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THUCYDIDES’S TRAP AT SEA: THE INFLUENCE OF SEA POWER UPON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RISING AND HEGEMONIC POWERS

Denizde Thucydides’in Tuzağı: Deniz Gücünün Yükselen ve Hegemon Güçler Arasındaki İlişkiye Olan Etkisi
21. Yüzyılın başından bu yana, Çin düzenli olarak donanma varlığını arttırmış ve kendine ait bir deniz kimliği belirleme sürecine girmiştir. Bu araştırma Çin’in Amerikan deniz hegemonyasına karşı oluşturduğu örneğe Thucydides’in Tuzağı perspektifinden yaklaşacaktır. Araştırma, Atina ve Sparta, Fransız Üçüncü Cumhuriyeti ve Büyük Britanya, Alman İmparatorluğu ve Büyük Britanya, Japon İmparatorluğu ve Amerika Birleşik Devletleri ve Sovyetler Birliği ile Amerika Birleşik Devletleri tarihi örneklerini kullanarak yükselen güçlerin kendilerini hata yapmaya iten deniz kimliğini nasıl oluşturduğunu anlayacaktır. Bu araştırma çoklu-vaka metodunu kullanarak denizde ki Çin ve ABD rekabetini anlamaya çalışacaktır. Yine tümevarım yöntemiyle tarihte ki Thucydides’in Tuzağı sorununu oluşturacak, tümdengelim yöntemiyle de bu sorunu günümüz Çin örneğinde test edecektir. Bu araştırma Alfred Thayer Mahan’ın altı ulusal karakter tespitini bir ortak deniz kimliği ve deniz stratejisi çerçevesi geliştirmek için kullanacaktır. Sonrasında Julian S. Corbett’in oluşturduğu çerçeveyle deniz güçlerinin bu güçleri birbirine karşı denizde nasıl kullandığını ve bu durumun bu ilişkiyi nasıl etkilediğini açıklayacaktır. Sonrasında bu araştırma, günümüz Çin’in ulusal karakterinin ve büyük stratejisinin, nasıl Çin denizcilik stratejisini ve kimliğinin oluşmasında etkili olduğuna odaklanacaktır. Bu araştırma aynı zamanda ABD ve günümüz Çin denizcilik stratejisinin ve deniz kimliğinin nasıl birbirine karşı geliştiğini ve diğer yükselen ve hegemon güçlerin tarihte karşılaştığı hatalardan kaçınabilip kaçınamayacağını ortaya koyacaktır.
Anahtar Kelimeler: Deniz Gücü, Yükselen Güçler, Deniz Kimliği, Denizcilik Stratejisi, Güç Geçişi Teorisi, Çin, ABD
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
As the author of this thesis work, I could not express my gratitude to the people who assisted and motivated me during this hard and long process. First of all, I want to thank my thesis advisor Assistant Professor Ayşe Nur Çetinoğlu Harunoğlu from Marmara University, Faculty of Political Sciences, Department of Political Sciences and International Relations Department for allowing her time. Her advice and contributions have an important impact on the success of this thesis work.
Also, I want to thank my defence committee. I am highly grateful to Professor Çağdaş Üngör Sunar from Marmara University, Faculty of Political Sciences, Department of Political Sciences and International Relations Department, and to Assistant Professor Tolga Bilener from Galatasaray University, Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, International Relations Department. Their precious comments and suggestions also contributed much to making this thesis work even better. Also thanks should go to Assistant Professor Şükrü Yazğan from Marmara University, Social Sciences and Humanities Faculty, International Relations Department, and to Assistant Professor Radiye Funda Karadeniz from Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Economy Department for accepting our invitation for being substitute jury members. I am also grateful to Professor Erhan Doğan from Marmara University, Faculty of Political Sciences, Department of Political Sciences and International Relations for his support to me on my thesis defence day.
I also want to thank Marmara University in general which offered me an educational life that made the writing of this thesis work possible. Additionally, I want to express my gratitude to the US Naval Institute Press which assisted me in purchasing and bringing a resource for my thesis work. I would be remiss in not mentioning my thanks to my family. Especially to my father and mother who supported me in my educational life and supported me to purchase the resources that I used in this thesis work. Lastly, I want to send a big thanks to my friends who tirelessly listened, emotionally supported, and assisted me to protect my motivation in this work.
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TABLE OF CONTENT
ABSTRACT II
ÖZET III
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS IV
TABLE OF CONTENT V
ABBREVIATIONS VII
LIST OF VISUALS IX
1) INTRODUCTION 1
1.1) Methodology 5
1.2) Literature Review 8
2) THEORETICAL AND CONCEPTUAL BACKGROUND 10
2.1) Revisiting Thucydides’ Trap at Sea 10
2.2) Influence of Sea Power Upon International Relations in the 21st Century 13
3) RISING POWER NAVAL IDENTITIES AND HISTORICAL CASES OF THUCYDIDES’S TRAP AT SEA 18
3.1) A Periclean Navy 20
3.2) A Post-Periclean Navy 21
3.3) La Jeune Ecole and French Naval Identity Towards Britain 23
3.4) Imperial Germany’s Naval Identity Towards Britain 25
3.5) Imperial Japanese Naval Identity Towards the US 28
3.6) Soviet Naval Identity Towards the US 31
3.7) Oppositional Cases: United Provinces vs England, Japanese Empire vs Russian Empire, and US vs Britain 34
3.7.1) United Provinces vs England 35
3.7.2) Russian Empire vs Japanese Empire 37
3.7.3) Britain vs the US 39
4) CASE OF CONTEMPORARY CHINA AS A RISING NAVAL POWER 41
4.1) National Characteristics of China 41
4.1.1) Geography 43
4.1.1.1) North to South Nexus 43
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4.1.1.2) West to East Nexus 45
4.1.2) Physical Conformity 47
4.1.2.1) First Island Chain and China’s Security Dilemma 48
4.1.3) Extent of Territory 51
4.1.3.1) Malacca Strait and China’s Resource Dilemma 52
4.1.4) Population 55
4.1.5) Character of People 56
4.1.5.1) China’s Megaria, Washington’s Belgium: Taiwan and China’s Identity Problem 58
4.1.6) Character of Government 60
4.1.6.1) Capacity to Extract Resources 60
4.1.6.2) Ideology: A Dual Hat or a Triple Hat? 61
4.1.6.3) Leader’s Influence 64
4.2) Chinese Grand Strategy in the 21st Century 66
4.3) Chinese Maritime Identity and Comparative Maritime Identities 76
4.3.1) Hypothesis I: China as a Periclean Rising Power Navy 76
4.3.2) Hypothesis II: China as a Post-Periclean Rising Power Navy 82
4.3.3) Hypothesis III: China as a Third Way 87
5) MARITIME HEGEMONY AND THE US’S SEA POWER: A DESTINY OF EXCEPTIONALITY OR A GOOD FORTUNE? 94
5.1) American Maritime Hegemony and Naval Identity Since the 1970s 97
5.2) Current American Maritime Strategy in the Asia-Pacific Region 105
6) CHINA AND MARITIME HEGEMON: AVOIDING THUCYDIDES’S TRAP AT SEA 115
7) CONCLUSION 130
8) REFERENCES 135
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ABBREVIATIONS
A2/AD – Anti Access/Area Denial
AAW – Anti-Air Warfare
AI – Artificial Intelligence
ASCM – Anti-ship Cruise Missile
ASW – Anti Submarine Warfare
AUKUS – Australia, the United Kingdom, and the US Security Pact
BRI – Belt and Road Initiative
C3 – Control, Command, and Communications
C5ISR – Command, Control, Computers, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance
CCP – Chinese Communist Party
CMC – Central Military Commission
ECS – East China Sea
EMS – Electromagnetic Spectrum
GDP – Gross Domestic Production
GS – Grand Strategy
IGN – Imperial German Navy
IJN – Imperial Japanese Navy
JADC2 – Joint All Domain Control and Command
LCS – Littoral Combat Ship
LSC – Large Surface Combatants
MAD – Mutually Assured Destruction
PLA – People’s Liberation Army
PLAN – People’s Liberation Army Navy
PLAAF – People’s Liberation Army Air Force
QUAD - Quadrilateral Security Dialogue Between the US, Japan, India, and Australia
PRC – People’s Republic of China
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RN – Royal Navy
ROC – Republic of China
SCS – South China Sea
SOEs – State Owned Enterprises
SLBMs – Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles
SLOCs – Sea Lines of Communications
SSBN – Ballistic Missile Submarine
SSGN – Cruise Missile Submarine
TEUs – Twenty-foot Equivalent Units of Containers
UNCLOS - United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea
USSR – United Soviet Socialist Republics
VLS – Vertical Launch Systems
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LIST OF VISUALS
List of Tables
Table 1: Differences between a post-Periclean rising navy and a Periclean rising navy. 34
Table 2: Errors that made by rising and hegemonic powers. 40
Table 3: Possible eight common mistakes that could made by the US and China. 129
List of Schemes
Scheme 1: Holistic understanding of sea power that led rising powers and hegemons to a
Thucydides’s Trap at sea. 14
Scheme 2: Impact of sea power upon development of a naval identity of a state and
Thucydides's Trap.
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1) INTRODUCTION
For many centuries being a global hegemonic power has been tightly connected with having sufficient naval power. Many scholars who worked on hegemony were long concerned with Thucydides’ Trap; which is a specific relationship between a dominant power and a rising power. Since the 19th Century, the world witnessed two maritime hegemons who are Britain and the United States. As many scholars were concerned with arms races and quantitative analysis of forces, holistic research over how challenging rising powers of these hegemons used these capabilities in the sea remained scarce. As today’s world increasingly becomes interconnected with accelerated sea trade and the existence of a new naval rising power like China, makes the understanding of how rising powers use their naval power and strategy also becomes crucial. Miscalculated national characteristics and naval strategies based on ill-defined international conditions could easily lead to catastrophic wrongs that the world suffered in the past.
This research will employ a descriptive and explanatory type of researches for creating a general profile of the actions of a rising naval power. In line with this aim, this research will use mostly qualitative sources. Historical materials and current first and second-hand resources that concern Chinese naval power will be key sources of this research. This research will use multiple-case study research (as taking contemporary China as its main case) for creating a general form of causality between how national factors and the international environment affected the use of naval power by these challenging power against the hegemon. This research will try to use Alfred T. Mahan’s six national characteristics and Julian Corbett’s definitions of offensive and defensive naval powers as its unchanging variable. It will guide its readers to understand how sea power affects the development of the power transition process between the challenging power and maritime hegemon.
This research will try to answer the main question of how rising powers used their naval power against the hegemon and how it created the problem of Thucydides’s Trap? It will reveal that the state’s national characteristics and grand strategy have a great impact upon the development of a maritime strategy that tightly affects the perceptions of maritime hegemons. It will try to answer three sub-questions and three supporting hypotheses to support the main question. The first one is how the historical examples of rising powers used their maritime identity against the maritime hegemon? This research will show how maritime strategies’ historical examples affected the relationship between rising and hegemonic power and how it affected the two sides at the end. The second question is how contemporary China’s maritime strategy was affected by its character and its grand strategy? It will show the current developments in Chinese politics and how it influences the maritime strategy and identity development of China. The
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third question will be how China’s use of maritime identity could affect its relationship with the current maritime hegemon? This research will show that China’s maritime identity and the analogy of Thucydides’s Trap were crucially related to how the US perceived and react against it.
The objectives of this research are to contemplate existing rising and hegemonic power relationships by focusing on the use of maritime strategy and how it affects the development of a naval identity. It will also contribute to creating a general knowledge of how rising navies behave in a maritime power struggle against maritime hegemons. As previous researches focused on single cases, a dominant paradigm over how rising power behaves in the sea is still lacking in current rising power studies. Development of a paradigm of how rising power behaviours at sea will help both scholars and policymakers to understand their situation and to avoid the previous ones.
It could help the following researchers to understand how wrong policies and misunderstandings by both hegemon and rising power in the sea created a catastrophic end. As structural or, systematic level theories, criticized due to over-reductionism, this research will focus more on national characteristics and even ideational factors (like ideologies, values, and identities). Such a kind of view could help American and Chinese policy-makers to understand how the view of sea power could change by the national and ideational constraints. Even this, this research will not solely focus on ideational factors but also continue to focus on material factors like previous systematic examples.
Its propositions on national characteristics and maritime strategies related with three possible hypotheses on rising China could help both Asian policymakers and both American and Chinese policymakers to avoid a possible Thucydides’s Trap in the sea. Revealing possible misunderstandings and general tendencies among two powers could help policymakers to avoid wrongs of the past that affected Athens, the French Third Republic, Imperial Germany, Imperial Japan, and the Soviet Union. Not only solely looking at rising powers this research will also show how similar mistakes had an impact on the hegemonic powers like Dutch against the English, Britain against the US, and in Russian Empire in Russo-Japanese War. This research will provide a binary way of responsibilities to both rising and hegemonic powers to avoid previous mistakes.
This research will bridge the important gap between the relationship of International Relations, history, and war studies. It will help the researchers to understand how sea power and maritime strategy influence the course of International Relations. It will further Graham Allison’s scientific history approach while also bridging the classical maritime theories and works with contemporary International Relations discipline. This research will provide both a new theoretical and a conceptual outlook for Thucydides’s Trap on the relationship between a rising power and an existing hegemon with a focus on the theme of sea power. Not only in terms of rising and hegemonic relationships, but this research will also contribute
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various blueprints to the contemporary value of sea power, maritime strategy, and identity. It will also show a prospective way to future scholars who want to work on soft-positivism and also on understanding how unit and system-level factors could be worked in accordance with each other.
This research will show how theory is important since the controversy between strategy makers (who focus on theories) and its implementers (who focus on experience and practice) laid a Thucydides’ Trap on their countries’ future. What this research will focus on peace-time sea power where strategy makers were preparing for action. It will try to focus on how sea power affects the politics and decisions of politicians in geopolitical rivalries. For this reason, this research will try to reach readers from both strategy makers and implementers. Revealing possible misunderstandings and general tendencies among two powers could help policymakers to avoid wrongs of the past that affected five rising and hegemonic powers.
This research consists of two main sections which were focused on the theoretical, conceptual, and historical development of the term Thucydides’s Trap at Sea. The first section will briefly show the historical examples used their maritime power and strategy. The second section will be on how contemporary China and the US maritime relationship developed and the possible evolution of it to future Thucydides’s Trap at sea. The latter part will focus on Chinese history of the maritime strategy, national character, and grand strategy then focus on Chinese maritime strategy and how the US perceived and reacted to it.
The first part of this research will provide a theoretical and conceptual background of the analogy of Thucydides’s Trap and the concepts. The theoretical background will provide the introduction of what is Thucydides’s Trap and will answer the various criticisms directed to this analogy. It will then give the theoretical significance of why this research was conducted. The conceptual background part will define and introduce general concepts like sea power, maritime power, and maritime strategy. It will provide a general definition and perspective of how the author and the research understand the term sea power in International Relations. It will also provide the significance of such a term in contemporary world politics.
The second part will separately focus on how a maritime identity was formed. It will analyse the Athenian maritime identity versus Sparta, La Jeune Ecole versus Britain, Imperial Germany versus Britain, Imperial Japan versus the US, and Soviet Union versus the US. The part will continue with how opposite cases of this research also signified the importance of how those eight mistakes when making a maritime strategy was triggered a Thucydides’s Trap at sea.
The latter part will imply the six national characteristics of Mahan to the case of China from the 1970s to today. It will additionally focus on the geographical nexus of China’s socio-political division, the
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First Island Chain, the Malacca Strait, and the issue of Taiwan. The next sub-part of this part will focus on how the latest grand strategies of China affected its maritime power development. Then it will define three hypotheses for Chinese maritime strategy and possibly over the course of its maritime identity.
The fourth part will focus on the contemporary maritime hegemon, the US. It will first define what is a maritime hegemony and its historical characteristics. Then it will analyse the development of American maritime strategy and identity throughout the 1970s. The part will continue with the current American maritime strategy in the Asia-Pacific region. It will evaluate the traditional concepts of Air-Sea Battle, Archipelagic Defence, the Second Island Chain, and Forward Deployment. Then it will evaluate the latest American Maritime Strategy on the issues of alliances, nuclear weapons, grey zone warfare, artificial intelligence, sea control, missile defence, the American domestic, and economic concerns.
The last part will make a wrap-up of how much China and the US have a risk to fall in Thucydides’s Trap at sea like the historical examples. This part will evaluate the possibilities of the occurrence of the eight common mistakes that were suffered by the historical examples of rising and hegemonic powers. It will also compare the case of China and the US with the historical examples to find the most suiting case of the Thucydides’s Trap at sea in history to have an opinion about the dangers in the bilateral relationship between the two countries.
The research will show how the analogy of Thucydides’s Trap is a matter of choice of rising and hegemonic powers in their relationship. These choices were made by the cumulative effect of the national character and grand strategy of a state on the maritime strategy and its identity and how it shapes the perceptions of the hegemonic powers. Two types of mistakes that could be done when rising and hegemonic powers set their maritime strategies. The first one is the mistakes that were done in peacetime that led two countries to a devastating war or one of the states to the edge of collapse. The second one is the ones that were made in wartime that would lead one of the power to annihilation. Even this dual effect, like Aristoteles’s warning, a Thucydides’s Trap is not only concerning the issue of how wars happened but also the errors of an unjust peace. It is a problem of the mistakes that made in organizing the peace between a rising and hegemonic power that crucially harmed the mutual perceptions of two parties. This research will show how the mistakes in both organizing the peace led to war or in some cases vice-versa, and in the cases of war, how it made the situation worse for one or both of the belligerents.
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1.1) Methodology
This research will employ a descriptive and explanatory type of researches for creating a general profile of the actions of a rising naval power. In line with this aim, this research will use mostly qualitative sources. Historical materials and current first and secondary resources that concern Chinese maritime power will be key sources of this research. This research will use multiple-case studies (as taking Athens, the French Third Republic, Imperial Germany, Imperial Japan, the Soviet Union, and contemporary China as its cases) for creating a general form of causality between how national factors and the international environment affected the use of naval power by these challenging power against the hegemon. It will guide its readers to understand how sea power affects the development of the power transition process between the challenging power and maritime hegemon.
It will use qualitative sources like archival materials, articles, and books as its primary foundations of the source. It will cite from classical books of Alfred Thayer Mahan, Raoul Castex, and Julian S. Corbett to understand how the classical maritime schools of thought set the tradition for maritime strategies. Then it will proceed on secondary sources to understand the literature of rising naval power. The researcher will use Internet sources, researches, reports, and historical scripts for understanding historical cases of Athens, the French Third Republic, Imperial Germany, Imperial Japan, and the Soviet Union. The last part will use both primary and secondary sources to understand contemporary China as a rising naval power.
The research will build on a multiple-cases of rising naval powers to create a general framework of how rising powers behave in the sea and how it impacts their relationship with the maritime hegemon. It will use descriptive research for answering who used naval power and how they used it against the hegemonic state. After a descriptive introduction to the subject, for understanding China’s case it will use explanatory research tactics. It will try to answer both how China uses its maritime power and also try to answer why or why not it would not develop as same as other rising powers. This part will provide a causality analysis of how the national character of a rising naval power affects its relations with hegemonic naval power. In the end, this research will use the method of simplification and reductionism to define eight common mistakes that were done by rising and hegemonic powers. Kenneth Waltz sees simplification as a means for understanding complex situations. He underlined that ‘the process of isolation of a subject, abstraction of it, aggregating of different things, and idealization of the extent of research.’ (Waltz, 1979, p. 19) This research will isolate its focus on rising and hegemonic power relationships, abstract it on the domain of sea rather than a holistic one, aggregate different factors like national character and international environment, and finally idealize it to find eight common mistakes among those cases. It was well aware that this could be viewed as a mistake due to the risk of oversimplification of different cases. This research will not be a systematic theory of International
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Relations but it will use a mixed-method between systematic and unit-level analysis. David Singer underlined that a researcher should use an appropriate level of analysis for its purposes in research. For descriptive research, a researcher should use a systematic level of analysis while for an explanatory one he or she should use a unit-level one. (Singer, 1961, p. 89) As this research will first use descriptive one to understand why a state act in that way at sea, it will use unit-level analysis. Then as it uses how Thucydides’s Trap was formulated with the implementation of maritime strategy and identity, it will look at systematic level outcomes where perceptions of two powers led to a trap at the sea. Lastly, many reductionist and simplified theories were criticized due to their deterministic nature. This research will not accept the case of China in a deterministic way. It denies fixed continental and maritime identities as a strategy was an issue of choices in accordance with the nation’s conditions. It was well aware of the existence of oppositional cases where the outcome was different from the main arguments of this work. For that reason, this research will try to overcome the trap of pre-determinism by giving China a possible three types of naval identities which will not deny the possibility of China to develop an entirely different naval identity and maritime strategy. Neoclassical Theorists underlined the importance of soft-positivism in process tracing which focuses on different independent and intervening variables on whether it could be dependent. (Ripsman, Taliaferro, & Lobell, 2016, p. 106) This research will concentrate on naval identity and maritime strategy development, implementation, and its effects on the outcome as to whether intervening and dependent factors within the framework of the Thucydides’s Trap. The selection of Athens, the French Third Republic, Imperial Germany, Imperial Japan, and the Soviet Union as a case study is important since those states created their understanding of rising naval power strategies.
The use of classical theories from Mahan, Castex, and Corbett will help to make different cases more stable and clear. For avoiding the problem of possible manipulations contemporary China will compare historical examples with three different hypotheses. As the language barrier and closed ecosystem of Chinese military and strategic researches create a problem, the use of both primary and secondary sources will help this research to get around possible organized biases. It’s different hypothesis and focus on national characteristics will also help it to free itself from too much generalization and possible wrong causations. The use of alternate outcomes for a possible relationship between China and the US will also help policymakers of both countries to understand the risks when developing their maritime strategies.
The main concern of this research was focused on how maritime and naval power influenced the development of the relationship between two competent hegemonic and rising powers. But the author is well aware that the original analogy of Thucydides’s Trap was tightly concerned with numerous issues like domestic politics, economics, and others. This research will limitedly asses Thucydides’s Trap
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analogy within the context of maritime rivalry. It will help the readers to understand and answer the questions that asked to this analogy and its problematic trade-offs. Secondly, this research will focus on national characters and grand strategy which were broad concepts that have numerous definitions and determinant factors. This research will only asses these terms with their influence on the maritime strategy, identity, and the relationship between two rivals at sea. These concepts will only help the readers to understand how and why historical cases behave in that way and to create a context for contemporary China and the US. It will adopt eight case studies in addition to contemporary China and the US. These eight cases were different from the ones that Graham Allison focused on, as they limited themselves to the ones that have excessive maritime dimension. So the cases like the German Third Reich, Napoleonic France, and other primarily land rivalries like the Russian Empire and Austria-Hungary would not be included in this research. Thirdly, in terms of time-scope, this research will depend mostly upon the cases after the 19th Century when modern maritime theories were formed. But it limitedly refers to the Peloponnesian War, as the concept of Thucydides’s Trap was formed in that period. It will also refer to the Anglo-Dutch War of the late 17th Century as it was an important case to understand both our current case and also a well-referenced one for maritime strategy literature. It would not cover the rivalry between Ottoman Empire and Holy Alliance and Portugal and Spain. In addition to the time-span, the influence of religious dynamics like the faith in conquest and Papacy’s intervention made these cases out of our framework of maritime rivalry. This research will primarily focus on national navies with national economic and political ambitions. Fourthly, given the broad nature of the Chinese culture, history, and other factors, this research will mostly focus on China after the 19th Century. It will also only refer to the national characters and grand strategic developments that influence the Chinese maritime identity, power, and strategy. Fifthly, it will focus on the US’s grand, maritime, and naval strategy after the 1970s and in Asia-Pacific. Even it will sometimes refer to earlier issues that have an impact on current US policy this research will limitedly cover what the most Asia-Pacific researcher did in their earlier works. As the last limitation, this research will not refer to technical details or tactical issues in the maritime strategy as its aim was not to deliver a frame of action to one of the sides but to deliver a guide of how some actions could have similar effects on both parties with referencing the historical cases. Given these limitations, this research would not end with bold and ambitious indoctrination of what one state should do or with an effort of fortune-telling. It will provide a mirror for both state politicians and strategists to understand their problems. It will give and allow the subsequent authors, who want to work on Thucydides’s Trap, a framework and an area to broaden the concept and methodology to other issues like land, air, cyber, economy, and other strategic factors to understand the concept concurrently from both sides of the analogy.
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1.2) Literature Review
This research will have a unique character since most of the research works on this topic were concentrated on single cases of rising powers rather than creating a common framework for rising and hegemonic power relationships. Most of the thesis work in the YÖK Thesis system was focused solely on the future of maritime power and its impact upon Turkey. Another one was solely focused on China’s possible challenge to the US at sea.1 It will also be the first thesis that focused upon Thucydides’s Trap and the first one that specifically focused on a power transition theory at sea. It will also be the first thesis in the system that detailed focused on global maritime strategy, naval power, and naval identity. This research will contribute much to Turkish academia in terms of understanding the current theoretical and strategic works on the relationship between a rising and hegemonic power.
In terms of the literature and thesis on ProQuest same gap was also visible. Timothy Adamson wrote a thesis on the American rebalancing strategy and its implications for Sino-American relations. Yeh Chung-lu has a dissertation over China’s policy towards the US in the post-Cold War. All these examples were focused singularly on the relationship between China and the US in the maritime domain or combined with other issues.2 Also, there is no dissertation over the analogy of Thucydides’s Trap that was proposed by Graham Allison. Similarly, there is no dissertation over comparative rising powers, their strategies, and identities.
On a global scale, it still has a huge significance since it will bridge the different fields of works like International Relations, History, and War Studies. As Graham Allison first coined the analogy of Thucydides’s Trap, it was criticized much by academia, as his theory has viewed as too abstract. This research will also expand and re-arrange his arguments to a coherent whole in terms of sea power. While classical works of Alfred Thayer Mahan, Julian Corbett, and Raoul Castex were significantly concentrated on the nature of naval power but not on its political impact on the hegemon. Jun J. Nohara wrote an important work on the strategic and naval identity of China which was concentrated upon the process of development of a strategic identity and focused upon China as a single case. While most of the literature on rising naval powers was also focused on singular cases that were included in this research. Bachmann’s The Imperial German Navy, 1897 - 1918: Negotiating the nation, Bose’s Influence of Alfred Thayer Mahan on Japanese Maritime Strategy, Canuel’s From a Prestige Fleet to
1 For some examples, readers can look to Tutak, Eda, (2021), Turkey's maritime strategy in the context of the increasing importance of the seas and sea power in the 21st century: A sea power analysis model proposal, Özarslan Süleyman, (2018); The role of sea power in People Republic of China's challenge to USA's global hegemony; Dülger, Mehmet Ceyhun, (2006), The future of the sea power, and more.
2 For some examples, readers can look to Adamson, Timothy, (2016), China's Response to the US Asia-Pacific "Rebalance" and Its Implications for Sino-US Relations; Lu, Yeh-Chung, (2009), From confrontation to accommodation: China's policy toward the U.S. in the post-Cold War era; Kardon, Isaac Benjamin, (2017), Rising Power, Creeping Jurisdiction: China's Law of the Sea; and more.
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the Jeune Ecole, and MccGwire’s Naval Power and Soviet Global Strategy works are examples of such kind of singular case studies. Toshi Yoshihara and James R. Holmes’s book Red Star Over the Pacific and Michael McDevitt’s China as a 21st Century Naval Power provide valuable insight for understanding Chinese naval power, strategy, and tactics but they were again limited on the case of China while also include too many technical details over the subject of naval power. This research will use all of these sources as valuable ones but will also try to bridge these valuable works to a coherent guide to understand the relationship between rising and hegemonic power at sea.
As today’s world concentrates on the possible actions of China and a possible power transition between the current hegemon, this research will bridge a critical gap between former rising powers of history. Since several pieces of researches were concentrated on singular historical and contemporary cases, a general assessment of naval rising powers could contribute much in understanding the relationship between the nature of naval power and how it made an impact upon the relationships among different powers. As many studies based on unique cases concentrated much on tactical and technical aspects of naval power, this research will primarily focus on how the strategy of naval power impact international politics.
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2) THEORETICAL AND CONCEPTUAL BACKGROUND
2.1) Revisiting Thucydides’ Trap at Sea
The first attempt to understand how the relationship between a rising power and a hegemon was dated even twenty-six centuries before, whilst both humanities and social sciences continues stressing on this debate. The first remarks on the topic were developed by Ancient Greek historian Thucydides in the wake of the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides emphasised that ‘the rise of the of Athens, and its wake-up call in Sparta, made a war inevitable.’ (Thucydides, 1998) While the modern narrative of him was put forward by Graham Allison in his widely criticized book Destined for War as ‘the belief and perception of the rise of Athens and its fear was the essential cause of the Peloponnesian War.’ (Allison, 2018, p. 29) This research work will neither refute his arguments nor will take it as in its way.
In the end, it will try to make the arguments on Thucydides’s Trap further while also answering some of the main criticism directed towards the work of Graham Allison. It is crucial to realize that the importance of this analogy will necessitate scholarly attention and to not let it go in the back shelves of libraries. This research will provide both a new theoretical and a conceptual outlook for Thucydides’s Trap on the relationship between a rising power and an existing hegemon with a focus on the theme of sea power.
Michael A. Peters criticized Allison’s scientific history understanding as ‘based on the Western historical development and binary logic of his historical learning’. (Peters, et al., 2020, p. 2) This research will not refute the scientific history method of Allison but will depend upon a more limited understanding of it on sea power. Rather than concentrating on the structural causes that Allison focussed on his work, this research will try to cast a light on both rising and hegemonic powers themselves. Peters also criticized him for his American or hegemonic-centred understanding of Thucydides’ Trap which revealed China’s rise as ‘something ought to be managed’. (Peters, et al., 2020, p. 2) As this research will focus on both the development and implementation of a grand and a maritime strategy; it will not solely focus on the Thucydides’ Trap as an end and will also reveal both the identity of rising and hegemonic power is a thing that should be managed.
Another criticism that posed against this analogy was Benjamin Green and Mou Chunxiao who underlined the deficit of respective identities of both the US and China. While Green criticized Allisons’s lenses as ‘scholarly escapism and a zero-sum self-prophecy’, Chuxiao underlined ‘the lack of Chinese characteristics and its vision of diplomacy’. (Peters, et al., 2020, pp. 3-4) As this research will primarily focus on the character of rising powers rather than pure systematic ends it will also offer
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huge attention to how rising powers’ character affected its strategy development, implementation, and its end in the sea.
Kouskovelis criticized the term ‘Thucydides’ Trap’ as a misleading compass and added that the only question that could be asked to Thucydides’ work was ‘how wrong decision-makings could end with a trap for both powers.’ (Kouskouvelis, 2017) This research will take the way of the critics of the term and will focus on how wrong strategic decisions in the sea could lead rising powers to such a trap. Rather than answering the classical question of Allison on ‘whether the war was inevitable?’ it will focus on ‘whether rising powers could successfully manage its relationship with the hegemon with avoiding Thucydides’ Trap at sea?’
Another work concerned with this topic was provided to literature by A.F.K. Organski, which was named as Power Transition Theory, that stressed ‘a rising power that is short of the power of hegemonic power could initiate a conflict to change the course in its favour’. (Organski, 1958) Contrary to Organski’s systematic and material understanding of power, this research will show how rising powers in the sea also refrained to enter wars almost in half of the cases that will be covered. It will also fill in the gap of cultural and subjective analysis in Power Transition Theory with its extensive focus on rising powers themselves. This research will balance mostly reductionist Realist literature of rising powers with more contemporary Neoclassical Realism. Ripsman, Taliaferro, and Lobell underlined that ‘perceptions (or misperceptions) of leaders and people, complex international signs, problems of rationality based on domestic and other non-material feelings, and constraints on mobilizing state power could affect the international system’. (Ripsman, Taliaferro, & Lobell, 2016, pp. 20-24) It will show how Realism also provide works on perceptions and its relationship between a material world with simply focusing on sea power, which was a solid domain that has both civilian and militarily dimension.
The answer of why this research will stress this much on sea power was based upon the nature of the Peloponnesian War that constituted the backbone of Thucydides’ Trap analogy. ‘The Peloponnesian War of (431-404 BCE), and the process that led us to it, has a maritime characteristic’. (Nash, 2018, p. 133) Likewise, Allison’s main case of interest, the British-German relationship in pre-World War I, had an extended understanding of maritime power and strategy. This research will primarily focus on four naval rising powers in the modernity which were between the 19th and the 20th Century. This period was when globalization become more widespread and maritime domain become crucial for it.
