What is naval power

After the outbreak of hostilities with Spain in May , President William McKinley finally secured the annexation of Hawaii by means of joint resolution of Congress. Following the successful conclusion of the Spanish-American War in , the United States gained control of territories that could serve as the coaling stations and naval bases that Mahan had discussed, such as Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.

Five years later, the United States obtained a perpetual lease for a naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Menu Menu. Given the author's dissatisfaction with this state of affairs and out of respect for the memory of Itamaraty's patron, I intend to address an issue that lies at the heart of a series of distortions about the meaning of Paranhos Jr. Few periods could be classified as more fruitful with regard to building a national grand strategy than the decade in which the Baron served as foreign minister Constituting the paradigmatic moment in which Brazilian Republican foreign policy was consolidated, Rio Branco's administration was able to wield the power available to the country to set, on favorable terms, the boundaries of the nation.

It should be noted that Rio Branco was a contemporary and supporter of one of the greatest efforts to incorporate naval armament in Brazilian history-the result of which was the so-called " Fleet. Nor would it be plausible to assume that Rio Branco's acts were in dissonance with the directives issued by the President and the political coalition which supported him. Therefore, Rio Branco's grand strategy, broadly speaking, can be viewed as representing the grand strategy of the country.

Section 1 of this article touches upon the dependence of historians on State institutions in Brazil. Section 2 tries to operationalize the concept of grand strategy, while section 3 describes the consequences for the Navy of the Revolt of the Armada. The next section outlines the domestic factors affecting Brazil's capacity to react to foreign threats. Section 5 deals with the contextual elements that framed the naval reorganization programs of and In sections 6 and 7, I sketch the contours of the naval programs, Rio Branco's role in this process and the instrumentality of the new fleet for Brazil's grand strategy as implemented by the patron of national diplomacy.

The last section presents the conclusions. The study of history in newly independent Brazil was directly linked to the interests of the monarchical state. There is no need to go any further in order to identify the origins of two plagues that have been ravaging national historiography, to a greater or lesser extent, since the foundation of IHGB until the present: historiographical officialism and Brazilian intelligentsia's dependence on state institutions.

The historiography in Brazil has always been more or less an official historiography Mota corroborates this view by claiming that national historiographical production is traditionally "courtesan" Mota , 2 MOTA, Carlos Guilherme. The combative history proposed by the former professor of Rio Branco Institute aimed to attack one of the most persistent myths disseminated by officialist historians: the bloodless nature of Brazilian history.

Rodrigues would assert that his work sought to call into question the officialist mythology: "I wanted to denounce the fraud of the bloodless and cordial Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira. At the center of Rodrigues's rationale was the nationalist ideology, which drove him to reject the view that Brazilians would be invariably passive before the elites' arbitrariness.

This section intends to trace the inescapable contours of grand strategy and clarify the theoretical and conceptual framework adopted in the article. The case study on Baron of Rio Branco's grand strategy and the naval modernization program of the first decade of the twentieth century will generate hypotheses about the theory's adequacy to the empirical and contextual evidences presented.

Turning to the operationalization of the concept of grand strategy itself, it should be considered that the grand strategy of any state involves at least the following internal factors: political, economic, ideological, institutional, cultural, geographical, technological, role of leaders, and civil-military relations. The literature on the subject does not normally attach paramount importance to the last element.

However, it has crucial importance in any context, in particular when we are dealing with states where the barracks' role in domestic politics and the construction of nationality is relevant-like in many countries of Latin America.

The nature of civil-military relations has multiple implications on the following aspects: military doctrine, quality of the strategic assessment of opportunities and threats, strategic culture, interface between foreign and defense policies, defense policy's degree of internal coherence, and ultimately the very political stability of the regime.

To make matters even more complex, except for the geographical factor, all others interact with the international system in different ways and with different intensities.

Given the above-mentioned, it is adopted here a modified version of neoclassical realism, which postulates the interdependence between the domestic and international levels. The latter, however, does not present itself to decision-makers in an absolutely clear fashion in terms of the incentives it offers. Incentives will be read by decision-making elites and their supporters according to a series of filters: political, ideological, institutional, inter alia.

