I was halfway through Corbett’s Principles of Maritime Strategy after reading Mahan’s Influence of Seapower upon History and something struck me as I compared the ideas of the books. Classes I had taken in college studied both authors, their ideas and theories. After developing an understanding of them we applied them to realms outside of the sea, in this case using them to build ideas for space power theory. Yet throughout this we never challenged the ideas that we were taught. We never read or saw these two books, and yet we took for fact that Mahan was solely for large, decisive naval battles (which he is) while Corbett advocates protecting your sea lines of communication (which he does). Yet this definition of these competing ideas was at best incomplete, at worst dishonest. Mahan establishes the idea of a naval power, and especially in the situation Britain was in during his era needing to dominate the seas and that the best way was through a decisive naval battle. Corbett agrees with this idea wholeheartedly. The only difference is that Corbett then goes on to admit that when you’ve gained the superiority Mahan suggests is necessary, it will become next to impossible to have a decisive naval battle. This leads to needing to find other ways to be effective, thus protecting SLOCS and setting up situations where the enemy perceives weakness and risks their ships.
The whole point I guess is that while we had the gist of what was going on, we lacked the background to question what we were told, and were never made to feel like we should acquire this background. We questioned things, but always in the boundaries that had been established. I think back through my schooling, and it seems this has always been the case. Read the textbook. Listen to the teacher. What we say is truth. It always has been and it always will be so. I see this as a problem. It is part of why I am writing this, to have a place to organize my thoughts, get them on paper (metaphorically) so I can look at them later and see if they make sense at all. So then the question becomes how do we lift the veil from our eyes. It’s one thing to go out on my own and go to the source in order to form my own opinions and have enough background to make them opinions I can support. I do not know what the answer is, but I think I at least have what I might consider a respectable question which is a start.
