Seapower and International Relations

Abstract

Since its popularisation by US Navy Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan at the end of the 19th century, the concept of seapower has been used indiscriminately and has also given rise to many debates. Indeed, this concept is particularly difficult to delineate and to use accurately, for it can be understood in many different ways. Although Mahan developed a proper ‘philosophy of sea power’ (Sempa, 2002: 105) destined to explain, advocate and justify naval programmes and naval militarism in the US, he did not precisely define the concept of seapower as such. His Influence of Sea Power identifies six conditions affecting the seapower of nations: the geographical position, the physical conformation, the extent of territory, the number of population, the national character, and the character of the government. Thus, Mahan explains how seapower is constituted, but not what seapower practically is (or means), except the connection between a flourishing maritime trade that generates the nation’s wealth and a powerful navy to protect it (Mahan, 2007: 589). Geoffrey Till pointed out that we can interpret seapower in two different ways: either as an input, that is to say the sum of various naval and maritimerelated assets, or as an output, that is to say ‘the capacity to influence the behaviour of other people or things by what one does at or from the sea’.