The Problem of Asia

Its Effect upon International Politics

David B. Sachsman, Alfred Thayer Mahan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138537811
• eBook ISBN: 9781351476317
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Problem of Asia, the celebrated American naval historian and strategist, Alfred Thayer Mahan, analyzes the geopolitical structure of world politics at the dawn of the twentieth century. Mahan wrote his book at a time when the United States was emerging as a world power, having recently acquired overseas territories as a result of its victory in the Spanish-American War. It was a call to America and its leaders to break with the intellectual tradition of Washington's Farewell Address and to recognize that U.S. security was tied to the balance of power in Asia as well as Europe.

For Mahan, the immediate "problem of Asia" was the threat of Russian expansion into Central Europe, Central Asia, East Asia,,and the Middle-East/Persian Gulf region. Mahan advocated an alliance consisting of Britain,. Japan, Germany, and the United States to counter the Russian threat. He also discussed the rise of Japan as a world power, the potential for China to emerge as a great power later in the twentieth century, and the increasing importance of the Middle East/Persian Gulf region to the global balance of power. The Problem of Asia contains geopolitical insights and analyses that remain relevant today. As recent events have reminded us, the world of the twenty-first century is still composed of nation-states and non-state actors that vigorously and sometimes brutally pursue their goals and self-interests. Mahan's approach in The Problem of Asia to the study and analysis of international politics in an anarchic world provides an important conceptual framework for understanding the fundamentals of global politics.

This edition of Mahan's classic work includes a lengthy introduction by Francis P. Sempa that analyzes the book in the context of Mahan's life and other writings.

PART I

The Problem of Asia (from Harper’s New Monthly Magazine)

Chapter 1

In order to efficiency of action, whether in personal or in corporate life, we have to recognize the coincident necessities of taking long views and of confining ourselves to short ones. The two ideas, although in contradiction logically, are in practice and in effect complementary, as are the centripetal and centrifugal forces of the universe; unless both are present, something is wanting to the due balance of judgment and of decision. This is, indeed, but one of many illustrations that the philosophy of life is best expressed in paradox. It is by frank acceptance of contrary truths, embracing both without effort to blend them, that we can best direct our course, as individuals or as nations, to successful issues. This observation receives practical illustration in the admitted political maxim that a strong opposition is essential to successful representative government. Thus it is again that only by a minute mastery of details can a solid foundation be laid upon which to build opinion; yet unless details are thrust aside, and reflection fastens upon the leading features only of a problem of conduct, it is difficult, if not impossible, clearly to perceive the mutual relations of the parts and their proportions to the whole, upon a just sense of which depends correctness of appreciation, with consequent discretion of action.

Beyond all other movement, beyond all corporate or even national experience, the progress of the world illustrates the necessities and the uncertainties with which thought has to contend, and under the stress of which it must develop into policy and assert itself in conduct. This is, of course, an inevitable result of enlargement of scale, and the world movement presents action upon the greatest of all scales. There is vastly more of detail and of surprise, of the complicated and of the unexpected. Every nation or race deals with its own problems—those of its internal and of its external life; but the fortune of each exerts a specific influence upon the general outcome. Not only are those influences very diverse in themselves, but they cause incessant change in the relations of the parts to each other and to the whole. Relative importance and the nature of that importance are subject to continual fluctuation. Enmities succeed to friendships; strength declines to weakness; accident, as men call it, in a moment and amid universal astonishment reverses conditions. Still, although liable at any moment to see hopes overthrown, combinations frustrated, and even the solidest foundations giving under their feet, nations and their rulers must take account of existing tendencies, argue from the present to the future, estimate the relative weight of contemporary factors, and from them forecast the probable issue, although it seem to lie beyond the horizon of their own generation; for in their day they are the guardians of posterity, and may not shirk their trust. They must, in short, take long views, and upon them in due measure act as opportunity permits; yet withal the uncertainties, both of calculations and of events, are so great, the difficulties of prediction and of speculation so obvious, that they are compelled to treat the situation of each moment in the light of immediate necessities, to take short views, to look primarily to their feet and to the next step, endeavoring only, if they may, that this be in the general direction which their practical sagacity has indicated as the far goal of the nation’s good.

