with the rest of a national establishment. Of what use it was, or might be, few cared much to inquire. There was not sufficient interest even to dispute the necessity of its existence.2
The conventional understanding of Mahan is that he persuaded his countrymen through a crude argument about the primacy of the combat battlefleet. While Mahan did make arguments in his earliest work supporting such a characterization, he made others pointing in a very different direction—toward economic pressure, not battle, as the ultimate object of naval force. Over time, combat became ever less pronounced and economics ever more so in his explanation of sea power. Mahan became a pioneering thinker about the importance of naval power in a globalized world economy, as well as of public opinion in shaping national strategic policy. His understanding came to center on the role of naval power in facilitating—or deranging—international trade. Coming to grips with the sophistication of his thinking, especially in his later work, makes him more, not less, relevant for the task today: convincing taxpayers that the Navy performs so vital a mission they must fund it.
Ships offload cargo in Shanghai, China. Winning battles is a means to a navy’s ends. The true end is what Alfred Thayer Mahan called the “derangement” of an adversary’s trade and, thereby, economy. Credit: Shutterstock
Influence
Mahan’s campaign began with the 1890 publication of The Influence of Sea Power upon History: 1660–1783. He provided a novel, systematic, and coherent explanation of the purpose of a navy, covering the generation, employment, and mechanics of applying power at sea to attain national objectives. Peppering the historical narrative with allusions to contemporary issues, he argued that sea power had influenced the course of human history more than any other single factor. As future president Theodore Roosevelt remarked in a review of Mahan for Political Science Quarterly, “It seems almost incredible, when we think of the immense part played by naval power in history, that no historian should ever yet have treated it at length from the philosophic standpoint; yet this is literally the case.”3
Contrary to popular opinion, Influence was not primarily about the employment of naval forces in wartime; rather, it was about the importance of state coordination of national maritime (including naval) resources to achieve relative advantage in both peace and war. Furthermore, the book’s central proposition was fundamentally economic: “Both travel and traffic by water have always been easier and cheaper than by land.” State power, Mahan held, was a function of national wealth, and the generation of wealth derived from commerce. In modern times, the single most valuable font of commercially produced wealth was overseas trade. Following this logic, he reasoned that access to the sea (the “common”) was essential to national well-being; hence the need for a strong navy to guarantee access. Though Mahan spent a further 20 years refining precisely how sea power worked, the core thread of his overall theory remained unaltered. In identifying the interrelationships between trade, wealth, and power, Mahan was the first to articulate a coherent explanation for why states should invest in navies.
On his retirement in November 1896 after 40 years of service, Captain Mahan turned his attention to educating the public and its elected representatives. Having been impressed by the impact of public opinion on strategic decision-making during the Spanish-American War, he wrote:
The study of the Art and History of War is preeminently necessary to men of the profession, but there are reasons which commend it also, suitably presented, to all citizens of our country. Questions connected with war—when resort to war is justifiable, preparation for war, the conduct of war—are questions of national moment, in which each voter—nay, each talker—has an influence for intelligent and adequate action, by the formation of sound public opinion; and public opinion, in operation, constitutes national policy.4
This striking formulation—“public opinion, in operation, constitutes national policy”—concisely expressed Mahan’s understanding of its relationship to the Navy. He wanted his countrymen to better understand that the United States inhabited a dangerous world likely soon to become a good deal more dangerous; that events outside the continental United States impinged on the nation’s general economic security—and its long-term prosperity. Through education, Mahan hoped the electorate would more readily accept the necessity of a strong navy: He tried to show citizens how their navy was essential to protecting their interests. More than most naval officers of any generation, Mahan understood the paramount necessity for naval policy to command not just public assent but also public understanding to obtain the requisite levels of funding.
Mahan undertook his educational campaign at an inflection point in U.S. history. Naval reform remained a contentious political issue throughout the 1890s, provoking disagreement over the precise character and purpose of the force needed, and especially over the funds required. The dispute was so intense because it occurred during a period of social upheaval and economic depression—and against the background of a still more profound debate over the future shape of U.S. society. Simply put, there were competing fiscal demands. Some interests wanted the federal government to invest instead in national infrastructure (or the Panama Canal). Others demanded more generous pensions (especially for Union Civil War veterans). A large number thought the money would be better spent fixing societal problems at home—a down payment on a redistribution of wealth necessary to create a more equitable society. (Sound familiar?) It was an ongoing debate with clear parallels to today. Mahan’s skill was in relating seemingly narrow naval issues to politically important nonnaval ones. That was why he commanded a large audience.
