The Need for Strategy: Comparing Mahan and Roosevelt on the Maritime War of 1812
The Need for Strategy: Comparing Mahan and Roosevelt on the Maritime War of 1812
The MOC
By Zachary Turinsky
September 20, 2025
At the turn of the 20th century, the United States built a navy, a process accompanied by intense political debate. In defending this navy’s importance, two of the nation’s navalists, Theodore Roosevelt and Alfred Thayer Mahan, turned to the past. Roosevelt, in 1882, wrote The Naval War of 1812; Mahan, in 1905, wrote Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812. The stories they tell, however, differ dramatically, and for that reason Roosevelt himself criticized Mahan’s great work. For Roosevelt, the war is a tale of American triumph; for Mahan, a dismal American failure. Mahan takes the broader, maritime picture; sea power encompasses protecting the totality of a nation’s interests at sea. Roosevelt, by contrast, takes a narrow naval view. Most importantly, Mahan writes with strategic acumen; Roosevelt, while writing with undoubted tactical expertise, lacks the richness of Mahan’s strategic vision. Two key examples, the importance of Kingston and that of Commodore Rodger’s expedition in the Atlantic Ocean, demonstrate the superiority of Mahan’s vision. As the U.S. Navy adapts to an era of renewed great power competition, Mahan’s insights demonstrate that sound tactics or operations alone are insufficient for victory. Strategic thinking is necessary to translate tactical victories into enduring success.
For Mahan, the War of 1812 was an unnecessary failure. The land campaign faltered; Washington was burned; the economy suffered from an English blockade; the American merchant marine was driven off the sea; and the American casus belli, neutral rights at sea, was not secured. By integrating the outbreak of the war into a longer history of American diplomacy in London, Mahan demonstrates the failure of the United States to achieve its diplomatic objectives. Compromise with Britain may have been possible, especially if the United States developed a navy to defend its interests.
For Roosevelt, though, the war was a triumphant success. Yes, Roosevelt admits the failure of the land campaign and the reality of the English blockade, though not the failure of the United States to achieve its war aims. Roosevelt, however, believes one success mattered above all else: the glory of the U.S. Navy. For Roosevelt, the U.S. Navy becomes less a political-strategic instrument and more an exemplar of martial vigor to bolster national pride. As Roosevelt writes in summing up the war, “the material results were not very great… but morally the result was of inestimable benefit to the United States. The victories kept up the spirits of the people, cast down by the defeats on land… and gave the navy, and thereby the country, a world-wide reputation.” The real mistake, for Roosevelt, was not the decision to go to war with England. Rather, it was the decision not to go to war with France, in addition! “What we undoubtedly ought to have done was,” Roosevelt wrote, “declared war on both France and England.” No doubt this was strategically disadvantageous, but it would have meant more combat for the navy, more of a chance to prove its fighting mettle. And as both Mahan and Roosevelt recognize, the U.S. Navy performed admirably in that single-ship combat on the open ocean.
Mahan, by using the lens of sea power and not merely naval power, is able to put these single-ship actions into a broader perspective. The purpose of a navy, for Mahan, is twofold: the military one of securing lines of communication and preventing an enemy’s invasion, and the economic one of protection of national commerce and destruction of the enemy’s. In this strategic framework, it is unclear to what purpose the U.S. Navy’s open ocean successes usually served. While Roosevelt devotes many pages to demolishing the work of the British historian William James and proving the fighting spirit of the American navy, for Mahan, the undoubted courage of American sailors is subordinated to a narrative of American strategic imprudence. For Mahan, “making comparisons of desert [in battle] between [the two navies] is a mere waste of ink, important only to those who conceive the chief end of war to be fighting, and not victory”. Mahan also emphasizes this broader maritime strategic perspective through one of the consistent themes of Mahan’s oeuvre, the inferiority of a strategy of commerce-destroying to that of a blockade. This central task of a navy, gaining control of the sea to protect or attack a state’s commerce, is rarely touched on by Roosevelt. Roosevelt discusses the glory of specific American privateers, but not the economic consequences of the British blockade. Mahan, by contrast, “tells the [economic] tale of congestion and deficiency, due to interruption of water communication,” which meant that “Great Britain could put forth her enormous naval strength with the most sensible and widespread injury to American national power, as represented in the financial stability which constitutes the sinews of war.” The concept of sea power, as opposed to merely naval power, provides Mahan with an analytical framework to appreciate the totality of the navy’s importance in war.
