Beyond a geopolitical view of the oceans: oceanpolitics and the singularity of the

maritime domain
Leonardo Faria de Mattos
Bruno de Seixas Carvalho

Introduction
Over the last decade geopolitics has increasingly dominated the international debate.
Whenever a topic is globally relevant, it becomes geopolitically noteworthy, giving birth to a plethora
of expressions such as: the geopolitics of energy (Kaplan, 2014); geopolitics of cities (Ipea, 2016);
the geopolitics of water1; geopolitics of the virus (Valença&Carvalho, 2021); geopolitics of food
(Vieira et al, 2019) and many others. Since the neologism was created in the late 19th century by the
Swedish jurist Rudolf Kjellén, the geos (land) prefix has had more than a semantic influence and
conspicuously oriented the application of the term. Thus, geopolitics usually means the objective
relations of states in a hard power competition over a given issue, and in a determined region on the
map. Put simply, it is the relation between power politics and geographically objective space
(Spykman, 1942; Strausz-Hupé, 1942; Mattos, 1988, 2002; Castro, 1999; Kaplan, 2000, 2012; Costa
e Silva, 2003)
In this respect, “geopolitics of the oceans” is the term frequently used to bring the maritime
domain to the centre of the political and strategic analysis, usually relying on the opus magnum of the
North American Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History (1660-
1783). If Mahan never used such an expression, Admiral Stavridis’ partly-memoirs book loosely
defines it as the constant influence of the sea upon political events ashore (Stavridis, 2017). Recent
events such as the South China Sea dispute; the Crimea annexation by Russia in 2014, and the ongoing
dispute between Greece and Turkey over their maritime limits in the Aegean Sea highlight the
relevance of the topic.
However, the oceans’ importance goes much further than being a means of dominium. As
much as 25% of the world’s oil and natural gas lie beneath the seabed, and 16% of all animal protein
consumed come from the sea, explaining its importance as humankind’s resource. As a medium of
transport and information, 95% of the world’s data runs through fibre optic cables at the bottom of
the oceans, and 90% of the global trade is maritime2. Furthermore, the oceans are also crucial climate
regulators and are assumed to be the locus of our civilisation (Stevens & Wescott, 1958; Paine, 2013).
These represent the much-quoted four attributes of the sea, as Geoffrey Till skilfully highlights (Till,
2018, p. 06-17).
Hence, is Geopolitics, as a !both efficacious and misfiring, and a plastic or malleable (as well
as controversial) term” (Black, 2016, p. 03) still the only adequate concept to grasp the political

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singularity of a space as heterogeneous as the oceans? Into what extent does a geopolitical analysis
neglect the nature of the sea as a particular political territory? What differences can the oceans provide
if considered in their precise constitution?
In answering these questions, this chapter will seek to indicate the limits of the concept of
geopolitics and present an alternative theoretical conceptualisation for it: the idea of oceanpolitics.
The term was originally carved by the Chilean admiral Jorge Martinez Busch in the 1990s seeking to
ensure that the Chilean political decisions incorporated the influence of the seas upon the “life of the
State” (Busch, 1993, p. 3). Busch persuasively characterised the oceans as a cohesive element,
balancing a complex system, and functioning as a vector of communication; production; recreational
and touristic matters, urban; juridical, and of projecting power (Busch, 1996). Oceanpolitics thus must
be an “unitary vision capable of indicating how these vectors act with each other, and how a national
oceanic politics can articulate such a system” (ibid. p 337). Similarly, the then Rear Admiral - now
the Commandant of the Brazilian Navy - Ilques Barbosa Junior applied the term to the Brazilian
maritime reality and astutely indicated the South Atlantic as its strategic oceanpolitical space
(Barbosa Junior, 2007). Quoting Lord Palmerston's3 famous saying, Barbosa Junior highlighted the
importance of the term for national security matters, framing the South Atlantic as the locus for
survival and prosperity (Ibid, p. 20).
However, as much as the two admirals indicated the importance of the oceans, they still did
not further analyse the singularity of the oceans per se. Arguably, this might explain why there is no
academic debate regarding the concept, neither has the practical emphasis of its importance being
problematised outside the Brazilian Navy. In this sense, original approaches have been made by
geographers and sociologists. John Hanningan, for instance, insightfully analyses the competing
narratives concerning what he calls the geopolitics of the deep oceans. Defining the maritime domain
both as “a physical site sculpted by ocean currents […] and a construct shaped by geographical
knowledge” (Hannigan, 2016, p. 17) he goes on in calling attention to the danger involved in the
escalating competition for the conquest of the oceans. As we shall see, Philip Steinberg
conceptualised a geographical “ocean-space”, and deeply studied the social construction of the oceans
(1999, 2001, 2013). Hester Blum studied the cultural conditions of seamen in the middle 19th century
United States (2008), arguing later that “the sea is not a metaphor”, and “oceanic studies could me
more invested in the uses, problems, of what is literal in the faces of the sea’s abyss of representation”
(2010, p. 670). Kimberly Peters have tried to bring the oceans to the core of the geographical analysis,
underlying the flagrant absence of the oceans in the discipline (2010), and them presenting an
authentic research on offshore radio piracy (2012).
However, these academic debates do not touch the field of geopolitics, missing a crucial
interconnection with Political Sciences and International Relations. Hence, in filling this gap, we will

