China and the commons: Angell or Mahan?

World Affairs

Volumn 168, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 172-191

  Holmes, James R ^a,b   Yoshihara, Toshi ^c,d  

^a UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA   (United States)

^b US NAVAL WAR COLLEGE   (United States)

^c US Air War College   (United States)

^d Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CONFLICT MANAGEMENT; GEOPOLITICS; STRATEGIC APPROACH; WAR;

ASIA; BEIJING [CHINA]; CHINA; EURASIA; FAR EAST;

EID: 33745737369     PISSN: 00438200     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3200/WAFS.168.4.172-191     Document Type: Article

References (151)

1. People's Republic of China, China's National Defense in 2004, http:// english.chinamil.com.cn/special/cnd2004/contents_02.htm (accessed April 1, 2005).
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. To name just one example, many participants at a workshop on East Asian security convened by the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy in Newport, RI, on April 12, 2005, professed bewilderment that anyone would assess China's maritime strategy through a geopolitical lens.
5. Chen Jian, The China Challenge for the Twenty-First Century (Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace, 1998), 4-8.
6. Barry R. Posen, "Command of the Commons: The Military Foundation of U.S. Hegemony," International Security 28, no. 1 (Summer 2003): 5-10.
7. Paul M. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Ashfield, 1992 [1976]), 9.
8. U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense, The National Defense Strategy of the United States of America (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, March 2005), http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Mar2005/ d20050318nds1.pdf (accessed April 1, 2005).
9. Posen, "Command of the Commons," 45-46. Posen's discussion of the benefits of one dominant power ensuring the commons is not new. In 1907, for instance, the British diplomat Eyre Crowe urged his government to provide international "public goods," in the form of secure sea lanes, a dependable system of finance, and so forth. Only by supplying public goods could Great Britain persuade rising powers to acquiesce in its dominant position.
10. Eyre Crowe, "Memorandum on the Present State of British Relations with France and Germany, January 1, 1907," in British Documents on the Origins of the War 1898-1914, ed. G. P. Gooch and Harold Temperley, vol. 3, The Testing of the Entente, 1904-06 (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1927).
11. Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783 (Boston: Little, Brown, Dover, 1987 [1890]), 25.
12. Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Problem of Asia (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1970 [1900]), 124.
13. Ibid., 26.
14. Ibid., 124.
15. Margaret Tuttle Sprout, "Mahan: Evangelist of Sea Power," in Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to Hitler, ed. Edward Meade Earle, 430-31 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1943).
16. Mahan, Problem of Asia, 129. He did not, however, urge the United States to take on an open-ended naval buildup or to attempt to supplant Great Britain as the world's leading naval power. Local supremacy would do. The fleet "must be great enough to take the sea, and to fight, with reasonable chances of success, the largest force likely to be brought against it. ... What we need," he declared of the U.S. Navy, are "twenty armored battleships" able to "raise blockades" and "beat off an enemy's fleet on its approach."
17. Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1970 [1879]), 198.
18. Mahan, Influence of Sea Power, 71.
19. Ibid.
20. Mahan defined "command of the sea" as "that overbearing power on the sea which drives the enemy's flag from it, or allows it to appear only as a fugitive; and which, by controlling the great common, closes the highways by which commerce moves to and fro from the enemy's shores." Mahan, Influence of Sea Power, 138.
21. Mahan, Problem of Asia, 42.
22. Mahan, Influence of Sea Power, 26.
23. Mahan, Problem of Asia, 33.
24. Ibid., 15.
25. Placing a premium on the control of the Straits of Florida, the canal zone itself, Hawaii, and the Philippines as a lifeline for trade from East Coast ports to colonies in the Far East, Adm. Alfred von Tirpitz, Germany's prophet of sea power, envisioned a similar belt of German colonies linking Kiaochow with Central and South America. Ironically, Mahan laid the intellectual groundwork not only for a more vigorous U.S. role in the Caribbean, but for European encroachment there.
26. Alfred Thayer Mahan, Naval Strategy, Compared and Contrasted with the Principles and Practice of Military Operations on Land (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1911), 111. Tirpitz made a nearly identical argument for German bases in the Caribbean and the Pacific.
