brilliant responses all! i particularly liked the mention of the smurfs.
one thing seems clear: having a big navy seems to put you in a better position to wage an aggressive war (or choose your wars.) a big continental land power soon reaches limits.
and yes, the best way to combat naval superiority is to achieve alliance superiority.
I remember now … Brainy Smurf creating the strategy … Handy Smurf building all of those terrible weapons … Hefty Smurf leading the shock troops … Jokey Smurf slaughtering all of those people with his “presents.” If only negotiations hadn’t broken down at the last minute, a lot of lives could have been saved.
Big Navy: Look at Napoleonic War or World War II. While victory ultimately came on land, the decisive factor was that due to the British and Allied control of the seas the French and the Axis could not attack Britain.
Genghis Khan had some moderate military success without much of a navy.
That’s mostly because in US history classes (as far as I’m aware) there doesnt seem to be much study of the war outside of America (what part of US pop knows that the Spanish and Dutch helped the American Revolutionaries, even though not directly?). While Britain usually remained dominant in those battles, it had to stretch its ressources to protect all of its Empire at the same time. A very heavy drain for Britain.
That said, in the end, the war was won the ground, not at sea.
he had a navy. but the japanese defeated it without a navy of their own. 
That was his grandson.
oh, right. the mongol army is a good example of imperial overstretch.
Gonna have to disagree ( y’know, props to my peeps and all 
). Genghis never noticeably overstretched and arguably neither did his sons or even his grandsons. They ceased expansion eventually, but not really from a collapse of logistics. On some borders semi-firm limits were imposed by a necessity for access to adequate pasturage ( since Mongol ponies were classically exclusively grass-fed, rather than raised on fodder ), but even here the Chinese branch managed to function as it continued to push south.
It was really more of an internal failure with the eventual dissolution of imperial unity and the resultant infighting. In particular the long violent feud between the houses of Jochi and Ogedei/Chagatai on one side and the house of Tolui on the other that consumed the second half of the 13th century and beyond. Compounded in China after Kublai by a certain degree of stagnation. But as long as imperial unity lasted ( de facto to ~1260 ), nothing really stopped the core Mongol imperial army. Even Ayn Jalut was won against a skeleton force ( substantial, nonetheless ), after the main army had withdrawn.
In general when we talk about the seapower, while it has frequently been quite important, I think it has less often been decisive. And there are even fewer examples where I think it could be argued that it was the dominant arm of any military. The biggest exceptions are probably all to be found in the 15th-mid 20th centuries, with Britain, the Netherlands and perhaps Portugal topping the list at their height and maybe imperial Japan slotting in there as well. By contrast even imperial Spain probably leaned a bit more on its army, though again a strong navy was obviously a necessity.
^
ok, taking off from your last paragraph, let’s talk peacetime. better yet, peacetime now. the US is arguably at war at the moment so we see that it’s trying to maintain its present military stature. but during peacetime and even cold war where you often have arms build-up, any economic/political power has to maintain an armed force on a budget.
i’ll put myself on the line again by saying a navy is far more difficult and expensive to maintain and develop. this, even for countries whose crucial military arm has been land and perhaps air forces (USSR then and china now.) army strength requirments in these countries are huge, but nothing compared with building a blue water fleet (or even an extensive brown water fighting capability.)
so my question: should the major contending countries today aim for blue water superiority, whether through autonomous build-up or superior alliances?
i have to qualify my second paragraph a bit more. the 2010 US army budget is 249 billion while the navy’s is 170 billion (including the marine corp.) the air force is also 170 billion. this is explained by the fact that the US has a standing navy and requires by and large operating maintenance, replacement and upgrade. a country wanting to match the US navy will have to spend much-much more. that’s what matters here.
And don’t forget that the wars the U.S. has been fighting for the past 10 years in Afghanistan and Iraq are both primarily army wars with no naval combat worth speaking of. Even though the figures you speak of leave out the operational budget for Iraq and Afghanistan, those wars still have an impact on how money is allocated and spent.
Getting back to the OP, again it depends on the nation and the war. Think about the Vietnam War - the most powerful navy in the world couldn’t do much to influence the course of the war. Victory for the Vietnamese couldn’t consist of coming across the Pacific to occupy Washington DC, but that wasn’t necessary for Vietnamese war aims. If a navy were always more important, the North Vietnamese with their impotent naval arm should have lost the war.
It may be that ‘major contending countries’ doesn’t include Vietnam - the term is somewhat vague. But the point is that it all depends on what war the nation can reasonably expect to be involved in. Take India for an example, although they’ve spent lots of money on naval expansion in recent years, I’d say their army is more important since their likely conflicts are against Pakistan or China
Hey, the Navy has more nuclear warheads than the AF, and they seem to keep better track of them too!
Or, as grunts are fond of saying, “either you’re infantry, or you’re just support” 
Although seapower has great advantages it does not guarentee victory. For example:
[ul]
[li]5th century BC Athens was unable to defeat a Spartan-led alliance despite naval dominance[/li][li]Alexander the Great had no navy, and could only reduce the Persian Navy (manned mostly by Phoenecians) by capturing its bases.[/li][li]13th century Japan had no Navy, yet presented a serious obstacle to Kublai Khan’s 2nd invasion attempt, even before a typhoon wiped out the fleet.[/li][/ul]
Only as transportation.
England pressed its advantage enough to win the crown for Henry V, and to keep
his and numberous other English armies supplied for decades. The problem was
that the French kept picking themselves off the floor after their several defeats,
and I believe English internal problems hurt the war effort also.
On land they were fought to to a standstill fair and square first by the Americans
alone, and then by the Americans and French. At sea the French inflicted a rare
defeat on the RN, allowing the British army at Yorktown to be cut off and forced
to surrender.
They had a full-sized fleet stationed at Port Arthur. The CIC Vitgeft was incompetent,
and the Japanese first bottled him up witha suprise attack, then so heavily mined the approaches
that the flagship hit one in a sortie in force, and I think went down with all hands, including the
Admiral 2nd in command (Markov?sp), who was the best sailor they had.
Yes, the naval race was irrational, and so was the Kaiser’s policy of backing
Austria-Hungary vs Serbia even at the risk of a general war.
the only possibility would have been by advancing full-scale submarine production
by several years. Germany began the war with only about 35 boats, and those gave
the Brirish a devil of a time. By 1943 I believe it was building well over 100 per year.
150-200 boats and ~100 per year then abuilding in 1939 would have been hard for
the UK to overcome.
Why should we cut back in the face of another country’s growing power?