Like Athens and Sparta, all four cases that this research will depend upon, and also the current case of the US and China, were the rising and hegemon states that do not share a common land border. Mahan defined the sea as ‘a medium for communication and sea power as using the seas for a country’s interests’. (Mahan, 2013, pp. 37-39) This make the development, implementation of the sea power a
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crucial means to understand the end which was Thucydides’ Trap. As Carl von Clausewitz defined the war as ‘a continuation of politics by other means’, Julian Corbett expanded his views to the sea and defined the roles of navies ‘to influence the political outcome on land’. (Clausewitz, 2015, p. 45; Corbett, 2010, p. 90) Even though most classical sea theoreticians analysed sea power as a military mean that developed for wartime purposes; even in peace-time naval power contributes to politics through its role and place in naval diplomacy and state identity.
The value of theoretical works was always doubted among policymakers and implementers of the strategy. Not only theoretical ones but also historical narratives combined with theory development was also attracted harsh criticisms, while its value for creating valuable thought schools was generally neglected. As this research will not focus solely on paradoxical concentration to why war occurs, but on how mistakes were made when developing grand and maritime strategies. History could be a valuable research source to learn from. Colin S. Gray underlined that ‘history has a mere prominence since, it is the only thing that could back the assessment of a strategy, as future is still on its way.’ (Gray, Strategy and History, 2006, pp. 5-6) This research will refrain from offering any single future prediction and prescription for China and the US with primarily depending upon historical cases of other naval powers. As Ian Spiller argued ‘in some historical cases characteristics could be changed, or even change radically, that it could not resemble some historical evidence.’ (Spiller, 2020) Even this research will not deny this; it will also try to reveal how history is still valuable for understanding common mistakes that are still in effect in the previous twenty-six centuries.
Both makers and implementers of the maritime strategy approach theoretical works as problematic since practice and experience mean everything. Geoffrey Till underlined Mahan’s point on ‘British dependency upon learning through hard-way, which makes triumphant Nelson as an example of practice while ‘rat-catcher’ Admiral Jellicoe as an example of ‘going by the book’. (Till, 2009, pp. 39-40) This research will however show that how theory is important since the controversy between strategy makers (who focus on theories) and its implementers (who focus on experience and practice) laid a Thucydides’ Trap on their countries’ future.
As Mahan argued, there is ‘a time for action while also there is a time for preparing for action’. (Mahan, 2013, p. 37) What this research will focus on is peace-time sea power where strategy makers were preparing for action. Even this Mahanian beginning, it is important to understand that this research was not solely on strategy but on politics itself. Mahan warned his readers that his historical work on sea power was ‘not for narrating why rivalries, conflicts, and violence in the sea occur’ (simply not focusing on politics itself) but to show ‘how sea power affected it’. (Mahan, 2013, p. 29) This research will try to do what Mahan was refrained to do and will try to focus on how sea power affects the politics and decisions of politicians in geopolitical rivalries.
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2.2) Influence of Sea Power Upon International Relations in the 21st Century
The influence of the sea power on international relations always remained a contested and ambiguous one. For that reason, this part was included for understanding current debates and the value of sea power in IR. As International Relations focused on preventing wars, analysis over political values of sea power and IR remained scarce in its nature. This trend was changed after World War II and even accelerated with the end of the Cold War. Geoffrey Till defined this change as from ‘power at sea’ (or to control the sea) to ‘power from the sea’ (or to project power from the sea). (Till, 2009, p. 22) Raoul Castex also approached the conflict and wars from a different perspective. He claimed that since the seas upkeep the economies of countries, all wars were naval [maritime] wars. (Castex, 2017, p. 26) In modern times it is true that wars were less frequent, however, most crisis even with-out resorting to a war has a maritime character. This part will first address the essential differences between what is sea power, maritime power, naval power, and their strategy.
Even Mahan coined the term sea power, ‘he did not evaluate it in detail since the nature of power is contested’ according to Till. (Till, 2009, p. 20) The literature on the nature of power was distinguished among three different categorizations of it. David Baldwin named them ‘power as an component of national power, relational power, and a behavioural (or psychological) power.’ (Baldwin, 2013, p. 274) Classical definitions of sea power, however, mostly focussed on the first one. Mahan defined sea power as ‘an ability to use the sea for national flourishing’, Spiller extended his account by claiming that the concept of the sea power ‘includes both civilian and military aspects’. (Mahan A. T., The Influence of Sea Power upon History 1660-1783, 1987, p. 65; Spiller, 2020, p. 26) More ideational and complex definition of sea power was provided by Andrew Lambert. He defined sea power as ‘not only having a strong navy but a more complex issue where a state emphasizes the use of sea for national goods’. (Lambert, 2018, p. 4) Sea power is not only a possession of power but an identity that exceeds a nation’s use of sea and become a political, economic, and strategic value and way of daily life for both state and its people.
This research will take a holistic view of sea power. Geoffrey Till defined sea power as ‘an input and an output’. (Till, 2009, p. 21) The input is what classical definitions provided as sea power as a means of national power. While Till put front that ‘output is a relative concept that depends upon how a state’s sea power could affect the result of an issue’. (Till, 2009, pp. 21-22) As both Thucydides and Graham Allison underlined, power is highly related to its psychological effect on the hegemon. The holistic understanding of sea power will help the readers of this research on how a rising power creates its naval identity through the development of its maritime strategy and national sea power. Its implementation of sea power as a relational concept against hegemon will show, how the perception of hegemonic state creates the psychological dimension of power, which is Thucydides’s Trap in our case. Allison
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underlined the words of Eyre Crowe, who analysed German naval power, stated that ‘intentions did not matter but capabilities.’ (Allison, 2018, p. 59) This understanding of Crowe solely depends upon the consideration of sea power as a national power. But it is clear that in Thucydides’s Trap, not only capabilities, but perceptions of relational power and its psychological effects upon hegemon also matter. It is not Imperial Germany’s naval capability development that led to Thucydides’s Trap but its implementation of sea power through its relationship with Britain and its psychological impact upon London is the cause.
Scheme 1: Holistic understanding of sea power that led rising powers and hegemons to a Thucydides's Trap at sea.
Different from sea power which focussed on the political, economic, and military connection of using the sea, maritime power also constitutes another understanding. Corbett underlined that the sea was ‘not a thing for conquering but a mean for transportation and defence’. (Corbett, 2010, pp. 89-90) His definition of maritime strategy and power is to influence the events on land and focus on littoral waters rather than high seas. This shows us that his maritime power and maritime strategy differs from Mahan’s sea power concept (which focused on power at sea) and is based upon power from the sea. Ian Spiller widened the concept of contemporary maritime power ‘to include both civilian and military factors and also the factors that caused from the land, air, even outer and cyberspace’. (Spiller, 2020, p. 26) This research will accept, Mahan’s sea power concept and Corbett’s maritime power as intertwined concepts that make a state’s maritime strategy and identity.
Other important discussions that surround sea power were the current stage of globalization (which revealed a change in the value of maritime power) and the introduction of nuclear weapons (that changed the value of sea power). Geoffrey Till underlined that ‘deterioration of national maritime power with the privatization of maritime industry and introduction of other methods of transportation made its
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strategical worth lesser’. (Till, 2009, pp. 103-104) Even the numbers reveal it in that way, civilian use of sea still matters both grand strategy and its implementation. Corbett argued that in the nature of the sea, there was ‘no concept like continuous sea control but there is a disputed one’. (Corbett, 2010, p. 87) As increased globalization lengthened the duration of post-war peace and flourished sea trade it also strengthened that Corbettian nature of the sea. However, it is still crucial to understand that, the 2021 twin crisis of COVID-19 and the Ever Given Incident in the Suez Canal revealed the sensitivity of this global supply chain. Accidental blockade of the Suez Canal, due to Ever Given which ran aground in March 2021, ‘was costed between six to nine billion dollars for a week and created an annual loss of trade in 0.2 to 0.4 percentage’. (Russon, 2021) While even six months later, still many ports of the world suffer from over-whelming traffic, experts warned that its impacts will ‘continue to be in weight until 2023’. (Saunokonoko, 2021) As examples showed, security and safety of the seas both in terms civilian and military terms is still crucial for current international relations.
In terms of power at sea, Graham Allison defined the Cold War process and rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union as ‘a nuclear mutually assured destruction (MAD) system that discouraged both powers to enter into a hot war and even to a risk of war’. (Allison, 2018, pp. 208-209) Surely he is not an only scholar and will not be the last scholar that will think in that way. Bernard Brodie underlined that ‘the end of American nuclear primacy, brought naval power to merge its traditional roles with new ones.’ (Brodie, 2011, p. 328) As we live in an age where geopolitics and geopolitical ambitions are in resurgence, power at sea also implies great prominence. Kane and Lonsdale argued that ‘the development of nuclear strategy after the Cold War become slower when compared with other branches of warfare’, while Till also underlined, ‘with the rise of littoral sea power related to resources and decolonization movements make sea power in rise once again’. (Kane & Lonsdale, 2016, p. 414; Till, 2009, p. 356) As we see in Russia and China and even all minor regional rising powers, power at sea still constitutes a political value. The 21st Century is an age where Eurasian powers were willing to take their littoral seas back. The latest American sea strategy, Advantage at Sea, started with a sentence in the foreword stated that ‘our actions in this decade will shape the maritime balance of power for the rest of this century.’ (US Navy, 2020) It is also clear that we are in a decade when a Thucydides’s Trap at a sea could be shaped due to wrong strategies and misunderstandings of naval identities.
The majority of the classical thinkers of sea power refrained from addressing the political impact of maritime strategy and navies. Julian Corbett limitedly assessed the political value of sea power, as he extended Clausewitz’s argument to sea, which accepted ‘maritime strategy as the continuation of politics’. (Corbett, 2010, p. 34) As the world entered a period of long peace after the end of WWII, political efficiency and value of naval power increased significantly. However, Edward Luttwak criticized ‘the peacetime strategic value of single ships that conduct navigation operations which could
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not provide any strategic effect to a state.’ (Luttwak, Strategy and History, 1985, p. 94) But it is crucial to realize that in peace-time and on the naval identity of a state, the mere presence of even a single ship has huge significance. Till exemplified Britain’s Sovereign of Seas as an example of ‘a single ship that carried British naval identity in peacetime’. (Till, 2009, p. 259) The same could also be accepted for Imperial Japanese Navy’s Yamato battleship which take its name from Japanese warrior spirit. Even a small gunboat, as SMS Panther, which Imperial Germany employed in Tangiers signified a diplomatic crisis with Britain as its mere presence was perceived and demonstrated aggressive German naval identity.
In the modern era, United Kingdom’s single ship navigation through Crimean waters with HMS Defender in 2021 signified the continuity of this culture. Even a single ship demonstrated its power to create diplomatic tension between Moscow and London. HMS Defender’s mere presence in the Black Sea signified London’s naval identity, policy, and strategy towards Russia. Ken Booth and later Ian Spiller summarized this political role in three categories which were ‘power struggle, manipulation through coercion (gunboat diplomacy), and prestige’. (Booth, 1977, pp. 18-19; Spiller, 2020, p. 30) As China integrates its sea, undersea, and above-sea capabilities in its near seas, it has a significant impact on its relationship with the US. China’s latest security document underlined that Beijing was modernizing and arming its maritime domain ‘to safeguard its national unity’. (The State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China, 2019, p. 15) The only occasion that China directly names the US as a concern in that strategic document was in its first part. Even this, the latest American maritime strategy directly defined China as ‘the primary maritime competitor and challenger of the US in the long-time’. (US Navy, 2020, p. 9)
Robert D. Kaplan defined sea power as a ‘compensatory answer to shape the geopolitical context for an actor who is in an infernally complex and intractable situation on land.’ (Kaplan, 2018, p. 40) Kaiser Wilhelm of the German Empire approached sea power in such kind of value, as in his opinion without a capable battle fleet, how could his country challenge the complex situation of the land. He even openly criticized French La Jeune Ecole in the wake of the Fashoda Crisis, as its poorly capable navy ‘led to an abdication vis-à-vis Britain on the sea’. (Kennedy, 2017, p. 206; Massie, 1992, p. 256; Canuel, 2018, p. 109) Like Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, Chinese President Xi Jinping also implies ‘the importance of sea power for China’s great rejuvenation (that has a geopolitical dimension) in response to the complex situation on land and sea’. (Jinping b, 2013) It is acceptable to accept sea power as a compensatory answer to complex geopolitical context, but it is also important that strategic mistakes and misunderstandings made sea power equally dangerous for a rising power. As this part revealed contemporary discussions on sea power were concentrated on an essential dichotomy of ‘power at sea’
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and ‘power from the sea’. The next part will go deeper into the historical cases of rising powers and how their relations with maritime power influenced.
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3) RISING POWER NAVAL IDENTITIES AND HISTORICAL CASES OF THUCYDIDES’S TRAP AT SEA
Identity in International Relations was a relatively new concept that become a common theme after the Cold War. Alexander Wendt underlined the importance of state identities, which were ideational, over IR. He underlined that ‘states create a mirror effect with the creation of an identity that affects the view of other parties’. (Wendt, 1992, s. 404) As Wendt’s focus was on the ideational creation of state identities, this research will provide a look at how material conditions provide an identity to a state. A naval identity is a material identity, that is derived from the mere existence of a countries’ ships, which signified the values, policies, and strategies of a state. Before going deeper on this topic, we would have to focus on the Peloponnesian War as a case that consists of two different naval identities.
Jun J. Nohara underlined an important work on the strategic identities of a nation. Nohara underlined that ‘a state adopts its strategic identities through social interactions and strategic perceptions’. (Nohara, 2017, p. 212) This research will show in its historical cases how the strategic identities of states developed and go a step further to understand how it had an impact upon its relations with its rival. A naval identity was a subset of a strategic identity but it had to evaluate differently from it since the nature of the sea was highly different from other components of strategical domains.
Creating a maritime identity is a complex process that requires both a change of the culture in many issues. Andrew Lambert defined this reformation in two ways which were ‘state reformation for sustaining a navy’ and ‘creation of a cultural identity on the sea’. (Lambert, 2018, p. 5) So a state’s maritime (or sea power) identity development starts from its national character and grand strategy. It could be accepted as a circle where all actors had a binary way of interaction. When a state decided to become a sea power, it should create a grand strategy which is a course and decision-making mechanism that drives this identity. This stage was formed by two processes which were first economic and civilian maritime identity development. States like Athenians, Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish, Dutch, and British Empires were examples of how states developed a civilian maritime identity first than a military one to support it. Then it continues with coercive and military maritime identity development. In the case of the Ottoman Empire, Roman Empire, and the US, states developed their military maritime identities first then transformed their populations to civilian maritime countries. In such a case, the international environment takes an important part, as if there is an already existent maritime hegemon such kind of project remained problematic. Examples like England in the 17th Century, Sweden at the start of the 18th Century, Imperial Germany, and Imperial Japan showed this problem as sole coercive sea power was failed by a war with the hegemon. This shows us that given the state of the international conditions, a
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state’s grand strategy could change but a state should need both. A state’s national character should support both the grand strategy and the navy of that state to sustain a maritime identity. After the development of sea power, states implement it via maritime strategy. A state should carry its navy to have an ability to show power from the sea and power at sea to carry its maritime agenda both benevolently and coercively. Navies of Imperial Germany and Japan was failed to deliver the power from the sea part as their civilian maritime power was limited while Ming China, Spanish, and Swedish Empire were failed to create a naval power that could show definite power at sea. The toughest issue is the problem of the continuous implementation of this maritime identity. Any disruption in this circle could easily lead to the crumbling of what we called as maritime identity.
Scheme 2: Impact of sea power upon development of a naval identity of a state and Thucydides's Trap.
Ancient Greece provides us a simulation to understand the current world since the technology of the time and geography of the Aegean Sea provide us a similar position to understand current concerns and strategies. Some scholars could object to the definition of Athens and Sparta as distanced powers since they have a geographical connection through the Megarid region. Even this, ‘Pericles defined that long walls of Athens and its port, Piraeus, made it an island that could be fed by its sea power’. (Kagan, 2004, p. 51) It is important since the long war allowed discussing two different naval identities. It also become a case that made Athens suffer from its naval identities through its war.
It is important to note that land was the primary domain of dominion in the Ancient Greek world. As Sparta controls the lands, Athens fell at an enormous disadvantage which led them to find a new way. As globalization and trade become widespread and made the sea the primary dominion of hegemony, the Second Peloponnesian War remain a different case from other historical cases. But it is crucial to
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understand that Athens signified an important example since it was the first state that employed sea power to get over its asymmetry with the existing hegemon. ‘As Spartans concentrated on war at land, Pericles concentrated on raids against Peloponnesians to inflict pain while refraining from a decisive battle’. (Walling, 2013, pp. 61-62) Most of the historical examples of this research will show the Theodore Roosevelt’s opinion. As the rising powers that engaged in a rivalry with hegemons with-out actual well-timing were failed while others who engaged it with-out having a will to engage also failed to achieve its political objective.
3.1) A Periclean Navy
The course of the Peloponnesian War has become one of the most debated issues even since Thucydides. Athens’s overdependence on sea control and its inflexible naval identity was not taken into consideration much. Pericles was aware of the danger of war as he tried to avoid it. He proposed ‘a Pan-Hellenic Alliance which would give them control of the fleet of the Greek world to the Athenians’. (Kagan, 2010, p. 44) His efforts were failed after inflexible Athenian dependency on the sea since Sparta’s sea-faring allies rejected it. Both Athenian crisis with Corinth and Megarian Decree was made to protect Athenian sea control. As Corcyra’s ambassador warned, ‘the loss of Corcyra’s fleet to the ever-growing Corinthian fleet will disrupt the balance at the sea towards Sparta’s Peloponnesian Alliance’. (Kagan, 2004, pp. 30-31) Even this Pericles was not in a position to violate the previous treaty and wage a war against Spartans. He sends ‘a fleet of ten ships, which did not have any strategic value, to deter Corinthians’. (Kagan, 2004, p. 34) Even it was not enough to deter Corinthians, it was enough to trigger the crisis that set the course to the war with Sparta.
In terms of grand strategy, Athens tried to protect the terms of the latest war termination while also protecting the Athenian regime. For avoiding a geographical sense of strangulation and protecting the Athenian commerce, and also to send a message Pericles implied a Megarian Decree. These mistakes end with a mistake in Athenian grand strategy and its implementation through maritime strategy. Walling underlined that ‘Pericles’s pre-war diplomacy was disconnected from its maritime strategy’. (Walling, 2013, p. 62) As Spartan King Archademian’s efforts to avoid war was fell short since both Athenian and Spartan domestic actors influenced by mistrust and divergence over to protect peace or not. ‘Sparta went to Athens with a proposal to repeal the Megarian Decree which was unacceptable to Athens since it will tie Athenian sea-control to the will of Sparta’. (Kagan, 2004, p. 49) It was reciprocal misunderstandings of Athenian naval identity and Sparta’s perceptions over it that made it inevitable the declaration of war in 432 BC.
Pericles took ‘an operational understanding of active defence’ that used sea power as a means of its grand strategy against Spartans. (Nash, 2018, p. 125) Athenian mistakes on sea power did not end in the
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pre-war period, as Athenian naval strategy slowly prepared the end of Athenian naval identity and its Empire. Pericles adopted a defensive strategy that used its sea power for offshore attrition of Sparta. He used his navy ‘to rule over the small islands and the flow of goods to other cities’. (Nash, 2018, p. 124) Which is an early example of the use of guerre de course and sea denial. His strategy was primarily focused ‘on draining the morale and will of Spartans but not material destruction’. (Kagan, 2004, p. 52) After all, neither Athens and nor Sparta achieved a decisive battle to end their hostilities. The plague in Athens and revolts in Sparta put two states to blink of collapse where attrition become the common problem of the two countries.
Pericles warned his people to ‘not make a premature peace that could harm the maritime empire’. (Walling, 2013, p. 67) He increased his efforts to drive Athenian people to have a more ambitious naval identity. ‘Pericles gave his vision of a Mediterranean Empire which was utopian in its nature.’ (Walling, 2013, p. 68) Even this Pericles did not see the end of his strategy as he died in the wake of the Peace of Nicias. Even after several naval expeditionary victories, Athenians and Spartans reached an agreement that did not satisfy both sides. Thucydides called it a ‘treacherous armistice’ since both Athenian sea-power and Spartan hegemony were impossible to become compatible visions. (Walling, 2013, p. 77)
Even Nicias secured peace between Athens and Sparta, Athenian sea power and identity that depends upon it made further problems. A discussion in Sparta’s Assembly showed the problem of Athens’s incompatible naval identity and strategy as they underlined that ‘the nature of Athens that made impossible for everyone.’ (Kagan, 2004, p. 42) Nicias’s efforts to consolidate Athenian sea control in the Mediterranean will show how an overarching naval identity and a strategy of a rising power led to a disaster at sea than in politics. It was Thucydides’s Trap at sea, as Athenians misread the identity and will of Sparta’s toward them as we will show in the next part.
3.2) A Post-Periclean Navy
While the strategy of Pericles was accepted as a defensive one, that in line with its grand strategy of attrition, it failed to deliver the necessary political end to dissolve the Peloponnesian League. Pericles even warned his successors to ‘take care of Athens’s fleet and to avoid expanding the Empire when there is a looming threat of Spartans at near-by’. (Thibault, 1973, p. 33) Even with this warning, however, Nicias’s efforts were going entirely a new phase where Athenians suffered from domestic rifts. Not only, domestic conditions, Nash argued that also ‘external events take Athenians to react against Syracuse’s domination of Sicily’. (Nash, 2018, p. 129) The nature of these developments has again created a threat to Athenian naval identity. ‘As Nicias see a united Sicily which was under the aid of Sparta as a primary threat to Athenian maritime control in the Mediterranean, while he also expected the campaign could
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help Athens to control an island that is more populous than itself’. (Walling, 2013, p. 78) When Athens acted against Sicily, it made crucial mistakes that also led to the defeat of the following rising powers.
As Pericles feared the time of the Athenian expedition was completely wrong as Spartans looked for an opportunity to change the latest war termination conditions. Also, Athenians seriously misunderstood the Spartan view of war at sea was gravely changed in the post-war period. Nicias’s efforts in Sicily led Spartans to put Athens in ‘a grand strategic trap where Athens was constrained in a multi-theatre war that will drive Athens to the out of its walls’. (Walling, 2013, p. 79) Not only in terms of taking Spartan intentions wrong, but Athens also suffered from overconfidence in their naval power and also on the issue of Spartan naval identity. As again Walling argued, ‘Nicias was believed suffering in Sicily will mean nothing as Athenians will continue to control the seas while Sparta will remain on land since it has no belief in defeating Athens at sea’. (Walling, 2013, p. 79) Sparta has another view, as both the leaders and assembly, understood that this was not a war like the past. They developed the belief that they should have to learn how to use the sea to defeat the Athenians forever. Misfortune and tactical failures costed for both Athenian land forces and its naval forces in Sicily which also cost Nicias his life. Athens fell in great danger as its mixed grand strategy drive it to attrition of all resources, since the crumbling of its sea power in Sicily put its lifelines of trade routes in Hellespont a risk. Spartan General Brasidas led a campaign to Thessaly and Chalcides which were supplied Athens with silver and lumber which directly targeted the source of Athenian identity.
Athens furthered its mistakes as ‘domestic divergences drive the Athenian politics to removal and execution of its eight best Admirals due to the loss of the Sicilian expedition’. (Walling, 2013, p. 80) It was now setting off a clock that counts back for the destruction of Athens. As Corinthian Admiral Polyantes discovered that ‘Athenian naval power was not undefeatable with a naval innovation, Sparta and its allies drive a campaign to develop a naval power that could fight and win against Athens’. (Thibault, 1973, p. 35) It was the Battle of Aegospotami, which took place in modern-day Dardanelles, that ended with a decisive Spartan victory that ended the years-long Peloponnesian War. The battle did not only signify a single defeat to Athens but the end of Athenian naval identity. ‘As ships symbolised the means of freedom and power of Athens, their destruction resembled the vice-versa.’ (Butera, 2010, p. 77)
Athenian sea power and its excessive dependency on naval identity put it in a vulnerable position after the Pericles, which turned a navy into hubris and nemesis for them. As Sparta controlled the events on land, with hegemonic power, its move to obtain the sea from Athens led to a Thucydides’s Trap for Athens. As both Pericles and successors of him failed to deliver the necessary means to reach its political goals, following rising powers were suffered as hegemons already control the sea and thorough it the
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land. Nash underlined that ‘the outcome of the war was decided by the ability of belligerent parties to use sea power with effectiveness’. (Nash, 2018, p. 135)
What we also revealed was that, not only the outcome, but also the road that went to both Peloponnesians War was sailed through the sea with excessive Athenian naval identity. Even though Thucydides did not mention a Thucydides’s Trap that made war inevitable, he mentions a trap that was concerned with the sea. He answered the question of ‘how Athens was lost the war with an answer that revealed how the Athenians used their sea power’. (Thibault, 1973, p. 32) It was not only Athens, as we would see in upcoming parts, whose loss was prepared by sea power. Many of the rising powers were constrained in choosing a Periclean or a Post-Periclean identity against the hegemon was suffered from similar mistakes and outcomes.
3.3) La Jeune Ecole and French Naval Identity Towards Britain
The development of the Ecole was tightly related to Louis-Napoleon’s Second French Empire. Ross underlined that ‘Napoleon III used the French Navy to sustain his domestic legitimacy and named it as a prestige fleet’. (Ross, 2018, p. 14) The case of Louis-Napoleon could become another case study of this research. However, it was closely tied with the case of the French Third Republic and relatively short-lived naval identity and project. His naval ambitions were Mahanian based upon huge capital ships. ‘He individually supported the build-up of the first ironclad La Gloire as a capital ship while Britain was concentrated upon old-school ship-of-lines’. (Ross, 2018, p. 15) Even this, the economic position of France was in no condition that Mahan highlighted. Canuel underlined that ‘with Napoleon III, Paris created larger market shares around the world’, while Ross underlined that ‘the French economy was still based on the continent and Britain was in much better terms’. (Canuel, 2018, p. 98; Ross, 2018, p. 14) Thus, Emperor achieved to attend public attention to his navy with his specific policies and ambitions. ‘He employed populism and Orsini bomb-plot against him which linked with Britain to fund his ambitious prestige fleet.’ (Ross, 2018, p. 15) Emperor’s fleet was failed not at sea but the land with Franco-Prussian War. As France is in ‘no position to obtain necessary intelligence’ and with its ‘failure to cut Prussian trade and to blockade due to fear of British reaction, the French Navy was surrendered at the port’. (Canuel, 2018, p. 101; Ross, 2018, p. 17) This problem played an important role in the development of the Ecole as we will see in this part.
La Jeune Ecole was an interesting case to understand a Periclean naval identity even further. France was a unique continental state that suffered from continuous wars with two maritime hegemons which were Dutch and British. Mahan defined that ‘the continental weakness of Paris was due to persisting threats that cause a double burden on the French treasury’. (Mahan A. T., 2013, p. 127) As Vauban, Napoleon, and his nephew Napoleon III faced, the French were in a bleak condition since Britain held both the sea
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and land through its allies. Richard Grivel, who established the Ecole, put British superiority as ‘impossible to meet with French resources’. (Peifer, 2013, p. 101) Both Grivel and his successor Aube defined a fleet that for a naval battle with Britain will be a hubris and nemesis for the French state as happened on earlier occasions.
Even this, however, the Ecole was not well in terms of timing. Its revolutionary ideas, which were like Pericles’s, were beyond the reach of the Third Republic. The technological groundwork that carried it was ‘not enough to support such kinds of operations since torpedo boats failed to engage with trade convoys’. (Peifer, 2013, p. 104) Its ideas were only coming in effect into the First World War as submarines were introduced for maritime guerre de course. The period was also followed by the introduction of Dreadnaughts which led to a great maritime arms race between Britain, Germany, Russia, and Italy. French dependency on lesser ships put it in a negative position as ‘its rivals widened the gap between Paris and rest of the Europe’. (Lavarnhe, 2018, pp. 20-21) Also, the 19th Century resembled an age for deepened and widened maritime trade, even with Paris’s reluctance in building a huge navy, its grand strategy was entirely developed differently.
Like Pericles, who obtained a coastal and defensive position, La Jeune Ecole also took a similar understanding of sea power. Even this, however, French was focused on continuing the colonial rivalry with Britain over the distanced parts of the world. Aube underlined that ‘states have to create new markets for providing domestic wealth, as colonial power and colonies were tied to each other with sea lines of communication’. (Røksund, 2007, p. 8) Even this what Aube and the Ecole missed was that the same issue was also true for French sea power. As France shared a need for overstretched economic use of the sea, La Jeune Ecole fell short in supporting the French naval identity. The grand strategic goals of France failed to balance with the maritime means of Paris. This caused the development of the Ecole to frequently fall in incompetence due to domestic and technological setbacks. Peifer underlined that ‘the Ecole itself was divided French navy and created confusion among strategy implementers’. (Peifer, 2013, p. 104; Ropp & Roberts, 1987, pp. 178-179)
The failure of La Jeune Ecole is also closely related to Paris’s misunderstanding of British naval identity. Grivel and Aube’s plans were, developed in line with what Pericles had in his mind, based upon deterring British ships to not leaving the ports. As Napoleon Bonaparte warned earlier in 1815, the British was already commanding the seas which gave London the advantage to hoist its flags wherever wood could swim. London’s identity was tightly connected with its navy. Like Athens whose survival was tied with the sea; ‘since 1846, Britain was gravely dependent upon oceans for cheap food’. (Røksund, 2007, p. 10) As the survival of London is severely tied to the sea, there is no chance for Royal Navy to wait in the port. While Aube’s view on coastal defence and concentration again developed problematic since Britain was not constrained to its littoral waters.
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The last failure of La Jeune Ecole was after the Fashoda Crisis. A misunderstanding of British naval identity put Paris in a risk of war in the distant shores of Africa. The peripheral concentration of the French Navy due to torpedo boats gave the French ‘no naval power to project power against deterring British efforts’. (Lavarnhe, 2018, p. 15) The cancellation of the ship of the lines and delay of capital ships that could engage with British ships put French forces in disproportionality. Canuel underlined that ‘the failure of the global reach of French sea power made advantageous British to control the shores and seas of the Nile which isolated French Captain Jean-Baptiste Marchand to strand in South Sudan’. (Canuel, 2018, p. 109)
Even this, the popularity of La Jeune Ecole was not ended since various powers continued to learn from them. Lavarnhe argued that ‘the value of the Ecole was coming from Aube’s vision and its inspiration sourced from pursuing technological developments’. (Lavarnhe, 2018, p. 22) Like Pericles, Grivel and Aube’s efforts were not enough to meet French grand strategic goals and also to counter British naval identity. Canuel also highlighted this problem as he claimed that ‘the Ecole was failed to create a cogent theoretical and doctrinal framework for support.’ (Canuel, 2018, p. 113) Even this, what prevented a war with Britain in Fashoda Crisis was the French adoption of a full attrition strategy and self-restraint of Paris who acknowledged its weaker position. The following part will go deep on Imperial German naval identity who took a Post-Periclean path that led to a conflict with Britain.
3.4) Imperial Germany’s Naval Identity Towards Britain
The case of Imperial Germany and Tirpitz’s Risk Fleet (Risikoflotte) signified a great departure from the point of La Jeune Ecole and also Pericles. The unification of Germany in 1871 brought grave disagreements as the Empire was dominated by the Prussian Juncker class who focused on land power and agricultural production. This put German Empire in a fragile position since western and southern German regions were against the sponsoring land power of Junckers as they extensively profited from a sea-borne trade. Emperor William employed his fleet to defend the unity of the Empire as most of the ships were ‘named after southern and western German states, while an extensive public relations campaign was conducted to send the message to the audience’. (Bachmann, 2016, p. 86) Even Tirpitz’s plans, German population and Kaiser Wilhelm II himself created a naval identity that could challenge British naval supremacy for furthering German trade and colonial interests.
This naval identity was not really applicable since Berlin took a wrong one, just like post-Periclean Athens who suffered from its expedition in Sicily. It was a time when ‘Britain decided to selectively engage in the North Sea even it would cost war with Germany’. (Spiller, 2020, p. 103) Also like the French and Dutch, Germans were a continental state that was simultaneously under threat from Russia and France. German resources were not enough to counter Britain as it was not in a total decline, also
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Mahan warned that ‘a naval arms race could only have one winner, since 1912, Germany was aversely left-back by British naval build-up’. (Spiller, 2020, p. 103) As we will see in upcoming mistakes timing was one of the most crucial mistakes that did by IGN.
Germany increasingly become dependent upon sea trade routes, its development of overstretched understanding of naval commerce brought a sense of strangulation. Even Tirpitz employed a kind of keeping low strategy, ‘in 1902 Kaiser Wilhelm II invited his cousin, King Edward VII of Britain, to a naval review in Kiel which led Britain to forwardly deploy a fleet in the North Sea’. (Allison, 2018, p. 72) As the British employed a British squadron that create a sense of possible naval blockade, Germans become more ambitious in terms of defending the shores and trade of Germans. Tirpitz developed its fleet as a balanced one that could ‘deter Britain from leaving the ports since its use of naval power against Germany would mean an imperial crumbling for the British’. (Spiller, 2020, pp. 102-103) It would have led to a terrible mistake made by Pericles, his successors, and also by Grivel and Aube.
