Abstract
Since 1945 the South China Sea and the western Pacific has functioned as an uncontested global common patrolled by overwhelming U.S. naval and air power projected from a series of peripheral and over the horizon bases. The dramatic rise of China alters this situation and has transformed the South China Sea into a frontier of control as China seeks to morph this maritime theater into a landward extension of the Chinese coast where it can deploy land-based tactics into an arena previously dominated by maritime power and tactics to secure the South China Sea as a de facto territorial water that serves multiple Chinese strategic interests. Hence, the attempt by a land-based Eurasian power (China) to carve a permanent bridgehead into Spykman’s Eurasian maritime periphery. Against, this trend the United States has countered with President Obama’s Asian Pivot. However, the implementation of the Asian Pivot is limited by several post Cold War developments and certain constraints inherent in the geographic setting of the South China Sea. Beyond the South China Sea, the geographic setting favors the U.S. and its allies. Consequently, American options acting singly or in coalition with other nations, most notably Japan and Australia, remain more flexible and able to serve as a long term counterweight to Chinese force projection capabilities into the western Pacific proper.
Highlights
At the close of the 19th century, the Royal Navy ruled the world's oceans, or in the words of Alfred Thar Mahon, the global commons (Mahon, 1890)
For the United States, its Pacific possessions acquired in the late 1800s, mostly through the Spanish-American War and the antecedent purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867, laid a foundation for a series of bases that functioned as a network of nodes for projecting military force throughout much of the Pacific basin
While the legal history behind these various claims would prove an interesting historical geography, this paper argues that the strategic interests of one such claimant (China) and its increasing tactical ability to implement such strategic interests trump any findings that an impartial legal/judicial inquiry may find
Summary
At the close of the 19th century, the Royal Navy ruled the world's oceans, or in the words of Alfred Thar Mahon, the global commons (Mahon, 1890). Possessing similar cultures and strategic outlooks, such a "passing" occurred rather smoothly This situation meant the U.S Navy became the chief agency for patrolling one of the world's most strategic thoroughfares, namely the Strait of Malacca, which joins the Indian and Pacific Oceans and is bordered by Indonesia and the Malaysian Peninsula (Mahon, 1890). Compounding this transition, the United States, by vanquishing Japan in World War II: (1) recaptured its previous bases and added the home islands of Japan and the Ryukyu Islands to its network of Pacific bases; and (2) acquired additional basing rights in Australia. The U.S Navy was able to contain the Soviet Naval expansion and pin the Chinese military to its immediate coastline during the Cold War (1945-1991)
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