Mahan’s broader strategic insight means that, unlike Roosevelt, he appreciates two signal events in the war: the American failure to take Kingston on Lake Ontario and the success of Commodore Rodger’s expedition at the beginning of the war. For Mahan, the key to the failure of the campaign on Lake Ontario was the failure to take Kingston, because of the fort’s position on the mouth of the St. Lawrence River. “Upon Kingston and Montreal,” Mahan writes, “by their position and intrinsic advantages, rested the communication of all Canada, along and above the St. Lawrence, with the sea power of Great Britain whence alone could be drawn the constant support without which ultimate defeat should have been inevitable.” In addition, Kingston possessed Britain’s main shipbuilding capacity on Lake Ontario, which was crucial because each side depended on wartime shipbuilding to (re-)constitute their navy on the Great Lakes. If only the United States had successfully made a concerted effort to take Kingston, Mahan argues convincingly, Lake Ontario and those to its west could be controlled by the U.S. Navy, enabling a land offensive. As Mahan points out, “the two ports, not the fleets dependent on them, were the decisive elements of the Ontario campaign; and the ignoring of that truth was the fundamental, irremediable American error.”
Roosevelt, by contrast, de-centers Kingston from the narrative. Roosevelt does briefly mention Kingston and recognizes its importance when discussing the failure of Commodore Chauncy to provide naval support to a land offensive against Kingston. Outside of this passage, however, Roosevelt attributes the United States’ failure on Lake Ontario to a broader array of factors, such as the U.S. Navy’s hesitancy to engage the British navy or insufficient attention to taking Toronto, rather than a repeated failure to take this critical location.
This lack of strategic acumen is further demonstrated in one other example of sharp disagreement between Roosevelt and Mahan: Commodore Rodger’s daring expedition, consisting of five warships, at the beginning of the war. For Roosevelt, this was “a very unfortunate cruise, in which he had made but seven prizes,” and engaged in no glorious bouts of combat with the British. Mahan, by contrast, understood its broader strategic significance. In effect, this expedition denied Britain sea control in the Atlantic, with important strategic consequences. As Mahan argues, the presence of this large American squadron in the Atlantic forced the British to concentrate their navy to prevent any ships from being overpowered by Rodgers – whose location was unknown to Britain. This meant that the British navy could not disperse and hamper the return of American merchant ships. Most, therefore, successfully hurried back to the United States with valuable cargo after learning of the outbreak of the war. Many of these ships went on to serve as privateers during the war. As Mahan therefore points out, perhaps with Roosevelt’s book in mind, “it is in such study of reciprocal action between enemies that the lessons of war are learned, and its principles established, in a manner to which the study of combats between single ships, however brilliant, affords no equivalent.”
In all fairness, Roosevelt was only 23 years old when writing his Naval War of 1812, and his tactical accounts are well-reasoned and truly encyclopedic. Mahan, by contrast, was nearing the end of his storied career. And both thinkers agree on perhaps the United States’ greatest strategic failure: not building up a sufficient navy beforehand to prepare for the war. This comparison may therefore be unjust in judging the respective merits of Roosevelt and Mahan as naval thinkers. It does, however, demonstrate the necessity of strategic thought in naval warfare. Had Mahan’s strategic insights been followed, perhaps the United States would have won a decisive victory on the Great Lakes near the opening of the war. Were Roosevelt’s insights followed, and Commodore Rodger’s “unfortunate cruise” called off, large quantities of American commerce and ships returning from abroad may have been taken by the British, harming the American economy and taking future privateers off the seas. Small tactical successes may demonstrate the fighting spirit of a navy, but they cannot win wars. Winning wars requires strategic thought, that is, the application of systematic thought to action, a relation between ends, ways, and means. This Mahan provides, which explains his justly deserved fame as a theorist of sea power, and why his work has enduring relevance for the U.S. Navy in its 250th year.