This mistake was Germany’s misunderstanding of British naval identity. As we said in the previous, part, British dependency at sea was become more and more evident. Even in the early 1907, Britain discussed acting against Germany which focused on total annihilation of the German fleet. ‘Admiral John ‘Jockey’ Fisher proposed a pre-emptive, Copenhagen-style attack, against Germany which was suspended by King himself’. (Allison, 2018, p. 74) Even though the German grand strategy was focused on the attrition of Britain, its naval arms race was fastened after 1907 which set its maritime strategy for an annihilation war. As both Britain and Germany employed a mixed grand strategy, of attrition and annihilation, the clock started to count back for a single crisis that could lead to a war between two incompatible naval identities.
It became possible after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo that led to a war between Austria-Hungary and Serbia. As Allison himself underlined a sea power did not automatically end with a war between Britain and Germany. Most of the opinions on why Britain entered the war against Berlin have remained an issue of great discussion. As neutrality of Belgium was accepted sacred for Britain since the 18th Century. For understanding how a naval identity shaped the course of events at land that led to war between Berlin and London, one should focus on the very value of Belgium. The mere existence of Belgium, as a neutral state, was developed after the British war with Dutch and followed by Napoleon’s. As Dutch control of the Flanders region and following French control of Wallonia and Napoleon’s establishment of Batavian Republic put British sea power in Channel and its very security at risk. Germany’s invasion of Belgium was neglected in terms of the value that it could be made upon the sea. ‘In 1914, after the British entrance to war, Tirpitz and German Military High Council rushed to Flemish ports which were already secured by British Marines’. (Vandeweyer, 2013, p. 36) It was clear that the neutrality of Belgium means the neutrality of the seas for Britain which turned
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Belgium as Megarian Decree of Britain against Germans. ‘As German troops entered Belgium, Churchill send a telegram to RN ship captains to commence hostilities against Germany’. (Allison, Destined For War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?, 2018, p. 84; Churchill, 1923, pp. 245-246)
German Empire and Kaiser’s effort to create a domestic naval power were also criticized by other domestic state actors. His ambitions were seemed contradictory to domestic politics and the necessities of the German Empire. Ross underlined that, ‘in the 1890s, Leo von Caprivi warned Kaiser to not focus on developing an ocean-going navy since they did not have the capacity to sustain it’. (Ross, 2018, p. 19) Empire’s extended funding of the navy reacted to different opinions from Junkers and the officials of the army. In 1911, Kaiser Wilhelm’s efforts were again opposed by his advisers where he said that ‘he would not allow England to tell him what to do.’ (Ross, 2018, p. 20) His insistence at the expense of domestic politics played an important part in Berlin’s problematic naval identity towards Britain.
Just like Pericles’s successors did, Tirpitz also continued to suffer from its naval identity until the very end of the war. As things did not develop in a way that Tirpitz expected, now he had ‘a sea power that was too big to prevent a war while a too little one to win against the hegemon’. (Spiller, 2020, p. 104) Military historians and strategists criticized British Admiral Jellicoe as he did not focus on a decisive victory against Germans in Jutland War. Many define Jutland as an incomplete naval battle that Germans did not suffer from a decisive defeat. But for Berlin, the Battle of Jutland signified a decisive blow to IGN which did not have any resources to fill the future ships that would sink in fleet warfare. Wegener defined the German fleet as ‘inactive’, which already locked in its ports after the Jutland, which also ‘demoralized people who were expected much from their fleet’. (Hansen, 2005, pp. 85-86) Incumbent Admiral Scheer then focused on a concentrated fleet that focused sea denial through U-boats which were focused on attrition grand strategy. His efforts fell short as the German high-seas fleet was not in a position to control the seas. The loss of German sea power, through an indecisive war with a decisive outcome, strengthened the hegemonic advantage of Britain who control the seas and also the land.
Scheer’s concentrated fleet and maritime strategy of guerre de course made things worse for German Empire, who fell in a grand strategic trap like Athens. As Germans left between multiple theatre land wars, sank of British ship Lusitania revealed the biggest mistakes that Berlin did. Scheer’s successor Admiral Eduard von Capelle again misread the American intention and its naval identity who thought that any American contribution for the war would mean ‘zero’ effect. (Rahn, 2017, p. 26) It was an age when American naval identity increasingly become visible and its ambitions for freedom of navigation become visible by President Wilson’s Liberal thoughts.
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The declaration of war by Washington to Berlin, after Zimmerman telegram, signified an end for German efforts in the war. As the German Navy was locked in its ports it failed to prevent American trans-oceanic support to its allies. As the war ended with Versailles Treaty, the German fleet ended in the hands of Allied forces at Scapa Flow. While it led to a Sailor’s Revolt in Kiel ‘who see the locking of the fleet as redeeming the sacred value of the nation’. (Bachmann, 2016, p. 89) German fleet sank by its sailors at Scapa Flow for avoiding the fall ships to enemy hands, its naval identity and the Empire was also sinking at the shallow bottom of Scapa Flow. As we noted earlier, the German naval identity which sees a navy as a ‘beauti sund possenti’ was turned into a nemesis and hubris of Berlin. The quote ‘in defending of everything, he defends nothing’ was attributed to many leaders from Frederick the Great to Napoleon and even to Sun Tzu. It is a good suiting quote for IGN. As Imperial German Navy was put defend of everything from security of German shores and it’s beyond, to its national unity, it defends nothing after the Battle of Jutland.
The abnormal defeat of the Imperial German Navy in the Battle of Jutland created an important impact on Imperial Japanese Navy. Who taught to learn from mistakes as they developed ‘the concept of kantai kessen (need for a decisive victory) that was presented in 1920’. (Sagen, 2004, p. 75) As we will see in the next part, whether the Japanese learned well from the mistakes of Germany as a rising power is quite interesting since their defeat had interesting parallels with the Germans in terms of politics and strategy.
3.5) Imperial Japanese Naval Identity Towards the US
Sea power constituted an important meaning for Japanese identity since the Meiji restoration. Japan suffered from the power of American steamships of Commodore Perry and later Western bombardment of Kagoshima and Shimonoseki by Western powers after its isolation. Japanese Empire increasingly focused on developing a naval power and identity to employ its power in the Pacific Ocean. Sato Tetsutaro underlined that ‘Japan should be a maritime power (where he used riko o sake, umi o susumu3) rather than a continental one since it was an island country’. (Bose, 2020, p. 57; Yoshihara & Holmes, 2006, p. 29) Even Tetsutaro’s warnings, Japan directed towards an opposite position which created huge problems.
Anand Toprani underlined that ‘Japan was failed to understand that it should not fight a war against its main oil supplier, which was the US’. (Paine, 2017, p. 104; Toprani, 2012, pp. 1-3) Even this Japan recognized its dependency and its risks over the Japanese economic life. As Japan decided to act on the Manchurian issue, the American embargo pushed Japan to use its surrounding seas. Its resources were not in a position to feed the growing Japanese economy and population. Cadres in the navy introduced
3 Jap: “Avoiding the continent and advancing on the seas.” (Yoshihara & Holmes, 2006, p. 29)
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‘a Nanshin policy which was a southward focus on Japanese expansionism’ while Army officers favoured ‘a nanshu hokushin which focused primarily on North Asia and at the land of mainland China’. (Dollery, Spindler, & Parsons, 2003, p. 4) The development of Japanese naval identity was hit hard by heightened tension between IJN and Army which had different visions.
The post-WWI order, which declared China as an open market, constrained Japanese gains while ‘the Great Depression created a condition where passivity means perishing of country’s wealth’. (Paine, 2017, p. 183) Even this over-dependence on overseas markets, the timing was a crucial mistake for Japan to enter a war with China on its mainland. Like post-Periclean Athens, which suffered from outside developments that developed apart from Athenian control, IJN was also influenced by outside problems. ‘It was an age of nationalism in China and Communism in Russia which targeted Japanese expansionism at all costs.’ (Paine, 2017, p. 184) It was also an age when the US was on the rise since its victory in WWI resembled an important accumulation of power. Admiral Yamamoto himself was fascinated by the production capacity of American car factories, which also signified a warning for Tokyo to avoid a war with it.
Japanese Empire was not satisfied with the latest war termination conditions which led revisionist young officers in Tokyo to take a bold stance. Even after the Russo-Japanese War and post-WWI period, ‘diplomats failed to turn them into a diplomatic success’. (Paine, 2017, p. 180) These developments led the authorities in Tokyo to divert from each other while focusing on the different types of strategies. General Yamagata’s seizure of Government in 1922, ‘unified the military with other institutions which devastated the Japanese grand strategy and reduced it to a single military strategy’. (Paine, 2017, p. 180) Young officers in the Japanese Army plotted a conflict in Manchuria against Chinese forces which led Japan to a land conflict. The conflict was continued until Tokyo was frightened of the danger of economic strangulation. As the Empire was under the embargo of Washington, Japanese oil tankers that ‘carried petroleum from Borneo, Sumatra, and Malaya had to pass from the American-controlled Philippines’. (Symonds, 2018, p. 171) With a lack of grand strategy and a sense of economic strangulation, Japanese military circles now were on a path for collision with its arch-rival, the US. Graham Allison also underlined this position as he underlined ‘American position to Japan left Tokyo to decide between a war of unthinkable or worse.’ (Allison, 2018, p. 44)
Even naval officers objected to Hideki Tojo and the army’s decision to expand the war to the sea after the gridlock in China but those efforts fell short as ‘Tokyo was not keen to consider different political opinions’. (Ito, 1962) Isoroku Yamamoto even warned his superiors over his concerns over delivering victories after twelve months since Japan was in no place to obtain resources to defeat Americans. His warnings were fell short since the political climate in Tokyo was designed to use Japanese naval power
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to its very ends under the belief nationalist spirits like Yamato-tamashii4. Japan’s ‘over-extended militarily and financially involvement in the war’, like post-Periclean Athens, put it in a grand strategic trap where it had to combat against a hegemonic power that was advantageous in both lands and at sea. (Paine, 2017, p. 185) Isoroku Yamamoto complained one of his fellow officers, over the plans of Army General Nagano with these words;
“If these fools in the army will drive us a war with the US, we could only strike pre-emptively.” (Symonds, 2018, p. 172)
Yamamoto derived a plan from the 1905 Russo-Japanese War. He focused on ‘a strategy of attrition (zengen sakusen) based upon annihilation or a decisive fleet encounter’. (Bose, 2020, p. 60; Asada, 2006) A mixed strategy of attrition and annihilation again pushed a rising power to collision with hegemonic power. As Japan bombed Pearl Harbour with a surprise attack, Yamamoto had a belief of the American loss of the Pacific fleet will lead to demoralization of Washington which would lead to better war termination conditions. He later understands that he was completely misunderstood American naval identity which was focused on achieving a decisive and unconditional victory. As US President Franklin Roosevelt revealed in his Infamy Speech, ‘the absolute victory to prevent such a war to happen again became the grand cause of the American war efforts.’ (Chan, 2016)
It was now clear that Washington was preparing for a strategy of annihilation which was not expected by Japanese strategy makers. As Japan tried to avoid the mistakes of the IGN, it gave the very chance to the US to implement its strategy. As Japan engaged a decisive fleet action with the US at Midway Atoll, Tokyo lost its valuable aircraft carriers which were hard to recover since Japan was in no position to sustain the offensive war with its scarce resources. As Japan lost its ability to control the sea, Japanese soldiers in Pacific islands like Solomon and Iwo Jima engaged in a war of suicide with no support and resources. ‘The loss of Japan’s navy cleared the loss of its survival in both continental and maritime domains.’ (Paine, 2017, p. 179) Tokyo’s lessons from the Battle of Jutland were only for learning for more lessons that harmed rising powers. Bose defined IJN’s loss as ‘a blind faith in contested doctrines that was disconnected from the realities of the battlefield’. (Bose, 2020, p. 65)
As this research revealed, not only in the field of strategy and tactics, Japanese defeat was one of the many cases that rising powers suffered even before the start of the war. Loss of Japanese aircraft carriers in Midway first transferred the skies than seas to the US. Even with the fierce efforts of Japanese soldiers on an island by island, the crumble of Japanese naval identity again brought an end to Japanese Empire’s expansionist identity and all the efforts that Tokyo achieved with its scarce resources since the 1860s.
4 Jap: Yamato Spirit. Yamato was a war god in Japanese mythology where the warrior spirit of Samurai culture was depending upon.
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The crumbling of the Japanese immature naval identity under various problems become worse with the use of atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As a new age was started with them, similar problems at sea for another rising power, the USSR, continued to exist.
3.6) Soviet Naval Identity Towards the US
The development of Soviet naval identity has remained a controversial one since the value that the USSR attributed to it always remained a disputed one. The development of Communism as a distinct economic system that focused on self-sustainment, rather than global trade and production, and the introduction of nuclear weapons mean a new barrier for Russia to develop its already scarred sea power and identity. Beyond ideology, Soviet efforts for development for a sea power were also not well-timed. Stalin focused on naval build-up, WWII and Nazi attack through land failed these attempts to become real. ‘Stalin’s efforts to establish four fleets for offensive purposes did not connect with a strategy to deploy them oceanically.’ (Murphy & Yoshihara, 2015, p. 22) His failure to connect a grand strategy with maritime strategy led the USSR to lose its scarce resources in the dawn of WWII.
As USSR had no vision for over-stretched maritime commerce its focus on the value of it in its grand strategy also remained primitive. Condoleezza Rice underlined that ‘Soviet grand strategy came under a contradiction between ideology and the realities of the balance of power politics’. (Rice C. , 2014, p. 169) As Moscow failed to balance American sea power at sea due to its ideological constraints in the pre-war world, it increasingly remained dependent upon nuclear weapons. Many argued that both the US and the USSR were rhetorically focused on the annihilation of their systems, their grand strategies were rested upon a strategy of attrition which was realized by both sides. Both Kennan and Bohlen were underlined that the ‘containment’ strategy was for dealing with Soviet expansionism ‘through diplomacy but not with a war’. (Gaddis, 1974, p. 397) Even with changes in the language, the American containment strategy was focused on a long-term attrition strategy rather than an annihilation one. Graham Allison also underlined a similar restraint as ‘nuclear weapons led both states to restrain themselves in a hot war’. (Allison, 2018, p. 208) This also showed itself in Soviet doctrine where Nikita Khrushchev walked away from the orthodox Marxist tradition of the inevitability of war between capitalist and Communist world to a ‘peaceful coexistence’ which was widely criticized by the circles in Moscow.
Not only in terms of grand strategy, in terms of maritime and naval strategy, the Soviet Union also suffered from ideological problems. ‘Soviets had a Marxist-Leninist view of war which look for the certainty of victory and gains overwhelmed the costs of war.’ (MccGwire, 1979, p. 141) Even this Soviet over-dependency on nuclear weapons, its ideology was prohibited it to engage in costly wars since the principles of MAD directly put the survival of the Soviet state at the stake. ‘Soviet strategist
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Svechin’s calls for a mixed grand strategy of attrition and annihilation were widely criticized by Tukhachevskii who see an attrition strategy as clearly an imperialist path.’ (Stone, 2012, p. 678) Following military leaders and strategists also suffered from this ideological position as even Khrushchev’s doctrine was criticized as too naïve with Capitalism. This put the USSR in a contradictory relationship between grand strategy and military strategy, as Moscow wanted the annihilation of the Capitalist system while failing to do it due to nuclear weapons. This contradiction also showed itself in naval strategies and sea power. As Admiral Gorshkov’s work Morskoj Sbornik advocated for ‘a stronger navy in peace and war-time was delayed numerous times due to military censorship’. (MccGwire, 1979, p. 152)
Graham Allison, underlined in his book Essence of Decision, that ‘nuclear crises were manageable ones through the use of limited means’. (Allison, 1999, p. 259) The lack of Soviet sea power had a crucial impact on the course of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. As Washington placed a blockade on Cuba for stopping Soviet ships, Moscow’s options were dramatically down-graded. ‘As the US positioned its ships away from the range of Soviet bomber planes’, Khrushchev now only had an option which was to escalate the crisis for a nuclear war. (Barlow, 2006, p. 163) Its naval power and lack of Soviet naval identity gave enormous flexibility in the crisis which mean an advantage both at seas and on land. Soviet dependency on nuclear weapons made Moscow assess American naval identity in the crisis which helped the avoidance of war in the crisis. Admiral Zumwalt of the US also accepted this position underlined that ‘the Soviets had no sufficient naval power to counter what Americans did which led them to withdraw.’ (Ackley, 1972, p. 57; Zumwalt, 1971)
Admiral Gorshkov, who wrote his opinions after the Crisis, ‘criticized his country’s unbalanced fleet which concentrated on defensive purposes’. (MccGwire, 1979, p. 154) Like La Jeune Ecole, Soviet Navy also failed to deliver the political effect in Crisis which crucially downgraded the Russian hand against the US. Even his criticisms, Gorshkov himself failed to separate from Soviet tradition, where he proposed a ‘Blue Belt of Defence’ which focused on sea-denial through land and air assets. (Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 259) His opinions, however, made an effect on developing Soviet sea power and naval identity through the Mediterranean. ‘Soviet Navy only outnumbered the US Navy in the Mediterranean in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War’ which severely limited American involvement in the crisis. (Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 143) This presence remained limited since economic and political problems drive Moscow to act differently after the departure of Gorshkov from his position.
Even though 1973 signified a date for the expansion of peace-time Soviet naval power and role, it was limited in ideological framework, as focused on ‘the provision of assistance to friendly regimes’. (MccGwire, 1979, p. 177) As the US and Western bloc dominated the sea lines of communications, Warsaw Pact was limited in its nature to the hinterland of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Lack of
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Soviet sea power gain curtailed the hands of Soviets in crises like Angola, Ethiopia, and others where the US used the sea lines of communications to support friendly regimes. Gorshkov tried to focus on changing Soviet naval doctrine ‘to traditional fleet encounters and use of sea powers, where he briefly introduced the topic of the strategic strike against the West’. (MccGwire, 1979, p. 158)
Admiral Gorshkov’s efforts fell short as ‘Moscow was in no rush to change its strategy of sea denial to a power projection’ as its resources were in a scarcity that already harmed the Soviet system. (Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 261) The development of intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles made the Soviets concentrate more on their submarines. Which made things even worse, as, with the comfort of its defensive ability to strike from long-range, a fleet become valueless for Moscow. But it also resembled Soviet renunciation from the global trade system that prospered the Western block. In 1986, Reagan Administration published the Maritime Strategy, which focused on ‘an expeditionary naval operation to the Soviet mainland through the use of American sea control’. (Till, 2009, pp. 55-56) It was a hypothetical plan destined to fail since a regime-change operation was impossible since the Soviet mainland was protected by MAD doctrine.
Failure of the USSR to create a cohesive naval identity due to domestic disagreements, strategic inflexibility, ideological reasons, and simply over the scarcity of resources put it in a vulnerable position against the US. As the West continued to engage in a trade relationship with the help of maritime commerce, the Soviet economy increasingly become fragile due to several problems. The lack of naval power created a least favourable environment when compared with the hegemonic US, which first controlled the seas than land through its allies. In 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, its naval identity even become worse as existing Soviet ships either scrapped or sold and made the world a unipolar one for the upcoming two decades. As Tsar Peter the Great underlined, a ruler with a strong army has one hand but with both a navy and army has two. It was evident that after two hundred years, Moscow again fall in a position where it only had one hand which did not destroy it at once but did it slowly throughout the 20th Century.
It was an age when the US searched for a role for its triumphed navy. Yoshihara and Holmes underlined that ‘the US strategy in 1992 was an ahistorical one where Washington tried to use the sea not with full-Mahanian, or power at sea, terms but with Corbettian (power from the sea) terms’. (Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 271) While the literature after the Cold War was quite optimistic about the following days. As Francis Fukuyama argued that ‘the history was now ended with great power conflict, where conflict will be a thing between states that remained in history.’ (Fukuyama, 1989, p. 18) Yoshihara and Holmes also underlined and criticized that ‘the end of the history was understood as end of naval and political history’. (Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 251) This research also agrees with Yoshihara and Holmes as power was still a matter of international relations. Whereas both sea power, its strategy, and
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its distinctive identity will be continuing to be with us. As with the rise of Chinese naval power, which will be covered in the next part, and the latest American maritime strategy revealed sea power, its identity, and strategy will have to be taken into consideration to avoid common mistakes that were made in history.
Table 1: Differences Between A Post-Periclean Rising Navy And A Periclean Rising Navy.
3.7) Oppositional Cases: United Provinces vs Britain, Japan vs Russian Empire, and the US vs Britain
Even with the extent of the special attention to the national character, maritime strategy, and naval identity of respective cases this research was still has a reductionist path to understand the main problems between rising and hegemonic navies. But it is crucial to realize that this dissertation was not one that have a pre-determinist path. Even in many cases, failure of the development of a practical naval identity led to the failure of rising powers, this did not mean rising powers pre-determined to fail against hegemons. The following part of this research will not try to determine the relationship between China and the US at sea, but it will try to reveal the options and possible common mistakes that they should be aware of.
Three cases had an oppositional outcome where rising states successfully took the control of the seas in the modern era. These cases had unique characteristics in terms of historical and geopolitical developments. We will answer how oppositional cases, where rising powers successfully displaced the hegemons at sea, occurred in history. Oppositional cases signified great importance for this research as two of them show us that the same mistakes done by rising powers were also done by hegemonic ones which had a crucial impact upon the outcome of the Thucydides’s Trap. Post-Periclean Naval Identity Periclean Naval Identity Type Offensive Defensive Grand Strategy
Mixed
Attrition Focus Sea Control (High Seas) Sea Denial (Littoral) Tactic
Decisive Battle
Operational Battle Fleet Type Balanced Concentrated Relations with Grand Strategy
Sea Power as an end of Grand Strategy
Sea Power as a mean of Grand Strategy
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3.7.1) United Provinces vs England
The case of the United Provinces and England was historically beyond this research as it focused on the post-19th Century modern navies which were influenced by the modern theories of the maritime strategy. But it will not ignore this case, as it was one of the most crucial oppositional examples and also the one that nourished the arguments of both Mahan and Corbett. The case could be accepted as one of the cases of this research in which rising power failed to oust the existing maritime hegemon. But historical realities did not prove in that way as Britain, in the long run, ousted the Dutch power at sea. This part will show how the mistakes that previous rising powers did work vice-versa for the Dutch who suffered more from them.
United Provinces were neither a republic nor a federation but a loosely defined confederation. It consisted of ‘seven admiralties, each had its fleet and budget, that were led by the city of Amsterdam but in constant competition’. (Mahan A. T., 1987, p. 180) Even this distinctive naval identity, it was not a stable one since not all provincial administrations thought in the same way. ‘Inland Dutch provinces did not accept the naval identity that coastal Amsterdam, Zeeland, and Friesland imposed them’. (Lambert, 2018, p. 168) This led to furthering of frictions later as the rise of the House of Orange was supported by continental-minded provinces to balance the naval identity of the coastal states.
The First Anglo-Dutch War was a classic example of timing error for English rising naval power. Cromwell himself acknowledged that Civil War-thorn England was yet in no position to overthrow the Dutch hegemony. ‘Until the 1650s, Dutch did not attempt to take the command of the seas as no power was in place to challenge the Dutch trade which was protected by the number of cruisers’. (Lambert, 2018, p. 161) It was an age when Dutch was focused on power from the sea rather than power at sea. The rise of the English Navy with Cromwell constituted a new era where Dutch leader De Witt, who was like Themistocles and Pericles of the United Provinces, had the chance to consolidate his country’s naval identity to create a battle fleet. Both Dutch and English had overstretched their understanding of naval commerce as even the all efforts of Cromwell, English Parliament decided to enter a war. The acceptance of the Navigation Act, ‘which ban Dutch ships from carrying British goods to the Caribbean’, led to a major crisis between the two countries. (Slantchev, 2014, p. 28) Even Cromwell’s wisely calculated actions of the Navigation Act was a complete misunderstanding of Dutch naval identity by English. Where De Witt’s novel fleet was not established for deterring them but to annihilate them. ‘The coup attempt in 1650 by William II of Orange put the Dutch Republic to act against English, who created extensive ties with him’ which was fell contrary to English expectations of subordination. (Slantchev, 2014, p. 27)
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Both Dutch and British suffered from the danger of strangulation since both states have depended upon an open Channel and the North Sea. Both sides prepared a grand strategy of annihilation which concentrated on destroying each other’s fleet. While the execution of it as a naval strategy has widely become problematic where both sides turned to an attrition strategy. As both fleets were protected by the riverine systems of Thames and Maas, neither side wanted to risk their fleets with pursuing the enemy to its shores. Even though the Dutch grand strategy has focused on destroying British naval identity, it was not instrumentalized by Dutch Admirals. This gave the English to execute an attrition strategy which made great damage to the Dutch but no decisive outcome in the long run. Mahan underlined the truth of the concerns of Dutch over the issue of strangulation as English guerre de course put the Dutch to a vulnerable position;
“Industries like fishing and commerce, that gave the wealth of the state has almost dried. Workshops were closed while the works were interrupted. Zuyder Zee becomes a forest of masts; the state has filled with beggars; the roads have covered by grass and fifteen thousand homes in Amsterdam has abandoned.” (Mahan A. T., 2013, p. 51)
Even the Dutch survived with a treacherous peace, which led them to prepare for a second war. As the first war has never ended with the latest war termination efforts, the Second became inevitable. The restoration of the monarchy of Charles II in Britain created a second blow to the Dutch naval position. ‘De Witt again drive Zeeland and Utrecht, who supported William III of Orange, to a hardliner position to take support for his Republic and navy’. (Slantchev, 2014, p. 29) In 1665, Charles declared a war against the Dutch that nobody wanted. 1667 signified an important year when the Dutch entered, ‘ill-protected, Thames River and almost destroyed the English naval power’. (Mahan A. T., 2013, p. 48) While the domestic conditions in England did not favour the imposed naval strategy of King Charles II. ‘His policies were blocked by the parliament who did not want to supply resources to his personal war with the Dutch.’ (Slantchev, 2014, p. 30) This issue put England in a position where it lost the main strength that Cromwell gained in the previous war. As Mahan argued ‘after two costly wars, the Dutch kept large fleets afloat even though they lost a great quantity of resources.’ (Mahan A. T., 1987, p. 342)
While the Third War was between 1672-4 which was again initiated by Charles II, who was this time allied with a continental ally, the French. The English again failed to deliver an end to the war as differences in the English and French naval identity made things even worse. Again Mahan underlined that ‘both states were united with a momentary alliance and interests where at the lowest they were hatred each other that led them to never follow the same path or action’. (Mahan A. T., 1987, p. 402) The indecisive Battle of Texel, which was like the Battle of Jutland, drive the English out of its coalition with France. It was a French land campaign that challenged the very existence of the Dutch. Which also
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led to the rise of William III. William III changed the Dutch strategy and identity to a continental one that focused on creating an army. ‘His success in stopping the French invasion increased his prestige among the Dutch provinces which led to an end of the rule of De Witt leadership.’ (Slantchev, 2014, p. 32)
The last failure of the English has made achievable by William III, who focused on again securing the seas after he defeated France. As the English were devastated by a long war, William invaded England and led to a Glorious Revolution. The failure of England as a rising power was only prevented by the vision of William III. Mahan underlined that ‘William wanted a unified sea power of English and Dutch’ which made it a unique case. (Mahan A. T., 1987, p. 453) When William III died, even though Dutch had a victory, he gifted Britain political stability. The Dutch tumbled into a grand strategic trap where domestic conditions worsened and the Nine Year’s War with France started when they already had scarce resources. In the long run, the time worked for England as the rise of France put its relations with the Dutch to stability.
While the British allied and shared the resource burden with Dutch against its old ally, the French. Over-expansion of Dutch resources put London in a favourable condition where it also limited the hands of Amsterdam. As Mahan underlined, the Dutch, located between France and England ‘suffered from constant wars that left with exhausted resources, annihilated navy, and rapid decline of Dutch naval identity’. (Mahan A. T., 1987, p. 430) The long decline of the Dutch continued until 1780. When its arch-rival Britain, who already outweighed it, destroyed its navy in the Americas, Europe, and Asia.
3.7.2) Russian Empire vs Japanese Empire
The value and appropriateness of this case could be problematic since it was not a classical case that occurred for the control of seas while Russia was primarily a land power that lacked a coherent naval identity. The inclusion of this case was due that it includes precious lessons and also it had an extensive naval dimension as the Japanese Empire successfully changed the course of the events at the land with its sea power. Graham Allison also includes this case in his work, Destined for War, as it was ‘a prequel for Pearl Harbour’. (Allison, 2018, p. 47) It was the only case that rising powers avoided almost all mistakes while the hegemonic was suffered from almost of all.
Starting with the issue of timing it was the mistake of Tsar Nicholas II to risk a war with Japan. Japan was in clear rise as it took assistance from the West while Russia was in clear decline with domestic divergences. ‘In 1903, Saint Petersburg provoked Japan to a war with its rejection to remove troops from Manchuria and building an economic area near the Yalu River.’ (Sprance, 2004, p. 8) Tokyo tried to avoid war by proposing new negotiations with Russia. Which was denied by Tsar himself, ‘who had a vision of an Asian Empire and hatred Japanese and also one requires a decisive victory to sustain his
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regime’. (Sprance, 2004, p. 8) Japan was now confident that it was either now or will be never since if Russia will solidify its position in Korea, Tokyo will have no opportunity to control the events on the mainland.
Apart from the personal hate and instability of the regime, Russia also suffered from a fear of strangulation even though it did not have an overstretched understanding of maritime commerce like Japan. Mahan himself underlined that ‘Russians had a belief that loss of Port Arthur will end with isolation of Vladivostok and allow Tokyo to destroy concentrated Russian fleet’. (Mahan A. T., 2013, p. 224) Sprance underlined that ‘Tsar was lacked a capable prime minister and suffered from corrupt and ineffective advisors’. (Sprance, 2004, p. 12) It was a clear misunderstanding of Japanese naval identity as Tokyo has no means and will to challenge the fleet of Vladivostok. In terms of grand strategy, Japan was well aware of its scarcity of capabilities. Tokyo had a flexible and limited grand strategy as focused on attrition rather than a mixed one. Paine underlined that ‘Tokyo had an exit plan and limited objective which mean they knew where to stop and also where to start.’ (Paine, 2017, p. 185) While Russia was focused on the annihilation of Japan at land, it did not create an active and proper naval strategy.
Japanese grand strategy was also well suited with its naval strategy. As Corbett underlined, Japan choose ‘to limitedly isolate the Port Arthur from sea to affect the events at land rather than controlling the sea from Port Arthur to Vladivostok’. (Corbett, 2010, p. 206) While the Russian naval strategy was not compatible with its grand strategy. It was a concentrated one where Russia choose to use a ‘fortress fleet’. Mahan underlined that the Russian choice of fortress-fleet ‘resembled its national character of Russia but sacrificed Russian offensive power against the Japanese Empire.’ (Mahan A. T., 2013, p. 218) Even in terms of grand strategy Russia took an offensive mixed grand strategy, in terms of naval strategy it chooses a defensive one.
Japan successfully implied its attrition strategy in Port Arthur which then shifted its strategy of attrition to a mixed one. As Admiral Togo mastered geography, history and destiny helped him when Rozhestvensky’s fleet was encountered with Japanese in the Tsushima Strait. Even Admiral Rozhestvensky himself defined his fleet as ‘the fleet that sunk themselves.’ (Regan, 2016, p. 24) The end of the Russian Baltic fleet resembled the end of even primitive and weak Russian naval identity and rise of the one of Japan’s which then crumbled against the US. Mahan defined that what made Russia to this defeated position was ‘the mistakes of peace-time strategy become intolerable and irreversible when the war came to the doorstep of a country’. (Mahan A. T., 2013, p. 226)
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3.7.3) Britain vs the US
When it looked to the table 2, the case of Britain and the US signified it as the main oppositional case of this research. There are so many independent differences when compared with the previous cases of rising powers and hegemonic powers. It was unique because both countries did not suffer from the mistakes made by other cases in this research. It was extensively related to both the grand strategy and naval identity of the US and Britain. Different from all other cases, both London and Washington selected a grand strategy of voluntarily self-limitation rather than annihilation or attrition.
