The doctrine for American Empire began when state-centered actors introduced preemption and nation building into U.S. policy at the end of the nineteenth century. In 1890, law makers used the new doctrine to authorize a battleship program that placed the United States upon a path-dependant course toward military parity with Europe. I argue that naval theorists, not political or economic actors, were responsible for producing and extending the imperial doctrine and policy. These actors framed a new outward reaching national vision and created networks of support that ensured their program's passage through Congress. The project began from an intellectual reassessment of American security. It succeeded because state actor's designed a strategy that could circumvent the era's fragmented political landscape. Once military reform was complete, the United States possessed the tools for global hegemony. My findings confirm and modify predictions generated from the Offensive Realism school of International Relations.

The evidence I present is at variance with other explanations of late-nineteenth-century foreign policy adjustment. I found that politicians or “principles,” followed an imperial program developed by subordinate state actors. American Political Development (APD) scholarship suggests possibilities for such an outcome. One explanation is Daniel Carpenter's theory of bureaucratic capacity which notes how late-nineteenth-century state actors were able to advance new domestic proposals once they had demonstrated the value of their programs to the public. I apply Carpenter's theory to American strategic adjustment. My findings indicate that state actors established autonomy, capacity, and altered the direction of U.S. foreign policy without demonstrating the value of their program. Strategic adjustment was possible, I argue, because state actors functioned as an epistemic community that achieved political support by monopolizing specialty knowledge during a period of technological uncertainty.