27. Alfred Thayer Mahan, "The Strategic Features of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea," in Mahan, Interest of America in Sea Power, 277.
28. Mahan, Interest of America in Sea Power, 275, 380.
29. Mahan, Problem of Asia, 135. After seeking to undercut the Monroe Doctrine where it suited his expansionist purposes, Mahan demanded that it be upheld in Panama: "there is in [the growing imperial competition] nothing to diminish, but rather to intensify, the purpose that there shall be no intrusion of the European political system upon territory whence military effect upon the Isthmus can be readily exerted."
30. Mahan, Problem of Asia, 122.
31. Norman Angell, The Great Illusion: A Study of the Relation of Military Power to National Advantage, 4th ed. (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1913), 4.
32. Ibid., 4-5.
33. Ibid., 5.
34. Ibid., 5-7.
35. Angell quoted Mahan's The Interest of America in International Conditions (Boston: Little, Brown, 1910) at length before going on to show that Mahan's "philosophy does indeed represent the general public opinion of Europe, the opinion of the great mass which prompts the actions of governments and explains their respective policies." He documented this claim with numerous quotations from European newspapers and journals, focusing in particular on German outlets. Others testified to Mahan's influence. In Britain, observed Eyre Crowe, "No one now disputes" the "tremendous influence" of naval preponderance, as "described in the classical pages of Captain Mahan." Margaret Tuttle Sprout pointed to his "intoxicating effect" on the Germans, "a people just awakening" to the possibilities of world power. At an 1897 meeting of the Pan-German League in Hamburg, for instance, Kaiser Wilhelm II threw his support behind naval expansion, declaring that "a dire necessity for us is a strong German fleet." By 1907, Crowe reported hearing slogans such as "Our future lies on the water" and "The trident must be in our hand" from the lips of countless Germans.
36. Angell, Great Illusion, 15-27, 39-41;
37. Crowe, "Memorandum on the Present State," 402, 405;
38. Sprout, "Mahan: Evangelist of Sea Power," 442-43;
39. Mr. Tower to Sir Edward Grey, January 24, 1906, in Gooch and Temperley, British Documents, vol. 3, 352.
40. For a fuller assessment of Mahan's influence on British and German strategic thought, see James R. Holmes, "Mahan, a 'Place in the Sun,' and Germany's Quest for Sea Power," Comparative Strategy 23, no. 1 (January-March 2004): 27-62.
41. Angell, Great Illusion, 6-13.
42. Ibid., 29.
43. Ibid., 30-34.
44. Ibid., 34.
45. Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye in Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977) were among the first to contend that economic interdependence was transforming international politics. The usual rejoinder directed at Keohane, Nye, and like-minded analysts was that war had come in 1914 despite Norman Angell's pleas that war was futile and economically self-defeating.
46. For a sampling of realist commentary, see John J. Mearsheimer, "The False Promise of International Institutions," International Security 19, no. 3 (Winter 1994-95): 5-49;
47. John J. Mearsheimer, "Clash of the Titans," Foreign Policy, January-February 2005, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/files/ story2740.php;
48. Mackubin Thomas Owens, "In Defense of Classical Geopolitics," Naval War College Review 52, no. 4 (Autumn 1999), http:/ /www.nwc.navy.mil/press/Review/1999/autumn/art3a99.htm.
49. Also useful is Mackubin Thomas Owens, "China, Russia and the New Geopolitics of Power," Claremont Institute, May 31, 2000, http:// www.claremont.org/projects/missiledefense/000531owens.html.
50. Christopher J. Fettweis, "Revisiting Mackinder and Angell: The Obsolescence of Great Power Geopolitics," Comparative Strategy 22, no. 2 (April-June 2003): 113;
51. Norman Angell, The Fruits of Victory: A Sequel to the Great Illusion, intro. S. J. Stearns (New York: Garland, 1972), xx.
52. Christopher J. Fettweis, "Revisiting Mackinder and Angell," 109-29.
53. Zbigniew Brzezinski, "Clash of the Titans," Foreign Policy, January-February 2005, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/files/ story2740.php.
54. The great German philosopher argued, in brief, that a world populated by constitutional republics would be a world in which war was unlikely. Populaces preoccupied with commercial pursuits would discourage their governments from resorting to armed force. Immanuel Kant, To Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, trans., intro. Ted Humphrey (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2003);
55. Thomas P. M. Barnett, The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-first Century (New York: G. P. Putnam, 2004), 169.