Graham Allison underlined that ‘Britain was well aware that the timing for challenging the US is not suitable since London was primarily focused on its rivals in continental Europe’. (Allison, 2018, p. 199) Not only in terms of timing, but even both sides also had an overstretched understanding of maritime commerce, they were focused on different theatres. As Washington gained control of Hawaii and the Philippines and competed for sustaining an Open China, this pushed the US to war with Japan but not Britain. Ross underlined that ‘Britain reduced its fleet in the Caribbean and Northeast Asia to rebalance the Mediterranean against the German and Italian naval power’. (Ross, 2018, p. 19) The American focus on Monroe Doctrine and selective engagement to the European continent prevented the development of a sense of geographical strangulation. American naval strategy was also highly suitable with its selective and self-restrained grand strategy. This was evident during the Crisis of Venezuela which was the most dangerous one that could have led to a war with Germans who was supported by the British and Italians. President Theodore Roosevelt employed ‘cruisers and gunboats to observe the German fleet, while also ordered its main fleet to come to the home rather than directly sending it to the Caribbean’. (Livermore, 1946, p. 465) Even this was a restrained strategy it significantly conveyed the message to the British. As British was clear over the extent and seriousness of the American naval identity.
President Roosevelt well-assessed the British naval identity as he was ‘sure that London will not-dare a war in Western Hemisphere’. (Ross, 2018, p. 25) It was clear that Britain was in no position to challenge Monroe Doctrine as it did in 1812 since Roosevelt showed a clear will to implement it. Another crisis happened over the boundaries of Alaska and Canada, which was a British dominion at that time. In October 1903, ‘London took a back-step from supporting the claims of Canadian Administration which end with frustration in Canada’. (Allison, 2018, p. 104) It was again the careful assessment of the British Admiralty of American capabilities, sea power, and naval identity. As British Admiral Jacky Fisher warned Britain to not fight a war ‘if it did not want an overwhelming humiliating defeat vis-a-vis the US’. (Allison, 2018, p. 196)
In line with Fisher’s warning, London even abandoned its primary dominion and ally in the Americas. British domestic politics were also focused on another continental rival which was the German Empire.
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Mahan also had a huge impact upon President Roosevelt who at that time wrote the book On Naval Warfare. In this book, he offered an ‘Anglo-Saxon Common Interest Community’ where he defined that both Washington and London had common interests over the future of sea which will inevitably tie the two countries by an alliance soon. (Mahan A. T., 2013, p. 242) It was revealed as true after the start of WWI where Washington and London agreed upon the principle of Freedom of Navigation. Allison himself also underlined that even Britain realized that ‘it will not be number one anymore, its value will be continuing in place as both states were tied with similar cultural pattern’. (Allison, 2018, p. 200)
Ross underlined that the success of the US rise, and its peaceful outcome with Britain, was the ‘combination of domestic and strategic opportunities of that era’. (Ross, 2018, p. 29) It was a unique historical case that this research could not explain with what it argued. However, one should be aware that the success of this case was, again developed at the expense of the survival of another rising power, which was Imperial Germany. It is also crucial to realize that, this research will not refute the possibility of such kind of relationship between China and the US in the next part of this research. Error / Case Timing Error Geographical Sense of Strangulation Overstretched Naval Commerce Misunderstanding of Naval Identities Contradictory Naval and Domestic Politics Uncompromised Grand and Naval Strategy Inflexible and Concentrated Fleets Outcome Athens vs Sparta R R R B B to R B to R No W La Jeune Ecole vs Britain R No B R R R R NW Imp. Germany vs Britain R R B B R R No W Imp. Japan vs the US R R B R R R No W Soviet Union vs the US R No No No R R R N W United Provinces vs Britain B B B B B to H B to H No W Russian Emp. vs Imp. Japan H H R H H H H W Britain vs the US No No No No No No No N W
Table 2: Errors that made by rising and hegemonic powers. (Done by: R: Rising Power, H: Hegemonic Power, B: Both, No: No Mistake.) (Outcome Part: W: End up with a war, NW: End up with no war.)
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4) CASE OF CONTEMPORARY CHINA AS A RISING NAVAL POWER
China conceptualized sea power in a different way from what previous and Western nations did. This difference was started from the essence of the Chinese language. The Chinese language has a huge potential to give concepts of social sciences different meanings and emphasis. Chinese scholars used ‘haishang liliang (海上力量/sea power as a strength) rather than fully-Mahanian and political term haiquan (海权)’. (Wei, 2015, p. 84) Studying Chinese strategic culture and identity was a tough thing to make as both in terms of language and culture, the Chinese had a belief of strong authenticity and self-meaning of the concepts. McMahon underlined the warning first made by Michael P. Pillsbury that, ‘the Chinese had employed significant variances in the language of official writings in Chinese and English to cover and deceive foreigners over the essential motives of the country.’ (McMahon, 2021, p. 108; Pillsbury, 2016, p. 11) This research will not strongly support such kind of Western position, but it is well aware of the differences between Western and Chinese perspectives on different concepts. For this reason, it will try to balance Western sources with Chinese sources to find an equilibrium of both rising and hegemonic power’s naval identity and its perception.
As Beijing’s history was so long and its culture had unique characteristics that linked with many ideologies and thoughts, scholars who worked on China generally tend to maintain fixed identities and characters. While the Western view was tending to use simplification for paradigm-making, the Chinese view was showed a contrary position where special and indigenous factors constituted important dynamics. Mahanian arguments signified that a continental identity of French and Dutch put them in a vulnerable position, Western sea power scholars tend to classify China as a major power with continental character. Sukjoon Yoon, however, did not agree with this position as he defined China as a ‘pseudo-maritime power’ (海洋貧國). (Yoon, 2015, p. 41) Even though geographical conditions affect a nation’s maritime identity it did not determine it. Castex underlined an alternative concept for continental and sea power and identity states. His emphasis was on ‘principal theater’ where naval strategy was ‘affected by non-maritime powers and interests.’ (Castex, 2017, p. 104) China, until, the 20th Century set its continental North as its principal theater, while sea domain served as a secondary theater to support the course of principal one.China in most of its history was tried to develop and use both land and sea power which is frequently disrupted by continuous problems of unity, threats, and character.
4.1) National Characteristics of China
This part will touch upon some ancient issues, as the readers will see in the part of geography. But particularly, this part will focus on Chinese national character from the 19th Century to today. This could
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be accepted as a period when China’s naval modernization efforts and also it is a time when the first part of this research and most of the naval schools based upon. Even though the part of national character was included in the previous works of Thomas M. Kane’s Chinese Sea Power, this part will include recent developments and will also provide a comparison with previous rising powers and their character.
The first attempt for modernizing the Chinese Navy was carried by even Qing Dynasty itself. The First Opium War of 1842 signified a wake-up call for the Dynasty. As a result of Nanking Treaty, ‘five Chinese coastal ports opened for full-Western use’, the Dynasty itself was humiliated politically in the eyes of people. (Holcombe, 2019, pp. 244-245) Even with these problems, early attempts by the Dynasty failed as ‘hard-line-Confucians objected to this fleet build-up’. (Cole, 2014, p. 47) Things even become worse after the naval battles with the French and Japanese in the 1890s. Even with modernization efforts and purchase of modern ships from the Germans, the Chinese failed to stop the French and Japanese naval forces. Xiaoqin underlined that Admiral Li Hongzhang’s view of the navy was based upon ‘supporting diplomatic efforts with an inactive defence’. (Xiaoqin, 2011, p. 7) Like historical experiences, Hongzhang’s efforts were again focussed on power from the sea in an age when power at sea become the dominant paradigm. His defeat in naval wars was related to the ‘failure of central government and strategy’ and even tactics, Xiaoqin underlined that it was also due to the ‘lack of a grand strategy that supported a maritime one’. (Cole, 2014, p. 48; Xiaoqin, 2011, p. 6)
The problems also continued in the short-lived Chinese Republic where continuous domestic and economic problems created problems in developing a coherent naval power institutionalization. In the Republican era, ‘the navy was built around defensive missions like prior ones and developed as a secondary component of military power’. (Cole, 2014, p. 49) This became worse with political alignments due to the incoherence of the Government. Chinese Navy remained in turmoil during both World Wars and with an incessant Civil War. A Western observer warned that ‘Chinese ships changed their factions so fast that there was no clear list for an exact number of ships that a fraction commanded.’ (Cole, 2014, p. 48) After his victory over the Republican forces, Mao Zedong underlined the importance of the military with a culture. Even this, his search for a culture to establish a well-functioning navy did not go as he planned and wished. The word ‘[…] with Chinese Characteristics’ (中国特色) become one of the buzz words to understand something about China in the West. This chapter will address the heart of the matter, on what are those characteristics, show how cultural and material factors influenced this process. It will try to answer whether those characters are pre-determined or not. Sukjoon Yoon underlined that ‘China’s emphasis on the great wall at land, and also a natural one at sea, has created a strategic disparity between land and sea in its history’. (Yoon, 2015, p. 41) This chapter will also help to extend Yoon’s arguments on the lack of strategic balances due to the concentration on the continent that has evolved, developed, and internalized by the Chinese themselves with their choices.
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4.1.1) Geography
Like the US and Russia, China could be accepted as a continent-wide state with an enormous population. Contrary to the historical choices of Beijing, China has a huge maritime territory and opportunity. When we disregard the political realities on the map, China has access to three of the world’s oceans like the Indian Ocean through the Malacca Strait, to the Arctic Ocean through the Bering Strait, and to the rest of the Pacific through Luzon and Miyako Straits. Not only in terms of access, China just like the Dutch, French, and British was located on the major economical SLOCs of the world economy.
Currently, ‘China has authority over 3 million kilometres of maritime zone and 273 million hectares of the littoral continental shelf’. (Qi, 2006, p. 59) Those geographical areas host a developing extent and value of natural resources like fish, sea-sand, oil, and natural gas. This push China to a territorial and offshore crisis in the SCS and ECS. Not only in terms of off-shore resources, but China also has extensive maritime coast and geography to defend in both peace and war. This geography takes the lion-share of the Chinese economy and population. In natural terms, geography has to push China to become a maritime power rather than a continental one. But it was important to remind that a geographical map without political narration would mean nothing other than a blank factual sheet of information. What gave geography its meaning was the existence of borders, communities, and excessive values that defined these concepts.
4.1.1.1) North to South Nexus
Both in geographical and cultural terms, China’s north to south nexus signified great importance. Like all other aspects of Chinese culture and social life, its maritime identity is also influenced by it. Chinese history was broadly documented by the Northern Dynasties while its continental identity was the choice of the North rather than the South. Wei underlined that ‘China was linked to seas from southward to northward’. (Wei, 2015, p. 58) This also supported the significance of China’s seaward orientation and development. Not only the geographical extent of the seas and coasts, but continental geography also favoured the South in a significant way. ‘China’s southern regions were surrounded by mountains and rivers which motivated them for turning to the sea with their vast populations.’ (McMahon, 2021, p. 89) In these term,s the south of China shared the advantages of the Dutch and Eastern Coast of Americans in achieving a solid maritime trade outlook.
Chinese history was generally codified by northern dynasties who has a strict view of geographical boundaries. The official name of China was called ‘Zhongguo’ (中国) or the Middle Kingdom which defines central and northern China which lay between the Yangtze and Yellow River. Even today the Chinese concept of Zhongguo resembles being at the centre of the world, the historical one is not developed in a similar vein. In social terms, it also means huge divergences in politics and culture. The
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southern part of China was so different from the north that, in 280 when Jin Dynasty retake the south, southerners wrote a song that said ‘the Zhongguo will be defeated while the southern Wu will rise again.’ (Holcombe, 2019, p. 22) In terms of economy, the north and south experienced different statuses of wealth in different periods. ‘China’s northern and eastern land trade routes were frequently disrupted with inter-dynastic wars while the south continued its trade and connection via sea.’ (Yingsheng, 2021, p. 59) Traditionally, southern coasts hosted and developed six different language dialects while the central North was unified under the Han dialect. Chinese north and south divide even influenced the world in a significant manner as the nations who imported tea from the south via sea derived it from ‘te’ while the ones imported from the north via land derived it from ‘ch’a’.
Those differences become even more visible between 700 and 1100 years as dynasties like Tang and also Song gave huge importance to the south. ‘The northwest declined due to recurrent floods and droughts, while the northeast suffered from repeated wars, nomadic raids, and uprisings.’ (Lo, 2012, p. 61) The gap between the south and north even become visible to the Chinese themselves. A Song patriot Cheng So-nan emphasized that ‘the wealthiest cities were established in the south while the northern cities were far from worth mentioning about.’ (Lo, 2012, p. 78)
While the rise of the late Ming Dynasty in the 16th Century again showed convergence with north and south. However, this process again failed after the Dynasty’s sea ban due to the northern view of the land. Fitzgerald tightly connected the fall of Ming’s sea power with the south-north relationship. He underlined that ‘southern Ming became northern in habitat and terms of its administrative cadres.’ (Fitzgerald, 1972, p. 106) After the 16th Century, until the 19th Century, China experienced the imposition of the north upon the south which eased the alienation of the south via Western colonialism in the coasts. The Republic of China tried to address this problem even in language. ROC adopted the name Zhonghua (中華) instead of Zhongguo, which is more inclusive in terms of southern geography.
The influence of this nexus continued in the period of the PRC. In the initial period of Mao Zedong, ‘the Politburo of the CCP set the PLAN to regain off-shore southern islands and Taiwan from the Kuomintang’. (Cole, 2014, p. 49) Even the PRC also took Zhonghua as its official name, the rise of the nationalist rhetoric in Beijing again see the rise of the term Zhongguo. As Mao’s reforms were focused on land and agricultural cultivation and heavy industry based on self-sustainment, the south and north continued to remain in total isolation from the world. After the period of Mao Zedong, with Deng Xiaoping, ‘China tried to reach a balanced linkage (均衡連結) among its regions in different geographies for creating a sustainable economy’. (Yoon, 2015, p. 42) Deng’s efforts even showed an extensive focus on the south and an attempt to create a unified China as in the period of Ming. Deng started his reform process from a trip to the south of the country to ‘take a popular backing from the
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coasts where he tried to free himself from the seclusion of Beijing-press’. (Zhao, 1993, p. 748) As China settled Free Trade Zones (FTAs) around the southern and eastern ports and industrial zones, the geographic nexus in the country again showed a significant change. ‘With the 1990s, the economic centre of the gravity of China was relocated to the southeast of China’. (Wemnu, 2004, p. 25) For the first time in history, north and south converged in a single economic program, China took advantage of it to create a maritime power.
Since the rise of Xi Jinping, China also shifted its focus more southward, as for the first time China experienced a sense of security at its northern border. Even though China gave equal importance to its crisis in the East China Sea with Japan, SCS signified a great opportunity for showing Chinese maritime power. China was advantaged in the sea since Beijing has the upper hand with its naval power and settlements. As the Southeast Asian states have historical experience of non-alignment with the US and lesser naval powers, SCS has a better prospect in terms of not directly risking a war with Japan and the US. The South become the principal theater of action for China which affected the dispersion of the forces. Chinese Southern Fleet took the best ships that were constructed, like the first domestically-built Shandong carrier. Xi Jinping himself called for further development of the southern city of Shenzhen at the expense of Hong Kong. Xi also visited Hainan, the strategic island in the south, and declared a project for the development of the island. He underlined the words of; ‘Hainan signified itself as a historically essential witness of China’s reform and open-up process’. (CGTN, 2018)
4.1.1.2) West to East Nexus
Different from the south to north nexus, the east to west nexus of China was relatively new and expanded in the 19th Century. Historical Chinese accounts were defined the country’s west as a region that was uncivilized. Like south, northwest, and western region were also considered as ‘the outside of huaxia (civilized regions)’. (Holcombe, 2019, p. 22) Even this, the historical Chinese capital was located in the inland city of Xi’an which was the starting point of the land Silk Road. Today, Xi’an was still important as it is located at the start of China’s land-based Belt and Road Initiative. As south means sea in Chinese literature, the west means agriculture and land trade. In the 18th Century, with the Qing Dynasty, the Chinese expanded even westward, as for the first time they ‘subjugated the plagued steps and took the control of Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet’. (Holcombe, 2019, p. 205) This new expansion of the Chinese lands even solidified the land orientation and continental identity of China.
Today, the west to the east problem is separated into a new kind of aspect. The first one is the problem between rural inland regions of the north and southwest of the country. The unequal terms were plagued the Chinese regions which signified a great ‘strategic problem’ for the country. (Yoon, 2015, p. 41) The problem of unequal development still hard-hit the Chinese freedom of the use of its scarce resources for
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sea-power building. Xie Chuntao underlined that ‘CCP privileged social development of inland regions and also to increase the agricultural development of these regions’. (Chuntao, 2017, p. 13) In the latest years, China announced an agricultural reform for regions like Shaanxi and new industrial development zones in Hubei, Sichuan, and Chongqing. China tried to connect these regions to the sea via inland riverine systems like the US and the Dutch did. Hence, the efforts that showed for the West, inequalities continue to linger reputation and future of the CCP and its economic miracle in these regions. While the peripheral regions like Xinjiang, Tibet, and Inner Mongolia even creates more problems as these regions were suffered from ethnic tensions, extremism, and poverty issues. These regions reserved an important part of China’s security budget, which was influenced the development of the PLAN, as the People’s Police put enormous effort to control those regions.
The latest years show the growing importance of the western regions of the country just like the rise of the south. In terms of political support, contrary to the development, ‘CCP delight by greater supports from the inland regions when it compared with coastal and urban ones’. (Cunningham, Saich, & Turiel, 2020, p. 6) For solidifying this ground, CCP and its leadership excessively announce new programs for Western inland China. The Belt and Road Initiative has excessively seemed as a sea-based project since the sea domain carried the bulwark of Chinese exports. But the Initiative still has a broad land dimension as it was a project that was created to ‘meet the demands of both coastal and inland China’. (Nohara, 2017, p. 227) Xi Jinping promoted an airport and a significant train route to Europe via the peripheral region of Xinjiang. The westward focus of China also has a great strategic dimension.
The excessive dependency of China on the seas and the southern coast created a problematic theme for the development of China. ‘The pipelines of Alashankou and Myanmar could bring oil via Xinjiang and other inland regions as an additional source to impede a blockade.’ (Collins, 2018, p. 61) In terms of the railroad, China could use the land of the west to sustain its emergency communication with the world. In the pandemic, which was mostly medical products, ‘the land route carried one billion TEU’s of goods to the Eurasian landmass.’ (Global Times a, 2021) The prospect of land routes showed itself in the first emergency crisis of the world that occurred after the BRI. The inland regions also gave a strategic depth to China, as Beijing could relocate some of its production to the inner mainland, which would be protected by the nuclear umbrella. Even CCP sees the process as creating harmony within China, the landward development of the West again increasingly attracts attention as a rival process for a risky seaward one. It is clear that Western China, with its problems of inequality and strategic value, could again rise as a rival for a budget that could be used for seaward and maritime development. Like the US, CCP’s manifest of destiny could again hamper the development of Chinese seaward expansion. The future of the West will inevitably be tied with the coastal regions and still with the maritime identity of the country.
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4.1.2) Physical Conformation
From a Mahanian-point-of-view physical conformation was closely related to a country’s port infrastructure, having a coast was not enough. Chinese ports were highly developed until the Qing Dynasty, but then the story of those ports was written and furthered by the Western power which was named as ‘bainan guochi’ (百年国耻) or the Century of the Humiliation. After the devastating two world wars and the abandoning of the Chinese ports by the Western powers, the conditions of these ports become even problematic. In the wake of the Civil War, both Republican and PRC’s naval units carried surprise attacks to each other’s shores which were even devastated Chinese ports and shorelines. Under the rule of Mao Zedong, ‘China suffered from incompetent ports which have dispersed and few in their nature’. (McMahon, 2021, p. 92)
Since Deng’s reformation efforts and open-up of the free trade zones the outlook of China’s port capacities and works also started to develop. ‘Chinese ports handled 67% of world’s containers’ while in 2013, they handled ‘170 million TEUs which surpassed Singapore and South Korea’. (McMahon, 2021, p. 93; Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 53) Not only in terms of containers, but also Chinese ports handled passengers, LNG, oil, steel, and agricultural products with different kinds of vessels like LNG tankers, roro, oil tankers, and bulk carriers. ‘Chinese ports accommodated of 7.84 billion tons of non-container goods in 2015’. (Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 53) Chinese ports become so crucial that any problems in one of them, crucially impact the global economy. ‘In 2021, the shut of the world’s third busiest port of Ningbo due to pandemic, drive the logistical costs to a sky-high’. (Leggett, 2021) In terms of military ports, China modernised the ports in Qingdao, Ningbo, and Zhanjiang, also opened-up new ones with special roles in Hainan and Tianjin. China established ‘outposts (with reclaiming 3200 acres of land from the sea) in SCS which have naval, intelligence, logistical, and aviation roles that give upper-hand to Beijing’. (US Secretary of Defence, 2019, p. 75)
Not only in terms of domestic ports, but overseas ports also constituted great importance. Mahan underlined that ‘a government should find and provide a colonial naval base that could favour the overseas interests of a country’. (Mahan A. T., 2021, p. 241) American efforts to capture Hawaii in the 19th Century show such kind of motivation. It was clear that the world is different from the time when Mahan argued. As there is no more legitimization for colonial expansion anymore. In civilian terms, Beijing has an extensive global maritime reach. ‘China owns, partners, leases, and operates terminals around the world.’ (McMahon, 2021, p. 97) Its stakes in commercial ports extend from the Indian Ocean to Piraeus in the Mediterranean from North America to the Arctic. ‘Chinese state-owned COSCO procured 49% of French CMA CGM and Hutchinson Port Industries which operates ports even in the US, and formed extensive alliances with other companies.’ (McMahon, 2021, p. 97) Even with this civilian out-reach, the military meaning of these purchases was still limited in its nature.
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Even there is some discontent over China’s intentions in the ports like Pakistan’s Gwadar and Sri Lanka’s Hambantota, Beijing’s port purchases only favour its civilian sector. Thus, China has a strong view of ‘strategic strong points’ and a ‘connecting the dots’ strategy to create an extensive overseas reach. (Rice & Robb, 2021, p. 10) It only secured a military use overseas base in Djibouti for anti-piracy purposes, which ties China’s naval demands to the will and intention of third parties like Russia in the Arctic, Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean, and Venezuela in the Atlantic Ocean. China did not have the advantage that the US and even the UK have over the world’s oceans and seas. China’s overseas naval influence and presence were tightly connected to ‘the decisions that lay beyond of the Beijing.’ (Rice & Robb, 2021, p. 14) This is also why China stressed so much importance to underline the peaceful intents of its naval power.
Another thing that affects China’s maritime reach was the availability of inland waterways. States like the US, Netherlands, and Russia in the Volga-Don region also favoured such kinds of waterways. China’s Yellow River connects the cities of Luoyang and Xi’an with Tianjin, Yangtze River connects Wuhan and Chongqing to Shanghai, and the Pearl River favours the southern city of Kunming. All of these regions now are a host for newly developed FTAs and industrial zones. ‘In total China, has 110.000 km of navigable riverine systems that carried 5.6 billion tons in 2013 which even surpassed Beijing’s famous railroad systems.’ (Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 62)
The last dynamic we will cover is how physical conformation affected China’s fleet dispersal and naval strategy development. Like la Jeune Ecole and the Soviet Union, China also preferred a certain type of naval strategy. Yoshihara and Holmes underlined that ‘the geography of China has well conformed with a sea-denial strategy’. (Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 184) But it was clear that even with all these limitations of naval strategy, China tries to improve its physical conformity to support a powerful navy. However, Castex’s warnings also constituted an important wake-up call for Beijing. ‘Creating an assembly of forces could harshly have affected by geographical realities’. (Castex, 2017, p. 106) Like Mahan’s warning, these realities could be sourced by the political situation rather than purely geographical ones.
4.1.2.1) First Island Chain and China’s Security Dilemma
Geography could lead to a ‘mindless and incomprehensible’ decision of hostilities. (Castex, 2017, p. 280) When one looks to the Pacific from the map, it could appear as a big blue ocean but once if we look closer, several smaller and moderate sized islands will change this situation. Those differently characterized and disputed islands lay like an arrow bow between China and the rest of the ocean. The value that China gave to the island chain has been widely ‘criticized by Western scholars due to China’s unchanged continental mind-set’. (Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 72) But one should be aware that these
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islands chains are geopolitical realities that are hard to change in the near term. No fully maritime hegemon and power, except the Dutch, has experienced such kind of close-geographical threats at their shores. So it is clear that the island chains are unique in terms of both experience and hardships for the character of China. Like Imperial Germany’s problem with the North Sea, China’s problem with these chains was hard to solve even by being a state with maritime power and mind-set.
The history of the island chain could be traced back until the time when the Chinese re-realized the existence of the sea after its long isolation during the 16th-19th Centuries. Even the concept itself was Western in origin and developed in the wake of the Cold War, the Chinese had their view of these islands. During the 1980s, Chinese Admiral Liu Huaqing defined the ‘island chain from the Aleutian Islands to the Sunda Islands in Indonesia.’ (Huaqing, 2008, p. 585; Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 77) Even this definition is again made broader and narrower by the Chinese scholars and official documents, this research accepts the chain that starts from Sakhalin and Hokkaido and downs to Natuna Islands. The inclusion of Sunda and Aleutians could be problematic as Chinese ships could not directly reach these islands without navigating through several straits. ‘The First Island Chain has 140 straits while Chinese ships and planes only use 20 of these straits.’ (Erickson & Wuthnow, 2016, p. 10) In recent years the Taiwan Strait, Luzon Strait, Miyako Strait, and Tsushima Strait constituted the most important ones, as these straits have tied with the Chinese SLOCs and witnessed the transits of the PLAN ships.
In terms of politics, those islands also have significant value as they were mostly controlled by democratic states and they have extensive alliances and partnerships with the US and other Western states. Huang Yingxu, from the Chinese Academy of Military Sciences, defined these islands as an ‘encirclement arc’ to ‘curb and contain’ China. (Yingxu, 2010, p. 154; Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 76) Not only metaphorically, but those islands also resembled a bow that could always provide a danger of ideological targeting of the heartland of the Chinese economy and crucial SLOCs around those costs. Also politically those islands symbolized the continuation of the Cold War between the US and China since the 1950s. Chinese scholars and strategy-makers increasingly see those islands as a ‘springboard (tiaoban)’ to project power into the Chinese mainland. (Erickson & Wuthnow, 2016, p. 14) The militarization of the islands also emphasizes this role of the chain. Japan has extensive naval and air bases which co-used by the US around the islands of Okinawa and Sasebo in Kagoshima while also having continuous radar and reconnaissance units near the Miyako and Tokara Straits that monitor for Chinese ships, airplanes, and submarines.
Another issue that concerns both Chinese security and maritime strategy is the strategic value of Taiwan. Apart from the ideological and identical threat of the island, Taiwan has huge importance and risk for Chinese strategy. A PLAN Magazine article defined Taiwan as a ‘key point’ in the First Island Chain. (Bai, 2007, pp. 17-20; Erickson & Wuthnow, 2016, p. 9) Taiwan was an important issue as its puts huge
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risks and uncertainty over China’s fleet dispersal. The island and the strait indicate ‘an axis for dividing the northern and southern coasts and waters of China’. (Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 85) In earlier cases, Mahan warned in terms of separating fleets due to the risk of surprise attacks by an enemy. China, like Russian Empire, dispersed its fleets to three theatre commands which were separated by not-really-friendly Taiwan and a strait that was controlled and patrolled by Taipei. China is increasingly seeing the Taiwan and surrounding island chain ‘as a barrier to Chinese naval build-up’ and maritime identity. (Erickson & Wuthnow, 2016, p. 12) This was also become more evident with Taiwan’s procurement of new F-16 planes capable of anti-ship missile launch, with domestically-build submarines, and rising capability of cross-strait ballistic missiles. Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu defined his country as a ‘sea-fortress’ whereas the Taiwanese fleet also become a fortress-fleet with a clear defensive outlook. (Lieser, 2021) As Taiwan increasingly turns to a sea-fortress and a fortress-fleet, China’s drive for a pre-emptive strike to not miss the chance for changing the status-quo grows stronger. Like Imperial Japan did against Tsarist Russia, a clear fortified fleet in a status-quo would eventually mean high costs for the PLAN and its expeditionary forces.
Even with this negative outlook, the First Island Chain is not undefeatable. China mitigates this problem by locating some weaker points both in political and military terms. Thereby China, since the 2010s as its Southern Fleet grew and the relations between the US and Philippines become problematic. China showed a concentration on politically sub-due Manilla’s already weak naval power. ‘Chinese submarines increasingly use the Luzon Strait which was labelled as a gap between the chain.’ (Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 93) Beijing also pushes major US allies in the region like South Korea and Japan to peacefully coexist with rising Chinese naval power. Chinese ships increasingly engaged in freedom of navigation operations near the Japanese island to exploit the weaker position of Japan due to Tokyo’s pacifist post-war constitution. Even China shows an improvement in its relationship with South Korea due to its mediation in the Korean Crisis, Japan with an extensive alliance with the US and re-rising naval capabilities still signify a great threat to Chinese maritime build-up.
While the case of Taiwan also constitutes the main opportunity to peacefully over-ride the island chain with a possible unification with the mainland. Fall of Taiwan would mean the end of the almost half-century-long island chain. It will give China the chance to shift its maritime identity from a Periclean (defensive) naval identity to a Post-Periclean (an ambitious) one. The significance of this chain for the relationship between the US and China and the importance of the Second Island Chain will be evaluated in the later parts of this research. Lastly, the First Island Chain also constitutes an important advantage for China just like the Malacca Strait. Erickson and Wuthnow defined this as a ‘benchmark’ where the Chinese Government increasingly uses these islands as ‘cornerstones in achieving and measuring its naval capacity’. (Erickson & Wuthnow, 2016, p. 14) The risks of these islands and their political
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situation increasingly provide necessary attention and resources for the PLAN from the public of China. It was a clear strategic rationalizer and a condition that favours a stronger Chinese maritime and naval identity.
4.1.3) Extent of Territory
Even it favours Beijing, Chinese territory was simultaneously hard to defend. For long centuries, China experienced relatively fewer threats from the sea when the Chinese state defined it as a natural wall at the south. This situation, however, changed gravely after the 19th Century when Western powers shifted to power from the sea approach while China retreated to isolation. Large populations in the coastal cities of the Qing Dynasty exposed them as potential markets for Western colonial expansion. Chinese navigable rivers even make this problem further as in the 19th Century British ‘HMS Nemesis sailed to Pearl River where it bombarded the interior shores of the riverine basin’. (Holcombe, 2019, p. 236) Contrary to Mahan’s example where he claimed sparse population has created inferior defence, defenceless crowded shores also made problems. Even how much Chinese capabilities have improved, the development of ballistic and inter-mediate range missiles made things worse.
Taiwan posed 400km ranged, air-launch Wan Chien missiles that could target China’s economic centre of gravity and almost 6 million populated Chinese cities of Xiamen and Fuzhou. Not only by Taiwan, but northern Chinese cities were also under the closer range from Japanese islands with American and allied bases Sasebo and Okinawa. As we mentioned in the earlier part, even in peacetime, this did not mean a real threat, but it still put enormous stress on the Chinese view and budget. Zhang Wemnu also underlined the importance of the domestic security sides of the problem. He emphasized that ‘losing Taiwan would mean China’s incapacity to imply border and customs security of Southern provinces.’ (Wemnu, 2004, p. 25) The extensive ties between Xiamen, Fuzhou, and other Southern cities with Taiwan create a great source of uneasiness among the Chinese politicians as happened in the East and West Berlin case of the Cold War.
China is a continental state that has a vast amount of resources which gave it great potential to build a world-class navy. In this part, we will briefly look for the resources that could be used in the shipbuilding and keeping them afloat. China has vast resources of rare earth materials which even the Pentagon and the US were dependent on them. Apart from this, modern ships are mostly produced from steel. ‘China produced 1000mt of raw steel in 2019’, which was the highest sum that produced in the world, even this Beijing also ‘imported 38,56mt with %150 increase in 2020’. (USGS, 2020, p. 83; Yumae & Onishi, 2021) The steel was mixed with aluminium resources in ship-building industry. In terms of aluminium, ‘China doubled the world’s production capacity and it was forty-four times higher than the US’. (USGS, 2020, p. 21) In terms of shipbuilding, China has a vast amount of resources to build a huge navy. Even
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this, in peacetime the ever-growing Chinese economic machine vastly consumes this possible production capacity.
In terms of floating those ships, like the US Navy, PLAN also needs to have oil. ‘China produced 5 million barrels of oil per day in 2016, while consumed 13 million barrels, the remaining 7,6 million was provided by imports.’ (Worldometer, 2021) Not only in terms of oil, but China also required to use kerosene again like the US Navy for sustaining its air wing of the navy and PLAAF. China’s sole kerosene provider China Aviation Oil (CAO) underlined that ‘China supplied 10 million tonnes of kerosene to civilian airline demands’ while the amount for the PLA was not clear. (Reuters, 2014) In peacetime, the Chinese Government needs to provide an essential programme and have to make the right choices to sustain both civilian and military needs. The next part will focus on China’s Malacca Dilemma which was constituted a nightmare for Chinese politicians. As an over-stretched sense of geographical strangulation is important to understand rising powers’ mistake, the Malacca Dilemma will constitute an important problem for China.