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argue that, since the beginning of the 20th century, the theoretical approach and political dimension
of geopolitics has largely relied on the idea of territory as a homogeneous land-space, projecting the
notion of land upon the sea mainly through the works of Sir. Halford Mackinder and Alfred Thayer
Mahan. We will distinguish geopolitics of the oceans from oceanopolitcs by advocating that the
oceans are singular spaces in four main aspects: ideationally, ontologically, geographical and
strategic. This will result in a conceptual analysis, that is, an extensive approach seeking to formulate
common understandings of what relates to oceanpolitics via a multidisciplinary approach.
In presenting this alternative view, we do not intend to dismiss the important contribution of
the core geopolitical thinkers, much less to overlook the political use of the concept itself. Rather, we
seek to follow admiral Ilques’s lead in furthering his “preliminary research” on the topic (Barbosa
Junior, 2009). We believe that this is important for four reasons. Firstly, it will bridge the gap between
several fields of study, leveraging the scope of maritime studies. If we consider the latter as an area
of knowledge that seeks to highlight the social, economic, cultural, political and strategic aspects
involving human relations and the oceans (Almeida &Moreira, 2019, p.13), then, oceanpolitics could
be crucial. Secondly, questioning the theoretical approach that explains the centrality of the seas for
the world politics could create new analytical frameworks in an area extensively dominated by Anglo-
Saxon and Western European views. Thirdly, since theories serve as toolkits to assess reality, the
conceptualisation of oceanpolitics might influence decision-makers in a long-term perspective.
Finally, the concept of oceanpolitics might help fostering a maritime mentality, due to its wide
approach.
This chapter is comprised of four parts. The first one seeks to elaborate on the concept of
geopolitics, highlighting its political and epistemological trajectory since the end of the 19th century.
We then provide, in the second section and third section, a more meticulous analysis on Mahan and
Mackinder’s main concepts, focusing on their view on the seas as a political space. In the fourth part,
we will contrast their approach by showing how unique the ocean space can be. We hope to conclude
that oceanpolitics is not merely a matter of semantic change and is able to deeply contribute to an
alternative political perspective.
The epistemological trajectory of Geopolitics
A precise definition for Geopolitics is anything but homogeneous. Overall, it essentially
means an analytical framework that seeks to articulate the importance of geographic territorial
patterns in political history (Gray & Sloan, 2005, p.02). From such a perspective, !a geopolitical
thinking” can be traced back from Plato and Aristotle, to Bodin and Monstesquieu (Cohen, 2015, p.
17). Even José Bonifácio, the architect behind the creation of the Brazilian navy is deemed to have a
geopolitical thinking4 (Mattos, 1988, p. 30). However, the neologism geopolitik was carved only in
1899 by the Swedish jurist Rudolph Kjéllen, as an outcome of the social-darwinist turn natural
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sciences had acquired. The “inevitability of history” as Isaiah Berlim writes5, is deeply present in
Kjellen's idea of geopolitics, that is: “the science which conceives the state as a geographical organism
or as a phenomenon in space” (Cohen, 2015, p. 18).
Kjellen largely relied on Friedrich Ratzel’s Political Geography, whose main argument was
that the states should function as living organisms, and its political purpose is to articulate people and
territory according to geographical laws governing space and location (Stogiannos, 2019, p. 13).
Political geography, thus, should be a scientific discipline whose first task was “the detection of
telluric facts, based on the political and economic phenomena” (Ibid, p. 14). In an 1895 essay The
Laws of Spatial Growth of States, he observes that culture and “other manifestations of the growth of
people precede the growth of the state”, a mechanism closely related to land. This is because the soil
permits the fixation of people in a given territory, and function as the “bearer of its growth as well as
its fortification” (Ratzel, 2011 [1897]). Driven by the natural laws of growth, states need their
physical space in order to expand, via what he called Lebensraum (Castro, 1999).
This ideological approach to geopolitics is much less evident in the so-called “Anglo-Saxon
school of geopolitics”, contemporary to Kjellen and Ratzel (Valença & Carvalho, 2021). Although
not using the neologism, both the British geographer Halford Mackinder and his Heartland theory,
and the North American Navy officer Alfred Thayer Mahan and his Sea Power thesis, were able to
relate natural conditions to policy decisions, much similarly to the way we understand geopolitics
today. As we shall expose later, Mackinder’s thesis revolved around the strategic importance of the
Pivot Area (later the Heartland), a Eurasian landmass historically marked by territorial conflicts and,
thus, potentially determinant for the future of world politics (Mackinder, 1904, 1919). Mahan’s most
famous book The Influence of Sea Power Upon History (1660-1783) sought to highlight the
conditions upon which sea power drove the prosperity of nations. Such conditions largely relied on
geographical and political elements ashore; the much-debated elements of Sea Power, analysed in the
next section (Mahan, 1987 [1890]).
After the Second World War (1939-1945) the association with nazism via Ratzel’s pupil
Haushoffer influence on Hitler and Rudolf Hess (see Herwig, 2016) resulted in a sharp decline of
geopolitics as a formal discipline in Europe and in the U.S. (Heppler, 1986). In Brazil, on the other
hand, Kjellen and Ratzel’s ideas were applied by Everardo Backheuser (1954), who even established
a formal discipline of “geopolítica” as early as 1948 (Miyamoto, 1981, p. 80). Mackinder’s ideas
were more evident on Mario Travasso’s “A projeção continental do Brasil” (The Continental
Projection of Brazil) (1947). The foundation of the Brazilian War College in 1949 fostered the
Brazilian geopolitical thought with authors like Golbery do Couto e Silva (2003), Meira Mattos
(2002) and Therezinha de Castro (1999).

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 Overall, these authors, although shedding light on the importance of the sea, emphasised the
Brazilian continental perspective more deeply and became national strategic paradigms. Sayings like
“Brasil is a continental State” became conspicuously famous. Even the Brazilian Navy’s strategic
concepts and documents are enormously influenced by the Army’s geopolitical thought. For instance,
the Naval Military Doctrine (2017) and the Navy’s Strategic Plan 2040 (2020), still largely rely on
Golbery’s sketch for a national geopolitical doctrine, where he depicts the expressions, or the fields
of geopolitics (political, psychosocial, economic and military) as well as his methodological bases
for a national strategy (see Couto e Silva, 2003, p. 545-592).
In the U.S, the European émigrés Nicholas Spykman, Robert Strausz Hupé and Hans
Morgenthau between the 1930s and 1950s, contributed to “the gradual passage from the study of
geopolitics as a natural science to its study as a social science” (Grygiel, 2006, p. 08). In avoiding the
use of term, and employing a systematic study of international relations, these authors aimed to restore
the reputation of geopolitics and disassociate it from the Nazis (Hepple, 1986; Grygiel, 2006). This
was particularly evident in Strausz-Huppé’s The Struggle for Space and Power (1942), which placed
the roots of geopolitics in 1823’s Monroe Doctrine, for example. Spykman’s Rimland theory sought
to emphasise the Eurasian portion that encircled the Heartland, as well as its importance for the U.S
foreign policy and for the global balance of power (Spykman, 1942).
These ideas were largely influenced by Mackinder and Mahan’s principles, understanding the
underlying geopolitical dynamics with the apparent linearity, objectiveness and predictability of the
land as the primordial space for the political struggle. Such views affected the U.S grand strategy
during the early Cold War period and the containment policy6 (Gaddis, 1982, p. 56, Sloan 1988), as
well as deeply framed the way of thinking about International Relations.
In the 1960s, in the U.S, the geopolitical discussions revolving around the concept of Rimland
decreased its importance, due to the nuclear deterrence theories and the new technological
achievements brought by the ability to project nuclear weapons by aircraft and missiles (Heppler,
1986, p. 24), revealing once more its epistemological dependence on land. However, from the 1970s,
the changing character of the international political atmosphere between the U.S.-URSS, and the
decolonisation process created the conditions for the revival of the discipline (Ibid). The
popularisation that followed is frequently attributed to Kissinger’s overuse of the term geopolitics in
his works and interviews, more particularly in his memoirs The White House Years (1979). In
academia, Colin Gray’s The Geopolitics of the Nuclear Era: Heartlands, Rimland and the
Technological Revolution (1977) marked the first time the word was overtly used with a considerable
influence on the growing body of strategic studies, the latter largely levered by Mahan and
Mackinder’s thought.