56. For a sampling of other views proclaiming the death of geopolitics, see Ivo H. Daalder and James M. Lindsay, "For America, the Age of Geopolitics Has Ended and the Age of Global Politics Has Begun," Boston Review, February-March 2005, and America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2003);
57. and America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2003);
58. Joseph S. Nye, Power in the Global Information Age: From Realism to Globalization (London: Routledge, 2004);
59. and Michael Mandelbaum, The Ideas That Conquered the World: Peace, Democracy, and Free Markets in the Twenty-first Century (New York: Public Affairs, 2002).
60. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times dissents from this view, contending that globalization raises the costs of geopolitical ventures but does not end geopolitics altogether. "A Conversation with Tom Friedman, a Columnist for the New York Times," The Charlie Rose Show, April 5, 2005.
61. Barnett, The Pentagon's New Map, 62, 108, 152, 169.
62. Wang Zaibang, then the vice president of the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, incorporated this quotation into his introductory remarks. Wang Zaibang, presentation at Symposium on Sea-lane Security, cosponsored by the Ford Foundation and the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, Beijing, China, April 13-14, 2004; author discussions with Chinese analysts, Beijing, April 13-14, 2004; Mahan, Influence of Sea Power, 138.
63. See, for instance, David Hale, "China's Growing Appetites," National Interest 76 (Summer 2004): 137-47;
64. Bernard D. Cole, "Waterways and Strategy: China's Priorities," China Brief 5, no. 4 (February 15, 2005), http://www.jamestown.org/ publications_details.php?volume_id=408&issue_id= 3232&article_id=2369260.
65. On the buildup of China's merchant fleet, see David Lague, "The Making of a Juggernaut," Far Eastern Economic Review, September 18, 2003, http://www.ocnus.net/cgi-bin/exec/view.cgi?archive=31&num=7102.
66. "Mahan is alive and well and living in Beijing," declared Lague, pointing to the rapid growth of the Chinese merchant fleet. Some news outlets have taken account of the Chinese naval buildup, highlighting its focus on Taiwan. See, for example, Edward Cody, "With Taiwan in Mind, China Focuses Military Expansion on Navy," Washington Post, March 20, 2004, A12.
67. People's Republic of China, China's National Defense in 2004.
68. George W. Baer, One Hundred Years of Sea Power: The U.S. Navy, 1890-1990 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), 12.
69. Wen Zongren, in Annual Report: The Military Power of the People's Republic of China, 2005 Office of the Secretary of Defense (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2005), 12.
70. Wang Xingwang, "Views on Theory of Dominant Operations - On Domination of Information and Traffic," Zhongguo Junshi Kexue, June 20, 2002, 129-32, FBIS-CPP20021204000144.
71. Xie Zhijun, "Asian Seas in the 21st Century: With So Many Rival Navies, How Will China Manage?" Junshi Wenzhai [Military Digest], February 1, 2001, 20-22, FBIS-CPP10010305000214.
72. Jiang Shiliang, "The Command of Communications," Zhongguo Junshi Kexue, October 2, 2002, 106-14, FBIS-CPP20030107000189.
73. Zhang Wenmu, "China's Energy Security and Policy Choices," Shijie Jingji Yu Zhengzhi 5, May 14, 2003, 11-16, FBIS-CPP20030528000169.
74. Alexander Chieh-cheng Huang, "The Chinese Navy's Offshore Active Defense Strategy," Naval War College Review 47, no. 3 (Summer 1994): 9-18.
75. In line with Mahanian theory, Beijing can also be expected to seek out naval stations to support operations far afield from China's coasts - a trend already evident in its pursuit of basing rights in the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea, along the sea lanes that furnish the nation with much of its oil and gas. People's Republic of China, China's National Defense in 2004;
76. Sudha Ramachandran, "China's Pearl in Pakistan's Waters," Asia Times Online, March 4, 2005, http://atimes01.atimes.com/atimes /South_Asia/GC04Df06.html.
77. Mahan, "The Strategic Features of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea," in Mahan, Interest of America in Sea Power, 283-92.