4.1.3.1) Malacca Strait and China’s Resource Dilemma
Like all countries, China which is now named as a production centre of the world needs extensive resources. Yoon underlined that ‘China’s economy seriously relies on overseas trade for raw and agricultural resources from the rest of the world’. (Yoon, 2015, p. 42) Not only in terms of resources, but China also extensively tied to world markets in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East for trade via the sea. Beyond the island chain that we mentioned, Malacca Strait between Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore constitute an important issue where is the narrowest choke-point that Chinese goods passed. The strait came to great attention during the 2000s and still constitutes an important issue. Chinese scholar Zhang Wemnu emphasized that ‘China ought to go and claim its resources to endure its development which denoted Malacca Strait’. (Wemnu, 2004, p. 19)
The issue was then stressed by the Chinese President Hu Jintao as Malacca Dilemma in the Chinese foreign, economic, and security strategy. PLAN then extensively drove plans to mitigate this issue where it has to protect the Chinese interests. There is a general belief in the ‘essentiality of the control of Malacca which was tightly linked with regulating China’s security’. (Xiaoqin, 2011, p. 16) Sea lines of communication (SLOCs) were tightly connected with the very value of the sea. As both Mahan and Corbett argued, the SLOC was the primary goal of the use of the sea by a state. Raoul Castex also underlined the war-time importance of the SLOCs. He defines three roles of SLOCs in war-time which were ‘sustaining economy, movement of forces, and securing internal communications’. (Castex, 2017, p. 30) China, like all rising powers, had an extensive view on sea power, SLOCs, and a connection with its maritime identity.
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Even in this situation, since the 2010s, China’s extensive obsession with Malacca Strait started to be eased. The introduction of new land routes via Kazakhstan and Xinjiang and through Russia to north-east China diversified Chinese dependency on the sea. Also in terms of diplomacy, even the countries like Singapore and Indonesia developed extensive ties with the US and Britain, China also sustained a stable dialogue with these countries. 2019 Defence White Paper did not directly mention about Strait of Malacca. Instead, it only attributed ‘the importance of the security of SLOCs’ in both modern (against adversaries) and in post-modern (policing) terms. (The State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China, 2019) However, Chinese academia, military circles, and even in some accounts official sources, continue to stress the importance of the strait.
The strait still has great importance for the peace-time development of China but the latest developments and stability in the relations between China and those states show that the strait did not show a primary danger for a peace-time or crisis-time blockade against China. In a scenario of war, even China secures the Malacca Strait, the US Navy could still intercept the Chinese bound and vice-versa ships at the Hormuz and Bab-el-Mandeb Straits where it has a significant presence. Even some ships could avert the distant blockade, the US still have a chance to intercept these ships at open-seas, on their course to Malacca. China should go even further and engage in a fleet battle with the US to control the entire Indian Ocean for secured SLOCs. Even this, the Chinese state increasingly use the strait as a ratio to project its naval power to and beyond the strait. It is clear that the strait was important in terms of peace-time, it was not a crucial SLOC to China in a war and a possible blockade. Even this, PLAN increasingly sees the strait as rational and righteous geography to navigate and project power as the SCS becomes the principal theater and the Indian Ocean becomes the main overseas interest for China.
Gabriel Collins has interesting research that focused on a possible American oil blockade on China in an advent crisis or a conflict which could guide us in understanding the anomaly of Malacca. A blockade was a costly action even in terms of material resources and also in terms of reputation. As Napoleonic France, Imperial Germany, and the German Third Reich showed us a blockading state suffer in its relationship with neutral states. Like those states, ‘the third parties, could estrange from the US blockade even only on oil without a global accord on the inevitability of it’. (Collins, 2018, pp. 51-52) Given the fact that most of the American allies like the European Union and even the US itself were dependent upon the production from China, it would create huge public stress on the blockading states. Other Asian allies of the US, Japan, and South Korea will also suffer from ‘a slow-down of resource stream and also states like Saudi Arabia and other American-Gulf-allies from an economic one’. (Collins, 2018) In a peace-time crisis, it will even be harder as the US, currently could not properly impose an embargo on the smaller states like Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea due to international objections.
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In terms of implementation, Washington could also face great difficulties. During the sanctions on North Korea, ‘the oil flow was limitedly-sustained off-shore to Pyongyang by Chinese ships which could not be intervened by the US’. (Koettl, 2021) Even with a blockade, China could sustain limited diversion of traffic to land routes which would require an extensive strategic bombing of inland China and even a bombing campaign to states like Kazakhstan and Russia. This will extend the war to an abnormal, total, or nuclear war. Not only in terms of oil, but the US should also stop the flow of all-kind of staff like agricultural commodities and high-tech imports to China. Again it will require constant patrolling of an enormous range of geography and a vast amount of warships which would push the global civilian shipping industry and many others to bankruptcy. Ironically, ‘China is a net importer of wheat and soybeans’ from Brazil and the US which was sustained from the opposite side of the Malacca Strait. (Yoon, 2015, p. 45) With this dynamic, any attempt to put agricultural pressure on China will backfire in the US market. Even in peacetime, ‘President Trump’s tariffs hit hard the US farmers’ as many of them lost their market shares and profits to Brazil. (McCarthy, 2020)
Collins also has doubts over the possible outcome of a successful oil blockade as ‘China could use less-environmental fuel extenders, alternative land routes, and decrease domestic consumption’. (Collins, 2018, pp. 59-66) American politicians tend to think that China could not risk such kind of price as their Government will fall in a vulnerable position and could not achieve to control the habits of the freshly developed Chinese population. But COVID-19 pandemic again showed an interesting case that could display a potential use in a scenario of a blockade. As global demand shrink with lock-downs and Chinese factories involuntarily closed due to the virus, ‘nitrogen dioxide levels due to fuel use show a half reduction in one year’. (BBC World a, 2020) This shows us that in a scenario of oil blockade, with less global demand and possible disruption of social life, China could sustain its survival for a while. China also started a ‘Clean Plates Initiative’ which focused on testing maximum food efficiency and saving. (BBC World b, 2020) It could show how much could be achieved in peacetime that could influence a blockade scenario.
As we witnessed, Malacca become a lesser problem both in peace-time and war-time as Chinese capabilities and its share in the world economy developed. When looked at from the Castex’s point, Malacca is only for sustaining the resource leg of Chinese security so it was not a principal SLOC for the PLAN in a war. Then why it still constitutes great importance for China and Chinese audiences? The answer is clear that Malacca was part of China’s naval identity and rationality. Collins underlined that ‘China could fuel nationalist enthusiasm against a blockade and use it as a support for a prolonged conflict’. (Collins, 2018, p. 53) Today Malacca Strait, like Collins’s argument, is a peace-time extender and justifier of the maritime reach and ambition of Chinese maritime power and identity.
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4.1.4) Population
China for centuries has been privileged and also plagued by a huge population that favoured it to create land armies. China’s vast number of people was so effective on China that it significantly affected China’s maritime power and identity development. Even Mao Zedong himself understood the importance of the Chinese population in the Korean War. He developed a strategy using huge numbers of ground troops to shock and surround the allied forces. ‘Until recent years, the two-third of the PLA was conscripted from the rural areas with inadequate professionalization.’ (Allen & Clemens, 2014, p. 15) Even this, the vast population of China was employed as farmers and workers as a trading class and growing middle classes remained scarce due to structural and ideological reasons. Since the 1980s, the Chinese government changed its stance as an aging population with the One Child Policy and growing industrial production made protection of people essential.
China also experienced a rise in maritime trade and priority of Government that supported the development of the sea-faring population. ‘As the US experienced loss of skilled population for ship-building and navigation, China in contrary raised as a primary country with highly skilled maritime talents.’ (McMahon, 2021, p. 87) In that sense, China had a great advantage when it compared with Imperial Germany, Japan, the Soviet Union, and even a maritime hegemon like the Dutch. In 2020, ‘China had 122,034 seafarers with an increase of 17,175 in abroad’ while the domestic ones even constitute a higher number. (Si, 2021) Even this, one should also not forget that civilian employment is a risk for military purposes, as more and more naval careers shift to civilian ones for their higher payments. For competing with civilian industries, PLAN made vast ranges of reformations that targeted new, skilful, and young talents. PLAN offered civilian university graduates the chance to get the status of officers in the navy (直接招收). (Allen & Clemens, 2014, p. 10) The Chinese Government increasingly trains its population as naval officers and staff, how the US did in the early 20th Century. Another strong point was a larger number of civilian cadets and sea-farers in peace-time offers a larger potential in war-time since those unemployed sailors with a possible maritime blockade will provide better opportunity when compared with the US Navy. PLAN also introduced the concept of ‘non-commissioned officers (NCOs) that was selected from the ones with secondary degrees and civilians that trained for different roles in naval ships.’ (Allen & Clemens, 2014, p. 20)
China was significantly affected by the results of the One-Child Policy. According to estimations, ‘until the 2040s, Chinese median age will shift to 50-55 years old in the population’ while new teenagers will be well-educated when compared with the previous ones. (Eberstadt, 2019, p. 10) Like all jobs, the vast amount of skilled workers severely affected the maritime talents and then the potential of enlisted naval officers. Plagued Athens and Dutch maritime identity were severely damaged by their population problem while current Japan was experiencing a similar problem. Until now, the industrial growth in
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China in the south and north was ‘supported by migrations from the inner and Western populations’ who severely experienced a population aging. (Tang, 2021) When the migration will get slower, the remaining jobs in the Mainland will attract greater attention when it compared with sea-faring ones. Till also underlined a similar issue as ‘current social system favours ashore employment with higher prices’ when compared with early unstable 19th Century. (Till, 2009, p. 88) Also, navies increasingly become sophisticated where new positions and talents like computer engineers, pilots, and other kinds of high-tech specialists were required and a navy should compete in the talent pool. The dual job burden of the navy will inevitably push China to new solutions like more automation with the technology which is a similar issue with the US and other navies.
Our last focus will be on China’s maritime militia who is part of the civilian population. The Maritime Militia is one of the most crucial and authentic institutions of Chinese maritime identity. It was a great privilege and also simultaneously a risk for China as a rising power. No other rising power was proliferated from a such kind of grey zone unit. Chinese maritime civilians like fishers and domestic transportation captains increasingly take roles in military institutions. China increasingly employs this branch of the population to use its coercive and offensive muscle without escalating a crisis to a regional conflict. The role of this militia was summarized under three activities which were ‘serving in peace, response to emergency, and fighting in a war (pingshi fuwu, jishi yingji, zhanshi yingzhan)’. (Erickson & Kennedy, 2020, p. 215) The role of the militia will have explained in detail in part 7.3, where we will discuss the Chinese cabbage strategy. It was clear that China, with its militia, was increasingly becoming a navy with people rather than the US and its allies in the region whose people have a navy. As the last word for this part, the head of the Militia in Hainan underlined Government’s position ‘to prepare 5000 Chinese fishing ship with 100.000 reserve fishermen that will exceed the sheer number of other regional states.’. (Yu, 2012)
Until now, the Chinese people and Government achieved great success with the choices that were made over the development of a maritime identity. However, as conditions even become problematic, the future choices of Chinese people on whether they will live on land and not choose sea will be decisive. Not only the choices of people, the choices and efforts of the Government will also be crucial in sustaining a sea-faring population in China that could make a real difference.
4.1.5) Character of People
China did not favourably start the 20th Century as a maritime state. Chairman Mao Zedong’s land-focused policies like the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution hugely alienated Chinese people’s focus on overseas trade. ‘Since the 1950s, China had no Chinese-flagged ships in international trade’, Beijing only experienced ‘a partial enlargement in merchant marine between the 1970s and 1980s’.
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(McMahon, 2021, p. 92; Cole, 2014, p. 54) The character of people was tightly connected with how much a nation had over-seas trade. Wei underlined that as ‘the concept of sea power evolves, societies (which also include Chinese society too) evolved with it’. (Wei, 2015, p. 83) In the part of physical conformity and population, we realized China turned into a major maritime state with various overseas interests and works. Belt and Road Initiative even increased the reach and volume of the interactions of Chinese people.
As China evolved to a maritime nation, Chinese people also leaned to the sea. Many Chinese people showed their interest in mostly imported luxury brands, ‘as until 2025, the Chinese demand will make 65% of the world’s luxury market’. (Luan, et al., 2019, p. 4) The evolution of Chinese society developed so sharply, that China become a production house while turning the Chinese people into a potential market for the world. This special economic relationship also supported Chinese maritime interests. Currently, there are ‘more than 5500 ships with Chinese flags, from 2030, the Chinese will be the dominant actor in sea trade.’ (McMahon, 2021, pp. 93-95) Not only in terms of consumption, but the eating habits also constitute an important part of the character of the people. ‘Fish reserves could replace ecologically de-gradating animal stocks as a primary Chinese nutrition source.’ (Yoon, 2015, p. 45) It is not a coincidence that why Chinese fisheries and off-shore workers like sea-sand retrievers are increasingly instrumentalized in supporting Chinese maritime strategy. Beijing also started an ambitious Blue Economy Program for mastering the off-shore resource and economical use of surrounding waters and even open seas that have only been bounded by global norms.
As Chinese flagged ships become more and more plentiful, the Chinese shipbuilding industry also shows great development. Beijing now domestically built different types of civilian and high-valued units like aircraft carrier Shandong, nuclear submarines, and icebreakers like Xuelong-2. China has a competitive shipbuilding industry with two SOEs, CSSC and CSIC, while also having several private ones. In the world trends, most of the shipyards show a sign of monopolization due to raised costs. ‘More than 40% of world’s ships were now built-in Chinese shipyards while those yards also built 83 warships between 2009 and 2017.’ (McMahon, 2021, p. 94) As we underlined earlier, success in civilian use did not guarantee success in a militaristic mean. Shipbuilding is one of the only advantaged factors that automatically turned into a military one. ‘In 2015, China issues a decree that set guiding principles to civilian shipyards to assist the PLAN.’ (McMahon, 2021, p. 107) Not only in terms of quantity of shipbuilding the domestic and market competition also favour the PLAN. For example, with the start of the anti-piracy operations, ‘China builds eight Fuchi-class overseas replenishment ships in five years that show the capacity of the Chinese shipbuilding in need’. (McDevitt, 2020, p. 32) Different from the US system, which focused on awarding naval contracts to specific shipyards and companies where the initial designing process was changed several times as we see in the case of Zumwalt. China has a
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different way of doing it. ‘Chinese shipyards built small military ships where sailors and captains choose best designs with suiting capabilities while discarding the other features in bigger ones.’ (Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 156) This creates a favourable navigation and warfare environment for Chinese officers and soldiers that create a ship that is suited for purposes.
4.1.5.1) China’s Megaria, Washington’s Belgium: Taiwan and China’s Identity Dilemma
The importance of Taiwan was one of the most discussed issues in both China and the US. The former island of Formosa, now Taiwan was one of the most important geographical flashpoints and an identity problem. The island was first incorporated into China by the Kingdom of Wu. The current problem of Taiwan was not the first occasion when the island was developed as a break-away territory. Pirate Cheng Cheng’gong’s efforts which allied with Dutch was suppressed after long years of war. Hundred years later Taiwan again rebelled under Li Shuangwen which was again suppressed by the Qing. In 1885, the islands north was captured by the French which was followed by the Japanese Empire. After the end of World War II, the island came under the rule of Chiang kai-shek and his nationalist ROC. All efforts made by Mao Zedong were fell-short as PRC was not in a position to make cross-strait operations under the American nuclear umbrella. Hawksley defined Taiwan as ‘a never ended war since 1958 as the US involved in favour of ROC with its nuclear power’. (Hawksley, 2018, p. 43)
Taiwan is a crucial problem that affected China’s relations with the sea even in the contemporary status-quo. A separate Taiwan will mean ‘prevailing danger of containment and a weight over the future of China and its dream’. (Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 84) Most of the Chinese ports and shipments that will go from south to north, vice-versa, and from north to the rest of the world will have to pass from the Strait of Taiwan. Chinese official documents also stress the importance of the island. 2019 Defence Report emphasizes that ‘Taiwan is a fundamental interest of China’. (The State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China, 2019, p. 8) This part of the research will briefly look at why Taiwan was a fundamental identity and strategic threat to China and how it could influence the maritime identity of China and the relationship with the US.
The island had a great identical significance in line with its material one. ROC chooses democracy as its government type. Taiwan, who ethnically composed by the Chinese, shows the possibility of providing economic development and democracy could work efficiently. ‘ROC’s current president Tsai-ing Wen was supported by the Democratic People’s Party which want independent and sovereign Taiwan.’ (Hawksley, 2018, p. 200) The island was also experiencing a great division between the generations. Most of the youngers after the 1989 Tiananmen Crisis and current Hong Kong crisis supported a total break-away with China. ‘Only 35% of the Taiwanese have a favourable view of the mainland while 66% accepted themselves as Taiwanese rather than Chinese.’ (Devlin & Huang, 2020)
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Contrary to this, in 2014, ‘Xi Jinping underlined that citizens in both sides of the strait should have to work to realize the Chinese dream in peaceful terms’. (Chuntao, 2017, p. 133) In recent years, the Mainland speeded its campaign to unify with Taiwan. China established a direct economic relationship with the island while opening direct flights and proposed a railroad tunnel under the Strait which was delayed by Taiwan. Even this, Beijing continues to emphasize that ‘China must and will be united at all costs’ in its official documents. (The State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China, 2019, p. 8) Beijing increasingly sees Taiwan as how the Athenians see the Megaria. Like Athens decided to blockade Megaria in peacetime to protect its security and maritime identity, China also increasingly put a soft-peace-time one on the island. China increasingly pushes several states with economic ties, and even at organisations like World Health Organization, to isolate Taiwan in the international system. Even this understanding of the future of cross-strait relations, it is not pre-determined since the Taiwanese and Chinese views on the issue continue to develop in different ways. For example, a Taiwanese Coast Guard Commander Lee Su-ching signified that ‘they are determined to defend the island.’ (Hawksley, 2018, p. 196) Even this, not everyone on the island shares a similar viewpoint. Traditional Kuomintang Party and local businessmen who have an extensive relationship with the Mainland, favour a possible unification with China. Taiwan’s Kinmen Island residents stand at an entirely different point as they underline that ‘they were dependent to China which made them reluctant to fire any shot to mainland.’ (Hawksley, 2018, p. 214)
‘Since 2008, maritime trade and communications constituted an important point of convergence on Taiwan Strait’. (Chuntao, 2017, p. 123) China’s efforts, however, fell short with its emphasis on unification under the One Country, Two Systems Policy. It even become problematic and less attractive for Taiwan as the events in Hong Kong created a bold example for protecting their states. The future of Taiwan and China is closely connected in terms of state identity development. A China sees Taiwan as its Megaria, Washington also started to approach Taiwan as its Corcyra and even Belgium. Allison underlined that ‘any US commitment to Taiwan could turn the island as the Corcyra of the US’. (Allison, 2018, p. 174) It was also important to understand that the American belief in the status-quo at Pacific developed so much and long that loss of Taiwan could mean what loss of Belgium mean to Britain.
Like the west and east issue, the identity problem of Taiwan and the maritime danger of it will continue to limit the Chinese naval capacity. China could not be a proper rising navy that could make decisions on whether it will quest for a bid for sea power for balancing the US without retaking Taiwan. Just like the historical experiences, if Taiwan constitutes a break-away tendency, it poses a risk to the Chinese maritime society and culture. Taiwan as we will see in the next parts could be the main misunderstanding and risk for both parties in their relationships.
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4.1.6) Character of Government
For an insight into the character of the Chinese Government and how it influenced the PLAN and its maritime identity, one should have to focus on the relations of civilian and military institutions. China has vast differences when it is compared with other rising powers and also with hegemonic naval powers. Even how much Government politics and bureaucrats influenced the naval assets in previous examples, CCP has vital control over the military, militia, and even civilian aspects of its power. This process was named symbiosis, even the similar concept shared by the USSR, developed differently from Moscow. Benson and Yang named this as ‘building the army with politics. (政治建军)’ (Benson & Yang, 2020, p. 10) Different from the US and even other Western states, the Chinese military has guided under the guidance of the CCP and it has been specially tasked with protecting both country and the party.
Both in hegemonic and rising powers like Imperial Germany, Japan, and France the captains had relative autonomy over the course and policy of their ships. This is not the way how Chinese Navy has worked. Chinese naval officers did not have full autonomy as they ‘conjoin in the control of the ship with a political commissar (政治委员) who was continuously in connection and under the guidance of temporary party committees (临时党委) and Central Military Commission (CMC)’ which works from the shore. (Benson & Yang, 2020, p. 14) Even this seemed like an advantage for controlling the harmony of the navy with the political goals, it was a system that never tested in a serious crisis and wartime against a great power rival. This research will discuss how much this system could be flexible in times of crisis in the part of authentic Chinese naval strategies. In line with the suspicion on possible naval doctrines and party politics, under Xi Jinping, ‘PLAN’s institutional influence even put under the CMC and theatre commands.’ (Rice & Robb, 2021, p. 11) The possible risks of this on Chinese naval identity will be mentioned in the part of the ideology of this section. In respect of this character of China, understanding the character of the Government even becomes more crucial when compared with the previous examples.
4.1.6.1) Capacity to Extract Resources
China showed a huge achievement in terms of extracting resources both in civilian maritime and naval power. Between 1980 to today, China extracted its scarce resources for maritime purposes as continental security and the character of people abled it to do so. ‘Chinese SOEs had blank-check and protection in downturns and uncertain periods, for example, SOE COSCO has a budget of 26 billion$ for five years.’ (McMahon, 2021, p. 98) These numbers were significant in a world where maritime shipping is increasingly privatized and shaken from the rising costs due to domestic regulations and limitations in the Western states. McMahon again underlined that ‘by 2025, China will become the creditor of half of
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the shipbuilding credits and mortgages globally.’ (McMahon, 2021, p. 94) As Chinese people become more open and dependent on overseas richness, the Chinese Government also enjoys a blank check on developing civilian consent over its maritime budget-making.
In terms of the military budget, however, things change much since the conditions also changed. ‘The efforts of the PLAN in the conflict with Vietnam during the 1970s and 1980s brought a huge share of budget’ and upper hand with racing with the other branches of the military. (Rhodes, The 1988 Blues—Admirals, Activists, and the Development of the Chinese Maritime Identity, 2021, p. 73) As Chinese people become more attracted by their naval power the budget it attained also increased. Even it had the second-largest military expenditure, Beijing tends to use a ratio of defence expenditure with its GDP rather than doing it exclusively. This calculation put China ‘well behind of Russia, the US, and even behind of the UK, France, and India’. (The State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China, 2019) One should carefully assess that Chinese expenditures keen to resemble and support the Chinese position on its defensive and self-restrained maritime identity.
Specialists warned that the Chinese budget was ‘covered by a mystery since the value of Chinese currency and cheaper prices will mean much domestic workforce when it compared with the Western states’. (Grady, 2021) Also, readers should be aware that the Chinese military budget did not cover the dual-use civilian expenditures that cover the fishing industries, domestic transportation, and civilian infrastructure. SIPRI even underlined that its estimations for 2020 Chinese military expenditure even ‘did not include the Coast Guard’. (Tian & Su, 2020, pp. 8-9) It is clear that as all of these branches were known as active in China’s maritime defence architecture, China’s ability to extract resources is even higher when compared with the Western estimations.
Like Imperial Germany and Japan, after the reformation process in the 1970s, China also experienced rapid development of middle classes. Even this, the ideological reasons put a chief reservation on the development of maritime identity and support by the middle classes. There is no clear work and survey on how Chinese middle classes see and support the navy. Chinese TV program Heshang (河殇), which we will cover in detail in the next part, ‘influenced newly emerged middle classes over the sea power and mobilized people and elites to back it.’ (Rhodes, The 1988 Blues—Admirals, Activists, and the Development of the Chinese Maritime Identity, 2021, p. 75) Even this, since the 1990s, Chinese state suspicion on the relationship between middle classes and their naval dreams started to rise. This process put China in a hard position in defining the role of this power and also for using the resources of these classes without strengthening them in a capitalist political manner as the chief-financer of the maritime ambitions of the state.
4.1.6.2) Ideology: A Dual or a Triple Hat
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In terms of ideology China was a so complex country that had to be limited in its coverage as a bigger analysis could put us out of the context. In terms of politics, China could be accepted as a ‘dual-hat ideology where state simultaneously tries to control both the socialist and nationalist narratives’. (Matsumoto, 2021, p. 12) But in terms of sea power, China could be accepted as a state with a triple hat with Confucianism, nationalism, and Communism. Extremely aligning with an ideology brought absolute obstacles on being a maritime and sea power. Many could see Beijing as a good example since Government tries to limit and balance various ideologies for its political course. It is a hard process that should be constantly well managed since all three of China’s ideologies have great potential to harm a maritime power.
Confucianism was a historically effective ideology that, negatively affected the Chinese maritime and naval development. Even though there is no clear interpretation of the sea power by Confucius himself, the ideology was widely put production as the top activity of the society while his successors degraded the traders class. ‘Chinese Emperors were forced to encourage the people to be educated and to involve in agriculture rather than lower social classes of merchants.’ (Fitzgerald, 1972, p. 102) Not only in terms of philosophy, like happened in Eastern Europe, court politics and advisors also did not favour the development of a trading class. In the Ming Dynasty, ‘eunuchs pushed for stopping the imperial trade to protect their wealth’. (Fitzgerald, 1972, p. 103) The influence of Confucianism continued to exist as we see in the period of the late Qing. With the arrival of Western ideologies like nationalism and Marxism, Confucianism’s influence also eased. Today, Confucianism resembles a lesser threat as an ideology since CCP employs it to support its policies. The ideology was used to rationalize the Government’s concepts like harmony (hexie/和谐) and loyalty to the state (chung/忠). It is clear that until CCP will continue to support sea power, Confucianism will also be in the use to support it.
Since Mao Zedong, nationalism also constituted an important tenet of state ideology. Even after Xi Jinping, his maritime drive against Japan in ECS and against SCS showed a great example of how nationalism supported China’s power-making process. Ross underlined that ‘Beijing’s will to prevent urban-nationalist demonstrations (while also for satisfying growing Chinese online audience), nationalism becomes a widespread ideology of state’. (Ross, 2018, p. 31) Even with this, different from the ethnic nationalism in Imperial Germany, Imperial Japan, and other western nation-states, China tried to establish a civilizational understanding of nationalism. As we see in the re-emerging concept of Zhongguo rather than Zhonghua, China tries to locate its state in the middle of the world and to the world’s blue waters. Even this emphasis, the efforts of civic nationalism still fell short as the Chinese experienced ethnic tension in its periphery while the Han domination again became a great issue over the minorities like Cantonese and Hui people. Even this China continues to employ nationalism for furthering naval power. Chinese education system still widely teaches the Century of Humiliation and
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how it came from the sea for creating a rationale for a strong navy. Xi Jinping announced a program of ‘China’s Great Rejuvenation’ (da fuxing Zhongguo) which has a clear maritime aspect while China also purchased ex-Soviet carrier Minsk as a tourist attraction. (Ross, 2018, pp. 30-32) It is clear that with these efforts, China increasingly motivates its public to provide finance and consent in Chinese maritime dream. It looks like working, as even the Chinese doctrine did not urgently need aircraft carriers, ‘national will drive the Beijing to have them as a symbol of great power’. (Ross, 2018, p. 31) It is clear that, however, nationalism provides prospects for the Chinese dream, controlling it could be hard both at sea and at land. China in the near term will face more demands for nationalist rhetoric and stance, as its propagated middle classes will have a strong Chinese identity and a capable navy that could support these dreams.
Even different from the initial era of the PRC, as nationalism and Confucianism show development and with intensive opening-up and reformation, China still has a Marxist/Leninist orientation. In 2018, Xi Jinping himself underlined Marxism as the ‘totally correct way of life and spiritual pursuit’. (Shepherd, 2018) In line with his speech, China like all other leftist examples of this work, started diverse social projects that require intense resources which could be allocated to a naval build-up. There is a re-rising land power school, just like a maritime one, in China with CCP’s growing inward look to resolve the domestic inequalities. Ye Zicheng was one of them and underlined that ‘China should [re]-focus on land to elude strategic contradictions with the US’. (Wei, 2015, p. 86) This school, like La Jeune Ecole and the Soviet Malodiya Shkola, advocated that China should continue to subordinate PLAN with the main body of the PLA to protect the Chinese territorial integrity rather than looking beyond the first island chain.
Neither the Chinese Government and nor officials from the CCP did not choose such a kind of continental or maritime focus, the Government also tries to balance the leftist cadres with the nationalist cadres. The best example of this was derived from the 1970s when the CCTV series Heshang become a trending program in China. The program has resembled Imperial Germany’s Flottenverein works. It covertly gives ‘a message for creating a maritime identity and it blamed China’s continentalism as what permitted the majority of unfortunate developments that take place and created a sensational impact on the public.’ (Rhodes, The 1988 Blues—Admirals, Activists, and the Development of the Chinese Maritime Identity, 2021, p. 67) Chinese Communist ideology strikingly become aware that such kind of program was fuelled by newly developing Chinese middle classes, to resist and blame earlier policies of the land power. ‘CCP then blamed Heshang as drove by the bourgeoisie and foreign Capitalist inspirations which perceive sea trade and democracy as intertwined concepts’ rather than as a state’s strength. (Rhodes, The 1988 Blues—Admirals, Activists, and the Development of the Chinese Maritime Identity, 2021, pp. 64-68) Even today, China is cautious about to not directly mentioning a Mahanian-
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type naval identity since such kind of conceptualisation will inevitably tie the PLAN with the Chinese middle-classes which will divide the military into two different camps as happened in Imperial Japan and Germany.
As we mentioned earlier, in terms of command and control China was hugely under the effect of these ideological motivations. The CCP clearly wants ‘the persistence of party’s command of the guns (dang zhihui qiang/党指挥枪)’ exclusively in terms of PLAN. (Benson & Yang, 2020, p. 10) The recent reformations by Xi Jinping show the course was also developing in such a way. But it is crucial to not forget that naval power and war were highly problematic since in most of the terms the commanding officers were alone in the middle of the ocean. A political (re)turn in CCP to a more continental view of point to appease new middle classes and nationalism could again put PLAN to the subordination of the land army. It was clear that the navies that extensively tied under the command of the land armies were fell short in delivering the political goal of the state and people. In the long run, both ideologies that supported the PLAN could turn into the greatest obstacle as happened in the previous cases of this research. Ideologies, primarily the extreme ones, had huge potential to curtail a state’s maritime identity.
4.1.6.3) Leader’s Influence
In many of the Western accounts, Xi Jinping’s extensive naval reforms and ambitions were seemed as what Mahan called autocratic drive. But different from this, even from the time of Mao Zedong, Chinese leadership could be accepted in a cumulative development. Chinese maritime and naval identity steadily developed and implemented new concepts and strategies as its capabilities grew. Mao Zedong stressed the importance of ‘a navy for defensive purposes and retaking Taiwan for national re-unification’. (Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 105) Mao Zedong and his main admiral introduced path-breaking concepts like active defence and achieved some victories against the Kuomintang and Republican Navy. Even this, further development of the PLAN remained problematic as CCP had extensive economic and social problems on the land and there was relatively less development in the civilian maritime industry. Mao Zedong’s position was also had an ideological perspective as with the 1970s with the emergence of Sino-Soviet split Soviet Admiral Gorshkov’s thought attract huge criticism in China. Mao Zedong and his officers criticized ‘Gorshkov’s blue-water views as an evil instrument’. (Wei, 2015, p. 81)
As the Sino-Soviet split becomes more evident and problematic, the foreign assistance provided by Moscow to Beijing for naval power also become scarce. Even this until the 1970s, ‘Chairman Mao pushed hard for commissioning nation’s first nuclear submarine’. (Cole, 2014, p. 53) The inauguration of the submarine even signified as a great equalizer against the US and the USSR in terms of Cold War balances. But the platform just like what happened in the USSR, curtailed Beijing’s hands to change the status quo in a crisis like Taiwan. The negative image of the USSR and Red Navy and the conservative
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character of PLA continued to be a problem in transition to Deng Xiaoping’s era. The last years of Mao and the early phase of Deng witnessed a ‘Gang of Four and Zhang Chunqiao who was a hard-line continentalist’. (Cole, 2014, p. 53) The period of the Gang of Four was only the case that when China was distanced from the concept of symbiosis and experienced a rift between the Chairmanship of the CCP and PLA. Even in the end, the group has expelled from the military, Deng Xiaoping still suffered from the lack of Western assistance and enough resources to build a navy. In line with his grand strategy, Deng followed Mao and Xiao Jinguang’s concept of active defence and steadily expanded it to a ‘near seas protection’. (Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 108) The terms of Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao also witnessed slow, carefully assessed, but significant changes. Zemin introduced the concept of ‘protecting China’s maritime rights’ which was a bold concept that reasoned PLA’s existence as a developing institution. (Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 110) However, Hu Jintao’s period showed the most significant development of China’s maritime identity. His stress on Malacca Dilemma secured him the support of the CCP and people to one more time widen the role of the PLAN. He introduced the concept of ‘far-seas protection’ and ‘for the first time PLAN send ships to an overseas mission.’ (Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 112) His rule also signified great importance in developing Chinese maritime strategy in SCS who for the first time declared it as the principal theater of action of China. ‘His twice visit PLAN’s Southern Seas Fleet showed the importance that he gave to the PLAN and the south.’ (Li, 2010, p. 37)
As we witnessed until here, Chinese maritime and naval identity has tightly developed with the previous administrations. Xi’s position was also greatly influenced the Chinese maritime power and standpoint. In accordance with his grand strategy, Xi Jinping also has a broader role and view in maritime power. President Xi wanted his country to be a ‘responsible maritime stakeholder’ in line with his Chinese dream and great power status. (Yoon, 2015, p. 43) His drive was important, as different from previous administrations, his program simultaneously has a civilian and military aspect. Xi Jinping underlined his speech to Central People’s Committee that;
“We must advance our concern for the ocean, understanding of the ocean, and administration over the ocean, to make new achievements to push forward the building of China into a sea power nation.” (Jinping b, 2013; Xiaoyan, 2014, p. 7)
His presidency was started with a crisis with Japan on the ECS that fuelled nationalist dynamics in the country. This, did not end with a shift in the principal theater, as his administration still concentrated more on the SCS to ease the pressure over other theatre commands. China, in his period, also experienced a shift in the US policy, named as ‘pivot to Asia’. (Yoon, 2015, p. 47) His drive was related to the changing conditions in both domestic and international structures as different from the inorganic
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efforts of the other examples. But his excessive view on China’s hard ideologies will continue to be a huge problem and risk for sustaining Chinese naval power in its course. As he bided to take lifetime power and head of the party, his effect will be crucial and even could be deterministic over the future of this power.