Globalization I
In his later work (which is seldom read), Mahan refined his thinking about sea power. Belying his reputation as a crude apostle of the combat battlefleet, Mahan explored the workings of, and contemporary changes to, the global economic system. Indeed, it is fair to say Mahan was an early student of the late-19th-century economic transformation that today is called the first era of globalization, or Globalization I (the current era being Globalization II).
He made two key insights. First, he perceived that economic systems—old and modern—were intrinsically dynamic: The production of wealth was chiefly a function of the flow of international trade and spin-off commerce, not of raw productive capacity. Second, he saw that the growing interdependencies among national economies had myriad implications for the practical application of sea power. Consider: How can one apply naval pressure effectively if one does not understand the system one is trying to disrupt or control? What if economic pressure points—naval targets—shift as economic systems change?
In parallel, Mahan thought deeply on the changing character of war. As early as 1895, he displayed concern over the brittleness of modern societies—industrialized, urbanized, noisily democratic, and increasingly dependent on access to international trade—and voiced his fear that modern workers would be far less willing than their forebears to tolerate lower standards of living consequent to economic disruption caused by war. This growing brittleness, he realized, had strategic implications.
Although he consistently deprecated guerre de course as incapable of achieving decisive strategic results, he became more and more convinced that systematic commerce destruction, through blockade—economic warfare—was the primary object of sea power. Destruction of the enemy’s battlefleet might be a necessary means to this end, but only a means. Derangement of the enemy’s economy, so as to corrode the stability of its society, was the true end of naval force. In his own words: “The object of a blockade proper is to embarrass the finances of a country by shutting its ports to foreign commerce, thus deranging one main feature of its general markets, and thereby bring confusion into the whole [economy].”5
In 1910, Mahan wrote to The Times (of London) neatly summarizing his latest thinking on this point. Taking aim at a recent article that had argued “that ‘completely disorganizing the conditions of business’ constitutes ‘a pressure of comparatively small importance’ upon a nation at war,” Mahan responded:
I will venture the assertion that historically this is not so; that “complete disorganization of business,” which it is argued will result from the exercise of the right of maritime capture, has always constituted a “very important,” and often—if not always—a decisive “pressure.” To say that the greatness and intricacy of modern industrial and commercial development will cause the pressure hereafter to be greater is reasonably probable, and may safely be prophesized. To bring the pressure of war to bear upon the whole population, and not merely upon the armies in the field, is the very spirit of modern warfare.6
In short, Mahan predicted that major conflict between advanced industrial powers would imperil the highly optimized global economic system that underpinned industrial societies. What is more, in the future, sea power would become even more potent.
While Mahan discerned much on future maritime war, he never explained what would be necessary to make what we could term his “Sea Power 2.0” fully effective. The first to identify and assemble the remaining pieces of the puzzle was Admiral Jackie Fisher (who corresponded with Mahan). Under his leadership, the British Admiralty devised a strategy that married the Royal Navy to Britain’s effective monopoly over the transport, financial services, and communications infrastructure underpinning global trade.7 Information advantage was the key component. The effectiveness of the new strategy—or rather its potential, for very early on during World War I, Britain aborted full-on economic warfare because the resultant levels of collateral damage were too great—was quickly brought home to the Wilson administration after Britain started regulating U.S. trade (through neutrals) with Germany. Friction with Britain over trade provided the impetus for beginning a U.S. Navy “second to none” and the catalyst for the political cross-party pact necessary to introduce a progressive income tax to pay for it.8
Confusing Objectives with Objects
Why is Mahan not remembered this way? For one thing, Mahan’s work is difficult to read—perhaps he took too seriously the prophet’s charge to be mystical and inscrutable. He made most of his arguments implicitly, compelling readers to infer his point from the surrounding context. His earlier work is poorly structured and riddled with apparent contradictions. Even if, as Jon Sumida has shown, Mahan’s writing is a good deal more coherent and consistent than his critics have complained, fathoming his later work is complicated by the need to know a great deal of the history from his era.9 There are two other factors to consider.