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 During the 1960s and 1970s different approaches to geopolitics, more inclined to political
geography, started to emerge. Saul Cohen divides these approaches in three tendencies: (1) towards
a polycentric international power system, drawing upon Henz Werner and the general systems
principles of Bertalanffy (where his theory fits); (2) based on the unitary economically world model
proposed by Immanuel Wallerstein’s theories, and shifting the political cleavage to North-South
disputes (instead of West-East) (3) an environmentally and socially ordered geopolitics, as
inaugurated by Yves Lacoste and the French journal Hérodote (Cohen, 2015, p. 31).
After the Cold War, geopolitics has come to be understood through an even wider lens of
analysis. Critical thinkers, like Gearóid Ó Tuathail, followed Foucault’s notion of governmentality
and discursive formation of épistemes (Foucault, 2002) to consider geopolitics as a “geographical
knowledge […] that sought to organize and discipline what was increasingly experienced as unitary
global space into particularistic regimes of nationalistic, ideological, racial, and civilisational truth”
(Ó Tuathail, 1996, p. 12). If for Tuathail Geography was not objective by any means, for Robert
Kaplan it was the “backdrop for human history itself […] A state's position on the map is the first
thing that defines it, more than its governing philosophy even”(Kaplan, 2000, p. 29). His “Geopolitics
of Anarchy” draws on the premise that the gap between rich and poor countries might lead the world
to chaos, and the U.S. has the power to stabilise this conundrum (Cohen, 2015, p. 32).
To the present, although widely debated, Geopolitics is still epistemologically and politically
dominated by its “founding fathers”, frequently applied to the field of Strategic Studies. This
objective view is of remarkable importance for the long-term planning of decision makers. However,
it places the oceans as annexed to land, and carries an Anglo-Saxon- European bias. In this section,
we briefly tried to explain this land standpoint. In the next section we will turn to a more in-depth
analysis of Mackinder and Mahan’s View.

Halford Mackinder, the Heartland Theory and the Closed Seas

The British geographer Sir Halford Mackinder and his “Heartland theory” is one of the most
significant contributions for contemporary geopolitical thought. Mackinder was fully aware of
Ratzel’s ideas, and like him, shared the evolutionary biological framework central to late-nineteenth
century scientific and public debate (Kearns, 1984). In his much-commented 1904 lecture, The
Geographical Pivot of History at the Royal Geographical Society, Mackinder argued that nature
exerts a general physical control over political decisions, conditioning the “human history as part of
the life of the world organism” (Mackinder, 1904, p. 422). This “single world organism” was the
result of the increasingly interconnectedness of world politics, due to the transformations in transport
and communications technologies - what he addressed as a “closed system”, an argument he had
stated before (see Mackinder, 1887).
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 In this respect, Mackinder believed that the evolution of railways was of particular
importance, as it provided the conditions for humankind to overcome and exploit the geographical
conditions that shaped policy decisions throughout time. Moreover, as the mapping and surveying of
Earth’s surface between 1500 and 1900 had been completed “with approximately accuracy”
(Mackinder, 1904, p.422), the political and strategic importance of the oceans was part of the past.
The “Post-Columbian age” indicated that the balance between land power and sea power was
changing towards the former, a fact that could noticeably jeopardise the British maritime supremacy.
This is the reason why the “Pivot Area” was of paramount strategic value: an immense Eurasian
territory, essentially comprised of the Siberian forests to the north, and its steppes to the south,
encircled by the deserts and sub-arid steppes of Turkestan. Whereas physical conformation rendered
the Pivot Area inaccessible to sea power, its military mobility could be enormously increased with
the help of roads, railways and modern means of communication (ibid, p. 434).
Therefore, whilst in the 14th century, the horse-riding nomad tribes of the Mongol empire led
by Genghis Khan were able to conquest Asia and shape European modern states, a “certain
persistence of geographical relationship” put the 1900 Russia in an analogous position (ibid, p.436).
Therefore, under the conditions of the early 1900s, the Russians were able to shift the Euro-Asian
balance of power and pose a direct threat to Britain, even more so if a potential alliance with Imperial
Germany took place (Ibid).
The Pivot Area received a more in-depth analysis in Mackinder’s book Democratic Ideals
and Reality: A Study in the Politics of Reconstruction (1919). A Member of the British Parliament
since 1910, Mackinder was deeply concerned about the Peace negotiations that followed the Great
War (1914-1918) as well as Woodrow Wilson’s naive ideals and narrow legalism7 (Knutsen, 2014).
Although drawing on the same premises he had devised in 1904 - namely the evolution of railway
technology, an international closed system and the demise of sea power - Mackinder reformulated
the political role of eastern Europe, expanding on the dimensions of the Pivot Area, now overtly
conceptualised as the Heartland.8 Stretching from the Baltic through the Black Sea, towards the Asian
river of Lena and Amur, the Heartland’s physical conformation made it surrounded by ice to the
north; mountains to the east; and desert to the south. Only to the west it remained unprotected and
accessible, due to the plains of Germany, a strategic geographical corridor. Hence:
Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland;
Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island;
Who rules the World-Island commands the World (Mackinder, 1919, p. 194).

Corroborating his previous conclusions, Mackinder once again highlighted the geopolitical
threat posed by an alliance between Germany and Russia. He went further on elaborating on a solution
for this problem, acknowledging that “it is a vital necessity that there should be a tier of independent
States between Germany and Russia” (Ibid, p. 205). By settling the questions between the Germans
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and the Slavs, Mackinder advocated the creation of a geopolitical “buffer zone” between the Germans
and the Russians, so as to prevent a single power from commanding the Heartland.
In 1943 Mackinder published a paper that shifted the Heartland theory towards a more holistic
perspective. Influenced by the experiences of World War II, The Round World and the Winning of
the Peace, describes the Heartland as a “sufficient physical basis for a strategical thinking”, but still
“the greatest natural fortress on earth” (Mackinder, 1943, p. 598-601). The problem was still Germany
(more emphatically now) and the Soviet Union, despite the feasibility that the latter could conquest
the former, thus ranking as “the greatest land power on globe” (ibid). Detached from a large Siberian
region east to the Lena River - the Lenaland - the importance of the Heartland remained crucial,
however a further four “geographical concepts” must help improving the international balance of
power: the Midland Ocean, the Mantle of Vacancies, the South Atlantic Ocean Basin, and the Asiatic
Monsoon Lands.

