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Younghusband
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Younghusband

Date

September 22nd, 2007

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The ocean is becoming wild

I am already grateful for the wall being torn down. The NY Times had a special Op-Ed Contributor yesterday: Robert D. Kaplan. In Lost at Sea Kap writes about the changing balance of naval power in the Pacific. With ballooning miltary expenditures and expanding forces in Asia, America might not be able to cope while spending a meagre <5 percent on its defence. Kaplan simultaneously warns of war between China and other regional powers, and China becoming too friendly with other regional powers. Maintaining a balance between all the competing Asian states will be complex. Kaplan sees a future reminiscent of “an older world of traditional statecraft” where subtlety must guide America’s hand as the only power in the Pacific without territorial desires. The article mentions a few things already discussed here at CA.

  • Gwadar Port
  • China’s “sea denial” strategy. Check out the article “Mao Zedong, Meet Alfred Thayer Mahan: Strategic Theory and Chinese Sea Power”? linked to in this round up post I made earlier this year.
  • Drawing China in. Something I argued could be the goal of an Asian NATO

Thanks to Lex and The Chief for the heads up on this.

Comments to this entry

Lexington Green
September 22, 2007
8:53 pm
"...subtlety must guide America's hand as the only power in the Pacific without territorial desires."

This should allow us to be the "offshore" balancer in Asia for a long time, much as Perfidious Albion was able to do in Europe, to the perpetual irritation and resentment of the landpowers, scorpions trapped in a bottle who have nowhere to go, while the island power can take to the sea (and air and space) and come ashore at times and places of its own choosing.

BTW, I got halfway through Kaplan's new book today, and even though I had read a lot of it in the Atlantic, it is terrific.
Left Flank » That Old Kaplan Magic
September 23, 2007
1:57 pm
[...] tackling William James. Style defeats categorization. My Kaplan is not your Kaplan. Just check out Younghusband and Lexington Green on the same [...]
feeblemind
September 24, 2007
2:37 am
Good link. Thought provoking article by Kaplan. But I think the key question is which way the USA will tack? Will the USA see a series of appeasers in the President's office? Demographics: What happens after the Baby Boomers die off? Which way will the USA go then? Either the USA will continue to stand up to China or they won't. The smaller players will have to look after their own self-interest in that context.
El Jefe Maximo
September 24, 2007
7:45 pm
Given the probable outcome of the next US presidential election (to say nothing of the likely makeup of Congress): I don't see any possibility that US naval and air forces will receive the refurbishment they so desperately need. Anti-US powers are likely to have things pretty much their own way for awhile. If you're looking for 1930's analogies for what's coming in the US, try a Stanley Baldwin-like view of national defense.

I wonder to what extent this possibility might drive armaments on the part of other powers, particularly Japan ?
Lexington Green
September 25, 2007
12:04 am
I have to disagree with El Jefe. Defense spending is, first and foremost, SPENDING. The Democrats especially under President Hillary will want to prove they are "tough" on Defense. Spending money on defense will be one way to do that. Defense spending will grow under the next administration, no matter who it is.
IJ
September 26, 2007
10:46 am
Robert Kaplan writes: In a post-George W. Bush America, if we do not find a way to agree on basic precepts, Iraq may indeed turn out to have been the event that signaled our military decline. Preventing that will require continued high military expenditures combined with an unrelenting multilateralismof a sort we have not pursued since the 1990s.

But Kaplan seriously caveats high military expenditures: Military power rests substantially on the willingness to use it: perhaps less so in war than in peacetime as a means of leverage and coercion. That, in turn, requires a vigorous nationalism — something that is far more noticeable right now in Asia than in parts of an increasingly post-national West.

This leaves "unrelenting multilateralism" as his preference.

The President of the US seems now to be following this reasoning - yesterday at the United Nations: The president, who once boasted that the US was strong enough to go it alone, said: "The US is committed to a strong and vibrant United Nations."
jomama
September 28, 2007
12:57 pm
It seems no major state -- or upcoming one -- will ever get the idea
that the hubris that yields the bandying about of large military forces is usually
their undoing. That's not to say that the factors leading to that aren't
a great part of it.

Coming anarchy indeed.

When will a state emerge that has no such hubris, letting the rest
spend themselves poor? Ah, but such intelligence is not inherent
in force-based systems so we can forget that.