Mahan and the Problem of China

American Thinker ^ | Francis P. Sempa

[RoosterRedux]

Chinese President Xi Jinping has publicly called for the annexation of Taiwan. Chinese warplanes have entered Taiwan’s air defense space with increasing frequency. Reuters reported on October 11, 2021, that China carried out beach-landing military exercises in a province opposite Taiwan. We may be drifting toward war...

The German political geographer Friedrich Ratzel once wrote that, ”great statesmen have never lacked a feeling for geography... When one speaks of a healthy political instinct, one usually means a correct evaluation of the geographic bases of political power.” One hundred twenty years ago, the American naval historian and strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan wrote an article for the North American Review which was later included in a book called The Problem of Asia in which he identified the geographical middle-belt of Asia as the “debatable and debated ground,” ranging from Asia Minor (present day Turkey) in the west to Korea and Japan in the east.

*snip*

In The Problem of Asia, Mahan wrote that the struggle for power in Asia [...] would center in and around the “debatable and debated ground.” In his time, “the vast, uninterrupted mass of the Russian Empire” to the north of this region posed the greatest danger of Asian dominance, but he also noted some of Russia’s technological and logistic difficulties that manifested themselves a few years later in Russia’s war with Japan. In our time, however, China is Asia’s predominant power, is strategically allied with Russia, and is situated to economically and politically dominate “the debatable and debated ground.”

Within Mahan’s Asian middle-belt is Iran, Afghanistan, the Central Asian Republics, much of India, most of Myanmar (Burma), Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan. In some respects, Mahan’s “debatable and debated ground” roughly corresponds to the land portion of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

[DownInFlames]

Should China invade Taiwan, they can kiss several dams goodbye.

[sauropod]

bkmk