The geographical transformation of Mackinder’s Heartland concept Source: Cohen, 2015, p. 17

For Saul Cohen, Mackinder’s 1943 article incorporated a different perspective on the
Heartland theory, shifting from a geographical perspective based on military mobility, towards
another one hinging on people, resources, interior lines and new technologies such as airplanes
(Cohen, 2015, p. 19). Colin Gray considers Mackinder a man of his time, and the enduring
geostrategic importance of the Heartland theory was part of a long tradition in the rationale behind
the British foreign policy. Therefore, albeit changing the identity of the immediate threat – Russia in
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1919, and German more conspicuously in 1943 – his ideas encouraged the UK to join a state coalition
in order to deny continental hegemony. In this sense, the concept of “Middle Ocean region” provided
a highly prescient description of the structure of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Gray, 2004,
p. 20). Geoffrey Sloan shed light on the !amphibiosity” of the Midland Ocean and its strategic
capacity of allowing sea power to project itself ashore, suggesting that the third version of the
Heartland theory indicated an appreciation for sea power (Sloan, 2005, p. 34).
Mackinder’s intellectual trajectory, although clearly advocating the supremacy of land power
for international politics, has always placed emphasis on the geopolitical importance of the seas. For
instance, in the Geographical Pivot of History, he underscores the Mediterranean as the locus for the
early stage of western civilisation; and when addressing the rise of the Portuguese empire, the “all-
important result of the discovery of the Cape road” foregrounded “the revolution commenced by the
great marines of the Columbian generation” (Mackinder, 1904, p. 432). For Mackinder, by fostering
sea-power, the Europeans were able to triumph over the geographical conformation that landlocked
Middle Age Europe between deserts and icy forests.
However, this view was not anchored on the oceans per se, but on the perspective of its value
from and for land. This is not to say that Mackinder was wrong, neither to overlook his remarkable
strategic shrewdness. The point here is simply to underline that the Heartland theory, when
overemphasising the strategic importance of large portions of land, inaugurated an understanding of
the oceans largely shaped by land, as if both territories were identical geographic spaces. Arguably
such a perspective stems from his understanding of geography itself, whose idea of space was a
homogeneous and immutable territory in the long term. As part of the 19th century scientific zeitgeist,
for Mackinder, geography was “the science whose main function is to trace the interaction of man in
society and so much of his environment as varying locally” (Mackinder, 1887, p. 143), and the “the
Physical facts of geography have remained substantially the same during the fifty or sixty centuries
of recorded human history” (Mackinder, 1919, p. 37).
This “land perspective” is remarkably suggestive in Democratic Ideals, when discussing the
Seaman's point of view. Mackinder's main argument is that, throughout history, the most thriving
civilisations in politically and strategically mobilising their sea-power – from the Macedonians, to
the Romans, and even the British – succeeded in establishing a “closed sea”. A closed sea is a
maritime space surrounded by outputs ashore that enabled the near-to-absolute security of given
oceanic area. This strategic orientation stems from the fact that “after all, sea-power is fundamentally
a matter of appropriated bases, productive and secure” (Mackinder, 1919, p. 49). Hence, for
Mackinder, commanding the seas (and thus exerting sea-power) is an outcome of holding strategic
bases ashore, indicating that land-power is the condition for sea-power in the first place. For example,
when analysing the Roman’s Mediterranean Mare Nostrum, Mackinder states that:
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 True that there had been the culminating sea battle of Actium, and that
Caesar’s fleet had won the reward of all finally successful fleets, the
command over all the sea. But that command was not afterwards maintained
upon the sea, but upon the land by holding the coasts (Mackinder, 1919, p.
51).

Likewise, when discussing the features of the British sea-power, Mackinder considers one of
its most remarkable outcomes “the position in the Indian Ocean during the generation before the
[Great] War” (Mackinder, 1919, p. 74). This was because the British controlled the maritime region
in question by securing strategic points ashore, like the Cape of Good Hope, Australia, and India.
Moreover, diplomatically, most of the surrounding territories remained under control of friendly
European states, such as the Portuguese Mozambique, and the Dutch East Indies. Thus, the Indian
Ocean was also turned into a “closed sea” (ibid, p. 75), indicating that the maritime dimension,
similarly to the land, could be carved, encircled, and even controlled. Mackinder, thus, understood
space as a territory to be conquered via war.

Alfred Thayer Mahan and the Sea Power Thesis

If Mackinder was able to tackle sea-power as a concept, it was because in 1890, the US Naval
officer Alfred Thayer Mahan had created it. In the second 9, and arguably the most prestigious book
of his intellectual life, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History (1660-1783), Mahan introduced the
term, putting forward “the general conditions that either are essential to or powerfully affect the
greatness of a nation upon the Sea” (1987 [1890],p.02). Like Mackinder, he did not use the term
“geopolitics”, nonetheless he believed that geography played a pivotal role in historically fostering
the political and strategic use of the oceans.
In fact, for William Livezey, “as expositor of the Sea Power, Mahan was a geopolitical thinker
long before that expression was coined; as espouser of Sea Power, Mahan was the precursor of
Halford Mackinder” (Livezey, 1947, p. 286). Mahan was overtly seeking to sway the US’ foreign
policy towards a Maritime approach. He sought to achieve this by drawing from “the lessons of
history inferences applicable to one’s own country and service” and calling “for action on the part of
the government, in order to build again her [the US] Sea Power” (Mahan, 1985 [1890], p. 83 ). Thus,
for Henry Kissinger, as we saw, one of the levers of geopolitics himself, “Admiral Mahan"s perception
of the role of sea power proved that Americans could think profoundly in geopolitical terms”
(Kissinger, 1979, p.59).
Mahan’s Sea Power thesis came to him as gift from God, or as himself put “a mysterious
Power [..] imparting countless impulses” (in Seager, 1977, p. 431), when he was stationed in South
America, reading Theodore Mommsen’s History of Rome (Mahan, 1907, see also Ferrero, 2008). It
basically consisted of showing the centrality of the seas for the prosperity of nations, using England

