Zack Cooper’s exploration of the ascent and fall of the world’s greatest militaries is chronicled in his debut book “Tides of Fortune: The Rise and Decline of Great Militaries” (Yale University Press).

“What initially drew me to the topic was this puzzle about why China would abandon a military strategy that seemed to be working in favor of one that they had shown was vulnerable to new technologies,” Cooper said. “There were many explanations in the literature, but none explained the timing of China’s move.”

Cooper, a lecturer at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (Princeton SPIA), began working on the book for his dissertation while in the security studies doctoral program at the School. In the book’s acknowledgements, he cites the help of Princeton SPIA faculty and staff as crucial throughout the writing and editing process.

“The book is arriving at the same time that many in Washington have been rethinking U.S. defense strategy, so I’m hopeful that this can contribute to that debate,” said Cooper, who has also worked at the U.S. Department of Defense and the White House National Security Council. “The Biden and Trump teams have each sought to reshape the U.S. military, but I hope this can help them have a bit more historical perspective on how great power like the United States typically alter their approaches when they find themselves in a position like ours.”

Below is an excerpt from “Tides of Fortune: The Rise and Decline of Great Militaries.”

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The shift in U.S. strategy proceeded with remarkable speed after the Spanish-American War. By 1899, the British director of Naval Intelligence L. A. Beaumont warned, “the United States mean to be the strongest Naval power [along their eastern coast] and it will be difficult to prevent it.” Navy Secretary Hilary Herbert was somewhat more circumspect: “It is not contended that we should attempt to compete in numbers with the great navies of England and France, but we ought surely to move up steadily into a higher rank than we now occupy, and into the pace of nations whose necessities are far less than ours.” Politicians such as Chester A. Arthur argued, “I cannot too strongly urge upon you my conviction that every consideration of national safety, economy, and honor imperatively demands a thorough rehabilitation of our navy.”32

The navy’s sea-control transformation accelerated after the turn of the century. The U.S. Navy still trailed the British in overall tonnage, but by 1900, it had surpassed Italy and nearly equaled Russia and France. The United States’ warship tonnage jumped from 240,000 to 333,000 in the decade before 1900 and, in the next decade, added nearly 500,000 tons of modern warships. The president of Bethlehem Steel would later note, “In 1902, the United States Government launched us on a larger and modern naval program.” Only Germany was able to keep up with this percentage increase in warship tonnage. The historian Craig Symonds writes that early nineteenth-century navalists “yearned for empire” and that “a naval fleet was physical evidence of national adulthood.”33

With a growing navy, sea control now seemed attainable. Yet, the United States remained constrained by geography. Mahan’s vision of sea control required a unified fleet, but the United States had to operate in both the Atlantic and the Pacific. Indeed, when Roosevelt considered shifting vessels to the Atlantic in 1902, Mahan warned, “To remove our fleet—battle fleet—from the Pacific would be . . . a confession of weakness. . . . It would mean a reversion to a policy narrowly American, and essentially defensive.” Protecting both coasts became an even more difficult task after 1905, when Japan’s alliance with Great Britain and its defeat of Russia permitted Japan a freer hand in the Pacific. Roosevelt’s answer was the Panama Canal. But he was not content simply to build the canal. Instead, Roosevelt desired that it be “wholly under the control of the United States, alike in peace and war.” Other experts suggested that “fortified naval bases could be established in Cuba and Puerto Rico”: “our Navy can control the Caribbean.”34

This new focus on sea control extended far beyond the coasts of the United States. Congressman Richmond Hobson wrote in 1902, “The finger of fate is pointing forward. America will be the controlling World power, holding the scepter of the seas, reigning in mighty beneficence with the guiding principle of a maximum of world service. She will help all the nations of the earth. Europe will be saved by her young off-spring grown to manhood.” To accomplish this mandate, the 1903 General Board suggested “a) a forty-eight-battleship fleet, . . . b) an American policy to be automatically conditioned by naval development abroad, . . . c) a fleet always stronger than likely enemies, and d) a commensurate increase of personnel as well as materiel.” No longer would the United States accept a role as a weak state at the mercy of stronger powers. Instead, one naval historian observes, “Commerce raiding and coastal defense strategy were discarded and a forward strategy was adopted in which a fleet powerful enough to defeat any potential enemy fleet would do so far out at sea.” The United States had fashioned a sea-control strategy; the challenge now was to construct the requisite fleet.35