First, most naval officers (including his mentor, Stephen Luce) displayed more interest in plundering Mahan’s books for operational precepts than for strategic insights. While this allowed them to skip over all the boring economics stuff, alas, it reversed his logic in the process. Mahan did indeed argue that the primary naval objective should be to obtain command of the sea (sea control) and that this could best be achieved by using battleships to win decisive sea battles. But the Navy interpreted this to mean that a battlefleet, command of the sea, and national power were functionally equivalent. In so doing, however, it conflated the conceptually distinct operational, strategic, and grand strategic levels of his analysis. Mahan in fact thought the principal goal of sea power was to create political leverage to bring an end to conflict on favorable terms by deranging the enemy’s economy and society. The (Navy’s) operational objective, the enemy fleet, was the subordinate means to the main political object.
Second, Mahan was writing not for posterity, but for a well-educated contemporary audience that recognized his allusions and references to the leading political issues of the day. In particular, Mahan’s writing was influenced by his perceptions of the first era of globalization—which World War I destroyed. International trade took nearly a century to recover. In the aftermath of the war, moreover, the future trended toward autarky and barter between trading blocks.
During World War II, the entire character of the conflict—as well as the nature and role of international trade—was very different from what it had been before. This is not to say trade interdiction became less important—on the contrary. While the Navy’s surface fleet hopped toward Japan, Admiral Charles Lockwood’s submarine force quietly annihilated Japan’s merchant marine, cutting off the Home Islands from oil and reducing its population to starvation. The regulation of neutral trade—normally a critical aspect of commerce destruction—was moot, because there was none. If it floated and was proceeding in the wrong direction, the Navy sank it.
When, therefore, Harold Sprout (incorrectly) remarked to a 1954 audience at the Naval War College that “Mahan never achieved much sophistication in the economic field and in consequence his economic thinking was a century behind the times,” he revealed far more about his own world than Mahan’s.10 By the 1950s, the international economy had changed out of all recognition, rendering much of Mahan’s analysis not merely irrelevant but incomprehensible. The term “globalization” had not even been invented. For many years thereafter, historians smushed together the effects of “globalization” with those of “industrialization.” During the late 1950s, international trade began to revive, but not until the 1980s can it be said that Globalization II had begun. Only since have Mahan’s thoughts become fully visible once again.
Stand Navy out to Sea, Trade Our Battle Cry!
The Navy’s primary purpose is to sustain friendly commerce by sea. Today, like it or not, globalization is again the order of business, and national supply chains stretch around the globe. The smooth operation of the international economy is critical to U.S. economic security, social stability, and national prosperity. All major commodities are traded globally, and the prices Americans pay (with occasional sharp changes that have a tremendous political impact at home) are set not by local factors of supply and demand, but in the global marketplace. Key sectors at the heart of the national economy—e.g., information management, steel, and aviation—are unavoidably intertwined. Yet, just as in the 1890s, politicians today seem loath to admit that the forces of globalization are beyond governments’ ability to control, at least for very long. To paraphrase Leon Trotsky, Americans might not be interested in globalization, but globalization is interested in them. Spending on the Navy may thus be seen as an insurance premium for national prosperity.
A powerful navy also exists as a force for deterrence. In the event of a conflict, it becomes the principal instrument of commerce destruction. A modern blockade can be thought of as a massive, systematic “denial of access” to the global trading system—across, under, and over the sea. Possession of a large fleet does not automatically confer the ability to achieve effective blockade. Nor can the capability be improvised on the fly: Up-to-date comprehension of current business practices, for example, is vital.
Yet preparation is difficult, for it compels politicians and the public to face unpleasant truths. The greatest challenge always is stopping neutrals (and your own people) from trading with the enemy. (For many businessmen, “patriotism” assumes elastic properties in wartime.) The effective interdiction of enemy trade necessitates regulation of neutral trade, as it always has; it is delusional to think otherwise. This regulation inevitably leads to diplomatic friction (making a navy unpopular in other parts of the government) and compels the service to enter the quagmire that is the law of nations. The howls of protest and pleas for “special exceptions” from abroad and at home will become deafening. It is therefore doubly necessary to be prepared.