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and the United Kingdom as an idealised model10. His thesis is largely put forward in four books, the
first being the one above mentioned, followed by The Influence of Sea Power upon the French
Revolution and Empire (1793-1812) (1892); The Life of Nelson: The Embodiment of Sea Power of
Great Britain (1897), and the fourth and concluding work was Sea Power in Its Relations to the War
of 1812, launched in 1905.
Unlike Mackinder, Mahan was not a scholar, and his intellectual journey started at the age of
45, after invited by his friend and mentor admiral Stephen Luce to give lectures at the recently created
Naval War College, between 1885-188611. Mahan’s works are not linear neither homogeneous, and
as Jon Sumida and Geoffrey Till both point out, he often changed his mind and even inadvertently
contradicted himself (Sumida, 2005, p.45; Till, 2018, p. 74). Overall, Mahan’s underlying arguments
revolve around the premise that trade produces wealth; wealth leads to maritime strength; and such a
strength relied on what Mahan called the “Elements of Sea Power” (Till, 2018). These much-debated
geographical and political conditions Mahan decided to include just before his first Influence was
published, as an introduction to the historical analysis that it followed. Mahan's intention was to make
his book more “readable”, however, as one of his critics commented, it turned out to become an
entirely independent book (Seager, 1977, p.205).
The six elements of Sea Power are: geographical position; physical conformation; extent of
territory; number of population; national character, and character of the government. Geographical
position seeks to evidence better access to sea routes, allowing for a more effectively concentration
of naval power and facilitating dispersion when needed (Mahan, 1987 [1890], p.29). Physical
conformation concerns the underlying natural conditions for safe ports and strategic rivers. For
Mahan, “numerous and deep harbours are a source of strength and wealth, and doubly so if they are
the outlet of navigable streams, which facilitate de concentration in them of a country’s internal trade”
(ibid., p 35). Likewise, the extension of territory is related to the “length of its coast and the character
of its harbours” (ibid., p. 43), meaning how much states’ seaboard can touch the oceans.
The three other elements are intimately connected to social and political features that
complement the apparent determinism of the geographical conditions. In this sense, the number of
population relates to the number of people readily available for employment on ship-board and for
the creation of naval materiel (ibid., p. 45). As for the character of the people, Mahan underscores
peoples’ social natural tendency to trade, or “the aptitude for commercial pursuits” and their
consequently capacity to have healthy colonies (ibid., p. 50). This element of sea power is closely
intertwined with the character of the government, which Mahan thought would foster political goals
in war and peace. Whereas for the latter, governments can encourage “people’s industries and its
tendency to seek for adventure and gain by way of the sea”; according to the former, strategic political
choices can achieve to create a powerful navy, however “more important than the size of the navy is

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the question of its institutions, favouring a healthful spirit and activity, and providing for rapid
development in time of war” (ibid., p. 82).
It is true, though, that the first Influence's chapter provides an insufficient and partial view of
the Mahanian thought (Almeida, 2013, p. 157). In fact, the complexity of Mahan's ideas goes much
further, scattered over his 20 books, 137 articles, 2900 surviving letters and more than 5000 pages of
fine print. However, perhaps precisely because widely (and often solely) read, the elements of sea
power became Mahan’s definitive mark, shaping the geopolitical trace of his maritime thought. As
W.D. Pulleston underscores, although seemingly obvious, these elements needed to be exposed, and
“Mahan did it so simply and convincingly that the world accepted his theory in his lifetime and
transmitted it as axiomatic to this [1940s] generation” (Pulleston, 1939, p. 104). For Livezey, albeit
not entirely original, the elements of sea power conditioned the creation of a philosophy of history
“which neatly linked patriotism, politics and economics” (Livezey, 1947, p. 49). Paul Kennedy,
although critically engaging with the issue, writes that “the elements of sea power appear to consist
of truisms until it is recalled how little of what became commonplace to naval strategy was only made
apparent by his [Mahan’s] writings” (Kennedy, 1991, p. 07).
It is fair to consider the elements of sea power the most innovative features in Mahan’s
thought. Not much because of the content itself, but due to the clear language that Mahan expressed
his ideas. Moreover, the remaining chapters of the first Influence, and most of the three other Sea
Power books developed a strategic analysis through a largely tactical approach (Till, 2018, p. 74).
This somewhat “mathematical” view on strategy when demonstrating principles such as
concentration of force; central position; sea lines of communication, and even command of the sea12
had been similarly employed by other philosophers and military theorists throughout the 16th and
17th century, mostly when discussing land warfare (see Gat, 1991).
This is not a coincidence. As Mahan explained in a letter to Captain W.H. Henderson, the first
Influence was the outcome of the problem he posed to himself of how the experience of wooden
sailing ships could be useful for the technological developments brought by the recently developed
battleships. The solution was "by showing that the leading principles of war received illustration in
the old naval experience, just as they did in land warfare under all its various phases during the past
twenty-five centuries” (in Seager, 1977, p. 209). Other than Mommsen’s history of Rome, Mahan
drew heavily on La Peyrose Bonfils’ History of the French Navy, Henri Martin’s A Popular History
of France, and most importantly the works from the Swiss born general Antoine Henri Jomini.
The particular influence of Jomini upon Mahan is widely commented (even his dog was
named Jomini), and he turned especially to the general’s Critical and Military History of the
Campaigns of the Revolution from 1792 to 1801 and his Summary of the Art of War. This is not to
assume that Mahan only read the French13 however, it indicates a particular way of understanding the

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role of the oceans from a land standpoint. In other words, in skilfully putting forward analogies
between land and sea warfare by using the ontological and epistemic referential of the former, Mahan
projected the land into the sea inaugurating the geopolitics of the oceans. Suggestively, Mahan’s
political and most distinctive view of his elements of sea power remained entirely ashore. The oceans
as the territory for political struggles is under-analysed, and instead, countries should master it from
their homeland based on geographical and socio-political givens (with the exception of the character
of the government). Although Mahan underscored the importance of maritime trade – as many before
him had done – the core of his theoretical view remains on land.
When it comes to the more tactical approach, the analogies between infantry units and ships
of the line, and between cavalry and frigates fascinated him (Seager, 1977, p. xiii). He saw twentieth
century naval tactics as an extension of the tactics used by armies in previous centuries. This Jominian
geopolitical view partly explains the inexorable seek for decisive battles in order to control or
command the seas as if it was a chunk of land, akin to Mackinder’s “closed sea” strategic view.
Hence, the idea of controlling the sea, does not account for the singularity of the oceans. Craig
Simmons’ perspective in this matter seems particularly accurate when considering Mahan not
significant as a strategist, but as the clearest representative of a philosophical rationale of the end of
the 19th century (Simmons in Till, 1984, p. 33).
In these two sections, we explained the theoretical framework of the most influential
geopolitical thinkers of the western thought. Neglecting the nature of the oceans, Mackinder’s
Heartland theory demonstrated the importance of sea power by transforming the maritime domain
into a closed sea, as a mere extension of land. This was because the core of his thought relied on the
Eurasian landmass that historically shaped the world history, being thus, its geographical pivot.
Mahan’s elements of sea power and his tactical analysis of naval warfare were “terrestrial” in its
approach, as arguably the most innovative part of his work described socio-geographical conditions
ashore, and the core of his strategic thought was analogous – if not identical – to Jomini’s thoughts.
In enabling a persuasive narrative about the strategic importance of the oceans, these authors
established, rather, a paradigmatic terrestrial strategic view that has dominated the way we
conceptualise the oceans. In the next section we demonstrate how the maritime domain can differ
from land.