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As we witnessed until now, the Chinese national character has suffered from an anomaly of strategic culture due to various reasons in the 19th and 20th Centuries. But in natural terms, as Yoshihara and Holmes argued, China was well aware that geography was ‘not a fate’ but a factor that ‘mold’ the destiny of a nation. (Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 70) China increasingly take the right decisions and turned the international environment to its advantage until the 2020s. Wemnu also emphasized that ‘a state’s security was further than its geography and has a straightforward relationship with its national interests.’ (Wemnu, 2004, p. 20) It was clear that Beijing, until now, was well achieved to turn its advantaged development to develop a naval power. As China modernize its industry and navy, the period between the 2030s and 2050s will create an advantageous period for Chinese maritime identity. But this possible golden age will continue with a sharp slowing in population, growth, and resources that could transfer for naval power. The ideas and choices of the Beijing and Chinese people will continue to determine and change the future of Chinese maritime and naval identity. This part showed that China’s both strong and weak points. But they should not be overlooked as unchanging and pre-determined.
4.2) Chinese Grand Strategy in the 21st Century
The term grand strategy was a broad and contested one. In terms of understanding the Chinese grand strategy (GS), we will evaluate it with previous rising powers and their grand strategies. Like the concept itself, during the 1990s, China was widely criticized for the ‘absence of a lucid foreign policy due to Beijing’s multifaceted Government structure’. (Kane, 2002, pp. 6-7) But one should be aware that even how much a state has a complex structure, it still has the capacity and necessity to create a grand strategy as long as it continues to engage in world affairs. China, even when compared with Western countries, has had a more stable and long-term grand strategy even since the year 1949. As it was too complex, this part of the research will focus narrowly on Chinese GS, and then try to connect it with Chinese maritime strategy and its relationship with the US.
Grand strategies were tending to be ‘holistic’ ones that ‘covers both strengths and weaknesses of a state in an extended period. (Scobell, et al., 2020, p. 6) The grand strategies of the democratic states were formed under the conditions and the main tenets of the societies’ interests. While authoritarian states need one that will guide both the needs of people and the regime. China with its authoritarian system based on an unchanging governmental structure shows a stable grand strategy since the very start of the
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21st Century. Projects like the Chinese Dream and Belt and Road Initiative were the most ambitious ones created since the US’s Marshall Plan and the American Dream of the 1960s. However, this does not mean authoritarian states were more successful in forming and implementing a grand strategy. The problem of the West was now characterized by many puzzling social interests and again due to the division of the society over the employing which necessary means and ways. For example, on the issue of environmental protection, the West also shares similar goals with China over the problem. But the existence of differentiated views on the issue in divided parliaments and parties made reaching a consensus over the grand strategy for that issue also harder. What the West need is not a shift to an authoritarian system but a constant and fruitful dialogue in the society to facilitate a consensus for creating a grand strategy. Another issue that concerns Chinese GS was the effect of the leadership over determining the grand strategy of the country. Even though CCP leaders from Mao to Xi Jinping have an excessive role in defining these goals and strategies, down-turning China like Kaiser Wilhelm II’s Imperial Germany will be problematic. ‘Chinese GS was not also myopically ideological like the USSR.’ (Kane, 2002, p. 7) While the leaders were not the only determiners of it as they excessively need the approval of the public, the CCP elites like the Politburo, Party Committee, and others. With the rise of China and Chinese dependency over the foreign reputation to politically challenge the US primacy, overseas and international approval of Chinese GS also become crucial for Beijing when compared with the 1950s.
Every state and even communities starts defining its strategy in terms of its interests that depend upon the values. China has had unchanging value systems even since the era of Mao Zedong. Those values could be summarized in three concepts which were ‘security, sovereignty, and development.’ (Scobell, et al., 2020, p. 12) Those three concepts were so influencing that almost all of China’s international projects and decisions were interrelated with these concepts. Both Belt and Road Initiative and Maritime Stakeholder State concepts were developed for furthering those three values of China. Those three concepts find their places in the military strategy of China. Chinese Military Strategy listed ‘protecting the party and regime’s stability, defend the sovereignty and defeat aggression, and modernize and built the nation’ as its main goals. (Finkelstein, 2007, p. 108) Those three goals were tightly connected with China’s grand strategic goals and values. The recent Chinese Defence Strategy even broadened those concepts to include ‘both domestic and international interests and defence of the Beijing’. (The State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China, 2019)
Even China’s grand strategy and lesser strategies show a convenience with each other, contrary to the previous examples of rising powers, China’s values have an inner contradiction. This contradiction of values also showed itself in the maritime power of China. Shi Xiaoqin underlined that, in line with China’s prime value of development, ‘China did not have any motivation to settle territorial disputes
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with coercive means or extending its international influence’. (Xiaoqin, 2011, p. 11) Even this, China excessively drove out the Vietnamese from the Paracel Islands while twenty years later Beijing used a similar tactic for storming Pilipino fishermen from the Scarborough Shoal. China also used its economic assistance to isolate Taiwan from the world system by pressuring states like El Salvador, Palau, and others to conform with Beijing’s interests. China increasingly put security and sovereignty as a pre-condition for development. Thus, China name these actions as the righteous part of its strategy, in the eyes of the local and global community, those activities signify pure coercive intentions. Wu Xiaoyan for example took a more hawkish view of these territorial problems. Wu defined the alliance between Japan and the US and domestic modernization drive of Japan as ‘a genuine threat against Chinese territorial wellbeing whereas Beijing should have to construct itself as a sea power nation’. (Xiaoyan, 2014, pp. 17-18) Even his view also stresses the importance of cooperation, a strict view of security and sovereignty under the current status quo will inevitably lead to tensions between peaceful development and safeguarding the territorial goals. Since security and sovereignty mean pre-condition for the development of China and the continuity of the CCP regime, hostilities and crises will continue to exist.
Rising states formulate their grand strategies to achieve better peace terminations from the previous one that favoured the hegemon. Both Athens and Sparta, Dutch and English, Germany after the Versailles, and Japan after the WWI show such kind of leaning to challenge the hegemonic order from the previous war termination. As long passed after the latest great war, the world now lives in two post-war termination zones. Europe could be accepted as a theatre where post-Cold War termination conditions are in place. While when it comes to Asia, we could accept it as the post-WWII war-termination conditions. Chinese official Defence Paper declare that its military build-up was for ‘safeguarding national unity’ which has a clear indication of a negative-aimed strategy. (The State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China, 2019) But a negative aim is for protecting what existing status-quo lays over a state. Even though Beijing declare itself as a state with no hawkish revisionism based on positive aims, what China called its rightful territory is revisionist when compared with the latest war settlement. As Beijing profits from the American-established post-war economic system, China could not admit it as a total revisionist power as the Soviet Union did. But recent developments like Belt and Road Initiative and others increasingly show a will of developing a parallel economic system. In terms of regional security, China has more ambitious differences. Moore underlined that ‘China and the US were agonised from a strategic trust deficit, where Beijing and Washington see themselves from Cold-War lenses of containment and ideological disagreements’. (Moore, 2017, p. 2)
As the current status-quo in Xinjiang, Tibet, Macau, and Aksai Chin favours the Chinese interests, Beijing solidly set these regions under the principle of negative aims where China prepares itself for defending these territories. Also in SCS and Hong Kong, Beijing ambitiously strengthens its footprints.
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In 2017, Xi Jinping defined new Hong Kong law that was controversial to the 1997 Agreement, is in accordance with China’s grand goals of security, sovereignty, and development, and defined it as a ‘new red line’ of sovereignty. (BBC World, 2017) New law indicated the one-sided correction of the latest hand-out agreement between China and the West in 1997. China’s claims over Nine-Dash Line also reveal the historically positive aims of Beijing. The claims were based upon China’s historical maritime activities which were self-abdicated by China itself in the 16th Century rather than an unequal treaty as Chinese scholars claimed. Once the one abdicates from the sea, they also abdicate from the opportunities and safeties that it could provide. However, the weaker structure of the SCS nations and navies led China to take the upper hand and achieve a better status-quo since the 1970s which means the sea is now a negative aim just like Hong Kong. While in the issues of ECS, Taiwan, and territorial crisis with India; Chinese GS has clear positive aims where Beijing tries to change the latest war termination conditions which perceived again as unequal. Wu Xiaoyan underlined that China sees the crisis over Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands with Japan and the US as a ‘burden of unequal Treaty of Shimonoseki’. (Xiaoyan, 2014, p. 15) Taiwan also constitutes the second interest of China which requires a positive aimed grand and military strategy. Even the acceptance of the One China Principle by the US, Beijing sees ‘Washington’s aid as an aggression’ that tries to protect the unequal latest war termination conditions. (Cole, 2014, p. 51) With these positive aims for changing the strategic and political conditions in the near seas, China like all rising power had to create friendly near-seas. This automatically means the end of the neutrality of the seas for hegemonic Washington in the region.
China also suffers from a fragile regime that puts the burden of protecting the regime over the branches of the military. As we underlined in the part of the character of Government, CCP has an excessive relationship between the military and Government under the relationship of symbiosis. The PLA was generated as the army of a party while the PLAN was established as an under branch of the land-oriented PLA. The Chinese military has excessive duty to safeguard the party from both interior and external threats as we witnessed in the 1989 Tiananmen Crisis. For years, PLA remained as the basic institution that gave legitimacy and protection to the CCP. This situation changed in 1992 as ‘Jiang Zemin moved the party’s paramount legitimacy from the protection of the PLA to deliver development to public’. (Li, 2010, pp. 11-12) This civilian turn played an important role in distancing the PRC from the historical examples of Imperial Germany and Japan whom excessively build-upon military protection and prestige to protect the legitimacy of the regime.
‘CCP re-introduced the old Confucian concepts of rule by law (fǎzhì/法治), hierarchical and harmonious society (和谐社会), and social stability’ as primary supporters of the legitimacy of the regime in China. (Matsumoto, 2021, p. 10) Even this, it still employs the military to protect these values, but values
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themselves create a limitation for the CCP as a traditional mandate of heaven (天命) type Chinese social-contract. The role and prestige of the Navy as the protector of the regime like in the Imperial German case will be an objectively wrong assessment for China. As Berlin suffered from a mutiny in Kiel by IGN sailors after WWI, CCP is well aware that making a military branch pre-dominant within the PLA could make things problematic. ‘In Soviet Union, a ship commander, Valery Sablin mutinied against the Communist Party which led CCP to shift to a dual-command system within the PLAN’. (Benson & Yang, 2020, p. 41) As we see even in the term of Xi Jinping, China carefully tries to continue to balance all branches of the PLA in terms of both military build-up, budget, and role while also tightening the control of the party over the commanding process. Not only in terms of intra-military, but CCP also redesign the People’s Armed Police as a supporter domestic security provider to balance and in some cases support PLA. However, this does not mean that Beijing was seeing the navy as hubris and nemesis for its future. ‘In 2004, PLAN Commander promoted to take place in CMC while the representation of the branch started to raise in the civil-military relations’ until the latest reforms by President Xi. (Li, 2010, p. 38) China and CCP see the PLAN as a beati sunt possidentes for accomplishing the national rejuvenation like all other branches of the military. But contrary to historical examples, Beijing is also well aware that the inter-institutional race for budget and disruption of balance among branches could end with hubris and nemesis which equated to the fall of regimes in other examples. CCP’s goals have been defined as ‘no ship ought to act out of the party-political interest of country while the state should move from symbiosis to a coalitional relationship among the military and the party.’ (Benson & Yang, 2020, pp. 33-37) CCP and PLAN in a cooperation with other branches of the military will try to create friendly near-seas for the security and stability of the regime. Chinese stress on having the capability of American-like joint operations among different branches also show both the political and technical necessity of the concept for a balanced military.
Chinese GS was separated into four periods which were ‘the period of revolution under Mao Zedong, the period of recovery of Deng Xiaoping, power building period of the 1990s, and rejuvenation period that started Hu Jintao and continued by Xi Jinping’. (Scobell, et al., 2020, p. 14) This research will focus on the period from Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping and how it influenced the maritime strategy of the country. 1978 signified a date when the Cold War and Sino-Soviet split continued where Beijing was suffered from the lack of necessary technology, capital, and know-how to develop the project of reformation proposed by Chairman Deng. As he required extensive and constructive ties with the West, his grand strategy was defined in terms of ‘non-assertiveness in regional matters’. (Doshi, 2021, p. 59) His period could be accepted as a time when the value of development was accepted as the main tenet of the Chinese value system. In an official statement, Deng Xiaoping called for ‘setting aside the disagreement of Senkaku (Diayou) with Japan for favouring the fostering of joint development’. (MFA
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PRC, 2000) His speech on territorial issues shows China’s changed value system and its impact on Chinese foreign policy and strategy. In another speech, he underlined his aim as ‘hide one’s abilities and gain time for realising something big’ (tao guang yang hui / 韬光养晦). (Doshi, 2021, p. 48) In line with his grand strategy, Deng Xiaoping knew that sufficient naval power was a clear hubris and nemesis for his chairmanship term. In his Chairmanship era, the PLAN was guided by Admiral Liu Huaqing who focused on ‘a limited modernization and near-seas defence’ with strategic efforts like ‘deterring the rivals to threaten the newly developing Chinese coastal zones’. (Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, pp. 124-127) His efforts turned out well as China steadily but limitedly modernized its navy with scarce resources which at the same time provided a deterrent umbrella of security for the coastal cities of China. Navy in the era of Deng Xiaoping was one of the means of Chinese GS rather than an end.
His period was continued by Jiang Zemin whose period was quite different when compared with his predecessor. As Deng’s policy created a huge reaction both from the CCP and PLA and eventually led to the crisis at Tiananmen in 1989, Jiang’s period could be named as one that even cautious from Deng’s term. As the collapse of the USSR eased the tensions at the northern border while the US declared itself as the victor of the Cold War, China now has an optimistic international environment. Even this, Beijing’s stance was favoured a phony grand strategy5 where the party tried to balance the domestic demands, the pressures from domestic fractions, and international changes. This period seemed like a period when ‘China figure its national power to back world’s single persisted Communist great power’. (Scobell, et al., 2020, p. 16) As China steadily continued in its development path and increased its military and political power, Beijing on the contrary tried to act with limited ambition. In Kosovo War, when the USAF bombarded the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Beijing issued a hard criticism to the US. But in line with its grand strategy, Beijing successfully averted the domestic pressures while negotiating with Washington to avoid a possible crisis with the West. Both in the terms of Deng and Zemin, PLAN showed a keeping lower head at sea just like did by Admiral Tirpitz against Britain. While different from Imperial Germany, the unified nature of civil-military relations played an important role in the success of this outlook against the US. Zemin tried to bolster the defensive outlook of the PLAN just like historical narratives of ‘great wall at sea’ in 1992 which then fully evolved to a new one with repeated failure of Chinese naval identity in the 1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis. (Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, pp. 109-110) Under the guidance of Zemin, the PLAN was continued to be a mean of Chinese GS.
5 The term Phony Grand Strategy resembles the period of Phony War in the Second World War between September 1939 to May 1940 which resembled open hostilities without active hostilities between Germany and Allied forces. Chinese GS under Jiang Zemin resembled open rivalry and dissatisfaction between the West and China but without the existence of an active rivalry.
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While the period of Hu Jintao was accepted as the start of the grand strategy of national rejuvenation and the end of the phony interim grand strategy of the Zemin’s, things did not clear as many claimed. Even though both Chinese world-view become more international and the rising power and reach of the PLA become evident, China did not fully turn to a hawkish state. Chairman Hu’s period was characterized in terms of ‘holding back differences’. (Doshi, 2021, p. 62) Even this, however, the rise of the concepts like harmonious world order and south-south development projects constituted an important rift between the West and China. Hu Jintao increasingly ‘employed present Liberal foundations like multilateralism and cooperation for overcoming these rifts’. (Doshi, 2021, p. 111) As the US was constrained in a war in Iraq and the 2008 Financial Crisis took its toll over Western capitalism, China now sees the process as a time of the great rise of China to its righteous position in world affairs. In line with the evolving Chinese GS and maritime needs, the PLAN’s capacity and reach also increased steadily. The period witnessed the most significant rise of the branch in respect to other branches and institutions of the military when compared with previous ones. Under the guidance of Hu Jintao and Admiral Wu Shengli and Naval Political Commissar Liu Xiaojiang, the PLAN turned into a ‘comprehensive military service’ that assumes overseas roles and responsibilities. (Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 101) Even this, in Hu Jintao’s period, the PLAN still constituted a mean of grand strategy rather than an end to change Chinese GS to a one with complete open-seas ambitions.
As we covered until here, Xi Jinping’s period was generally commented as a revolutionary change from what China did for the last fifty years. But like his views on maritime power, his grand strategy was not majorly different from what Hu Jintao had in his mind. However, his period could be accepted as a major shift in the openness and advent of his ambition over both challenging the strategic status-quo in Asia and also to alternate the American-led global economic system. What his period differed was the enormous growth of China’s capability when the West was in a perceptual decline. Doshi defined Xi’s desires of ‘blunting’ and ‘building’ Asia was now extended to the world. (Doshi, 2021, p. 262) Xi Jinping’s decision to expand Belt and Road Initiative both to sea and land and even to the digital world signified such kind of alternative ambition. He also introduced ‘the concept of Community of Common Destiny for Asian region’. (Doshi, 2021, p. 181) But one should be aware that Chinese BRI neither constitute the same example as Japan’s Great Asian Co-Prosperity Zone or Germany’s Place Under the Sun Campaign or neither with the Soviet Union’s COMECON initiative. The BRI and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank were based on the willingness of aid and investment recipient states around the world. Not only non-Western states, American allies like Italy, Greece, Poland, and others increasingly show the will to join the initiative. Xi Jinping, in these terms, resembled Pericles of Athens who had a great vision of grand strategy. Beijing, which did not have anything other than a money since the 1990s, now had initiatives like the Made in China 2025, artificial intelligence programs, an
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icebreaker presence in the Arctic, and a strong military that could operate everywhere. Xi Jinping defined his Chinese Dream with these words to 12th National People’s Congress which also resembled parallels with what Thucydides narrative for Pericles;
“We should be guided by the strategic thinking that only development will make a difference, and steadfastly take economic development as the central task. We should comprehensively promote socialist economic, political, social and ecological advancement, further reform and opening up, boost balanced development, and continue to lay a solid material and cultural foundation for realizing the Chinese Dream.” (Jinping a, 2013)
His ambitious dream for China was even advanced in 2021 to the world where Xi Jinping underlined his dream for the world in the shade of the pandemic. His stress on the ‘Common Prosperity’ Doctrine where he had the ambition to merge Hu’s harmonious world with his economic program for South-South cooperation. (MFA PRC, 2021) The doctrine for the first time constituted a narrow world vision that was an alternative for the American one after the Neoliberal turn. But again one should be well aware that even how much Xi’s economic programs become ambitious Chinese GS is in no position and will to completely avert American-made world order. His economic and civilian ambitions, however, become so vivid that they directly showed themselves in the civilian side of Chinese maritime strategy. But one should be aware that Xi’s focus on maritime trade did not remain at the sea as Beijing increasingly solidified its positions with land routes too.
Xi Jinping’s militaristic and strategic aspect of grand strategy even become more ambitious than his civilian one. This difference is also sourced from the period and environment that he rose to power. His first strategic move was targeted the Japanese-controlled Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands which reversed Deng Xiaoping’s low-profile grand strategy. He stressed the importance of patriotism in his Chinese Dream speech and emphasized the concepts like ‘national spirit, reform and innovation’. (Jinping a, 2013)
As the US introduced the pivot to the Asia policy, Xi Jinping’s position even become problematic. For balancing this strategy, Beijing increased its push to develop the PLAN with new aircraft carriers and ships. But one should be aware that, Xi’s period did not signify a turn to make PLAN as an end of the grand strategy. Xi’s distance towards the navy was balanced with rising budgetary and technical assistance to all branches of the military. There were no official remarks on how much portion of the China’s military budget was allocated for the PLAN. But China uses a huge portion of its military budget not only to the navy, but also to ‘various branches, civilian contractors, and extensively to modernize the control and command systems’. (The State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of
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China, 2019) Even how much Xi’s maritime ambitions become visible, just like the previous administrations, he is still well aware that he had to use the PLAN as a mean of grand strategy rather than an end for it.
As we underlined in this part, Chinese GS did not completely determine by what leaders thought and wanted to do. CCP was an important source of legitimacy for the leaders and country’s sole political party and place that individuals could rise in political ranks and duties. CCP’s view on the sea and its strategy also have great importance. The Party’s conformity with slogans like ‘Strong China’ and ‘Chinese Dream’ whilst with the national dream of creating friendly near-seas was significant. (Yoon, 2015, p. 46) For this reason, the party strongly supports Xi Jinping’s maritime build-up efforts while also institutionalizing them within the annual Party Congresses. The party accepted the creation of ‘the State Security Committee’ and a ‘Third Study Group’ (集體) which aimed at ‘implementing and overseeing the maritime power of China’. (Yoon, 2015, p. 50) CCP, for now, is also in conformity with leaders as the party sees the PLAN as a subset and mean of grand strategy. But one should be aware that ‘the membership of new middle classes in the party was ever-growing since the 2000s’. (Matsumoto, 2021, p. 13) This situation could create a generational challenge in the CCP which we witnessed both in Imperial Germany and Imperial Japan. Growing influences of new middle classes on the state policy and the navy created tension and disagreement between generations that ended with the over-influence of the navy and inconsistent domestic politics over the naval strategy and identity. Zhang Wemnu also underlines the importance of this as he ‘paralleled Chinese development with Bismarck’s self-restrained foreign policy approach’. (Wemnu, 2004, p. 28) A Growing number of scholars tend to advocate for selective engagement and voluntary self-limitation to avert China’s growing generational and class-based divergences.
As a wrap-up for the part of Chinese GS, China, since the late 1970s, with its different national capabilities and character showed an authentic vision of grand strategy. Deng Xiaoping’s peaceful development was based on keeping low from the eyes of the West signified a self-restrained grand strategy just like the US did against Britain in the early 20th Century. However, this was not a guarantee for things to develop in the same way as, since the start of the 21st Century, international conditions and domestic capabilities changed principally. China, even since the 1990s with Kosovo Crisis, increasingly sees a necessity to change its grand strategy which also includes traditional strategies of a mixture of annihilation and attrition or solely on an attrition strategy. Even in the era of the phony grand strategy, China also continued to develop its military capabilities of annihilation. Jiang Zemin introduced the
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concept of ‘Shashoujian6 (杀手锏) which unswervingly confronted power asymmetry with the US in the Pacific’. (Doshi, 2021, p. 78) His concept was furthered in the period of Hu Jintao when the Chinese military capabilities developed in every branch of the military. The period also witnessed the development of new concepts like informatized warfare (信息化战) and joint operations where Beijing excessively looked upon balancing American power. Xi Jinping even pushed this further, as he declared his will to have a military that could fight and simply win the wars. China now invests not only in traditional platforms like aircraft carriers, anti-air warfare destroyers but also work hypersonic missiles, artificially intelligent systems, and even on encrypted communication with quantum technology that would make a revolutionary impact on the battlefield.
Not only in terms of mixed grand strategy, but China also has a sensitive view on attrition grand strategy. Historically an attrition grand strategy was affiliated with concepts like sea denial or guerre de course. But since the Cold War and phony rivalry between the US and the USSR under the shadow of the Liberal system and nuclear weapons the concept is also attributed by different meanings and ways. Concepts like long-term containment and peaceful coexistence become trending ones that involve peace-time attrition of a state without violent means. The rivalry between the US and Britain also signified a similar manner that in the long term both states gradually switched sides in terms of power. Xi Jinping’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative, where China unintentionally took the control of almost half of the world’s shipping show similar power. With or without intention, ‘the BRI and Chinese maritime vision gave China the chance to made the US reliant on the Chinese maritime industry’. (McMahon, 2021, p. 89) Both BRI and Chinese maritime ambitions, resemble the value of England’s Navigational Act where Dutch maritime interest came under stress without war but eventually led to war. The problem first showed itself in the 2020 COVID-19 Crisis. Whereas China used its special relations with the industry to excessively ‘lease global TEU stocks and even furthered with the establishment of Government-Industry level meetings to control the maritime services that affected the regulation of maritime shipping expenses’. (Baertlein & Saul, 2020) In history, for the centuries, rising powers tried to use costly and hateful guerre de course strategies to crumble hegemonic power with rising maritime commerce prices. Now China eventually enjoys the advantage of being a de-facto maritime-price setter state even without firing a shot whereas it tries to act as a stabilizer since Beijing also eyes development. But such a power is not constant as Beijing should be aware that once China uses its civilian maritime shipping advantage for political purposes, the Western states will act to mitigate this problem. But in a period of advent
6 The concept was derived from the history of China which historically means killer maze hand weapons that were created for making sophisticated assassination tasks.
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crisis and rivalry, China has a huge advantage to use against the US. It is clear that until now, China has successfully had a theoretical balance between its grand strategy and maritime strategy. But in terms of implementing this balance, things were not as easy as Beijing think. This is not because of China’s national character but due to the very nature of maritime and naval strategies that are based upon choosing between various dichotomies. The next part will go deep into these issues that China should manage.
4.3) Chinese Maritime Strategy: Periclean, Post-Periclean, or an Authentic One?
Up until now, readers of this research realized that China increasingly claimed that its maritime strategy was different from the previous historical examples. Wei underlined that unlike the Mahanian understanding of hegemonic-sea power, China could only create ‘a maritime strategy grounded on concord (hehe) and harmony (hexie)’. (Wei, 2015, p. 89) Chinese Maritime Strategy, even how much its character and grand strategy have a different world-view, would need to choose between already existing choices when it made its maritime strategy. This part will compare Chinese maritime strategies and identities with previous ones while also providing two unique elaborations of home-grown maritime thoughts.
This part will show that, even how much Beijing self-declaratory defined itself as exceptional, the mistakes or problems that surround the maritime strategy were also subjected to grave problems. Shi Xiaoquin warned that ‘the Chinese navy will have to recalculate both its strategic thought and force organisation as it approaches a crossroad’. (Murphy & Yoshihara, 2015, p. 34; Xiaoqin, The Historical Position of Small Ships and Boats and the Balanced Navy with Chinese Characteristics - 小型舰艇的历史, 2011, p. 40) This part will indicate that China has several great problems that could curtail the Chinese dream at sea. The main advocacy of this part will depend upon a Chinese philosopher, Dogen Zenji. Chinese maritime strategy, even how much unique, could fault Beijing in achieving its political goal as flowers fall even how one like them. While it could easily exceed the limits that Beijing designed due to the onerous and controversial nature of the maritime domain. Chinese Navy could turn to a weed that grows even how much one does not love it. China should be well aware that, as its approaches to the decision point, its self-proclaimed exceptionality is no guarantee of success. Whereas, Beijing should learn more in terms of not only answering the question of ‘how to build a powerful navy’ but also for answering the question of ‘how a state could use its powerful navy to achieve its political goals’.
4.3.1) Hypothesis I: China as a Periclean Rising Power Navy
Chinese maritime strategy has a long history of a Periclean one. China, like Periclean Athens and La Jeune Ecole, used its limited naval capabilities to reach the political goals of the state. In the Cold War,
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Beijing had lesser political goals that did not require global reach, those strategies achieved much. Mao Zedong and the following PLAN Commanders have emphasized the importance of an ‘active defence strategy’ that was a blend of Soviet and Chinese thought. Their concept of ‘active defence’ has based on ‘offensive campaigns for defensive ends’. (Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 119) His views were implied to sea by Xiao Jinguang under the name of ‘sabotage warfare at sea’ (海上阵地战). Xiao defined the aim of the concept as ‘to wage a protracted war with guerrilla tactics to have small victories that aimed to create a leverage’. (Jinguang, 2013, p. 287; Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 120)
This shows us that, like other rising powers, China also had a contested and integrated understanding of offense and defence. Though the development and globalization of Beijing changed its naval capabilities, goals, and strategies, Mao’s thoughts still have an impact upon some military officials. The latest military strategy of China in 2015 underlined that the concept of ‘active defence’ continues to be in place as its basis focused on ‘you fight your way and I fight my way’. (PRC State Council, 2015) Even with this emphasis, unlike Xiao did before, both the 2015 document and 2019 Defence Paper refrained from defining what an active defence consists of. This lack of definition blurs the development of Chinese naval identity and American perception of it, it also affects how the Chinese Navy picked its naval platforms.
While Chinese naval thought approaches sea denial with different characteristics. China has increasingly developed surface, sub, and above the surface and even its rocket forces with anti-ship missiles. China’s capabilities in surrounding seas have seemed like a ‘no-go zone for the US’. (Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 150) Beijing increasingly uses DF-26 anti-ship ballistic missiles and hypersonic ones with the joint contribution of PLAAF and Rocket Force. Latest Chinese Type-055 Renhai-class destroyers employ 112 VLS-cells that could contain YJ-18 anti-ship missiles which could target billion worth of US aircraft carriers and Aegis destroyers. China also positioned long-range ‘DF-21D and DF-26 missiles and J-11 and J-15 fighter jets on the mainland which could be used as an air-fortress to deter American Navy’. (Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 216)
Depending entirely upon a sea denial and A2/AD was not a suitable option for the Chinese Navy. Chinese deployments in the mainland constrain Washington’s response and possible escalation efforts. However, as the Soviets suffered, a dependency upon nuclear weapons could also constrain Beijing in its ambitions on Taiwan and the South and the East China Sea. China has to keep in mind that managing territorial disputes that have positive aims requires mastering the limited conflict, as nuclear deterrence is a prospect for protecting the advent status-quo. All previous leaders like Pericles, Tirpitz, and Aube experienced that deterrence through naval power is tightly related to perceptions of hegemons. The success of the Chinese A2/AD will be crucially dependent upon the posture and view of Washington on
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how much it could risk. Beijing predicts that Washington could not take a risk to send a Carrier Strike Group to China’s narrow seas. It could suffer from what Tirpitz and Aube have suffered. It was reasoned due to the nature of battle-fleets and capital ships which were still existing for a battle to provide sea control but not for awaiting in port. Rising new missile defence technologies like Phalanx CIWS, rail guns, and collaborative drones could expand the US’s ability to operate in denied areas. Choosing among options was a crucial step to set a naval identity that crucially impact the relationship between two powers. The latest Surface Warfare: The Competitive Edge document underlined that the Navy could develop experimental doctrines and concepts of smaller ‘Surface Action Groups (SAG)’ in coherence with ‘larger fleet formations.’ (US Navy, 2021, p. 13) The introduction of small, navigable but lethal ships in the A2/AD zones as SAGs could help the US Navy to manage the threat from China’s complex but inflexible strategy. The introduction of new unmanned ships like the medium (MUSV) and large unmanned surface vehicles (LUSV) could change China’s fleet deterrence efforts vice-versa.