Zachary Turinsky is a research intern at the Center for Maritime Strategy.
The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.
By Zachary Turinsky
At the turn of the 20th century, the United States built a navy, a process accompanied by intense political debate. In defending this navy’s importance, two of the nation’s navalists, Theodore Roosevelt and Alfred Thayer Mahan, turned to the past. Roosevelt, in 1882, wrote The Naval War of 1812; Mahan, in 1905, wrote Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812. The stories they tell, however, differ dramatically, and for that reason Roosevelt himself criticized Mahan’s great work. For Roosevelt, the war is a tale of American triumph; for Mahan, a dismal American failure. Mahan takes the broader, maritime picture; sea power encompasses protecting the totality of a nation’s interests at sea. Roosevelt, by contrast, takes a narrow naval view. Most importantly, Mahan writes with strategic acumen; Roosevelt, while writing with undoubted tactical expertise, lacks the richness of Mahan’s strategic vision. Two key examples, the importance of Kingston and that of Commodore Rodger’s expedition in the Atlantic Ocean, demonstrate the superiority of Mahan’s vision. As the U.S. Navy adapts to an era of renewed great power competition, Mahan’s insights demonstrate that sound tactics or operations alone are insufficient for victory. Strategic thinking is necessary to translate tactical victories into enduring success.
For Mahan, the War of 1812 was an unnecessary failure. The land campaign faltered; Washington was burned; the economy suffered from an English blockade; the American merchant marine was driven off the sea; and the American casus belli, neutral rights at sea, was not secured. By integrating the outbreak of the war into a longer history of American diplomacy in London, Mahan demonstrates the failure of the United States to achieve its diplomatic objectives. Compromise with Britain may have been possible, especially if the United States developed a navy to defend its interests.
For Roosevelt, though, the war was a triumphant success. Yes, Roosevelt admits the failure of the land campaign and the reality of the English blockade, though not the failure of the United States to achieve its war aims. Roosevelt, however, believes one success mattered above all else: the glory of the U.S. Navy. For Roosevelt, the U.S. Navy becomes less a political-strategic instrument and more an exemplar of martial vigor to bolster national pride. As Roosevelt writes in summing up the war, “the material results were not very great… but morally the result was of inestimable benefit to the United States. The victories kept up the spirits of the people, cast down by the defeats on land… and gave the navy, and thereby the country, a world-wide reputation.” The real mistake, for Roosevelt, was not the decision to go to war with England. Rather, it was the decision not to go to war with France, in addition! “What we undoubtedly ought to have done was,” Roosevelt wrote, “declared war on both France and England.” No doubt this was strategically disadvantageous, but it would have meant more combat for the navy, more of a chance to prove its fighting mettle. And as both Mahan and Roosevelt recognize, the U.S. Navy performed admirably in that single-ship combat on the open ocean.
Mahan, by using the lens of sea power and not merely naval power, is able to put these single-ship actions into a broader perspective. The purpose of a navy, for Mahan, is twofold: the military one of securing lines of communication and preventing an enemy’s invasion, and the economic one of protection of national commerce and destruction of the enemy’s. In this strategic framework, it is unclear to what purpose the U.S. Navy’s open ocean successes usually served. While Roosevelt devotes many pages to demolishing the work of the British historian William James and proving the fighting spirit of the American navy, for Mahan, the undoubted courage of American sailors is subordinated to a narrative of American strategic imprudence. For Mahan, “making comparisons of desert [in battle] between [the two navies] is a mere waste of ink, important only to those who conceive the chief end of war to be fighting, and not victory”. Mahan also emphasizes this broader maritime strategic perspective through one of the consistent themes of Mahan’s oeuvre, the inferiority of a strategy of commerce-destroying to that of a blockade. This central task of a navy, gaining control of the sea to protect or attack a state’s commerce, is rarely touched on by Roosevelt. Roosevelt discusses the glory of specific American privateers, but not the economic consequences of the British blockade. Mahan, by contrast, “tells the [economic] tale of congestion and deficiency, due to interruption of water communication,” which meant that “Great Britain could put forth her enormous naval strength with the most sensible and widespread injury to American national power, as represented in the financial stability which constitutes the sinews of war.” The concept of sea power, as opposed to merely naval power, provides Mahan with an analytical framework to appreciate the totality of the navy’s importance in war.