Towards the idea of Oceanpolitics

As we have just seen, the terrestrial space shapes the current understanding of geopolitics.
Thus, “geopolitics of the oceans” can be an analytical framework that overlooks the singularity of the
oceans. Oceanpolitics is not merely applying the same geopolitical principles to the maritime domain,
because in doing so, a terrestrial approach shapes our understanding of the seas. How, then, can we
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conceptualise a policy from an “oceanic” rather than terrestrial view? We argue that in four major
aspects the oceans are singular spaces: ideationally, ontologically, geographically, and strategically.

The ideational oceanic dimension

By ideationally we mean the way that ideas induce beliefs and practices. Instead of a platonic
unreachable metaphysical reality, ideas can function as humankinds’ powerful approach to reality
and practical life. Hence, the idea of the ocean has singularly framed the way civilisations have
perceived the world since the Ancient Greeks14. As Marie-Claire Beaulieu (2008) explained, for the
Greek city-states, across time and space, water itself has always played a distinctive symbolic role in
their divinities.
Okeanus, thus, is a word whose origin is unspecified, but appears to be non-Greek, largely
meaning the “stream that surrounds the Earth”. Its mythological presentation was somewhat complex
and multiple. In the Homeric and Hesiodic cosmogonies, he was depicted as a Titan, the father of all
rivers and the origin of all underground water; the “circling river” (Hesiod, p.240), or the “deep
flowing” (Hesiod, p.265), whose origins are unknown, but its flows are powerful and constantly swirl
back on itself, in an eternal circuit (Beulieu, 2008). Such a depiction expresses the idea of the oceans
as a dynamic all-embracing totality, as if life itself was constantly encompassed by an inescapable
moving belt of water. Hence, for the Greeks, the ocean segregated the boundaries between the living
and the dead, in such a way that sailors – as Homer’s Odysseus – who crossed the oceans and
eventually returned, were deemed to had descended into Hades (Beulieu, 2008).
Similarly, albeit not following from the same insight, Andrew Lambert situates the importance
of the oceans as an element of cultural identity. Seapower does not equal Sea Power, as in his view,
the latter is a Mahanian ill-translated expression of the Greek word thalassokratia from identity to
strategy, hindering, thus, the ability to understand the cultural aspects of the term. According to
Lambert, Mahan’s approach “was restricted to the strategic use of the sea by any state with enough
men, money and harbours to build a navy” and to nations that “chose to emphasise the sea, to secure
the economic and strategic advantages of sea control to act as a great power, through a consciously
constructed seapower culture and identity […]” (Lambert, 2018, p. 04).
Seapower, on the other hand, is a national engagement towards a maritime culture that
pervades the popular culture in paintings, books, pottery and temples. It involves emotions,
mythology and values. While it can be a political choice, it usually stems from states which are
actually vulnerable, weak and dependant on the sea to overcome such weakness. Thus, maritime
identity is unusual and unnatural, being a choice that states who seek to be great powers do not make.
This shared idea of the ocean as part of the constitution of a society, brings about inclusive politics,

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“spread by sea as part of the trading network […] Such ideas appealed to commercial actors who
moved by sea and recognised the need to challenge rigid autocratic systems” (Ibid, p. 08).
Lambert defends that Athens was the first seapower state, in the modern sense of the concept,
that is, involving identity and strategy. It was rather a process consolidated by pre-existing ideas
stemming from the Cretan legacy, via a “memory of an older seafaring culture, referenced in the
Homeric stories” (Lambert, 2018, p. 25). After Athens, for Lambert, Carthago, Venice, the Dutch
Republic, and England (later the United Kingdom) were the only seapower states there has existed.
He goes as far as to say that the US and China, nowadays, although having an enormous strategic
advantage in the maritime domain (sea power) are not seapowers in its full sense.

The ontological singularity of the oceans

Philosophically, ontology reaches back Aristoteles’ thought, and is often associated with
metaphysical elements concerning the nature of existence and the formation of reality (see Werner,
1954). Albeit instigating an avid philosophical debate – from Kieerkgard, Spinoza, and Nietzsche, to
Husserl, Sarte, Simondon, Heiddeger, Deleuze and Guattari – for our purposes ontology here means
the material conditions that distinctively constitute the nature of the oceans.
Historically, though, as Philip Steinberg admits, these conditions have “come to be seen as a
series of (terrestrial) points linked by connections, not the actual (oceanic) space of connections”
(Steinberg, 2013, p. 157-158). Unable to provide permanent sedentary habitation, and connecting not
only the continents, but the oceans with each other (Lewis & Wingen, 1999), the ontological
singularity of the maritime domain is marked by its very geophysical mobility, being “a space that is
constituted by and constitutive of movements” (Steinberg, 2013, p. 165). Steinberg insightfully finds
in oceanography an expression to depict such a feature: the mathematical Lagrangian formulation
based on fluid dynamics. Overall, according to this model, movement is characterised by the
displacement of material within mobile packages, whose traces are only recognisable through their
mobility (ibid. p, 160). This particular approach bears some resemblance to Deleuze’s post-
structuralist philosophy and his inspiration by the Riemannian differential geometry15 (see Deleuze,
1956; Deleuze & Guattari, 1980), and is able to conceptualise the oceans as ontological fluid spaces;
a dynamic field that produces differences inasmuch as it unifies experiences echoing Bruno Latour’s
symmetrical anthropology (2013).

The geographical oceanic approach

These ideational and ontological aspects help explain the geographical uniqueness of the
oceans, and its underlying resulting epistemological challenges. As the maritime domain is equally a
fluid space, and a zone of interconnection and circulation, geographers usually struggle to address its

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particular features (Peters, 2010). It is rather complicated to tackle the manifold ways in which the
sea can be studied due to the variety of human relations on its surface via ships and commerce, and
the relations between humans and non-humans such as animals and fish underwater, involving several
ecosystems. As David Lambert et al. argues, “clearly, climatic geophysical and ecological processes
belong in work on the sea, be these in the form of the monsoons that do provide some climatic unity
to the Indian Ocean or the strong ocean currents […] that affect the Japanese archipelago” (Lambert,
Martins, Ogborn, 2006, p. 482).
Thus, geographically, the oceans require more than a human agency approach, that is, it
requires an analytical framework that involves the multiplicity of heterogeneous actors that
contributes to the uniqueness of its spatiality. As Steinberg highlights, the ocean-space is qualitatively
different from the land-space and should encompass an array of topics to be studied such as Human
Geography, Environmental Geography, Marine Geography, and Physical Geography (Steinberg,
1999). This complex task was remarkably put forward by Kimberly Peters when accessing pirate
radios and the materiality of a so-called “sea agency”. She focused on the cultural and social life of
the sea as well as on the heterogeneous elements from the “hydro world: the more-than-human sea,
its extraterritoriality, its motion, depth and dynamism and the ways in which these qualities, specific
to the sea, were bound up with the intimate fabric of corporeality” (2012, 1242). Peters’ approach
demonstrates how geography might innovate in grasping the variety of sources of study that the
oceans might offer.

