Mahan’s naval geostrategy: Challenges, risks and threats to the United States national security in the 20th century

Abstract

Actual aim of Mahan’s works was to change the US attitudes towards naval power. However, the very changing of the attitudes meant also a change in the overall US foreign and, in particular, maritime policy. In this respect, the initial Mahan efforts to initiate thinking about changing the American attitudes towards the naval power turned into outright lobbying for changes in US foreign and security policy, by pointing to a series of actual geostrategic and security issues that the US had in the late 19th and early 20th century. Taking into account the pronounced impact of geodeterminism in Mahan’s geopolitical and geostrategic ideas and concepts, but also modern rationalistic approaches to security, the issues can conditionally be classified as geographically determined challenges, risks and threats to the national security of the United States in the early 20th century.