Alfred Thayer Mahan
United States

Mahan believed that if the United States were to build an Isthmian canal, it would become a Pacific power, and therefore it should take possession of Hawaii to protect the West Coast. Nevertheless, his support for American imperialism was more ambivalent than is often stated, and he remained lukewarm about American annexation of the Philippines. Mahan was a major influence on the Roosevelt family. In addition to Theodore, he corresponded with Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt until his death in 1914. During World War II, Roosevelt would ignore the late Mahan's prior advice to him that the Commonwealth of the Philippines could not be defended against an Imperial Japanese invasion, leading to a futile defense of the islands against the Japanese Philippines campaign.
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