Today’s Navy requires two things above all else: clear vision and money. It knows how to fight, and it can undertake complex operations. But in the long calm lee of Midway, has it perhaps confined itself overmuch to addressing the single potential adversary that its history has taught it to expect, while at the same time losing sight of its raison d’être? Naval officers are in the business of sharpening the point of the spear, as they must be, but sea power and combat capability are not the same thing. Navies are chiefly about peace, preserving it and securing it for civilian purposes. If conflict comes, moreover, without clear strategic aim, naval action is mere combat in pursuit of what Mahan termed “the sterile glory of fighting battles merely to win them.” To qualify as “strategic,” an action must meet two requirements. First, it must aim directly at achieving an overarching political goal. Second, it must include a path to end hostilities on acceptable terms: There must be an “off-switch.” What worked in 1945 will not work now.
The world has changed, and the Navy must change with it—as Mahan did. If the Navy struggles to articulate what it is for and what it can do in the modern world, then what are the prospects of getting Congress and the electorate to pay for what it needs? In times of relative plenty, lack of clear vision may not matter so much; but when fiscal resources are scarce, and there is serious competition for funds, then convincing taxpayers becomes paramount. As Jackie Fisher was fond of quipping, “The recipe for Jugged Hare begins with, ‘First catch your hare.’”
A Prophet of Power for Our Times - Defense & Aerospace Report
By Steve Deal
As a new Lieutenant (junior grade) Navy pilot flying the P-3C Orion over the Indian Ocean in the early 1990s, I like many others was carefully trained in the art of “recognition, identification, and grouping” – or “RIGing” as most of us called the maneuver.
RIGing part of an assigned surveillance mission where we would positively identify every ship we could find with the fuel and time we had available. Detecting first by our radar and then visually by descending to as low as 200 feet above the oceans, we would fly 500 yards off the starboard (right) beam of the vessel, and lumber on by, at the fuel conservation speeds of a big-wing, propeller-driven patrol aircraft. With a 35mm camera and four to five sets of human eyes, we would call out the name and registration of each ship (labeled on the stern, or back of the ship) and the order and variety of ship superstructure from aft to forward (back to front). Other crewmembers dutifully recorded these findings in a log, along with the exact latitude and longitude, course, speed, and observation of probable cargo loading (riding high in the water meant little load, the waves at the waterline meant the opposite).
This we would repeat in a 10-hour mission possibly 30-50 times. Climbing back to an altitude where our radar could again map the outlines of surface ship traffic, we would pick the next opportune target, and then descend again, perform the same procedure, over and over. Mowing the lawn, as some used to say, over endless acres of open sea. Far from the cerebral team sport of anti-submarine warfare, ostensibly our main national mission; yet without any associated anxiety that the job would not be done. Thousands of ships were out there at sea, and we could be the masters of our destiny for at least one day.
I often wondered then at 24 years old, having been commissioned at 21, with perhaps two years of flight school and a small amount of time in my assigned fleet squadron gaining initial qualifications: what are we doing with this information? Who is using it, and why?
Using my imagination and the very few answers that could be gleaned on the atoll of Diego Garcia, a British-owned Indian Ocean territory the U.S. was using at the outset of Desert Storm, I conjured the logs might be wired to some grand combination of U.S. Naval Intelligence, perhaps the U.S. Treasury or Commerce departments, perhaps even the Central Intelligence Agency and select allies. With all this effort expended, we as a nation had to know at a glance the global map of commerce. We must know where all goods (and therefore, economies) were coming and going, from which port of departure and arrival, and more importantly, whom we would protect while enforcing global freedom of the seas for navigation and trade, and whom in times of conflict we would not.
Even after ending a 27-year active-duty Navy career, I never found out exactly what that work of RIGing was used for – and it was indeed work getting the venerable P-3C, first designed and built in the 1960s as a military derivative of the 1950s Lockheed Electra airliner, out to the furthest-flung stretches of world ocean near the turn of the twentieth century and beyond, literally flying the wings off many of them and burning through countless engines while doing so.
It wasn’t until I knew I would be assigned to return to the Navy as a civilian, more than two years after retirement, that my youthful imagination was married to a new understanding of how that information might be used. That was in early 2018, when Admiral William F. “Bill” Moran, then Vice Chief of Naval Operations, asked me to come back and assist the new Undersecretary of the Navy, Thomas B. Modly, with the creation of a clean sheet review of naval education, a study of the impacts of learning Modly championed that hadn’t been conducted in over 100 years. Before my start date, I scoured every archive I could find about progressive naval leaders. I drove to Hyde Park, New York and dove into the boxes of former Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Delano Roosevelt; I searched the online records of his cousin, Theodore Roosevelt, who famously served in the same position before him, taking the reins of the Navy (and the nation, perhaps) when an attack on the U.S.S Maine occurred in a sleepy Cuban port. And I found every book I could – reading leaders like Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, Admiral William Sims, and most of all, First Sea Lord Jackie Fisher, who had seen the transformation of the Royal Navy from wooden hulls and sail to coal and paddles and then oil-fired engines and armor, submarines, mines, fast cruisers and dreadnoughts.