Princeton: Princeton University Press. Despite grand strategy being related to the possibility of using force, it is not limited to it. It is also worth noting that the grand strategy of small and medium powers will be substantially constrained by the risks and opportunities emanating from its regional surroundings. In the same vein, it is essential to include in the above mentioned analytical framework the role of leaders and the ideologies they are imbued with. This is especially relevant to the work developed here, taking into account that the period corresponding to Rio Branco's administration and the naval modernization program was characterized by a very distinct zeitgeist to the one we know today.

The Revolt of the Armada, which eventually blended together with the Federalist Revolution of RGS in the face of common goals fighting against Floriano's dictatorship , had significant internal and external repercussions.

Besides instilling fear in the capital's population in view of the threats of shelling made by the bulk of the Navy's warships, the Revolt produced a strong impression in the international community. Wanting to avoid the damage to international trade produced by the blockade of Rio de Janeiro's port, and interested in protecting their citizens living in Brazil's main city, the foreign squadron led by the U.

The consequences of the Revolt would be felt for many years. The author of Balmaceda himself would point out that the most worrying byproduct of the Revolt was to be found in the military camp-in addition to the ruin of the naval force and its resentment of the Army-because of the subversion of hierarchy resulting from the Iron Marshall's decisions. Due to the political fractures registered in the ranks of the Armed Forces, Floriano opted to employ junior officers loyal to him as interventors in the country's states.

Thus, captains, majors, and lieutenant colonels were elevated from day to night to positions of power, often at the expense of higher rank officers. This process has eroded the backbone of the Army, undermining the fundamental principle of hierarchy.

The "florianismo" also left deep marks in the naval force. Tese de doutorado. Rio de Janeiro: Liga Maritima Brazileira. In the same year the Revolt of the Armada broke out, Rio Branco was invited by Floriano Peixoto to take over the defense of Brazil in the arbitration of the question of Palmas or Missions against Argentina, to be decided by the President of the United States.

Therefore, if the Empire's moral rigidity hindered his political rise, the Republican shortage of critical mass specialized in boundary issues provided Paranhos Jr.

There is no doubt that the Brazilian grand strategy during the first 13 years of the Republic suffered from significant constraints. To these dimensions, which affect the willingness and ability to respond to pressures emanating from the international system, one must add economic and financial troubles.

Roughly speaking, one can divide the period into two distinct phases. The first corresponded to the military presidencies. During the first five years of the Republic, the marshals-presidents sought to improve the Armed Forces' status in terms of wages and armament. Until the "Encilhamento" financial crisis this policy had been possible due to consistent economic growth. Between and , however, macroeconomic conditions deteriorated while the country plunged into a very serious civil war Federalist Revolution and Revolt of the Armada.

In this context, the strengthening of diplomatic relations with the United States represented a true lifeline. At that time the "Colossus of the North" was taking the first steps of its expansive international policy. The U. According to the Brazilian perspective, a close relationship with Washington offered the possibility of instrumentalizing both its economic-the world's main consumer market for national exports of coffee-and security dimensions-inculcating in the minds of regional antagonists the idea that the U.

Alongside the careful cultivation of the relationship with the most powerful country in the hemisphere, Brazil tried not to antagonize Argentina. Rio de Janeiro's government sought to keep superficially cordial relations with its neighbor from the River Plate region. In reality, substantial portions of the Brazilian elites were disturbed by the growth of Argentine power.

Two other important issues would be part of Brazil's international agenda in this period: support for European immigration-with the aim of securing the arms necessary for the development of coffee plantations-and maintenance of external sources of financing the national economy via loans, lines of credit etc. Finally, attempts were made to demarcate the national borders through direct negotiations and-when these were unfeasible-by recourse to arbitration. With regards to the ability of the Armed Forces to support the national grand strategy, it appears that despite the efforts made by Deodoro and Floriano the dissensions between the Navy and Army, as well as the politicization of their ranks, eroded their meager combatant capabilities.

Brazil was actually devoid of any significant military resources. Worse than that: those existing had become useless in the face of the systemic inability of the naval and land forces to use them effectively. The staff shortages were also conspicuous, since the military service in Brazil still had not managed to untie itself from its characteristic of an appendage of the penal system. From any angle of observation the capacity of the Armed Forces to ensure the defense of the homeland was minimal-the problem being more acute in the Navy than in the Army because of the technological content and capital intensity required by naval forces.

