Sparta. Unfortunately, the campaign was a complete disaster, and it led to the destruction of the expeditionary force.3 While it failed for several reasons at the strategic and operational level—primarily poor leadership and planning—training and preparations also played a part. Although the Athenian expeditionary force had marines available, their responsibility was limited to policing the crew as well as defending or attacking ships. Meanwhile, the regular line Greek soldier had neither a familiarity with amphibious operations nor the ability to swim. Additionally, the lack of coordination and communication in offloading the expeditionary force, building up its combat power once ashore, and attacking Syracuse were hampered by continuous delays and indecisiveness. These holdups allowed Syracuse’s military to recover from the initial shock of the invasion, build up its defenses and, afterward, sally forth to surround and destroy the Athenians. In addition, the arrival of Sparta and its allies finished off what was left of the expeditionary force and turned the tide of the battle and, ultimately, the war.4 As a result, the geopolitical position of Athens as the most powerful city-state in Greece was shattered, the Peloponnesian War was concluded, and Athenian power was lost when it sued for peace with Sparta and its allies.5
The failure of the Athenian Expedition to Syracuse served as an important lesson for many centuries to future nations and empires about the importance of avoiding amphibious warfare whenever possible because it was simply too expensive and risky. Ironically, amphibious warfare played a decisive role in future strategies over the centuries, as seen with Rome’s victory over Carthage, the Viking invasions that led to the destruction of the Carolingian Empire, the Norman conquest of England, and the capture of Quebec during the French and Indian War. Yet, a review of numerous historical narratives reveals amphibious warfare in a more negative light, as seen in the Roman Civil Wars from 49 BC to 30 BC, the failure of the Mongols to seize Japan, repeated Ottoman attempts to conquer Rhodes, and British military embarrassments during the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. In each case, while the ships, weapons, armor, and fighting techniques differed, the conduct of amphibious warfare remained the same.
Essentially, amphibious warfare was thought to be a straightforward affair in which men were loaded onto boats, shipped to the desired location, and unceremoniously dumped off at the nearest port or beach to find and fight the enemy. This mindset posed several obvious problems, one of them being the assumption that the port or beach was either friendly or neutral to the expeditionary force’s intentions. The other difficulties were situationally dependent and determined by a variety of factors, such as weather, hydrography, and terrain. In addition, planners had to consider intelligence about the enemy’s strength and location on land and sea, the infrastructure and capabilities of the port, and issues with supply and labor. All these factors could potentially impact the coordination, movement, and support of the expeditionary force when it had to disembark and fight.
This practice continued with various countries and civilizations over the centuries and relied strictly on avoiding coastal forts and defenses as well as staying away from nearby armies that could potentially move against the landing force. In such cases, the expeditionary force could find itself potentially in a long, protracted siege if the enemy army decided to dig in and fortify a key settlement, as seen from the Ottoman defeat during the Siege of Malta in 1565. Even worse, the entire expeditionary force could be completely destroyed before it even landed and assembled for battle, as seen in 1588 with the destruction of the Spanish Armada and its expeditionary force in the North Sea during an attempted invasion of England. While both the Ottoman and Spanish Empires survived centuries after these catastrophic defeats, these operations had political, economic, and military consequences both at home and abroad. Not only was the material loss self-evident militarily and economically, but it also had significant consequences. For both the Ottoman and Spanish Empires, belief in their invincibility as the perceived top world powers of their time was severely compromised and, therefore, so was their support in their respective homelands and within the international system. After these disasters, both empires went through a slow, gradual decline over the centuries as unrest and revolution threatened to destroy their imperial institutions, while other powerful, opportunistic state actors sought to carve territorial acquisitions for themselves.
For many centuries, amphibious warfare in military history was looked at as an ad hoc affair and was consistently observed as such by its repeated failures, defeats, and disasters. Campaigns with successful amphibious attacks were argued to be special cases in which luck, surprise, or overwhelming military force played a major part. The lack of planning and preparation, combined with poor intelligence and unanticipated factors in landing troops from the sea, created the impression that amphibious warfare against a hostile enemy coast simply could not be done on a large scale. Instead, amphibious warfare tended to revert to either coastal raids, as seen in many of the European colonial skirmishes and wars prior to the nineteenth century, or by utilizing a friendly port from an allied nation in order to land unmolested and assemble the manpower and supplies necessary for an upcoming campaign or battle.
Part of the argument was that ships were made simply for destroying or capturing other ships. In the event that ships were used in support of ground operations, as in the case of an opposed amphibious landing, naval commanders had to improvise, using weapons and equipment it had on hand to support the landing force. Boats meant for transporting only a small landing party had to be converted to serve as transports to offload large numbers of men and supplies either at the port or at the beach. Usually, such a process was a very laborious, disorganized affair, resulting in not having enough time to land the whole ground force on the coast or sometimes failing to completely unload all the necessary food, supplies, weapons, and equipment for the expeditionary force’s campaign. In addition, such amphibious operations were even more frustrating by the need for unity of command and the potential chance for friction between leadership personalities. At a minimum, this friction often resulted in arguments. At worst, the expeditionary force was quickly kicked ashore and simply left behind by the navy!
The Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolutions attempted to address these shortfalls by setting the foundations for sorely needed organizational training and reform within the military. These changes ultimately led to the professionalization of the soldier and sailor through the creation of recruit training centers and war academies, thus creating a learning environment for military personnel. In turn, these institutions helped set conditions for the technical specialization of the military and the importance of using scientific logic and technology to carefully study the realities of combat in a variety of geographic locations during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The United States and Amphibious Warfare
While amphibious warfare was developed and used for centuries, the United States was one of the few nations in world history to use amphibious warfare to position itself for geopolitical supremacy in the international system. Being protected by two of the world’s largest oceans, the American republic was not only sheltered from invasion from more powerful state actors, but was able to use the safety of the North American continent to build and expand its political, economic, and military base. However, the United States’ use of amphibious warfare would not start to become a factor in its rise to superpower status until nearly the end of the nineteenth century. The rise in science and industry contributed to amphibious warfare’s use and success for the United States, because it enabled the development and mass production of technologies that could minimize the difficulties of amphibious warfare. Due to these developments, when the United States became strong and secure enough, it soon used technology to expand beyond North America to begin systematically using amphibious warfare to influence and fight other countries to promote its national interests and democratic ideology.
The United States’ ability to use amphibious warfare to dominate the world started with the Second Industrial Revolution, which brought unprecedented advances in science and technology to industrialized nations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It resulted in the development of inventions in agriculture, industry, and commerce as well as transformed the face of human society, including warfare. As a new industrialized power, the United States dramatically expanded throughout the world from 1898 to 1945. This expansion