In all this research, there was one book I found in my stacks upon stacks that astounded me in its realism and purpose – one that as Thomas Hobbes famously wrote of his translation of the historian Thucydides, “secretly instructs” between the lines of many painstaking archival discoveries and flashes of insight: Nicholas A. Lambert’s Sir John Fisher’s Naval Revolution. I knew a little about Fisher from my days speechwriting for the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff and Chief of Naval Operations, which sometimes involved pleasurable days in the Pentagon library (a formidable resource I reckon still remains underutilized to this day, possibly unknown to many).
Yet Lambert uniquely brought Fisher to life.
By interweaving the archival finds of intimate letters between English leaders, their families, and even would-be lovers with research in the official records of multiple government departments to produce a tightly woven narrative, Lambert taught how a coherent governmental interagency process could be orchestrated to effect national will and remain predominant on the world scene. In so doing, he immersed the reader in history as it was being made, better than anything else I read. This was not neat and tidy history written with the benefit of hindsight, but history that grappled honestly with the complexity of the national-security policy process — above all, with budgetary considerations, as omnipresent then as they are now, but which many of the other histories of force transformation that I read curiously neglected.
When I read Fisher’s Naval Revolution, I marked it up in pencil with questions, looked Lambert up online, found he was working for the Navy (as the then-Class of 1957 Chair of Naval History and Heritage), and just called him. And he actually picked up the phone. A few fascinating conversations later, he was invited to an “idea dinner” by Admiral Bill Moran held at his government quarters, seated with leading policy-makers of the time, a few of whom still serve in high office today. Lambert patiently taught then at table just as he does to willing readers, drawing on the insights developed in his two subsequent books, Planning Armageddon followed by The War Lords and the Gallipoli Disaster, which are well worth reading by US defense officials for their insights into economic warfare, civil-military relations, and the challenges of formulating national-security policy in a democracy.
But his fourth and most recent book is singularly important for them to read. In The Neptune Factor: Alfred Thayer Mahan and the Concept of Sea Power (the S in Sea Power is purposefully fashioned into a dollar sign), Lambert turns his attention from Britain’s most visionary naval officer to the United States’ most visionary naval officer. His method, as in all his work, is not to proceed from received wisdom about his subject, but to go back to the original sources. The result is a book that explains – far better than any account of Mahan known to me – why he is still read in Beijing today, and why he would repay closer reading in Washington.
Lambert’s Mahan is not the crude evangelist of decisive battle between battleships he is often caricatured as but a subtle and evolving thinker about the relationship between naval and economic power. Rejecting the notion that Mahan should be read for his contributions to some abstract naval theory, Lambert insists on the need to put him in his historical context — which was dominated by massive economic change. Domestically, U.S. industrialization powered a turn towards global dominance in the decades after Reconstruction, and before World War I, America already led the world in many decisive economic factors, although still dependent upon its power mentor, Great Britain. Internationally, this period of American industrialization, as true of the Second Industrial Revolution more broadly, was accompanied by the first era of globalized world trade.
Mahan, as Lambert shows, was intensely interested in both domestic and international economics, corresponding about it not only as a young officer with his friends but also — and this is one of Lambert’s archival nuggets — as a recognized authority with leading economists of the day. What many still see as Mahan’s life’s work, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783, was actually only his first monograph. Although this book made Mahan into an international superstar unlike any other previous American naval officer (or possibly since), Lambert demonstrates that it was merely an initial point of departure for Mahan’s further intellectual journey – his preliminary thoughts. And, as I was grateful to note, Lambert agrees that Mahan, especially in his first works, was and remains just a touch difficult to read as he wrestled for a narrative within them.
