 Mahan pushed the concept of the "big navy" and an expansionist view where defence was achieved by controlling the sea approaches rather than fortifying the coast.His theories contributed to the naval arms race between 1898 and 1914.At the start of World War I strategy was dominated by the offensive thinking that had been in vogue since 1870, despite the more recent experiences of the Second Boer War (1899–1902) and Russo-Japanese War (1904–05), where the machine gun demonstrated its defensive capabilities.