As China continues to rise as a commerce state in an international system dominated by an incumbent maritime power, future points of tensions are most likely to occur at sea, rather than by territorial conquest. Yet, security studies have long favored the dominance of land power and often fail to account for naval power functions beyond land support, viewing the few maritime powers as exceptions. Naval strategy and force structure varies considerably across states, even when controlling for relative size. Due to the nature of building and maintaining naval fleets, overall naval force structure is a path dependent endeavor, not easily varied over time. States must then construct naval strategy based on long time horizons, despite fluctuations in the threats they face. This project will look beyond security concerns and consider the economic motivations that influence whether a state deploys a naval strategy of competition or denial. First, a large-N analysis of country-year data introduces a new measure of naval force structures beyond the dimension of size, and findings indicate that while naval size is largely influenced by how wealthy a state is, naval strategy is instead influenced by the type of wealth a state has. Second, a series of case studies explore the within-state decision-making process for naval strategy, at the point in which the state begins to invest in a fleet of a specific force structure. Even while controlling for changes, or the expectation of change, to a state’s security environment, the project finds that states with externally oriented economies, reliant on production and overseas commerce are more likely to invest in a competitive naval strategy while states that are economically dependent on land rents, internally oriented, are more likely to follow a naval strategy of denial.