78. For a fuller treatment of Taiwan's geopolitical import for Beijing, see James R. Holmes and Toshi Yoshihara, "The Influence of Mahan upon China's Maritime Strategy," Comparative Strategy 24, no. 1 (January-March 2005): 53-71.
79. Dean Acheson, "Remarks by the Secretary of State [Acheson] before the National Press Club, Washington, January 12, 1950," in Documents on American Foreign Relations, vol. 12, ed. Raymond Dennett and Robert K. Turner, January 1-December 31, 1950, 431 (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1951);
80. Douglas MacArthur, "Message to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, August 20, 1950," in Henry C. K. Liu, "Korea: Wrong War, Wrong Place, Wrong Enemy," Asia Times, January 8, 2004, http://www.atimes.com/ atimes/China/FA08Ad02.html (accessed April 4, 2005).
81. Author interviews with Taiwanese scholars, National Chengchi University and Academica Sinica, Taipei, July-August 2005.
82. "Foreign forces" has long been Beijing's short-hand for "U.S. forces." In 1995, for instance, Chinese president Jiang Zemin delivered a speech titled "Continuing to Strive toward the Reunification of China" that vowed to strike at "foreign forces who intervene in China's reunification." See "Jiang Zemin on Taiwan Straits," http://www.chinataiwan.org/web/ webportal/W5097695/A5111811.html.
83. During the 1995-96 Taiwan Strait crisis, Foreign Minister Qian Qichen likewise warned "foreign forces," meaning the aircraft carrier task forces the Clinton administration had dispatched to the area, to steer clear of the island. Andrea Koppel and Tom Mintier, "China Demands 'Foreign Forces' Stay Away," CNN.com, March 11, 1996, http: //www.cnn.com/WORLD/9603/china_taiwan/11/ (accessed April 1, 2005).
84. For an excellent study that typifies 1990s forecasts of a North Korean economic collapse, see Nicholas Eberstadt, The End of North Korea (Washington, DC: AEI Press, 1999).
85. Marcus Noland, an expert on inter-Korean economic dynamics, argues that absorbing the North could cause only a "mild slowing of the South Korean growth rate," provided Seoul took proper precautions to cushion the economic blow. See Marcus Noland, "North Korea and the South Korean Economy," paper presented to the Roh Government Transition Team, Seoul, South Korea, February 24, 2003, Institute for International Economics, http://www.iie.com/publications/papers/ noland0203.htm (accessed April 1, 2005).
86. Thomas M. Kane, Chinese Grand Strategy and Maritime Power (London: Frank Cass, 2002), 37-38.
87. See Charles M. Perry et al., Alliance Diversification and the Future of the U.S.-Korean Security Relationship (Dulles, VA: Brassey's, 2004), 138-39.
88. "Bohai Sea Rim Economic Circle, a New Economic Engine," People's Daily Online, October 4, 2003, http://english.people.com.cn /200310/04/eng20031004_125391.shtml (accessed April 1, 2005).
89. "An Introduction to Petroleum and Natural Gas Exploration and Production Research in China," Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 41 (2004): 4.
90. "Largest Offshore Oilfield Found in North China," People's Daily Online, February 2, 2000, http://english.people.com.cn/english /200002/02/eng20000202T102.html (accessed April 1, 2005).
91. Edward Luttwak is credited with coining the term geo-economics. He argued that economic imperatives will increasingly determine interstate competition. Edward N. Luttwak, "From Geopolitics to Geo-economics: Logic of Conflict, Grammar of Commerce," National Interest 20 (Summer 1990): 17-23.
92. Interestingly, the concept of geo-economics has recently gained currency in the Chinese lexicon. See "China-Japan Oil Race Inevitable," Renmin Ribao (Online English version), October 28, 2004, FBIS-CPP20041029000002;
93. and Song Guoyou, "Why Is There Security in East Asia?" Zhanlue yu Guanli [Strategy and Management] 6 (November 1, 2003): 55-60, FBIS-CPP2004010 7000227.
94. It should be noted that the U.S.-ROK alliance was already engaged in efforts to consolidate and reduce the U.S. presence through the Land Partnership Plan signed in 2001.