As we underlined earlier, rising powers with a Periclean identity adopted a strategy of coastal defence. China has a long history of coastal defence as the maritime incapability of the state affected the strategy-making of Beijing. In recent years, Western scholars attributed the concept of fortress-fleet with China’s coastal defence understanding. But one should be aware that such a concept was never used in an official Chinese document. Readers of this research would remember it from part 3.7.2, where Russian Empire employed such a concept against the Japanese Empire. Mahan defined a fortress-fleet as ‘defensive’ in its nature and ‘a product of Russian continental thinking’. (Mahan A. T., 2013, pp. 217-218) A fortress-fleet is problematic as it did not employ a navy to support the national course at the high seas, whereas, it turns the ships to force multiplier of a fortress. Mahan, however, criticized this kind of role of a fleet as a fleet that tied to land with such kind of thinking, eventually ‘failed in providing a fortress-fleet and a fleet-in-being’. (Mahan A. T., 2013, p. 218) Chinese thought of a fortress-fleet is much more dynamic and wider as, China sees its mainland forces as the fortress itself, rather than tying a naval fleet to a single port or fortress.
Holmes underlined that, different from the Russian one, Chinese maritime thinking has ‘an offensive dimension whereas a fortress-fleet could operate at offshore waters which is flexible’. (Holmes, 2010, p. 123) Increasing A2/AD capabilities made China turn its mainland into a fortress that was protected by a nuclear umbrella. PLA introduced two types of missiles which were ‘theatre weapons and area weapons with robust penetration ability and destructive power.’ (Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 232) Not only in terms of missile technologies, China increasingly establish airstrips and bases to both SCS and mainland China. ‘Beijing could deploy H-6K maritime bomber planes in cooperation with maritime forces’ which could carry hypersonic missile targets against American and allies surface fleets. (McDevitt, 2020, p. 106) This would constitute a great opportunity to deter American support against
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the Chinese fleet. But a strategy that is based upon the intention of another party is problematic as we see in most of the cases of this research. For understanding this scenario, this last paragraph will simulate a possible crisis between the US and China under a fortress-fleet approach, which primarily isolates the possible allied support to two parties. Readers should be aware that in the real world, both China and the US could be subjected to political conditions and constraints which was different from the ones that were covered here.
In an advent crisis over Taiwan between Beijing and Washington, China could threaten the US with imposing costly strikes against super-expensive American ships. Whereas, Beijing alarmed all three naval fleets and coastal commands to prepare for missile strikes against American forces. The readers should be aware that command and control problems like cyberattacks that are sourced from civilian or third party groups or simply due to the ill-fate and human-error such a scenario could be easier and risky in an advent situation of crisis. A US Carrier Strike Group and other supporting vessels were now under great risk of being hit. Now PLAN, in coordination with other branches, ‘is planning some preventive strikes to level-down Taiwanese defences’. (McDevitt, 2020, p. 90) The US Task Group will try to test Chinese will to escalate the crisis and send a message to deter it. Washington set a fleet of limited, dispersed, and less costly surface vessels supported by the costly ones to reduce the possible losses. Now, China has to choose between deescalating or continuing to first level down the American ships. Political matters with Taiwan become more problematic under the advent crisis and Taipei declared its independence from Beijing. China could employ massive ‘rapid coordinated rushed missile attack’ (快速协同突袭) against lesser American AAW-capable vessels. (Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 244) Which would eventually push the dispersed US vessels to unite themselves to protect the capital ships. After the first salvo of missiles, Beijing now could employ its second card with the use of ‘overtaking missile attack’ (超车攻击) to level-down high-value units. (Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 244) Which could have been followed by the use of aircraft and submarines to hunt down retreating and damaged American ships. As the crisis escalated to a limited war, now, the US has to go upper hand with possible public reaction. Washington steadily has to choose whether to de-escalate the tensions, which would mean a defeat, or to retaliatory strike the targets in the Chinese mainland with taking the risk of escalating to a nuclear war. If we assumed that the US Navy took the risk and carried stealth and precision-guided strikes which neutralized some of the Chinese A2/AD capabilities. Both countries, now, will need to prepare for fleet warfare. As we underlined earlier, Taiwan also increasingly shifted towards becoming a fortress-fleet. Now with the confident support of the US and possibly its allies, Taiwan would employ harder measures and reactions which would require the expeditionary use of the Chinese fleet. A fortress-fleet will not deliver the guarantee of success against another fortress-fleet as
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war already escalated to an unknown dimension. The US Navy could now employ aggressive methods to level up the war at sea to re-obtain sea control which eventually put Chinese ships under the risk of a raid in a narrow geographical region. Any possible delayed response to the aggression by the US would give China to conduct its second-strike of anti-access over the American forces in Japan and others. If the aggression was first initiated by China, now, Washington can impose a ‘distant blockade’ on Chinese ships and resources. (McDevitt, 2020, p. 89) As the world has already lost its trading associations with Beijing due to A2/AD strategy, now, Washington could have the chance to force PLAN to come out from the fortress to a fleet battle with the US Navy.
As we underlined in this case, China could use a coastal defence approach offensively to both support its fleet and achieve the political goal that it has. But this dependency would eventually link the political goal of China to the intentions and very well-did understanding of American and allied maritime identities. Both parties would be subjected to at least two thresholds which could tie the crisis to a nuclear escalation. Castex underlined that ‘with new technologies, the land domain has a significant influence on the maritime one’. (Castex, 2017, p. 286) It is also true for the current developments, but for states with nuclear weapons, the same situation is not as profitable as with the ones that don’t have. Over connection of the PLAN with the mainland would mean an advent status-quo that could tie the hands of Beijing. In a scenario of Chinese fortress-fleet, aircraft carriers would be obsolete as China already have more capable land airbases in its theatres. This would have made CCP’s efforts and public aspirations for aircraft carriers obsolete and will turn it to a failure of fleet-build-up as the resources that shared them could be allocated to better defensive programs. A fortress-fleet, even, how much it developed is not a solution for being a great power that has a global reach. It would eventually fail to meet the needs of the Chinese GS. Holmes underlined that with a fortress-fleet, ‘China would fail to control the events in the Indian Ocean’ where there is another rising and rival power that created an alliance with the US. (Holmes, 2010, p. 126) Also, a fortress-fleet cannot protect Beijing’s far-seas protection missions, whereas, the advent security of the mainland will curtail the navy’s open-seas performance. Both in peacetime and in a crisis, a fortress-fleet as a doctrine of coastal defence, is not a guarantee for the success of Chinese maritime strategy to deliver political goals of the regime.
Another doctrine adopted by Periclean rising powers was the use of guerre de course against the maritime hegemon. All examples, La Jeune Ecole, the Soviet Union, and the IGN employed such strategy against maritime hegemons. The value of the guerre de course become a disputed issue among contemporary strategy-makers. French used such a strategy ‘to rise shipping and insurance prices to harm the British maritime hegemony’. (Peifer, 2013, p. 92) While German use was focused on timely-limited total strangulation of the British economy in both world wars. Mahan criticized this approach as he underlined that the first principle of the war is ‘to destroy the battle capacity of the enemy in the
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shortest period, as bigger ships could protect the commerce against smaller ones’. (Mahan A. T., 2013, pp. 94-95) The prospect of the guerre de course was densely dependent upon the geographical position, national character, and grand strategy of a country.
China gives a limited value for guerre de course when it is compared to other rising powers. As Beijing intensively becomes dependent upon maritime trade, open trade routes also favours the un-interruption of maritime commerce. Chinese Defence Paper underlined that ‘Beijing have faith in and supports international law for keeping the SLOCs’. (The State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China, 2019) It is a crucial declaration, as no rising power, that has a will to exercise such kind of doctrine takes such a position. In terms of capabilities, China has a huge quantity of anti-ship missiles, airplanes, and submarine forces to locate and destroy the enemy trade. ‘Beijing has a submarine power with ASCM capabilities’, torpedoes, and a great number of patrol crafts that could intercept commercial ships. (Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 163) But guerre de course doctrines need extensive convergence of a nation’s grand strategy and its maritime implementation. Even la Jeune Ecole employed an attrition strategy, its grand strategy had an extensive need for maritime commerce.
In the long run, in terms of GS, China could develop an attrition strategy. But it would be illogical for Beijing to create a naval force to engage in guerre de course. Even China and the US use common maritime trade routes; the US remains too far from the theatre. This would give Washington the advantage of diverting the Chinese pressure. Advent use of commercial convoys combined with the US’s huge fleet would eventually force the Chinese Navy to protect its anti-commerce force. As current developments show China could peacefully use its civilian maritime power to threaten the US maritime commerce. If Chinese SOEs decided to stop the service to the US in an advent crisis, the sea-logistics and insurance prices will sky-rocket in the American economy. McMahon warned that in civilian and peaceful terms, without any shooting, China has a force to impose a ‘century of shame’ to the US. (McMahon, 2021, p. 109) With this leverage, it would be absurd for China to focus and create a naval strategy based on Guerre de Course.
Beijing could only apply such kind of strategy against the regional allies of the US like Taiwan and Japan. Beckley underlined that ‘no nation could have achieved to force an opponent to accept its interests with a sole use of blockade’. (Beckley, 2017, p. 29) Even if China employs a wide-range blockade against Taiwan, it would remain uneasy like the previous fortress-fleet. China should employ decisive and aggressive, expeditionary, and speedy action to achieve its political goal. Technically, just like possible US embargo to China, according to Beckley, ‘the PLAN could only blockade 1/6 of the island’s commerce with other nations’. (Beckley, 2017, p. 92) This rate is so low that an eventual peace-time economic sanctioning by China against the regional states would make much more devastating results. Also in aggression against the commerce, Beijing’s international support will fell-down as global prices
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and logistics chain would suffer from huge blows. Peifer underlined that blockades increasingly become ‘an instrument of strong against the weak as happened in the cases like Iraq, Libya, and Iran’. (Peifer, 2013, p. 92) Chinese values and grand strategy is in no position to fully support and lean on guerre de course doctrine.
Kagan underlined that what Pericles had in his mind was failed due to the ‘very nature of human beings’ as he never persuaded the Athenians to live behind the strong walls of Athens. (Kagan, 2010, p. 53) The same is also true for the Chinese people in the 21st Century. As China increasingly connected with the world via both land and sea, and even virtually; it would be hard for CCP to persuade them to live behind the strong and historical walls of land and sea. Zhang Wemnu underlined a similar warning where he said ‘a state’s protection must go where a nation’s economic benefits at’. (Wemnu, 2004, p. 20) PLAN with the support of the government and people will inevitably become more than a defensive and limited Periclean navy.
4.3.2) Hypothesis II: China as a Post-Periclean Rising Power Navy
When it comes to having an offensive and ambitious maritime strategy, the Chinese Government and scholars have differentiated viewpoints. Wu Xiaoyan argued that ‘China like every other powerful nation ought to become a sea power state.’ (Xiaoyan, 2014, p. 14) Not only on the issue of international image, in terms of strategic necessities, it also has a massive influence. Xu Qi underlined that as ‘China’s ocean economy and technology’ triumphed, now, Beijing has ‘to protect a greater scope’. (Qi, 2006, p. 62) With Hu Jintao’s stress on the far-seas protection concept, China increasingly showed its post-Periclean muscle to the world. Rice and Robb defined this concept as ‘open to interpretation due to the lack of precise definition’. (Rice & Robb, 2021, p. 3) It genuinely signifies the post-modern missions for protecting Chinese SLOCs in peacetime. ‘But even the lack of wartime definition, Beijing has an open-seas strategy to protect those lines in such a scenario’. (Rice & Robb, 2021, p. 5) But a blue-water navy required a balanced fleet that could maintain expanded fleet action.
As we noted in the previous part, the active defence and sabotage warfare at sea strategy of PLAN in the Cold War also took the way of a concentrated navy. But since the 2000s, China increasingly implied the importance of a balanced fleet. Chinese analysts defined Soviet Navy during the 1950s and 1960s as an ‘unbalanced’ (失衡的舰队结构) and ‘deformed’ (畸形) one. (Dutton & Martinson, 2017, p. 47) Since then China commissioned Liaoning and domestically-build Shandong and also had a plan for Type 003 and 004 carriers which could balance American ones. In terms of large surface combatants (LSCs), China commissioned Type 055 Renhai-class destroyers, Type 075 Yushen-class amphibious assault ships, and Type 054A Jiangkai-II frigates which targeted to balance American LSC’s in the Pacific. Just like IGN, China set the US Navy as its primary example of a modern navy that PLAN should take as an
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example. Yoshihara and Holmes warned that both the US and China, like Britain and Germany, settled their naval standards against each other. (Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 147) This kind of creation of a balanced fleet could also constrain the flexibility of the Chinese Navy against the US Navy for avoiding a major conflict. For example, public opinion in China ‘favoured the development of an aircraft carrier for increasing Chinese power and strengthening its territorial unity’. (Luttwak, 2016, p. 79) Strategic necessities for aircraft carriers took different reactions from different scholars. Peng Guangxian from PLA Military Sciences Academy ‘denied an aircraft carrier as a means for domination’ while Song Xaiojun defined it as ‘an inevitable tool for protecting Chinese supply routes at far seas’. (Luttwak, 2016, p. 79) Chinese fleet increasingly become a balanced one with increasing capabilities but fleet-building is just one way of building a strong maritime nation. The other is to use this fleet to obtain a sea-control.
China like all maritime powers, even it did not mention in the official documents, has an extended vision for sea control. Beijing works on the concept of ‘comprehensive control’ which controls three dimensions of the sea and space through networked C5ISR systems. (Tianliang, 2015, p. 409; Rice & Robb, 2021, p. 6) While Chinese position was quite different when it compared to other powers. Chinese naval officials have a different view over the concept of command, while official documents did not use both words of Command of the Sea Decisive and Sea Control. Captain Liu Yijian defined it as a ‘zero-sum process where one uses the sea while denies the use of the other’, while Rear Admiral Huang Jiang take it from a Corbettian view and claimed that it was ‘a relative concept that would persist imperfect since the nature of sea did not give complete control’. (Yijian, 2005, p. 43; Jiang, 2003, p. 25; Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 45) It is important to note that as the Chinese fleet develops more and more capable for such kind of Command, its literature remains scarce since the nature of China as a rising power still suffers from similar disadvantages with rising navies. Ji Rongren and Wang Xuejin from NDU even warned that ‘with Chinese capabilities, a Command of the Sea will be incomplete and situational due to its relative handicaps’. (Rongren & Xuejin, 2002, p. 114; Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 46) Zhang Wei summarized these discussions for ‘a need of limited sea control (haiyang kongzhi) combined with strategical controlling (jinglüe) of the ocean’. (Wei, 2015, p. 92) Achieving sea control, even limited or a durable one, requires an ability to engage and win a naval battle.
For centuries, engaging a decisive fleet battle was viewed from technical points who looks for how many ships and how much firepower that it has. Michael McDevitt underlined that in terms of naval power ‘PLAN is more capable than the many observers thought’ which could mean eventual advantage over the US Navy. (McDevitt, 2020, p. 180) But in terms of strategy, the Chinese position on engaging in a decisive war is still problematic as Beijing wants to engage in a war within its territorial waters and under the advent security of the Fortress-China. Clausewitz warned that ‘war is full of uncertainties and
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frictions’ that made it unforeseeable as no modernization effort could guarantee Beijing’s awaited conflict scenarios. (Clausewitz, 2015, p. 91) Given the blue-water capabilities of the US, there is no guarantee for China to engage in a war under the advent security of the land. Yoshihara and Holmes also underlined that there is a ‘doubt over the motivation of the Chinese commanders to risk its freshly grown fleet to knock out the US Navy’. (Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 214) Under the lack of the support of ashore air bases, missile batteries, and simply regional replenishment stations which were mostly controlled by the US, PLAN’s aircraft carriers as capital ships are still a no-match for American far-seas strike groups. In 2021, China underlined its will to create autonomous ‘arsenal ships’ that could provide fire-power support to existing Chinese surface ships. (Bosbotinis, 2019) An arsenal ship, in the long run, could mitigate China’s aircraft carrier problem. But for now, with the current capabilities, China still has the quality problem vis-à-vis the US. Castex warned that ‘an offensive requires both quantity and quality and at the end, it necessitates surface action’. (Castex, 2017, pp. 321-322) As the maritime domain again expanded in the 21st Century, no navy could fully assure the total control of all three dimensions of the sea and others like outer space and cyberspace. A RAND report underlined that, even how much the PLAN was developed, ‘the immediate loss of the Chinese would be superior while with a timely extended conflict, the losses would intersect with the US which is still too hard to conceive by both nations’. (Gompert, Cevallos, & Garafola, 2016, p. 40) Also in terms of experience, the PLAN is still far from having sufficient war-time employment as the US had in the Iraqi War. Chinese C3 structure did not test in wartime use either. In a time of advent crisis or war, ‘Chinese captains were free to act without the authorization of the political commissar, but they have to defend the accuracy of their actions to the CMC’, such kind of burden of inspection could constrain the decision-making process of the Chinese officers. (Benson & Yang, 2020, p. 15) Due to the nature of the contemporary world, China has no luxury to guarantee its success in fleet-battle just like the historical cases of IGN and IJN. Technology and other advantages at all require the taking of the risk of losing Chinese surface maritime muscle that created with an enormous amount of public resources. In civilian terms, the losses will also be great for both states. In an advent time of war, ‘Chinese trade with regional states with 80% while the global one will fell 50%’. (Gompert, Cevallos, & Garafola, 2016, p. 47) Such a war will be a clear controversy for what the Chinese Grand Strategy tried to accomplish. The selection of a decisive fleet-battle would be a selection of protecting China’s territorial interests at the expense of the Chinese development dream. Castex underlined that ‘a fleet-battle with a deprived defensive posture would eventually lead to a naval disaster’. (Castex, 2017, p. 314) China would not take such kind of risk until things would become a life-or-death choice for the future of Beijing. But the situation in the 2030s and 2040s would be less clear in terms of fleet-battle as if there would be no big impediment and American effort to rebuild its capacity, both civilian and military maritime power of China will surpass the one of
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Washington. Castex argued that ‘in a war, capabilities weaken with a curve where one of the parties would achieve an optimal position to strike once’. (Castex, 2017, pp. 328-329) In peace-time, such kind of curve could also be accepted in time due to the attrition of economic burden that linked with efforts to protect the delicate balance. Given the state of the current civilian and military maritime power of the US and its domestic developments, the 2030s and 2040s have the potential to become confident curves when Beijing could try to achieve the optimal position vis-à-vis the US. But for now, under the advent maritime balance, such kind of choice would be a mistake for both countries to lose their maritime powers mutually.
Conducting an operation via an ambitious fleet could not only be done by a decisive battle. An offensive maritime power could also be used for operational and tactical ends. Such kind of use could be named as a fleet-in-being strategy. Some blended fortress-fleet with a fleet-in-being strategy as a one that could be used for the common purpose of defence. Holmes defined China’s current maritime strategy as ‘a hybrid of fortress-fleet and a fleet-in-being which was derived from the point of Corbett’. (Holmes, 2010, p. 125) But the concept is not a clear and well-defined one as it is ones of the most criticized one of maritime literature. Mahan underlined that ‘a fortress-fleet is a fleet that was tied to land for defending it while a fleet-in-being is a defensive one based on the fleet itself’. (Mahan A. T., 2021, p. 423) The common point of both theories was their dependency upon deterrence rather than employing naval power. Julian Corbett defined the term as ‘an action for a handicapped fleet to recon and deter a fleet from obtaining its strategic objective’. (Corbett, 2010, pp. 197-198) The term was first used in 1690 by British Admiral Torrington against his French counterpart Tourville, where his fleet was disadvantaged but remained active to block Tourville’s attempt to attack English shores. This position was, however, widely criticized by other maritime theorists like Mahan and Castex. Castex criticized the concept as an ‘exaggerated’ one and emphasized that against an opponent with ‘active, enterprising’ capabilities and tendencies it would not produce any result. (Castex, 2017, p. 341) Mahan also criticized the term as we underlined earlier that it is not a fleet-in-being that produced a result, but it was the weaknesses of Tourville that made it possible.
The concept was developed for war-time purposes at it was not excessively researched in a peace-time manner. In peacetime, a fleet-in-being was composed of stationary units that consists of high-value units. Both the Second French Empire’s and German Empire’s prestige fleets were examples for fleet-in-being in a peace-time. It was problematic that all examples were failed ones as it would make China’s efforts also harder. Mahan himself introduced a peace-time fleet-in-being concept which was based upon a ‘cordon (or choke-point protection) and combined dispersion’. (Mahan A. T., 2021, p. 426) His concept was based on stationing dispersed fleets to several choke-points which could easily be combined in an advent time of danger. China has a similar position, as Wu Xiaoyan argued, the PLAN’s main motivation
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was based upon ‘controlling the disagreements with local powers and to force them to engage in a dialogue’. (Xiaoyan, 2014, p. 23) When it come to the US, the Chinese fleet-in-being was also focused on capital ships like high-tech surface vessels, combined with undersea vessels, and even air and missile forces. The primary motive for China in a regional crisis will be ‘keeping Americans away from the conflict’ while for the PLAN it would be recon and deter American fleet with combined operations. (McDevitt, 2020, p. 102) China also uses its fleet-in-being to secure the SLOCs through a sense of deterrence. PLAN shifted to a ‘forward-edge’ as we see in China’s procurement of a naval base at Djibouti. (Rice & Robb, 2021, p. 5) Even how much it seems positive for sustaining both a Periclean and post-Periclean naval identity, the concept still has problems. The concept requires constant avoidance from a fleet battle which requires geographical distanced-positioning between two rivals. With the current nature of the Asia-Pacific and the First Island Chain with its numerous choke-points, it is hard for the PLAN to keep a distanced relationship with US Navy. And the other problem is the political matter, where Governments have expectations from a fleet to deliver action at sea. What failed Torrington’s approach, according to Corbett, is ‘the advent pressure of the British court in engaging a disadvantaged war with Tourville’. (Corbett, 2010, p. 196) Beijing’s political use of the PLAN in the harassment of USS Decatur by the Chinese Lanzhou destroyer in the SCS show such a risk. Benson and Young argued that the manoeuvre had an extensive ‘political objective’ which would probably ‘approved by the political commissar of the ship’. (Benson & Yang, 2020, p. 33) Such kind of use will eventually harm the concept of fleet-in-being as a disadvantaged fleet would not engage in such a risky political manoeuvre. All maritime theorists agreed on, even with a strategy of fleet-in-being, a state should engage in a fleet battle to deliver its political goals which were happened in the previous cases.
It is clear that China, different from the other rising powers, has no aggressive ambition to obtain a maritime hegemony. An offensive action requires technical capabilities, political support, and a favourable geographical position. Until here, we underlined that Beijing is not in a favourable position in all three of these conditions. Castex underlined that strategy requires an ‘autonomy’ from the policy as the political and practical form of war is completely different from each other. (Castex, 2017, p. 332) Given the CCP’s control over the PLAN, even on the individual ship-level, such kind of strategical autonomy to set a maritime course to an ambitious one, without party’s change of vision is still problematic. Mao Zedong emphasized the words of ‘dig deep holes, store abundant grain and never become a hegemon.’ (Wemnu, 2004, p. 30) His words still have a clear force to self-restraint over both Chinese politicians and the officers themselves.
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4.3.3) Hypothesis III: China in a Third Way
China has a home-grown theory that was created under the administration of Hu Jintao. It could be accepted as a kind Post-Periclean maritime identity. But the home-grown vision and concept of the harmonious ocean is short-of hegemony, where, Beijing limitedly declares itself as a maritime stakeholder with the US and other states. Such kind of vision is problematic; as the current administration of Xi Jinping did not stress the concept as enthusiastically as Hu Jintao did. Maritime-stakeholdership is not an unseen situation in maritime hegemony. But the Chinese one has grave problems when compared with the historical cases of maritime co-hegemonies.
The concept of the harmonious ocean means ‘universally protected oceans against conflicts and crisis where states resolute their maritime disagreements with non-violent instruments’. (Shixin, 2009) The stress has both modern and post-modern tasks to protect the oceans while also motivated to give Beijing the long-awaited freedom of navigation and security of the SLOCs. While the approach of the concept to near-seas is not as friendly as it declared for the high-seas. The concept looks for ‘not resorting to coercive strength but benign cooperation at littoral territories’. (Shixin, 2009) But the concept itself preserves a more ambitious background just like the concept of a harmonious world and great problems for the global reach and position of the US Navy and its allies. In this maritime system, ‘PLAN with its deterring role’ as a fleet-in-being has wide-range of far-seas missions for bearing co-maritime hegemony with other states. (Shixin, 2009) Just like the Ming Dynasty did in the 15th Century, the concept itself was focused on renouncing the ‘power at sea’ totally to a ‘power from the sea’. Given the strength of China in peace-time grey zone operations, such kind of system will completely favour the powerful states as the others will be subjected to the will of co-shareholders to use disputed waters.
The concept was derived from the concept of a harmonious world which was proposed by Hu Jintao. The concept seeks for ‘harmony among great powers to prevent conflicts and renunciation from the alliance systems’. (Hao, 2015, pp. 357-358) It directly challenges the US maritime alliances in the region, where, the regional countries remained respectful to Chinese interests in return for a limited share from the Chinese gains. Such kind of concept will fortify the Chinese power and control over the states like the Philippines, Vietnam, South Korea, Japan, and other Asian states. While with ambitious maritime claims like Nine-Dash Line, Senkaku Islands, and others, which were defined as China’s territorial interests, such kind of world system would mean renunciation from the territorial claims of other regional states. In terms of the relationship with the US such kind of concept look for reconsidering Sino-American relations. The concept was supported by the idea of G2, in which China and the US share the global leadership under the concept of responsible-stakeholder states. Beijing looks for a ‘managed great power relationship’ between the US under the Chinese vision rather than one that imposed by the US. (Zeng & Breslin, 2006, p. 786) In this outlook, China shapes the regional maritime
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order while creating a division of maritime roles between the US Navy and others. Such a kind of stakeholdership is problematic. Wemnu underlined that the Chinese vision has a goal of achieving ‘justice’ by protecting Beijing’s national and world’s shared interests. (Wemnu, 2004, p. 92) Even with these wise goals, it is clear the maritime justice that the US Navy has, is slightly different from what China has. Delivering a new maritime order requires the end of already existing ones, different from the 16th Century, there is no such kind of development in the world oceans. Wei claimed that the notion of ‘maritime security grounded on hegemony and war is no longer in play as the world needs a novel kind of maritime culture’. (Wei, 2015, p. 88) Even how much China believes, without official renunciation of the maritime hegemony by the US, such kind of notion could not be accepted without a shift of maritime hegemony to China or at least for the neutrality of seas.
The history of the shared maritime hegemony between two powers is not the first proposal or design in history. The first shared maritime hegemony was organized between the Spanish and Portuguese Empires. ‘Given the power of the Pope over ex-communicating defiant leaders neither Portuguese nor Spanish King risked engaging in a war that not blessed by the Papacy’. (Allison, 2018, p. 246) The co-hegemonic relationship was initiated by the Papacy which was based upon protecting the unity and peace of the Catholic world. The second was established during the 17th Century between was Britain and the Dutch. This hegemonic relationship was established under the unified throne of William of the Orange and consolidated by the common enmities against the rising French Empire. The third one was established under the US and Britain which mentioned as Anglo-Saxon Common Interest Community. This development was also supported by a common ideological position, values, and the rise of maritime rivals like Germany, Italy, and Japan. Such a kind of co-hegemonic relationship was established under the process when one maritime power rises while another one is in decline. The contemporary case of the US and China has slightly different characteristics when compared with historical examples.
Allison underlined that ‘commitment to international law and moderation of the UN could help great powers to manage their differences’. (Allison, 2018, p. 191) The first way to reach a harmonious ocean concept could be possible by creating a Sino-American Common Interest Community. Mahan defined the first condition to negotiate a shared maritime hegemony was based on ‘a sincere trust and unselfishness that free from emotionality’. (Mahan A. T., 2013, p. 238) The latest Chinese Defence Strategy again instigated Beijing’s will on common values of the world with the words of;
“A strong military of China is a staunch force for world peace, stability, and the building of a community with a shared future for mankind. China’s armed forces advocate common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security, uphold justice while pursuing shared interests, and actively
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participate in the reform of global security governance system.” (The State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China, 2019, p. 10)
In line with this China increasingly participate in post-modern activities like anti-piracy and maritime order operations. Beijing also ambitiously takes part in the UN-initiated maritime programs. ‘PLAN conducted freedom of navigation and anti-piracy operations in Somalia to support the security of navigation in the Indian Ocean’. (Shixin, 2009) Even China underlined this point for convergence between the US and China, post-modern values did not enough for creating a common interest community. Hence with Chinese peaceful post-modern missions, the US increasingly approach them suspiciously as they also revealed the PLAN’s growing capabilities. Chinese pressure on the neutrality of the seas and getting rid of alliances will require the US’s renunciation from the advantages that it has with its maritime hegemony. US and China neither have common values or leaders nor have a third party rival that could challenge both states.
Another scenario is China’s possible alliance to create a counter-hegemonic alliance to insist on harmonious oceans at the expense of the US. Such kind of alliance could be with another rising power like Russia or with other littoral states that want to retake their territorial waters. English alliance with the French against the Dutch showed such kind of character. China and Russia created a close relationship since the 2010s. In 2021, China and Russia conducted a joint naval exercise in the Sea of Japan ‘against the new maritime partnerships of the US like Quad and AUKUS’.7 (Yuandan & Xuanzun, 2021) A possible alliance between Moscow and Beijing could bring problems to the US Navy. But one should be aware that such a scenario is not peaceful as Beijing intended to do. Not only in terms of conduct, it is still problematic that whether Moscow could support China against the US by naval power as its primary theater is not Pacific but Atlantic and Eastern Europe. While its strategy was based upon nuclear deterrence and littoral defence rather than naval domination.
The strategy of the harmonious ocean is a problematic one as neither China nor the US has such an understanding of maritime convergence on values and interests. Mahan underlined that ‘unproportioned and hasty emotional alliances on a peaceful world will fell unsuitable’. (Mahan A. T., 2013, p. 275) China’s stress on the harmonious ocean in the 2000s when the emotional impact of the end of the Cold War underlined the importance of a value-oriented world system. But the current strategy of China has a lesser emphasis on the harmonious ocean under the principle of shared responsibility but much on imposing the Chinese interests on the US and its allies. Also, China’s possible alliances with other rising power and lesser powers could fall short. As Mahan argued, furthering a national maritime agenda is
7 QUAD was a de-facto partnership that focus on various fields between the US, India, Japan, and Australia; while AUKUS is a partnership between the US, UK, and Australia to share know-how about nuclear submarines.
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hard with temporary alliances due to differences of capabilities and values between the allied states as happened in the Anglo-Dutch Wars.
As we underlined until now, China has problems in determining its naval identity due to the problems in its national character and worldview. Aware of the mistakes of previous rising powers, Beijing increasingly looks at how to operate its naval power in a limited manner to support the national goals of the state. The untold story of Raoul Castex on strategic manoeuvre combined with home-grown Chinese strategist Sun Tzu’s thoughts on the strategy give us a great example. Different from the Anglo-Saxon and German schools of strategy, both Castex and Sun Tzu accepted strategy as an art rather than pure science. Castex defined the use of maritime power as ‘an art that develops hand-to-hand with strategy’. (Castex, 2017, p. 23) One should be well aware that, just like other maritime strategic theories, Chinese official documents did not mention both theorists. But contemporary Chinese Cabbage Strategy could be well analysed by the theories of both strategy theorists. China’s cabbage strategy uses both civilian maritime and limitedly military power in achieving the political goals without risking a major war with the US. In a clear sense, it is an art of strategy, rather than pure science, that implements in peace-time to achieve some goals through maritime power.
The term strategic manoeuvre was developed for understanding secondary naval powers who experienced disadvantages when compared with maritime hegemons. Castex defined manoeuvre as ‘organizing the efforts to move intelligently to create a favourable situation’. (Castex, 2017, p. 102) It is not only a military-concerned term but a one that includes all concepts like psychology, economy, and politics itself. German operation before Jutland was given as an example by Castex which he defined the aim of manoeuvre ‘to level-down the advantage of British to an acceptable one’. (Castex, 2017, p. 141) However, the concept took limited attention after the introduction of nuclear weapons as technical developments become not feasible enough to support the manoeuvres of rising powers. Today, the concept is much more attractive as the new strategies like grey-zone warfare brought new advantages to work in a limited manner. In 2021, China took such kind of position against the Philippines. ‘As Pilipino Air Force conducted low altitude fly-by over the Chinese fishing boats’ who stationed at Spratly (Nansha) Islands which ‘called as an aggression against civilians’ by the Chinese Global Times. (Yuandan & Xuanzun, 2021) Beijing’s use of maritime militia against the lesser maritime power states gives a great opportunity to take freedom of action in the SCS. Chinese strategist Sun Tzu defined the ‘deception’ as the essentiality to win wars. (Tzu, 2014, p. 2) Chinese use of the militia in the SCS, until now, gives what Sun Tzu advocated for. Erickson and Kennedy defined the Chinese cabbage strategy as ‘the instrumentalization of three warfare and a source of plausible deniability to avoid military escalation and international criticism’. (Erickson & Kennedy, 2020, p. 215) To understand how Cabbage
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Strategy gave China the concept of strategic manoeuvre one should first look at what does concept itself means.