It would be an interesting study, but one quite apart from the object of this paper, to trace the genesis and evolution in the American people of the impulse towards expansion which has recently taken so decisive a stride. To do this adequately would involve the consideration of a volume of details, in order to extricate from them the leading features which characterize and demonstrate the vital sequence in the several stages of advance. The treatment of the matter, however, would be very imperfect if it failed clearly to recognize and to state that it is but one phase of a sentiment that has swept over the whole civilized European world within the last few decades, salient evidences of which are found in the advance of Russia in Asia, in the division of Africa, in the colonial ambitions of France and of Germany, in the naval growth of the latter, in the development of Japan, and in the British idea of Imperial Federation, now fast assuming concrete shape in practical combined action in South Africa. Every great state has borne its part in this common movement, the significance of which cannot be ignored. We may not know whence it comes nor whither it goes, but there it is. We see it and we hear it, and our own share in it has already radically changed our relations towards foreign states and races. Whatever its future, a future it clearly has, to read which men must lift up their hearts and strain their eyes, while at the same time they neglect not the present, but do with their might that which their hand at the moment finds to do.

A study of a particular phase of this possible future, as it appears to one man, is the object of this present paper. Before, however, proceeding with such consideration, it may be interesting, and not inappropriate, to note in briefest outline how singularly the long view and the short view have received illustration in the recent course of events. The intrinsic importance of Cuba, of the West Indies in general, and of the Isthmus of Panama, to the political, commercial, and military interests of the United States, was long ago perceived. To illustrate this by detailed account, from the words and actions of public men, would require an article—rather, perhaps, a volume— by itself; but it is easy to note, rising above the sea of incidental details, of diplomatic negotiations and governmental recommendations, a few landmarks, such as the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, the attempt under Grant’s administration to annex Santo Domingo, the abortive negotiations for the purchase of the Danish islands, our treaty with Colombia guaranteeing the transit of the Isthmus railway. Solicitude, which traced its origin to the early years of the century, increased to conviction as the expansion of the country emphasized the consciousness of a probable destiny. Deadened temporarily by the outbreak of the civil war, which it antedated by generations, it revived immediately upon its conclusion—the insistence upon the French withdrawal from Mexico being a first-fruits of quickened life. For the moment the long view had yielded to the imperious demands of the short; but, the emergency over, the nation again lifted its eyes and looked afar.

Meantime events had progressed and continued to progress. New factors had entered into the conditions, while the bearing and importance of old factors were seen more clearly and forcibly, for time had brought them out of the haze of distant speculation, and nearer to the decisive moment of action. The school of thought that looked to expansion became more incisive and outspoken, its ideas increasing in scope and in definiteness of expression. The long view, raising its vision gradually above the Antilles and the Isthmus, as these drew more into the foreground, saw beyond them the Pacific, Hawaii, and the beginning of momentous issues in China and Japan. There insight again was baffled; unless it may be claimed, as evidence of a wider range, that the country and the exponents of expansion, in common with the world at large, had at last aroused to consciousness of the determining influence of sea power upon the history of the world. Sea power, however, is but the handmaid of expansion, its begetter and preserver; it is not itself expansion, nor did the advocates of the latter foresee room for advance beyond the Pacific. Their vision reached not past Hawaii, which also, as touching the United States, they regarded from the point of view of de-fence rather than as a stepping-stone to any farther influence in the world. So far as came under the observation of the writer—and his interest in the matter dated back several years—the expansionists themselves, up to the war with Spain, were dominated by the purely defensive ideas inherited from the earlier days of our national existence. The Antilles, Cuba, the Isthmus, and Hawaii were up to that time simply outposts—positions—where it was increasingly evident that influences might be established dangerous to the United States as she then was. Such influences must be forestalled; if not by immediate action, at least by a definite policy.

It was to such a state of mind that the war with Spain came; and the result has the special interest of showing the almost instantaneous readiness with which a seed of thought germinates when it falls upon mental soil prepared already to receive it. Reflection and discussion, voice and pen, platform and press, had broken up the fallow ground left untilled by the generations which succeeded the fathers of the republic. Habit had familiarized men’s minds with the idea of national power spreading beyond the bounds of this continent, and with the reasons that made it advisable, if not imperative. Though staggered for an instant by a proposition so entirely unexpected and novel as Asiatic dominion, the long view had done its work of preparation; and the short view, the action necessary at the minute, imposed primarily and inevitably by the circumstances of the instant, found no serious difficulty of acceptance, so far as concerned the annexation of the Philippines—the widest sweep, in space, of our national extension.

We have for the time being quite sufficient to occupy our activities in accommodating ourselves to these new conditions, and in organizing our duties under them. But while this is true as touching immediate action, it is not necessarily, nor equally, true as regards thought, directed upon the future. After a brief rest in contemplation of the present, effort must be resumed, not merely to note existing conditions, but to appreciate the tendencies involved in them—history in embryo—the issue of which will hereafter concern us or our descendants. Events of recent years have substantially changed the political relations of states, and thereby have imposed such a study of these as shall give point and direction to that long view of the distant future which, uncertain though it be in its calculations, and liable to sudden disconcertment, is nevertheless essential, if sagacious and continuous guidance is to be given to the course of a nation. Such study will require an intelligent and sustained resolution; for, with the possible exception of the Monroe doctrine, the people of the United States have been by long habit indifferent to the subject of external policies. They have been so not only as the result of our particular circumstances of isolation, but by deliberate intention, inherited from a day when such abstinence was better justified than now, and depended upon a well-known, though misunderstood, warning of Washington against entangling alliances. Under changed conditions of the world, from the influence of which we cannot escape, it is imperative to arouse to the necessity of conscious effort, in order to recognize and to understand broad external problems, not merely as matters of general information or of speculative interest, but as questions in which we ourselves have, or may have, the gravest direct concern, as affecting ourselves or our children.

