Answer:
A. He provided three strategies that would
greatly increase America's sea power.
Explanation:
<u>Alfred Thayer Mahan</u> was American naval officer and university professor who is considered the founding father of the American Geopolitical School. His biographers claim that as an active Navy officer and captain he did not have too much success, so he gladly accepted the offer to become a lecturer at Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island.
There he began to study the importance of maritime power in the historical stature of the great powers (especially Britain and France), which brought him worldwide intellectual fame. He also met Theodore Roosevelt at the Naval College who at the time was working as a lecturer in naval history. When Roosevelt became president (1901-1909), Mahan was one of his closest advisers. Mahan shared Roosevelt's imperialist views, advocating control of the Panama Canal, as the annexation of Hawaii and the Philippines.
From that period we have his famous statement:<em> "I am an imperialist for the simple reason that I am not isolationist."</em>
For him, the US had no choice but to follow in the footsteps of the imperial tradition of Great Britain and, over time, to replace it as the carrier of global naval (but also every other) domination. At the time of Mahan's writing, the US had a significant Navy only on the Atlantic coast, so it's no wonder that he points out that leaving the US on two oceans can be either a 'big weakness' or a 'big expense'. His references were to the necessity of developing a merchant fleet as the financial and ideological basis for a strong Navy. He also stresses the importance of controlling strategic points in remote areas and advocates that the US has its colonies as well.