95. For a detailed chronology of events related to the FOTA talks, see United States Forces Korea Website, http://www.usfk.or.kr/en, as well as the quarterly electronic journal on East Asian bilateral relations titled Comparative Connections, which is produced by the Pacific Forum at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, http:// www.csis.org/pacfor/ccejournal.html.
96. "ROK, US Agree on Total Troop Cuts," Korea Times, January 19, 2004.
97. "Osan-Pyongtaek to Become USFK Hub," Korea Times, April 26, 2003.
98. Indeed, this reconfiguration has raised fears among some South Korean lawmakers that their country might one day serve as a base for U.S. military intervention in a cross-strait conflict - an outcome that would surely provoke Chinese anger, if not hostility, toward Seoul. Such anxieties have reached the highest levels of Seoul's leadership. In a controversial speech, South Korean president Roh Moon-hyun declared that Washington would have to obtain consent from the ROK government before U.S. forces in Korea could be deployed for regional conflict. This stance was widely interpreted as reluctance on Roh's part to become embroiled in a war over Taiwan. The level of concern that Korean officials at the highest levels of government have voiced suggests both resistance to and genuine fear of the extra-peninsular character of the expected new U.S. military posture. See Jong-Heon Lee, "U.S. Intent Questioned: Seoul Seen as Base for Role in China-Taiwan Fight," Washington Times, December 3, 2004, 17;
99. "'Roh Doctrine': Principles at Stake," Korea Times, March 10, 2005, http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/opinion/200503/ kt2005031017081154040.htm (accessed April 1, 2005).
100. Park Sang-seek, "Time to Revisit the Korea-U.S. Alliance," Korea Herald, May 27, 2004.
101. Thom Shanker and David E. Sanger, "U.S. Defends Plan to Cut Soldiers in South Korea," International Herald Tribune, June 10, 2004, 1.
102. Writing in Jiefangiun Bao, the official PLA newspaper, one analyst sums up China's outlook on the U.S. force presence: "The Korean Peninsula is located in the heart of northeast Asia, so its strategic position is extremely important. To dominate the Korean Peninsula is also to have a tight grip on northeast Asia.... Thus, as long as the United States does not withdraw its troops, it can continue to have a say in the critical issues in northeast Asia" (emphasis added). The author declares that the United States wants to keep its troops in place because of its long-standing animosity toward North Korea and its desire to "strengthen [its] control of South Korea..." Hence Beijing's desire for U.S. forces to exit the peninsula following reunification. Bi Yurong, qtd. in Kane, Chinese Grand Strategy and Maritime Power, 112-15.
103. See, for example, Travis Tanner, "The Oil That Troubles US-China Waters," Asia Times, June 18, 2004;
104. Tim Luard, "Oil Fuels Asian Giants' Tensions," BBC News Online, November 16, 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4016059.stm;
105. Tschang Chi-chu, "Chinese Oil Hopes Dashed by Russian Pipeline Decision," Straits Times, January 6, 2005.
106. Coal remains the dominant resource for China's energy consumption. China consumes and produces the largest amount of coal of any country. According to China's National Bureau of Statistics, however, Chinese reliance on coal has steadily declined, dropping from 76 percent of total consumption in 1990 to 67 percent in 2003. The drop in the share of China's energy mix, which includes coal, oil, natural gas, and primary electricity, is partly due to the increase in oil consumption, which accounts for about 23 percent of total demand. See National Bureau of Statistics of China, China Statistical Yearbook 2004 (Beijing: China Statistics Press, 2004), 276.
107. A RAND study of China's economic vulnerabilities posited a scenario in which a 25 percent contraction in global oil supplies resulted in a tripling of prices over a ten-year period (2005-15). The study concluded that China would suffer an annual reduction of 1.2-1.4 percent in its economic growth rate. China would be among the countries hit hardest should an energy crisis transpire. See Charles Wolf Jr., K. C. Yeh, Benjamin Zycher, Nicholas Eberstadt, and Sung-Ho Lee, Fault Lines in China's Economic Terrain (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2003), 105-16.
108. See U.S. Energy Information Administration, "China," EIA Country Analysis Briefs, July 2004, http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/ china.html (accessed April 1, 2005).
109. U.S. Energy Information Administration, "China."
110. U.S. National Intelligence Council, Mapping the Global Future: Report of the National Intelligence Council's 2020 Project (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2004), http://www.cia.gov/nic/ NIC_globaltrend2020_s2.html#rise (accessed April 1, 2005).