Mahan’s broader strategic insight means that, unlike Roosevelt, he appreciates two signal events in the war: the American failure to take Kingston on Lake Ontario and the success of Commodore Rodger’s expedition at the beginning of the war. For Mahan, the key to the failure of the campaign on Lake Ontario was the failure to take Kingston, because of the fort’s position on the mouth of the St. Lawrence River. “Upon Kingston and Montreal,” Mahan writes, “by their position and intrinsic advantages, rested the communication of all Canada, along and above the St. Lawrence, with the sea power of Great Britain whence alone could be drawn the constant support without which ultimate defeat should have been inevitable.” In addition, Kingston possessed Britain’s main shipbuilding capacity on Lake Ontario, which was crucial because each side depended on wartime shipbuilding to (re-)constitute their navy on the Great Lakes. If only the United States had successfully made a concerted effort to take Kingston, Mahan argues convincingly, Lake Ontario and those to its west could be controlled by the U.S. Navy, enabling a land offensive. As Mahan points out, “the two ports, not the fleets dependent on them, were the decisive elements of the Ontario campaign; and the ignoring of that truth was the fundamental, irremediable American error.”
Roosevelt, by contrast, de-centers Kingston from the narrative. Roosevelt does briefly mention Kingston and recognizes its importance when discussing the failure of Commodore Chauncy to provide naval support to a land offensive against Kingston. Outside of this passage, however, Roosevelt attributes the United States’ failure on Lake Ontario to a broader array of factors, such as the U.S. Navy’s hesitancy to engage the British navy or insufficient attention to taking Toronto, rather than a repeated failure to take this critical location.
This lack of strategic acumen is further demonstrated in one other example of sharp disagreement between Roosevelt and Mahan: Commodore Rodger’s daring expedition, consisting of five warships, at the beginning of the war. For Roosevelt, this was “a very unfortunate cruise, in which he had made but seven prizes,” and engaged in no glorious bouts of combat with the British. Mahan, by contrast, understood its broader strategic significance. In effect, this expedition denied Britain sea control in the Atlantic, with important strategic consequences. As Mahan argues, the presence of this large American squadron in the Atlantic forced the British to concentrate their navy to prevent any ships from being overpowered by Rodgers – whose location was unknown to Britain. This meant that the British navy could not disperse and hamper the return of American merchant ships. Most, therefore, successfully hurried back to the United States with valuable cargo after learning of the outbreak of the war. Many of these ships went on to serve as privateers during the war. As Mahan therefore points out, perhaps with Roosevelt’s book in mind, “it is in such study of reciprocal action between enemies that the lessons of war are learned, and its principles established, in a manner to which the study of combats between single ships, however brilliant, affords no equivalent.”
In all fairness, Roosevelt was only 23 years old when writing his Naval War of 1812, and his tactical accounts are well-reasoned and truly encyclopedic. Mahan, by contrast, was nearing the end of his storied career. And both thinkers agree on perhaps the United States’ greatest strategic failure: not building up a sufficient navy beforehand to prepare for the war. This comparison may therefore be unjust in judging the respective merits of Roosevelt and Mahan as naval thinkers. It does, however, demonstrate the necessity of strategic thought in naval warfare. Had Mahan’s strategic insights been followed, perhaps the United States would have won a decisive victory on the Great Lakes near the opening of the war. Were Roosevelt’s insights followed, and Commodore Rodger’s “unfortunate cruise” called off, large quantities of American commerce and ships returning from abroad may have been taken by the British, harming the American economy and taking future privateers off the seas. Small tactical successes may demonstrate the fighting spirit of a navy, but they cannot win wars. Winning wars requires strategic thought, that is, the application of systematic thought to action, a relation between ends, ways, and means. This Mahan provides, which explains his justly deserved fame as a theorist of sea power, and why his work has enduring relevance for the U.S. Navy in its 250th year.
Zachary Turinsky is a research intern at the Center for Maritime Strategy.
The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.