As time went on, Mahan moved from his early, more limited emphasis on naval force as a projection of physical power to the much deeper interdisciplinary appreciation of naval force as integral to the global economic system and to the United States’ domestic stability. Lambert guides the reader through Mahan’s follow-on writings, which few seem prepared to indulge in today, or for that matter, as Lambert shows, even just a few years after Mahan’s time on earth had passed. When his own writings reflected his increasingly sophisticated and nuanced view of American’s role on the global stage, his popularity inversely suffered. The naval Icarus of his day died in less than happy terms, to be later resurrected over and over by those who would lift only fragments of his intellectual journey – mainly, the parts that mattered to them and their agendas, rather than any desire to see Mahan as a thinker and person in full.
Lambert’s book underscores just how unfortunate the loss of the historical Mahan to myth has been, and why it is so important to recover him today. Manifestly, Lambert’s Mahan-in-full is more relevant to contemporary US national-security policy than the legendary Mahan obsessed with “kinetic” combat operations. Does a conflict with China seem more likely to center on a Midway-style clash of aircraft carriers, or does it seem more likely to center on economic warfare, via deliberate derangement of the infrastructure of the global trading system in this, humanity’s second era of globalized world trade?
No less important is Lambert’s inspiration to young students of power today. His unequalled treatment of Mahan demonstrates many truths between the lines, and they resonate. Mahan the prophet of naval power was also a sometimes-prickly human being, who struggled with his own personal demons and insecurities – about the doubts of his peers, about the relevance of his own naval career, even about his personal financial security. Hence Lambert’s study resonates as much for its personal as its intellectual lessons: the importance of networks and mentors. How thoughts and views necessarily evolve as one matures. How difficult it is to remain focused upon the love of study for its own sake. The siren songs of fame and lucre. What to do with second chances. How service to country still matters today.
Then there are the professional lessons which each leader will read differently, perhaps, according to their personal experiences and reflections: how battling back autocracy’s endless overreaches requires a constant and coherent interagency approach. How the Navy is a potentially essential coagulant of such interagency coherence, if properly led and resourced to engage in global competition through its natural, pivotal role in a necessarily capitalistic medium – even if that role in advancing American power is unwanted by the Navy itself. Why such conflict requires the contemplation of the necessary tools of power which often seem less than honorable: espionage, the political will to leverage earned interdisciplinary capabilities, the potential of naval force as an economic weapon. In the end, lessons on how a synthesis of naval force can both lift the dreams of many through the defense of the commons for all in times of relative peace, and also create a readiness to favor one’s own economy in conflict, sometimes at the detriment of other innocents not caught up in the power struggle themselves – uses our own competitors are likely planning against us today.
These lessons described above are far from the only ones to be derived from a rewarding read and re-read of The Neptune Factor. Perhaps the best tribute that can be paid to Lambert’s work is that it offers a few answers to the wonderings of a young Lieutenant pilot, enthusiastically deployed to the far corners of the Indian Ocean to do his small part of a more comprehensive national security strategy. As a historian, Lambert does not say what U.S. strategy should be. But The Neptune Factor offers ample food for thought for those who want American naval power to fulfill its true purpose – protecting and advancing the naturally unstable sovereignty of democracy, for both ourselves and those willing to partner in the effort.
Steve Deal, Captain, U.S. Navy (Ret.) served as Deputy Chief of Staff to the Secretary of the Navy and Deputy Chief Learning Officer for the Department of the Navy. During his twenty-seven years on active duty, he commanded Patrol Squadron Forty-Seven, in Ali Air Base, Iraq; Joint Provincial Reconstruction Team Khost, Afghanistan; and Patrol and Reconnaissance Wing Ten in Whidbey Island, Washington.
in CYBER ANALOGIES
Edited by Emily O. Goldman and John Arquilla, NPS-DA14-001, February 28, 2014 CyberWar_Analogies.pdf, pp 88-131
The Strategy of Economic Warfare: A Historical Case Study and Possible Analogy to Contemporary Cyber Warfare
Nicholas A. Lambert
The international economy today bears an uncanny resemblance to that of a century ago. The stability of the modern international economy rests upon the free movement around the globe of goods, money and above all information (broadly defined). Within this globalized trading system, there exist numerous parallels to the 1914 setting: ever-increasing velocity of transactions and pace of economic activity flowing through financial systems; dependency upon accurate and instantaneous information; vulnerability of merchants to a collapse of the insurance and reinsurance industry; and the buying and selling of ever more sophisticated and intangible financial instruments. In all these respects, the world of 2014 resembles that of 1914.
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