In the featured article on the U.S. Naval Institute’s flagship Proceedings website, Lt. Commander Aaron Marchant of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) warns that while we rightly focus today on deterring a Chinese blockade, attack, or invasion of Taiwan, we must not ignore the long-term threat posed by China’s global maritime ambitions. Lt. Commander Marchant describes that threat as a “globe-spanning PLAN [People’s Liberation Army Navy] that can threaten the U.S. Navy’s command of the world ocean.”
Marchant’s reference to the “world ocean” brings to mind the geopolitical warning issued more than a century ago by Britain’s Sir Halford Mackinder in “The Geographical Pivot of History,” namely, that should China become the predominant power in Eurasia and use the vast resources of the great continent to achieve global naval supremacy, “the empire of the world would be in sight.”
Lt. Commander Marchant introduces his article by projecting ahead to the year 2050. The expected Chinese invasion of Taiwan in the 2020s never happened. Instead, tensions eased in the South China Sea. Xi Jinping’s successors in Beijing engaged in a peace offensive with Taiwan which resulted in the peaceful reunification with the island reminiscent of the early years after Britain ceded Hong Kong back to China in 1997.
The United States adhered to the Shanghai Communique, which recognized one China and accepted the peaceful unification of China and Taiwan. China used this peace offensive, Marchant writes, to not only gain control over Taiwan but more importantly to lull the United States to sleep while it continued “signing basing contracts and building out forward-operating blue-water naval forces” from the Middle East, to West Africa, and Latin America. By the time America awakened to the threat, “the PLA Navy (PLAN) ruled the seas.” The acme of skill, wrote Sun Tzu, is to defeat an enemy without fighting.
This scenario is not far-fetched. Arguably, this could be Xi Jinping’s strategy: focus America on the threat to Taiwan by rattling sabers and conducting military exercises in the South China Sea but refrain from actually attacking the island; meanwhile, move forward with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to achieve naval basing rights at ports around the world; and continue to build a blue-water navy that combines superior numbers of warships with technology and weapons that match anything possessed by the United States.
Such a strategy would be reminiscent of Deng Xiaoping’s post-Cold War approach to the United States: “Hide our capacities and bide our time.” Deng’s approach worked brilliantly in the next decades as the United States’ policy of engagement helped China become an economic and military superpower.
As Marchant notes, China has already “secured operating rights for ports in several foreign countries well outside China’s traditional sphere of influence in East Asia.” These overseas ports, he warns, “could be operated as bases for PLAN warships.” And several of those ports are located in Latin America (Argentina, Cuba, Panama), a not-so-subtle challenge to the Monroe Doctrine. The head of U.S. Southern Command recently warned members of the House Armed Services Committee that China’s goal in Latin America is “to replace the United States as a leader in the region.” Lt. Commander Marchant sees it as part of China’s “Project 141,” which he describes as a “secretive logistics network that aims to give China a worldwide presence.”
China’s reach is also extending to Africa, where it has been working to establish a military base in Equatorial Guinea on Africa’s Atlantic coast. The head of U.S. Africa Command stated: “By 2030, Chinese military facilities and technical collection sites in Africa will allow Beijing to project power eastward into the Middle East and Indo-Pacific Theaters and west into the Atlantic.” The PLAN already has the largest navy in the world, and, as Marchant notes, its shipbuilding capacity is 232 times greater than that of the United States. (RELATED: International Affairs Professor Says Biden ‘Checked’ China: What World Does He Live In?)
Marchant, and other American naval experts like James Holmes and Toshi Yoshihara, see China’s maritime buildup in Mahanian terms — Alfred Thayer Mahan’s concept of command of what he called the ocean “common” or “highway.” Mahan, like Mackinder, understood that island powers like the U.S. and Britain needed to command the seas to balance great land powers in Eurasia. Both Mahan and Mackinder warned their countrymen that their respective nation’s security depended on preventing great continental land powers from becoming superior sea powers. (RELATED: Trump Needs ‘Bismarcks’ to Steer Our Foreign Policy)
That still holds true today. This is why Lt. Commander Marchant urges U.S. policymakers to take steps now to counter China’s long-term threat. Those steps include: investing in a robust shipbuilding capacity that will enable us to outbuild our Chinese adversary; improved diplomatic engagement with countries in Latin America and Africa to counter Chinese diplomacy; and the formulation of a maritime strategy similar to the strategy in the 1980s that former Navy Secretary John Lehman oversaw which helped us win the Cold War against the Soviet Union.
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