The strategic singularity of the maritime domain

The uniqueness of the oceans in its ideational, ontological and geographical terms
consequently induce an equivalent strategic approach. In this respect, arguably, Sir Julian S. Corbett
was the first to author to shed light on this aspect. His definition for maritime strategy is widely
commented and demonstrates his attempt to distinguish the naval from the maritime sphere. Heavily
influenced by Clausewitz, Corbett overtly advocated for a theoretical approach in which he pointed
out how the maritime domain is different to that of land. For him:
the crude maxims as to primary objects which seem to have served well enough in
continental warfare have never worked so clearly where the sea enters seriously into
a war […] The delicate interactions of the land and sea factors produce conditions too
intricate for such blunt solutions (Corbett, 1911, p. 14-15).

It is true that Corbett famously underscored that because men live on land, political decisions
should be made ashore (ibid., p. 14). However, this was not an argument seeking to overlook the
maritime domain; rather, it was an attempt to focus on their strategic interconnections. As Corbett
writes, “the paramount concern of maritime strategy is to determine the mutual relations of your army
and navy in a plan of war” (ibid.). This means that the army and the navy must complementarily work

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together, instead of overshadowing the latter by the approach of the former. Differently to Mackinder,
for Corbett the great success of the British maritime strategy was to foster this mutual relation, by
adopting limited wars. Drawing on this Clausewitizian16 concept, Corbett observed that naval warfare
– at least at the time when he wrote – was quintessentially limited, as it was not impossible to
overthrown governments from the sea. Here, Corbett astutely hallmarks a distinctive strategic feature
of the oceans.
Most remarkably, however, is his notion of the command of the sea. Denying the possibility
of controlling a maritime portion of space as if it was a chunk of land, for Corbett: “The Command
of the Sea is not identical in its strategical conditions with the conquest of territory. You cannot argue
the one to the other, as has been to commonly done” (Corbett, 1911, p. 89). He goes on to explain
that such an analogy is false for two reasons. The first one is because, “unless inside your territorial
water”, the sea “is not susceptible of ownership” (ibid.), thus incapable of “excluding [e] neutrals
from it as you can from territory you conquest” (ibid.). The second is because one “cannot subside its
armed forces upon it as you can upon enemy’s territory” (ibid.). Corbett finishes his argument –
perhaps discreetly criticising Mahan – observing that “to make deductions from an assumption that
command of the sea is analogous to conquest of territory is unscientific, and certain to lead to error”
(ibid.).
After saying what the command of the sea is not, Corbett writes what it is, meaning nothing
but “the control of maritime communications whether for commercial or military purposes. The
object of naval warfare is the control of communications, and not, as in land warfare, the conquest of
territory” (ibid., p. 90). By highlighting these aspects Corbett echoes the ideational, ontological and
geographical particularity of the seas, focusing on the oceans as a space of movement and circulation.
His entire work on elucidating an adequate maritime and naval strategy, is tailored to such a
perspective. However, as Geoffrey Till highlights, Corbett was a man of his time and had his own
theoretical limitations. Albeit inspired by Clausewitz in some respects, he was a “cool rationalist”
who did not grasp the Prussian general’s trinity of war17, and the animal passions generated by it (Till,
2018, p. 85). Moreover, his emphasis on the specificity of the maritime domain in its spatial
dimension did not foresee naval warfare other than interstate conflicts. Hence, “today’s navies have
tasks Corbett never dreamed of” (ibid.).
In this respect, Geoffrey Till arguably fills this gap. Till offers a holistic strategic perspective
to guide navies in the globalised world of the 21st century. For him, the stability of the contemporary
international system, increasingly interconnected, and therefore, vulnerable to !new” forms of threats,
relies on the security of the maritime domain. Navies should adapt to this new reality, by adopting a
“new paradigm of collaborative endeavour that needs to be set alongside the more competitive naval
behaviours of the past” (Till, 2018, p. 36). This strategic undertaking must keep the threats to the
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maritime domain – and therefore, to the international system – under control, what Till calls
maintaining the good order at sea.
Maintaining the good order at sea is closely connected to the concept of maritime security
(see Bueger, 2015, Bueger & Edmunds, 2017) and is a different (though not mutually exclusive)
approach to the ordinary Mahanian view. This is because “new” enemies such as pirates, drug dealers,
human traffickers, terrorism, humanitarian disasters and illegal fishing cannot be originally defeated
in a decisive battle. Rather, tackling these enemies is a continuous, and never-ending campaign
involving multiple actors. If the international system is globalised, its threats have become global as
well, implying that no nation can cope with them alone, and bringing the need to an international
collaborative effort. Although acknowledging the controversy of the term (Till, 2018, p. 307), Till
call this strategic move, a battle for maritime security.
The battle for maritime security, for the continued operation of the sea-based
trading system is a demanding addition to the more familiar battle for the
defense of the narrow interests of the state. Partly this is because of the
maritime security battle!s globally inter-connected nature, its diversity, and
the manifold difficulties that it presents for those navies and coastguards that
are engaged in it. […] This is more a problem to be managed than a battle
to be won (Till, 2016, p. 181).

Overall, such a battle is a mission to be accomplished by post-modern navies, that is, navies
whose main strategic goal is to focus on the stability of the international system. In practice, it means
navies aiming to improve maritime awareness, and to implement both a maritime policy and an
integrated maritime governance (Till, 2018, p. 340-351). However, it is worth mention that these
maritime security approach does not exclude the “classic” Mahanian view, on missions of the so-
called modern navies18. Rather, Till stands for the complementarity of these categories, observing
that contemporary maritime strategy must balance naval power between cooperation and conflict.
Till’s approach seems to grasp the peculiarity of the oceans in their strategic view. He places
the maritime domain as the core of the international system, acknowledging its totality (ideational
aspect), its dynamical character (ontological aspect); its heterogeneous and multiple trace
(geographical aspect). Oceanpolitics, thus, is a political posture endeavoured by international actors
who seek to foster the singular aspects of the oceans. This is not a normative statement to describe
what actors should do; rather, it is a conceptualisation that helps the birth of innovative ideas with
practical outcomes which can distinguish states. The four aspects above mentioned are mutually
connected and do exist independently from each other. The biggest challenge is to grasp them
coherently towards a single policy. Overall, oceanpolitics is a cooperative holistic approach, where
states increase their national interests in tandem with the stability of the international system.

