Sublime

Naval vessels were extremely expensive items of capital equipment whose value deteriorated rapidly in adverse conditions. Naval warfare too was dominated by caution and manoeuvre. The stakes were high: outright defeat might mean invasion or the destruction of the merchant fleet. Hence navies were usually kept close to home.

if ever this war is to be won, it must be won at sea. Bonaparte has about forty-five ships of the line, and we have eighty-odd, which sounds well enough. But ours are scattered all over the world and his are not. Then again the Spaniards have twenty-seven, to say nothing of the Dutch; so it is essential to prevent them from combining, for if Bonapa

Another trait of a thalassocracy is that, as always with strategic positioning, trade-offs are essential[297]. Most old thalassocracies mastered the sea because they didn’t have much land to defend. Conversely, most countries with vast swaths of land had a hard time competing on the sea, because they lacked the focus and cohesiveness that made it p

Yet, although the Italian Navy struggled to create new capital ships, it also possessed young officers such as Junio Valerio Borghese, who were less impressed by tonnage and firepower than by the concepts of innovation, small-unit actions, and bravery.

To achieve supremacy at sea, the Navy’s General Board urged immediate construction of 176 ships at a cost of $600 million—the largest peacetime construction program in the nation’s history. The proposal included ten battleships, six battle cruisers, ten light cruisers, fifty destroyers, and one hundred submarines, along with the sailors to man them

As the example of the late Soviet Union illustrated so well, until a few years ago it was possible for states to exercise great power in the world even while wasting resources on a massive scale. When returns to violence are high and rising, magnitude means more than efficiency. Larger entities tend to prevail over smaller ones. Those governments t

There has been a lot of confusion lately about the exact meaning of fascism. People call almost anyone they don’t like a “fascist.” The term is in danger of degenerating into an all-purpose term of abuse. So what does it really mean? In brief, while nationalism teaches me that my nation is unique and that I have special obligations toward it, fasci

Crowe began where Mackinder left off. Great Britain was an island off the coast of a continent, but with “vast overseas colonies and dependencies.”21 Its survival required the “preponderant sea power” it had long maintained. This had made it “the neighbour of every [other] country accessible by sea,” a status that could have provoked “jealousy and