Great powers and the sea: Naval Power in international relations theories

This article aims to discuss the role of sea and naval power

in “Rise and Fall Realism”; “Defensive Structural Realism”;

and “Offensive Structural Realism”, which are respectively

represented by the works of Gilpin (2002) and Modelsky and

Thompson (1988); Posen (2003) and Mearsheimer (2001). We

argue that these scholars mistakenly employ sea and naval

power as if they were synonyms. In fact, these scholars are

mainly concerned with the military component of sea power,

that is, naval power. In addition, we claim that the relative

importance of naval power in relation to other sources of

power varies in a spectrum that goes from: 1) the consideration

of naval power as a necessary and almost sufficient condition

to global power raking, 2) moving to the acknowledgment of

naval power as historically important to the last two hegemonic

powers but not necessarily important in future manifestations

of hegemonic power, and 3) reaching the consideration of naval

power as only having a supportive role for land power, being

this power the necessary and almost sufficient condition to a

high placing in the global ranking of powers. Finally, we reflect

on the argument established by those variants of Realism on the

connection between naval power and wealth.

Revista da Escola de Guerra Naval