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Conclusion
The time has come for the oceans to acquire their uniqueness in international politics. In this
chapter we sought to put forward such an attempt by promoting the concept of oceanpolitics. We
explained that changing the prefix geos for ocean is not only a merely semantic move. Following the
growing body of literature stemming from Maritime Studies, as well as the insightful work of Admiral
Ilques, we demonstrated how geopolitics is a concept epistemologically embedded in a land
standpoint, thus inadequate to grasp the singularity of the oceans. In the first section, we briefly
covered the birth of the neologism from Kjellen to the Critical studies, to indicate into what extent
terrestrial views crossed the debate around the geopolitical debate.
In the second section, giving a closer analysis on Mackinder and Mahan’s work, as the most
influential geopolitical thinkers, we presented their biased view on the seas. Such a perspective helps
to explain why geopolitics has largely overlooked the oceans, and instead framed it as a land space.
After presenting this limit, in the third section we presented four aspect that distinguish the oceans
and finally underscore the difference beyond semantics that an oceanpolitics might have. We
suggested that since the birth of the western thought, oceans are associated with the idea of totality,
an ungraspable mobile aquatic materiality that defines life ashore, not the opposite. Thus
ontologically, oceans cannot be closed or controlled, as we have seen, based on Mackinder and
Mahan, ideas, respectively, because they are dynamics spaces. Geographically they require a holistic
approach what brings a different strategic perspective.
Hence, oceanopolitics is the political posture that grasps these four aspects and converge them
cohesively into long term policies. This is not to say that it is better or worse than geopolitics of the
ocean; neither we considered Mahan, Mackinder and the whole body of geopolitical thinkers as
useless. However, oceanpolitics as an innovative concept, might induce political practices that
distinguish countries internationally, and its multidisciplinary approach might encourage several
fields of study to assess the oceans singularity.

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1
Available at https://www.inderscience.com/info/inarticle.php?artid=44665 access on 8 February, 2021 07:15 pm
2
Available at https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/08/here-are-5-reasons-why-the-ocean-is-so-important/ access on
8 February, 2021 05:15 pm
3
Lord Palmerston was a British Prime-Minister that, during a speech at the House of Commons noticeable said that
Britain “have no eternal allies, and no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is
our duty to follow”. Complete speech available at https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1848-03-
01/debates/2221a5d7-21f5-49c5-a64a-cc333b61d517/TreatyOfAdrianople—ChargesAgainstViscountPalmerston

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4
As early as 1823, Bonifácio believed that Rio de Janeiro, then the capital of the recently independent Brazil, was
vulnerable to maritime attacks, because of its geographical condition. Thus, he defending a “central city in the centre of
Brazil, at the latitude of approximately 15 degrees and in a temperate weather, for the installation of the capital. See Souza
(2015), p. 138-139.
5
See Berlim (2013) p. 119-189.
6
This is stance is contested by Gerace (1991).
7
Mackinder was neither against Idealism, nor was he contrary to the League of Nations. His main argument was that a
more pragmatic view, or the “realities of power”, must be grasped in order to succeed in organizing international politics.
Knutsen raises a very interesting point in highlighting that Mackinder anticipated E.H Carr “first debate” in IR (Knutsen,
2014).
8
In 1904, Mackinder had used the term Heartland to refer to the Pivot Area, but as he points out, “incidentally and as a
descriptive and not a technical term” (Mackinder, 1943, p. 596).
9
Mahan’s first book was “The Gulf and Inland Waters”, published in 1883.
10
This assumption is often debated. For Sumida (1994) the Influence of Sea Power series was not unified around the
theme of the rise of British naval supremacy. Andre Lambert (2018) raises similar argument, when observing that Mahan
was largely concerned with French history.
11
For an in-depth analysis of this process, see Hayes and Hattendorf (1975); and Spector (1978)
12
According to Alves de Almeida, Mahan preferred the term control of the sea over command of the sea. However,
although the two expressions are commonly used interchangeably, command of the sea appears more frequently in
different works (Almeida, 2015, p.119).
13
Sumida (1994, p. 109-113) and Alves de Almeida (2015, p. 89-90) astutely highlight the influence of Clausewitz on
Mahan. Although Jomini was Swiss, he was entirely concerned with the French military history.
14
We are largely referring to the Greeks as the old city-states that used to exist where today is the contemporary territory
of Greece.
15
Steinberg’s criticism towards Deleuze and Foucault (2013, p. 158) misses the point that their philosophical analysis is
far from a metaphysical idealisation. When Deleuze and Guatarri refer to the ocean as a smooth space, they seek to
indicate a logic of operation; smooth is the hallmark of flows and intensities, an idea embedded in the ocean’s own
ontology. For a critical analysis of Deleuze notion of smooth space, as well as his reading of Henri Bergson’s notion of
the Riemannian space, see Widder (2019) and Duffy (2016)
16
Carl Von Clausewitz (1792-1831) was a Prussian general author of the seminal work On War. He theorises on the
complex phenomena of war associating it with politics in a systematic and precise style. Clausewitz analyses central
elements of war, from strategy to the military genius and all its unpredictability. Corbett was somewhat innovative in
using Clausewitz work in a time when Jomini’s theories dominated the European strategic thought (Gat, 1992). See Paret
(1976), Howard and Paret (1976), Strachan (2005). For a critical view, see Keegan (1989).
17
The trinity of war were the three major elements that characterize the ever- changing character of war: primordial
violence, hatred and enmity. These elements according to Clausewitz, are related to the people in form of their passion;
to the commander, in form of courage and talent to tackle the war’s “realm of probability”; and to the government in
dealing with war politically. In order to theoretically understand the way in which such a trinity affected war, Clausewitz
used the metaphor of a magnet, admitting that “our task is to develop a theory that maintains a balance between there
three tendencies, like and object suspended between three magnets” (Clausewitz, 1976, p. 89)
18
Modern navies, according to Till, are navies more wary of globalization and the implications for their own security and
sovereignty. Therefore, they are usually less inclined to collaborate with others in the maintain of world’s trading system,
and their missions are schematically: sea control; nuclear deterrence and ballistic missile defense; maritime power
projection; exclusive good order at sea; and competitive gun boat diplomacy (Till, 2018, p. 46).

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