111. China's traumatic experience with oil dependency vis-à-vis the Soviet Union is well documented. See, for example, Erica Downs, China's Quest for Energy Security (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2000), 43.
112. Zhang, "China's Energy Security and Policy Choices," 8.
113. Wei Zhangyao, "China Should Have a Mature Oil Security Strategy," Ching Pao 309, April 3, 2003, 49-51, FBIS-CPP20030402000082.
114. Jia Gan, "How Important Is Oil Security to the United States?" Zhongguo Nengyuan, January 22, 2003, FBIS-CPP20030207000136.
115. Shi Hongtao, "China's 'Malacca Straits,'" Qingnian Bao, June 15, 2004, FBIS-CPP 20040615 000042.
116. Zhang Yuncheng, "The Malacca Strait and World Oil Security," Huanqiu Shibao, December 5, 2003, FBIS-CPP20031217000202.
117. Philip Andrews-Speed, The Strategic Implications of China's Energy Needs, Adelphi Paper 346 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2002), 77-81;
118. Bernard D. Cole, The Great Wall at Sea: China's Navy Enters the Twenty-first Century (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2001), 63-67.
119. Zhang, "China's Energy Security and Policy Choices," 11.
120. Liu Xinhua and Qi Yi, "China's Oil Security and Its Strategic Options," Xiandai Guoji Guanxi [Contemporary International Relations], 12, Decemher 20, 2002, 35-46, FBIS-CPP20030425000288.
121. The plan to construct a series of naval bases was dubbed a "string of pearls" strategy. Bill Gertz, "China Builds Up Strategic Sea Lanes: Out to Protect Energy Sources," Washington Times, January 18, 2004, 1.
122. See Lyle Goldstein and William Murray, "Undersea Dragons: China's Maturing Submarine Force," International Security 28, no. 4 (Spring 2004): 161-96;
123. Holmes and Yoshihara, "The Influence of Mahan upon China's Maritime Strategy," 53-71.
124. Robyn Lim, The Geopolitics of East Asia: The Search for Equilibrium (New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), 7.
125. Acheson, "Remarks by the Secretary of State [Acheson] before the National Press Club, Washington, January 12, 1950," 431.
126. The most prominent advocate of this way of thinking about China's maritime destiny was Adm. Liu Huaqing, who commanded the PLA Navy in the 1980s. Liu exhorted Beijing to break with tradition, building up naval forces capable of waging an "active offshore defense" instead of confining itself to coastal defense. China, maintained Liu, should assert control of the waters within the island chain before pursuing a global, blue-water navy. Taiwan was and is a barrier to Liu's aspirations. For a more comprehensive overview of Liu Huaqing's vision, see Cole, Great Wall at Sea, especially 165-68.
127. In an essay pointing to the dangerous geopolitical consequences of a Chinese "victory" over Taiwan, a key step to inverting Acheson's defense perimeter, Arthur Waldron warns, "Chinese military expansion has put all of Asia on edge. The threat is not only to Taiwan, but Taiwan is increasingly the pivot. The strategic reason is obvious: the island lies athwart the most important East Asian sea lanes linking Japan, South Korea, and coastal China to the Middle East, [the] source of the petroleum that drives their economies. The same lanes connect European Russia by sea to its strategically vital Pacific coast, and connect India, which maintains a major presence at the western end of the Straits of Malacca, to East and Southeast Asia. To an ambitious power, they offer a route into the Indian Ocean and beyond." See Arthur Waldron, "Our Stake in Taiwan," Commentary 118, no. 3 (October 2004): 62.
128. See also Antonio Chiang, "China Needs Taiwan to Project Its Naval Power," Taipei Times, March 20, 2005, http://tai wansecurity.org/TT/ 2005/TT-200305.htm (accessed April 1, 2005).
129. Joseph Nye, The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 2002).
130. Nye argues that the United States has a responsibility to provide global public goods to maintain its standing and to sustain broad cooperation in the international system. He identifies these public goods as: (1) regional balances of power; (2) an open international economic system; and (3) universal access to the international commons, including the oceans. Joseph Nye, "New Orders? New Norms? The American National Interest and Global Public Goods," International Affairs 78, no. 2 (April 2002): 241-42.
