Alfred Thayer Mahan

Having therefore no foreign establishments, either colonial or military, the ships of war of the United States, in war, will be like land birds, unable to fly far from their own shores. To provide resting places for them, where they can coal and repair, would be one of the first duties of a government proposing to itself the development of the power of the nation at sea.

Organized force alone enables the quiet and the weak to go about their business and to sleep securely in their beds, safe from the violent without or within.