This reality did not allow room for maneuver, forcing Brazil to adopt a moderate and juristical posture in its international relations-that, however, did not deter Floriano from exerting strong pressure on Montevideo in order to prevent the use of Uruguayan territory as safe haven for federalist revolutionaries Bueno, BUENO, Clodoaldo. In the second phase, which corresponds to the governments of Prudente de Morais and Campos Sales, additional constraints to the implementation of a more ambitious grand strategy would be observed.

Trying to ensure governability, civilian elites carried forward a policy of seclusion of the Armed Forces from party politics-either by cooptation of military leaders or by weakening the Navy and Army, particularly the latter. Economic stagnation, coupled with a financial crisis, was repeatedly invoked as justification for low military budgets. Domestic instability, especially during Prudente de Morais's government, was another critical factor that explained Brazilian self-absorption.

However, the litigations over the island of Trindade and Palmas region, respectively with United Kingdom and Argentina, would be indicative of the tensions that could arise from the international system. Counting with the British lack of interest in the first case and with the deft political leadership of Rio Branco in the second, the country managed to emerge victorious in two controversies that could have contributed to foster further instability.

Only in Campos Sales administration the Republic would build mechanisms to stabilize the operation of the polis. The startup of the "governors' policy" allowed Sales to generate the necessary stability to carry forward his fiscalist program. The administration's general direction of supporting immigration to coffee plantations and advancing in the process of demarcation of the national borders remained intact. In this respect, it seems that to the French acceptance of the unfavorable outcome contributed the increasing assertiveness of the United States in the Western Hemisphere-as well as rising tensions in the old continent, which made it difficult to Paris divert its attention from threats emanating from France's immediate vicinity.

In this context, low investments in defense would result in the deepening of the crisis installed in the barracks, particularly after the Revolt of the Armada Navy, , and the disaster of Canudos Army, In view of this reality, and after the satisfactory resolution of the issue of Palmas, Brazil continued adopting what Hilton called "holding action" regarding Argentina: public manifestations of friendliness accompanied by strict surveillance of Argentine actions in South America.

The decay of the Navy, however, represented not only the impossibility of staving off attacks from the sea. In some professional and political circles, a certain nostalgia for the top spot that the naval force occupied in the region during most of the nineteenth century became consolidated. There is no doubt that the domestic constraints on the country's international actions were overwhelming during the first 13 years of the Republic.

In this sense, Brazilian statesmen had limited scope to take more ambitious steps in terms of foreign policy. The controversy over Acre, in turn, called again the attention of Brazilian policymakers to the fact that international relations in the era of imperialism involved substantial security risks. Faced with so much volatility and uncertainty, the Brazilian grand strategy was fundamentally limited, defensive and self-absorbed.

The demarcation of Rio Branco's grand strategy background allows us to analyze the domestic constraints and international pressures responsible for the birth of the naval programs of and One can legitimately assume that the modernization of the Brazilian Navy was based on the conjunction of several internal and external factors.

Actually, it was the result of an unlikely alignment of stars, an event that only happens in very special circumstances and after a long wait. The criticisms made by Arthur Dias about the disregard Brazilian civilian elites devoted to military affairs, in particularly to naval matters, are consistent with the difficulties that the country had to face every time it needed to deploy its Armed Forces-fact that became evident in the war of the Triple Alliance against Paraguay.

US Elections World News. China vs the world: Here's a look at Naval power in the Pacific in numbers. Rate Story. Font Size Abc Small. Abc Medium. Abc Large. Reuters According to defence experts Janes, between and , China built vessels -- compared to the United States' 68, India's 48, Japan's 29 and Australia's nine.

Australia's decision to acquire nuclear-powered submarines under a newly announced alliance with the United States and Britain has highlighted regional concerns over China's growing maritime might in the Pacific. Justifying ditching an earlier deal with France for conventional submarines, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said it was "not a change of mind, it's a change of need". AFP takes a look at how the military balance of power in the region stands. Read More News on naval power australia china navy us navy.

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