It is by such long views that is developed the readiness of decision, in unexpected conjunctures of international politics, which corresponds to presence of mind in common life; for ordinarily presence of mind means preparedness of mind, through previous reflection upon possible contingencies. The need of such readiness— of sustained apprehension of actual and of probable future conditions—receives the clearest demonstration from our recent experience. What more sudden or less expected, what, in a word, more illustrative of a short view resulting in decisive action, taken at a moment’s notice, can be adduced than that a war begun with Spain about Cuba should result in tendering us the position of an Asiatic Power, with the consequent responsibilities and opportunities? Evidently a mind prepared by deliberation upon contemporary occur-rences and tendencies is no mean equipment for prompt decision in such a case. It is in no wise a disconnected incident that the United States has been suddenly drawn out of her traditional attitude of apartness from the struggle of European states, and had a new element forced into her polity. The war with Spain has been but one of several events, nearly simultaneous, which have compelled mankind to fix their attention upon eastern Asia, and to realize that conditions there have so changed as to compel a readjustment of ideas, as well as of national policies and affiliations. Nothing is more calculated to impress the mind with the seriousness of the impending problems than the known fact that Japan, which less than four years ago notified our government of her disinclination to our annexation of Hawaii, now with satisfaction sees us in possession of the Philippines.

The altered conditions in the East have doubtless resulted—as did American expansion—from certain preparative antecedents, less obvious at the time of their occurrence, and which therefore then escaped particular notice; but the incidents that have signalized the change have been compacted into a very few years. Hence they possess the attribute of suddenness, which naturally entails for a time a lack of precise comprehension, with the necessary consequence of vagueness in opinion. Nevertheless, there they are matters of grave international moment to those older nationalities, from whom heretofore we have held ourselves sedulously aloof. Side by side with them is our own acceptance of the Philippines, an act which we could not rightly avoid, and which carries with it opportunity. Opportunity, however, can never be severed from responsibility; for, whether utilized or neglected, a decision, positive or negative, is made, which cannot be dissociated from the imputation of moral right or wrong, of intellectual mistake or of wisdom.

It may be well here to consider for a moment the charge, now often made, that by the acceptance of the Philippines, and, still more, by any further use of the opportunities they may give us, we abandon the Monroe doctrine. The argument, if it can be allowed that name, derives such force as it has from appeal to prejudice; a word which, although it has an invidious association, does not necessarily imply more than opinion already formed, and which, if resting on solid basis, is entitled to full respect, unless, and until, it refuses to face new conditions. The Monroe doctrine, however, commits us only to a national policy, which may be comprehensively summarized as an avowed purpose to resist the extension of the European system to the American continents. As a just counterweight to this pretension, which rests in no wise upon international law, but upon our own interests as we understand them, we have adopted, as a rule of action, abstention from interference—even by suggestion, and much more by act—in questions purely European.

Of these complementary positions, neither the one nor the other possesses any legal standing, any binding force, of compact or of precedent. We are at liberty to abandon either at once, without incurring any just imputation of unlawful action. Regarded, however, purely as a matter of policy, and as such accepted as wise, by what process of reasoning is it to be established that either the one rule or the other bars us, on the ground of consistency, from asserting what we think our rights in Asia? In its inception the Monroe doctrine was, I suppose, a recognition of the familiar maxim of statesmen that geographical propinquity is a source of trouble between nations, which we, being favored by natural isolation, proposed to avert; and to this proposition the determination to keep clear of questions internal to Europe was an inevitable corollary. We took advantage, in short, of an opportunity extended to us by fortunate conditions to assure our national quiet. But there are provinces other than geographical in which the interests of nations approach and mingle, and in those we have never been deterred by the Monroe doctrine from acting as our duties or our interests demanded. It has never, that I know, been seriously wished to compass our ends by the acquisition of European territory, for it would be neither expedient nor justifiable, even if possible, to unsettle conditions the permanency of which is the secure evolution of centuries of racial and national history; but we have had no scruples of justice or of expediency as to extension of territory in this hemisphere, where no such final adjustments had been reached. Now in Asia we are confronted at this moment by questions in which our interests will probably be largely involved. There is no more inconsistency in taking there such action as the case demands than there has been in any international difference we have hitherto had with a European power; while if such action should involve use of territory, directly or incidentally, by possession or by control—sphere of influence—it will only be because decadent conditions there shall hereafter have resulted in a lack of power, either to perpetuate a present system or to resist encroachments which the progress of the world under the impulse of more virile states is sure to entail. There is certainly no desire, but rather unwillingness, on the part of the United States to undertake such an addition to her responsibilities, otherwise sufficiently great; both her traditions and her present policy are necessarily adverse to such action. Still it must be considered as a possible contingency, however deplorable, for, if life departs, a carcass can be utilized only by dissection or for food; the gathering to it of the eagles is a natural law, of which it is bootless to complain. The onward movement of the world has to be accepted as a fact, to be advantageously dealt with by guidance, not by mere opposition, still less by unprofitable bewailing of things irretrievably past.

