Mahanian naval strategy drove the plan to make the Pacific an American lake.

Evidence

The maintenance of such an extensive collection of military bases was also rooted in a widely held strategic belief that the security of the nation and the prevention of future wars depended on dominating the Pacific through a Mahanian combination of naval forces and island strongholds. “This imperial solution to American anxieties about strategic security in the postwar Pacific exhibited itself,” writes the base expert Hal Friedman, “in a bureaucratic consensus about turning the Pacific Basin into an ‘American lake.’” — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 86

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: The ‘American lake’ concept connects to the island perimeter described in paragraph 87 and to the destroyers-for-bases logic.