131. As a seasoned veteran of U.S. policy toward China notes, "Maintaining balanced, beneficial, and constructive relations between the United States and China will never be easy. There is no strategy, attitude, communications channel, or communiqué that can make it so; the relationship is simply too complex and multifaceted to allow for easy management." See Robert Suettinger, Beyond Tiananmen: The Politics of U.S.-China Relations 1989-2000 (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2003), 441.
132. Posen, "Command of the Commons," 22.
133. Stephen Biddle, Afghanistan and the Future of Warfare: Implications for Army and Defense Policy (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2002), 53.
134. See Paul Dodge, "Circumventing Sea Power: Chinese Strategies to Deter U.S. Intervention in Taiwan," Comparative Strategy 23, nos. 4-5 (October-December 2004): 391-409.
135. Posen, "Command of the Commons," 37.
136. John Stone, "Politics, Technology and the Revolution in Military Affairs," Journal of Strategic Studies 27, no. 3 (September 2004): 421.
137. The time required to move troops and materiel across the Pacific by sea has changed little since World War II. According to one study, "even today moving troops, equipment and supplies requires 21 days by sea from Oakland, California, to Manila, Philippines, and 16 more to reach the western limits of the PACOM and US Army Pacific (USARPAC) area of responsibility in the Indian Ocean." See Lester W. Grau and Jacob W. Kipp, "The Tyranny of Time and Distance: Bridging the Pacific," Military Review, July-August 2000, http://fmso.leaven worth.army.mil/ fmsopubs/issues/bridge/bridge.htm. As an illustration of basing density, Asia has 2.9 hardened airfields per million square nautical miles, compared with 14 and 13.6 in the Middle East and Europe, respectively.
138. See Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force Web site, http://www.jda.go.jp/ JMSDF/gallery/ships/index.html.
139. See Charles M. Perry and Toshi Yoshihara, The U.S.-Japan Alliance: Preparing for Korean Reconciliation and Beyond (Dulles, VA: Brassey's, 2003), 34-36.
140. The alliance partners declared the Taiwan issue and its peaceful resolution a "common strategic objective." See Joint Statement of the U.S.-Japan Security Consultative Committee, February 19, 2005, U.S. State Department Web site, http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2005/ 42490.htm (accessed April 1, 2005).
141. Robert Magnus, in Christopher P. Cavas, "USN Ship-Buying Practices Under Scrutiny," Defense News, March 7, 2005, http:/ /defensenews.com/story.php?F=698550&C=navwar&P=true (accessed April 1, 2005).
142. U.S. Department of the Navy, An Interim Report to Congress on Annual Long-range Plan for the Construction of Naval Vessels for FY 2006, March 2005, n.p.
143. Christopher P. Cavas, "Stretching Shipbuilding Dollars," Defense News, March 21, 2005, http://defensenews.com/ story.php?F=731487&C=navwar&P=true (accessed April 1, 2005).
144. Ronald O'Rourke, Potential Navy Force Structure and Shipbuilding Plans: Background and Issues for Congress (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2005), 22.
145. Adm. Vern Clark, remarks at U.S. Air War College, Montgomery, AL, March 16, 2005.
146. Christopher P. Cavas, "U.S. Navy Heads to Port as Exercises Wind Down," Defense News, July 28, 2004, http://www.defensenews.com/ story.php?F=3108048&C=asiapac (accessed April 1, 2005);
147. U.S. Congressional Budget Office, Improving the Efficiency of Forward Presence by Aircraft Carriers (Washington, DC: Congressional Budget Office, 1996), 2, 11-27.
148. Ronald O'Rourke, Navy Ship Deployments: New Approaches - Background and Issues for Congress (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2004), 3-4.
149. Lu Baosheng and Guo Hongjun, "Guam: A Strategic Stronghold on the West Pacific," Jiefangjun Bao, June 19, 2003, FBIS-CPP 20030619000057.
150. Goldstein and Murray, "Undersea Dragons," 172-73, 179-81, 191-94.
151. See also Frank C. Borik, "Sub Tzu and the Art of Submarine Warfare," in Essays on Strategy XIII, ed. Mary A. Sommerville, 16 (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1996).