The Monroe doctrine has been and continues to be a good serviceable working theory, resting on undeniable conditions. But, having now a lifetime of several generations, it has acquired an added force of tradition, of simple conservatism, which has a bad as well as a good side. For tradition tends to invest accepted policy with the attribute of permanency, which only exceptionally can be predicated of the circumstances of this changing world. The principles upon which an idea rests may conform to essential, and therefore permanent, truth; but application continually varies, and maxims, rules, doctrines, not being the living breath of principles, but only their embodiment—the temporary application of them to conditions not necessarily permanent—can claim no exemption from the ebb and flow of mundane things. We should not make of even this revered doctrine a fetich, nor persuade ourselves that a modification is under no circumstances admissible.

For instance, it has become probable that, whatever our continued adherence to the doctrine itself, we may have somewhat to readjust our views of its corollary—that concerning apartness from European complications. It is not, indeed, likely, in any view that can be taken within our present horizon, that we should find reason for intervention in a dispute localized in Europe itself; but it is nevertheless most probable that we can never again see with indifference, and with the sense of security which characterized our past, a substantial, and still less a radical, change in the balance of power there. The progress of the world has brought us to a period when it is well within the range of possibilities that the declension of a European state might immediately and directly endanger our own interests; might involve us in action, either to avert the catastrophe itself or to remedy its consequences. From this follows the obvious necessity of appreciating the relations to ourselves of the power inherent in various countries, due to their available strength and to their position; what also their attitude towards us, resultant from the temper of the people, and the intelligent control of the latter by the government—two very different things, even in democratic communities. Herein, again, we only share the common fate of all nations; for not only do all touch one another more closely than of old, but—and especially in Asia—conditions external to all are drawing the regard of all towards a common centre, where as yet nothing certain is determined, where the possibilities of the future are many, and diverse, and great.

In so large a question as the future of Asia, upon which are now converging, from many quarters, streams of influence representing the interests, not of nationalities only, but of the larger groups which we know as races, it is well to study first the broad geographical features, in their several attributes—such as disposition, area, physical characteristics, distances—and thereafter the present political distribution, with the possibilities which result from both. To these considerations, pertaining to the continent itself, must be added an appreciation of the environing circumstances, even if distant, which are involved in the territorial situation of other nations, Asiatic or European; in their relative strength and its kinds—political, economical, military, naval; in their readiness of access to the continent of Asia—the length, nature, and facilities of the communications to and fro; the Asiatic positions, if such there be, now held by them—secondary bases, whence their influence, political or military, may be brought to bear. For the problem of Asia is a world problem, which has come upon the world in an age when, through the rapidity of communication, it is wide awake and sensible as never before, and by electrical touch, to every stirring in its members, and to the tendency thereof. But sensitiveness is not the same thing as understanding, any more than symptoms are identical with diagnosis. Study is requisite; and as a preliminary it may be observed that political problems into which the element of geography enters have much in common with military strategy. There will be found in both a centre of interest—an objective; the positions of the parties concerned, which are the bases of their strength and operations, even when these are peaceful; and there is the ability to project their power to the centre of interest, which answers to the communications that play so leading a part in military art, because power that can not be transmitted freely ceases in so far to be operative power. It is, in fact, this quality, facility of transmission, that has made sea power so multifold in manifestation and in efficiency.

As we look at the continent of Asia, in its length and breadth, we may note, first, that it lies wholly north of the equator, and in great part between the northern tropic and the arctic circle—that is, in the so-called temperate zone. The inferences as to climate which might be drawn from this a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction to the Transaction Edition
• Preface
• Map
• Part I: The Problem of Asia (from Harper’s New Monthly Magazine)
• Part II: The Effect of Asiatic Conditions upon World Policies (from North American Review)
• Part III: The Merits of the Transvaal Dispute (from North American Review)
• Index