In manoeuvre, the main element was ‘economy of force’ which is defined by Castex as ‘dosage’ or use of limited power. (Castex, 2017, p. 107) China’s proposed ‘cabbage strategy’ gave enormous flexibility to the Chinese navy which is a different view of a balanced fleet from other rising naval powers in history. It is an essential means to use a flexible amount of power without escalating a crisis to a clash that harms China’s long-term interests and power. The strategy was based upon ‘defending-first the advantageous position before the aggressor made its move’. (Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 178). Zhang Zhaozhong, from National Defence University, defined it as a ‘countermeasure taken for providing a layered defence to deny any actor’ who tries to challenge Chinese sovereignty. (Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 177)
China shows a full-Mahanian balanced fleet that displays non-Mahanian maritime naval capabilities as one for achieving Chinese objectives. Such kind of authentic strategies and new thinking made China an important case to analyse. The complex nature of fleet-building with Chinese characteristics unavoidably ends with an important naval identity and perceptions of it by other parties. For example, the Chinese ‘half-civilian National Fishery Administration, have war-ship-like capable and gigantic ships for protecting the Chinese fishing rights’ which also deter the states with limited maritime capabilities in the SCS. (Luttwak, 2016, p. 110) Such kind of use of civilian capabilities gave China the ability to project power in peacetime. For example, the Administration of Fisheries allied with Coast Guard to impose ‘unilateral fishing bans’ over non-Chinese parties in the SCS. (Kraska & Monti, 2015, p. 452) Such kind of policies and power impose great coercive power on local people to conform with Chinese claims without shooting a shot. Hawksley’s interview with Pilipino fishermen who was harassed by the Chinese Coast Guard show the value of the strategy as ‘with some civilian and economic concessions many local bowed to Chinese territorial claims in expense of their country’s claims.’ (Hawksley, 2018, p. 31)
Apart from the peace-time role, the militia and other branches that are tied with Cabbage Strategy have other roles in crisis and even war-time roles. This part will shortly evaluate China’s strategic manoeuvre in the SCS which gave the upper hand to Beijing without firing a shot. ‘Sansha City Maritime Militia with the security of Chinese Southern Fleet played a wide-range role in the SCS from coercion to build-up of artificial islets for the PLAN’. (Erickson & Kennedy, 2020, pp. 213-214) Raoul Castex defined ‘the essential requirement for manoeuvre is to have a sense of security which was supported by the use of intelligence’. (Castex, 2017, p. 114) His concept of security could be accepted as the combination of French words of securite (security) and surete (safety) where a military group operates under the sense of psychological freedom from the pressure of engaging with enemy fleets. He also included the term
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‘servitudes’ which means the ‘contribution of non-military factors’ to maritime strategy. (Castex, 2017, p. XIX) A sense of security for the Chinese means avoiding a major war to overcome the disadvantageous status quo without interrupting the daily life of the Chinese. ‘In 2021, Chinese fishermen militia, ‘occupied Whitsun Reef against the Philippines’ which secured the islands from any intervention without firing a shot. (Stashwick, 2021) Chinese strategic manoeuvres with Cabbage Strategy created a unique use of maritime power in the crisis time of Beijing. Sun Tzu advocates the wise commanders ‘to subdue the enemy without a war’ which showed itself in the SCS. (Tzu, 2014, p. 7) In a limited manner, China overcome the dichotomies of naval strategies and the nature of the sea with the wise use of intelligence. Combined with Beijing’s political, economic, and psychological strength to achieve its principal objective, Cabbage Strategy served much in providing strategic manoeuvre in the SCS.
Another essentiality of the manoeuvre is ‘to have the speed to exploit favourable situation before the superior force arrives the theatre’. (Castex, 2017, p. 185) One should be aware that China’s Cabbage strategy and manoeuvre have yet not tested any country with a major naval fleet. In wartime, China increasingly prepares its militia and other departments to assist the PLAN. Militia provides intelligence about a rival nation’s maritime forces and other situations. ‘China deployed modern-day reconnaissance and communication technologies to its fishing fleet to support its intelligence outlook’. (Erickson & Kennedy, 2020, p. 219) The fleet also provides logistical and limited conflict support to PLAN. The militia was regularly ‘trained for mine-clearing and radar-deceiving activities’ to make a complex conflict environment for the rivals. (Erickson & Kennedy, 2020, p. 216)
The future of the strategy was still problematic. After successful employment in the SCS, China increasingly expands the use of the strategy to ECS and a crisis with Taiwan. ‘Beijing used its fishing fleet with the support of Coast Guard to challenge Japanese sovereignty over the Senkaku (Diayou) Islands’. (Kraska & Monti, 2015, p. 455) But Japan has a larger surface and coast guard fleet that could be a danger for the security of the freedom of manoeuvre of China. Also, Japan sees the strategy as ‘an advantage to prevent a military escalation between two countries to went further up to a fleet-engagement’. (Kraska & Monti, 2015, p. 455) Tokyo more and more employed and deployed its Coast Guard to counter Chinese strategy. ‘China also employed its sea-sand retrievers around Matsu Islands to challenge Taiwanese sovereignty’. (Lee, 2021) Beijing is well aware that both Japan and Taiwan are conscious about what has done in the SCS and also how much their maritime capabilities were superior when compared with the SCS nations. The strategic manoeuvre was a well-defined use of maritime power without selecting a Periclean or post-Periclean maritime identity but it still has clear limits. It is clear that, since 2013, China started to shift its principal theater to the East China Sea and particularly to Taiwan. But the manoeuvre that it used in the SCS would not be applicable enough without setting a
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clear maritime strategy that includes the use of the navy, as a great equalizer, which could make things riskier in a cumulative period.
Its relationship with the US is much more problematic. As Washington is not a local power, the Militia’s peace-time support could be less guaranteed. Given the superior maritime capabilities of the US, having such kind of operational sense of security is not also assured. The American failure in the harassment of USNS Impeccable shows, the US Navy is at a clear disadvantage due to the less preparedness for such a scenario in peacetime. The latest American strategy also underlined this change in the maritime domain, which was now open to ‘malign behaviour that could conduct short-of-war.’ (US Navy, 2020, p. 6) But Castex underlined that ‘a manoeuvre could only be successful with favourable geographical conditions and by the support of the fleet itself’. (Castex, 2017, pp. 184-185) It was clear that there is no guarantee of a sense of security when the PLAN needs to move out of the first island chain where the reach of maritime militias and the security of the mainland will have diminished. The future of the success of Chinese maritime strategy, even how much authenticity that it had, will depend upon how the US perceives China and how it set its maritime identity.
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When we look at China’s maritime identity development process, its national characteristics were highly developed to sustain economic and civilian maritime identity development. Programs like Maritime Silk Road or Blue Economy created a successful civilian grand strategy by Beijing for encouraging people to involve in maritime life. While Chinese people also support the Government’s naval build-up program. The people also support the navy in form of militia, recruitment, or funding, they increasingly show a willingness to sustain it. This process was developed similarly with the examples of the first cases of maritime identities who put civilian development first. Since the 1990s, the Chinese Government shifted towards the second phase of identity development which was the coercive or military maritime identity development side. However, this part develops with more problems as China’s theoretical development of sea power remained problematic due to many reasons that we covered while its maritime strategy-making process is far from clear and coherent forming. The future of China’s maritime identity could evolve as a successful case, But the problems between the relationship between state and navy (with its strategy) or with people and state, or with simply people and sea could create a murkier case as happened in the Spanish Empire, England in the Anglo-Dutch War or other failed examples. Deliberate or non-deliberate, as China is far from drawing a coherent picture of its maritime identity, the view of the US of its maritime identity also becomes more complex and open to mistaken interpretations. Understanding Thucydides’s Trap at Sea lays in understanding the maritime identity of the maritime hegemon, the US, and its strategy towards China.
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5) MARITIME HEGEMONY AND THE US’S SEA POWER: A DESTINY OF EXCEPTIONALITY OR A GOOD FORTUNE?
Even how much both this research and previous literature used the concepts of maritime or sea hegemony and hegemons, an exact definition for the concept is still problematic. The reason for these hardships is sourced from the special character of the sea and its place in politics. The discussions on whether the sea was a region or not are still bland. The majority of scholars and Commanders defined the sea as ‘a productive terrain and an artery to the far-away regions of the world which could be organised and monopolized’. (Castex, 2017, p. 26) But this definition is again problematic as the sea is a remote geographical space where sovereignty could not be completely implied or even could be defined. The modern account and view of the sea as a region also become more region-like. Till underlined that since the UNCLOS, ‘the seas increasingly became a part of the sovereignty and exclusive territories of the states’. (Till, 2009, p. 351) But seas are still different from lands, whereas, there are three different zones that have three different control systems. These are high seas (where no state has an authority), territorial waters (which was under the sovereignty of a state), and exclusive economic zones (which a state has limited control).
From this perspective, a maritime (or sea) hegemony is different from a land-based one. This difference was sourced due to both positive and negative aspects. As the sea is far from being under complete control and jurisdiction of any state and hard to control as previously underlined by Julian Corbett, it is easier to achieve a hegemony at sea when compared with land regions. But its wide surface combined with above and under domain and necessity for having sophisticated platforms with huge coasts made it harder. A state could mass troops to land region, as we witnessed in the Cold War by the USSR in Eastern Europe while Moscow did not have a similar ability in the Cuban Crisis.
The maritime hegemony in the past was defined under the primacy of power. Mahan, for example, defined a sea hegemon as ‘a powerful state that could protect its interest and goods at sea’. (Mahan A. T., 2013, p. 95) The following definitions also included clear understanding of a power at sea to achieve the control of the seas and communication that flowed over it. Brodie defined sea hegemony as ‘an ability to concentrate forces in a geographical region zone for destroying or denying an enemies’ use of the seas’. (Brodie, 2011, p. 108) These definitions were focused on war-time purposes of maritime hegemony while a sea hegemony has a clear peace-time extension which should be evaluated. Raoul Castex is an important figure who acknowledged this side of the sea. He underlined that ‘in the peacetime, the seas are for everyone, but in a war, it is for the one who is the strongest’. (Castex, 2017) In the peacetime, sea hegemony plays an important part in designing the global system that favours the
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economy of the hegemon while also giving the ability to control the events on land. Both Dutch and British were good examples for these cases. It was clear that power is an ultimate source for having and sustaining a maritime hegemony. But sole power is not enough as the sea is so wide and hard region that requires ultimate sharing of a country’s scarce resources. Anthony Gramsci’s definition of the hegemon is ‘a state who subordinate others with a perception of universally-claimed ideology’. (Gramsci, 1975, p. 1638) In line with his definition, a maritime power also has to create an ideological strength. Both Dutch and British were depended upon protecting the freedom of navigation and open seas (which were neutral coastal waters) for both their and their allies’ interests and security. Dutch standing against England’s Navigational Law and British standing against German quest to dominate seas showed these binary ambitions. Castex also signified a similar change in recent years. He showed British hegemony as one that encompasses the arrangements between neutrals in peace-time, since the 20th Century the notion of command of the seas turned to a concept of ‘free usage’ which is more defective. (Castex, 2017, pp. 55-58) With these remarks now we could define the concept with these words. A maritime or sea hegemony is having sufficient power and will of a state to secure the seas for providing safe maritime regions for its commonly accepted maritime agenda and system. Both Dutch hegemony in the Baltics during the 16th -17th Centuries and British one during the 19th Century had similar success with this definition.
Even the difference between a land region and sea, sea -or maritime- hegemony still have similar character and necessities with ones that required for regional land hegemons. ‘A regional power has to be part of that region, have to stand against regional coalitions, be influential in regional affairs, and have to be a great power.’ (Nolte, 2010, p. 889) Both Dutch and British had strong positions like colonies and ports. Dutch position at the North Sea gave it an extensive chance to access the Baltic, Caribbean, and others. While Britain’s possessions in Gibraltar gave access to the Mediterranean, in Cyprus to protect Suez and others. Both Dutch and British stand against excessive coalitions by regional powers to change the situation at sea. Both states also had an intensive role in global affairs and capabilities to sustain maritime hegemony. ‘Regional leaders, or hegemons, also need regional followers and recognition’. (Nolte, 2010, p. 894) Both Dutch and British had extensive alliances in continental Europe and overseas theatres to support and create naval bases and ports. For example, Dutch created extensive maritime alliances with the Kingdom of Denmark-Norway for controlling the Baltics versus the Swedish while also a one with the Sultanate of Ternate for controlling Malayan outposts. Britain also created solid and temporary ones with Portugal, other continental states as it did in the Napoleonic Wars, or with other regional powers like Japan against the Russian Empire and with Oman for controlling the Persian Gulf.
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With these characteristics both Swedish control over the Baltic in the 17th Century and Dutch and British control could be accepted as a maritime hegemony. But as sea control is a relative concept, its hegemony was also one that relative in time, space, and extent. Then what separates the Swedish or Ottoman Empire’s maritime hegemony from the Dutch, British, and American one? Raoul Castex defined the concept of ‘preponderance’, which is different from traditional sea control, where a nation could hold a maritime region for a considerable time with geographical advantage. (Castex, 2017, p. 284) The hegemons that this research covered was not the ones with preponderance, or who obtains power via nature, but the ones who obtain the power at the expense of nature.
Hegemons were tending to be classified as benevolent and coercive according to the characteristics and systems that they created. This definition could be extended for both global and regional hegemons. ‘A benevolent hegemon is a state that has clear public good dimension with an inclusive pattern.’ (Destradi, 2010, p. 914) Both Britain and the US pushed the concept of freedom of navigation as the backbone of their maritime hegemony. In the era of extensive British control of the seas in the 18th Century, piracy in the world has experienced the end of its golden age where seas experienced relative safety. But hegemony is also closely related to power, no benevolent hegemon could be safe without coercive power. The fall of Ming China as a maritime hegemon was also an example of a sole-benevolent hegemon without power that could be weak in its nature. As we underlined until here when a state rises as a great power, it tries to retake its shores as both safety and security of that state starts from the seas that surround it. All maritime hegemons since the 17th Century employed coercive hegemony hand to hand with a benevolent one.
The US, just like its predecessors, is a maritime hegemon that has both benevolent and coercive sides. Washington, since the Presidential term of Woodrow Wilson, implied the principle of freedom of navigation as the backbone of its relationship with the sea. Current American maritime strategy still stresses the importance of the open seas while simultaneously warning that the condition is, now, ‘in a risk’. (US Navy, 2020, p. 1) The US still leads a huge coalition of nations with post-modern navies that work with the modern US Navy from Europe to Asia. The US also took extensive part in counter-piracy, smuggling, and migrant operations in various seas while also supporting the universal agreements for protecting the environment at sea. US President Biden, in 2021, again emphasized ‘the importance of freedom of the navigation for Washington’ in a phone call with Xi Jinping. (The White House, 2021) But even since the Cold War, the US continued to use coercive hegemony to deny challenging powers to defy the American interests.
In the Cuban Missile Crisis, Washington employed a blockade against Cuba and to the USSR to deny any attempt to locate missiles on the island. Castex himself underlined that once one side of the belligerent has control of the seas, ‘even how much private possessions has sanctity, it will violate it for
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its interests’. (Castex, 2017, p. 40) The US, like other hegemons, denied the freedom of navigation of Iraq in the Iraqi War, North Korea, and Iran in crisis to protect its interests. Like all maritime hegemons, the latest American Maritime Strategy also show a similar position ‘to impose military and economic charge to any challenger with controlling or denying them via sea’. (US Navy, 2020, p. 13) As Mahan underlined, with the American open-up after the Second World War and public support to prevent a new war, the US and its navy become seaward and outward-looking. (Mahan A. T., 1890) Today, the US is a maritime hegemon with both benevolent and coercive hegemonic tendencies. This part will go deeper into the character and current status of this hegemony.
5.1) American Maritime Hegemony and Naval Identity Since the 1970s
The mere existence of the US Grand Strategy has become a contested issue. While some scholars tried to bury it, some tried to emphasize the importance of reviving it. Drezner, Krebs, and Schweller underlined that Washington is now in an age where ‘decentralization’ and ‘incrementalism’ would be the main tenets of the US GS. (Drezner, Krebs, & Schweller, 2020, p. 11) Those terms prioritize the selective engagement and distributing the tasks to both private and allied parties for power saving. But one should be well aware that, if a rival state was now in a bet to challenge the hegemonic one at sea, power-saving would eventually fall short. As Chinese GS becomes more ambitious in all senses and has a will to achieve a positive aim, an American one based on selective engagement with decentralization will miserably fell-short. Ikenberry emphasized that the American GS in East Asia has developed ‘hand-to-hand with security and economics’. (Ikenberry, 2014, p. 49) Such a characteristic is still true for the American involvement in the region. But one should be well aware that this reality is also a risky aspect of the issue as both concepts have inner-contradictions among each other. Former President Donald Trump’s efforts to create an economy-based Counter-China strategy were inevitably resisted by a wide array of public and private institutions, whereas, Beijing favoured a unified national front to support its GS.
The US, just like Beijing, had a grand strategy even since 1776 with similar values and interests. What put Washington in this position today, is not because its grand strategy was dead but the perception of it since the start of the Cold War has now died. US GS was focused on ensuring ‘a balance of power in the two oceans that surround the country’. (Ross, 2013, p. 20) Even since the Monroe Doctrine, as a regional power, Washington imposed a similar position in creating neutral seas and friendly land theatre in the Americas. For centuries, the Americas constituted the principal theater for American action. This was first changed by American involvement in Asia where the US now have to protect the entire ocean and cross-oceanic interests with a huge fleet. Two world wars changed and widened this situation again. As American cross-oceanic interests are required to be protected at the beyond of the two oceans and it
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should be permanent. As mobilization due to the world wars harmed and changed American people’s perception, ‘Washington was aware that it has limited resources to stop Communism in the 1950s’. (Gaddis, 1974, p. 391) The introduction of nuclear weapons also pushed both Moscow and Washington to learn new ways of making grand strategies whereas annihilation became an extreme strategy while attrition become longer and more blurred as we see in the containment. However, Cold War signified a change in American GS that was different from what Ross was argued. Brooks, Ikenberry, and Wohlforth underlined that, in addition to the classical balance of power dynamics, ‘promotion of Liberal economic system and leading institutional order’ become the second tenets of the American GS that was per with its values. (Brooks, Ikenberry, & Wohlforth, 2012, p. 11) Different from now, the US did pretty well in achieving its grand strategic goals. Even the catastrophe of the Korean and Vietnam War, when Cold War attrition could be turned to a hot one, Washington achieved to protect its interests against Moscow. The US Navy and its sea control also served much as the ‘American GS was based upon reacting fast against any dangers that could be sourced from the Eurasia’. (Friedman G. , 2015, p. 143)
The 1970s, however, signified a great change in the American GS whereas the Soviets nearly challenged American sea power with Admiral Gorshkov’s reforms. The rising costs of the grand strategy and ill-fated decisions like wars in Vietnam and other crises become even more evident. Hence with the loss of Vietnam, the American GS in Asia achieved to uphold the regional status-quo. Ikenberry tied the success in the East Asian American GS with its ‘bipartisan nature’. (Ikenberry, 2014, p. 51) But even this, one should be aware that the American GS of the Cold War was gravely affected by domestic and even electoral problems. The bipartisanism is not the only source of success but it was combined with chance, as no nation in East Asia wanted or could seriously challenge the US hegemony. President Richard Nixon’s terms signified a great change and shift in the American GS that even today have crucial effects. As the Sino-Soviet split become evident, Washington decided to act to separate Beijing from Moscow as it wanted in the 1950s. The goal of separating China from the USSR was based on attracting good intentions and also favoured the lower development of Beijing when compared with Moscow. The decision, however, signified the postponing of the dual-front Cold War with Beijing and Moscow to focus on one. It also has an extensive public dimension as the American public was highly suspicious due to the growth of the Japanese economic power. Raoul Castex underlined that ‘all strategic decisions have uncertainty in its end and potential bad conditions whereas states choose the one with least bad conditions’. (Castex, 2017, pp. 248-249) Reconciling with China for Nixon compromised the best option available to ease the tensions over the budgetary and economic welfare of the American people. But in the long run, it signified American abdication from the goal of its grand strategy, and selection of a vibrant nationalistically aspired state to balance a militarily passive state like Japan that had grave limitations on its national capabilities. Both Dutch and British, also like the contemporary US, allied
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with England in the 1700s and Imperial Japan in the 1900s against the French and Russian Empires, which in the long run turned to a bigger threat against their hegemony. There is no guarantee that the American values will protect it from experiencing the fate of the Dutch and British hegemonic order. It is not the exceptionality of American values that produced a successful American GS in East Asia but the dynamics that produced such a regional environment of the time in there that made it successful.
The Cold War ended with American and Western victory due to the own weaknesses of the Soviet Union and partially due to American peaceful attrition GS. The US, even as a unipolar hegemon, again called the continuation of its grand strategic goal to block any power to control Eurasia. US Maritime Strategy of the From the Sea also showed a similar position which gave the task to the US Navy ‘to ensure no power to challenge American order at sea’. (Friedman G. , 2015, p. 123) Washington, now, had full capacity to control the events on the land by showing power projection from the sea. In line with expanding the American hegemony against rogue states like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya and China’s skilful strategy of keeping low, Washington was now on a path for imperial overextension. This put the scarce resources of the Americans in a danger. China had the full leverage of the one that the US had after its Civil War against Britain to steadily develop its power without clear hegemonic interruption. Graham Alisson underlined that ‘the US could exploit the possibility of taking regime change initiative in China’. (Allison, 2018, p. 224) It was clear that with Nixon’s recognition and American over-expansion in the Middle East, Washington missed the opportunity to imply a regime change in Beijing just like Britain in the American Civil War. The US could not engage in a regime change operation against Beijing without Chinese domestic reasoning. As Washington could not have achieved it in an age of power from the sea, it is even harder when China is preparing to secure its seas. It is also important to remind that even with a regime change in the USSR, only in twenty years, with nationalist aspirations Russia again developed a strong opposition to the US. American acknowledgment of the end of the era of power from the sea to a new strategy based on power at sea also shows a similar pattern. Different from the 1990s, the US was now well aware that it failed to achieve preventing the emergence of a potential hegemonic power in Eurasia in an age of power from the sea. The US, just like the Dutch and British, is now a hegemonic power with a necessity to develop a grand strategy based on negative aims where it has to protect the neutrality of the seas. After seventy years, the US again entered a period where American GS was in on the course to select between a coercive hegemony of annihilation or attrition when the American public is not want to choose either. Whether they prefer or not the necessity of selection will have a great impact upon the US naval identity.
Another theory on the American GS in Asia was again forwarded by Ikenberry who defined it from the concept of ‘deep engagement’. (Ikenberry, 2014, p. 50) A deep engagement for safeguarding the American-led order necessitates the active involvement of Washington in political, economic, and
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security affairs in the region. He underlined that the American deep engagement in East Asia should endure but the US should find a way to ‘simultaneously limit and integrate China to the world system.’ (Ikenberry, 2014, p. 44) Current American efforts to continue and broaden forwardly deploying American power at the region also show similar characteristic. Brooks, Ikenberry, and Wolhforth warned over possible ‘entrapment’ in the American GS due to rising costs in engaging simultaneous rivalry within the various fields and theatres, who also underlined the necessity of avoiding unnecessary wars. (Brooks, Ikenberry, & Wohlforth, 2012, p. 29) It would be an interesting example to see whether the US could achieve to compete with China without too much resorting to a showing of hard military power when its economic and political influence is in a relative decline.
As this research primarily focused on the grand strategies’ impacts upon the maritime strategy, it will also approach Ikenberry’s approach from this perspective. His definition for the American goal of simultaneously limiting and integrating China into the system is overreaching. Such kind of integration has been based upon the continuation of the belief of the exceptionality of American values that would bound China who has an entirely different set of values, interests, and identities. The definition that we created for maritime hegemony is also closely related to his arguments of deep engagement. As Washington is a far-away hegemonic power, it needs enormous maritime power to continue the deep engagement. Besides having power, it also needs the acceptance of the regional states to fulfil its role. Contrary to Japan and South Korea and the historical position of isolationist China, now, Beijing did not share its consent to share or give the maritime hegemony to the US without a war or an agreement. An American belief in integrating China into the world will inevitably necessitate a change of the maritime system or change of Chinese values. It is clear that China is in no position to give up its territorial interests and values like sovereignty; for now, the US is also not willing to change the maritime order for a shared one. Ikenberry defined the current Asian strategic outlook as an ‘unusual dual-hierarchy’ of economic and strategic poles. (Ikenberry, 2014, p. 57) Such a kind of dual-hierarchy is unusual because it is a temporary one, and it is clear that the sea resembles this dual-hierarchy and possible end of the deep engagement if the US would not remain powerful enough to impose it.
The primary focus of this research was based on understanding rising naval power’s naval identities. When it came to the hegemonic ones, the identities change with different characteristics and strategies from the rising ones. Almost all naval hegemons see and tie their hegemonic system and power extensively with their maritime and naval power. The US was in no difference from the Dutch, British, and even from Ming China in the relationship between its identity and navy. Hegemonic naval identities attribute their navies both offensive power to create favourable outcomes and also symbolic power to convince the other littoral states. The fleet of Ming China in the era of Zheng He has no difference when compared with Western ones, even it did not engage in a war, like others. What Washington differed
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from the Dutch and British was due that it was once a continental state whose survival was not tightly connected with the sea. Also, Friedman argued that Washington was in a different position when compared with London as ‘in both geographical and quantitative scale American maritime hegemony is costlier than the British one’. (Friedman G. , 2015, p. 126) However, the same could not be accepted true for now. Mahan warned that if the US will too-much focus on a single theatre, it would be inevitable that it will ‘face the fate of Rome when Carthage bided against their country in front of the walls of the city’. (Mahan A. T., 1890) Just like Athens, Dutch, and Britain, the US, accepted the sea as the first line of defence while its navy was the ultimate carrier of the American flag and guarantor of the system that favoured it.
Another dynamic that affects American naval identity and its impact upon the strategy and power is the values of the US. American grand strategy and foreign policy were defined from the basis of the American exceptionality. American policymakers and the public were framed themselves as a moral force of the world with exceptional institutions and excessive belief in freedom. But Stephan Walt warned that ‘the myth of American exceptionality has no difference with the other patriotic views in the world.’ (Walt, 2011) However, this exceptionality is so powerful that it even shows itself at sea in both civilian and military terms. During the 19th Century, the Government and people of the US ‘accepted the maritime power as an instrument to spread civilization’. (Ross, 2018, p. 27) Even Mahan himself underlined a similar position in the Spanish-American War. He claimed that the US, in addition to its strategic interests, ‘fought for moral reasons where Cuba was under the suffer of Spain’. (Mahan A. T., 2013, p. 275) It is clear that the latest American Maritime Strategy ensures the will of Washington to continue the exceptional morality that it had at sea since World War II. The document defined ‘China and Russia’s naval growth and modernization as aggressive and tasked the US Navy to protect the national interests via securing an advantage at sea.’ (US Navy, 2020, p. 5)
US strategic culture is also affected by this exceptional thinking. From the American Civil War to the Second World War, American strategies were settled over the concept of unconditional surrender. The reason that Imperial Japan failed to rightly assess the American naval identity before Pearl Harbour was related to this principle. President Roosevelt successfully mobilized the American public by using this exceptional view of the nation. Ever since the 19th Century, it was no coincidence that Mahanian values like the decisive battle for achieving total sea control were widely accepted by the US. The end of the Cold War means neutralization of the US Navy’s ratio for searching for a decisive battle and an unconditional surrender. Even this, the Gulf and 2003 Iraqi War also revealed the abnormal continuity of such kind of tradition. Recent American strategy also underlines that with the rise of contested waters, US Navy should ‘renew the emphasis on sea control and freedom of manoeuvre’. (US Navy, 2020, p. 6) Since the Korean War, the American view of the exceptionality of the sea create another problem. As
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the US achieved sea control near the Korean Seas without a war, some commanders see ‘the command of the seas as Washington’s exceptional destiny’. (Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 250) It is a clear wrong understanding to believe that the US like the Dutch, British, and even Chinese, is not exceptionally a maritime hegemon. Not only in strategic terms, in civilian terms Washington has much to do if it wants to exceptionally control the seas.
All previous maritime hegemons, both the Dutch, the British, and even Ming China, have excessive civilian use of the seas. As we witnessed in the case of the Dutch and the British emerging colonial companies steadily funded the hegemony of two states. Mahan indicated that ‘trade push people to take riskier and potentially costly decisions to protect their profits’. (Mahan A. T., 2013, p. 60) Even this, no nation is exceptional for endless power to sustain a civilian maritime identity. Castex underlined this contrary Mahanian reality as his country always faced ‘problems of great maritime limitations’. Primarily in democratic states politicians usually could not create long-term plans, that China is now proliferating, as both ‘politicians and public have a shortage of both technical and moral knowledge’. (Castex, 2017, p. 251) As the maritime sector increasingly privatized and its profits were distanced from the lower classes of taxpayers, both Dutch and British people in the long-run lose their ability and will to support it. The Chinese case was even worse as the imperial plan on treasure fleets found no support from the rural population. The latest American strategy boldly underlined that ‘the US is a maritime nation’ whereas ‘the sea supports 5.4$ trillion of the American commerce and 31 million jobs in the US’. (US Navy, 2020, p. 3) However, the rhetoric is not enough since actions were more important to sustain a maritime hegemony.
‘The US Government in both pre-WWI and pre-WWII period extensively created alliances with private companies to support its merchant marine build-up as American civilian industry is in no position to compete with global ones’. (McMahon, 2021, p. 86) But the US system, like Castex argued, faced a chronic problem of state limitations and a challenging economic system that sees public support as a malevolent thing. Whereas every costly attempt by the US to create a merchant marine was hit hard by global crisis and rivalries as the public-private relationship is not eager to develop as we seed in Dutch, Britain, and even in current China. While the current situation is worse as ‘the American tax-payers are less and less voluntarily backs the state for constructing complex and costly ships’. (McMahon, 2021, p. 87) Whereas foreign leasing from Europe and Asia is cheaper when compared with supporting the domestic industries. ‘In 2019, the US had just 182 US-flagged merchant marine ships that constitute only 0,4% of the world.’ (Bureau of Transportation, 2019) There is no major American container transporting company in the top fifteen of the world’s biggest container firms when compared with the growing market share of China.
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Not only in terms of ship-ownership, but the ship-building capacity of the US also experiencing significant problems. Between 2010 and 2016, American shipyards averagely ‘build five ships whereas China started its quest to overtake the world shipbuilding industry’. (Klein, 2015; McMahon, 2021, p. 87) A crisis in civilian industries would eventually harm the US Navy in a possible war as American naval ships were highly qualitative and sophisticated and could not easily be built by foreign or smaller private ones. US Government Accountability Office warned that the US shipbuilding industry faces the ‘lack of a doctrine, an unclear control and command, and a shortage of repair capacity in a possible naval conflict.’ (Fuentes, 2021) Given the situation on the shore, the navy is also well aware of the problem of the availability of its surface vessels in an advent crisis. The latest effort by them to mitigate this problem is also significant to mention. The US Navy will hold a closer eye on the remaining shipbuilding industry as a ‘national asset’ and closely monitor the ‘health’ of them and their suppliers. (US Navy, 2021, p. 9) Even with these recent efforts the American effort to revive the shipbuilding industry, they are still far from having a coherent road map and a political solution that could support the technical one. Not only in terms of shipbuilding, but American seafarers today also are not among the world’s top-seafaring nations. As the Department of Transportation underlined ‘between 1970 to 2009 American seafarers downed from 69,100 to 20,500’. (Matsuda, 2010) Even the latest American strategy has a clear Mahanian message, neither its content nor its implementation is as grand as Mahan expected. In 1914, in an article, he underlined that ‘if one-day Panama becomes a neutral state, the health of the US fleet concentration would be dependent to the will of that country’. (Mahan A. T., 1914, p. 412) Today, even the Canal is an interesting case that shows the change in the American maritime identity. After the nationalization of the canal, the US today, has ‘limited involvement whereas the ports in both entrances of the Canal was now operated by a Chinese company’. (Fang, 2018; McMahon, 2021, p. 89) Different from the American naval identity, American maritime identity is clearly in a retrench which could in the long run affect the naval one.
As the last question that is concerned with understanding American naval identity, this research will try to answer whether the US is in a hegemonic decline in Asia. It will not focus on the entirety of the US hegemony since it would be too wide on this topic. The declining American hegemony was becoming one of the buzzwords of the Century as emergent powers raised as potential challengers for Washington. However, as we see in the historical cases, a hegemonic power’s decline could not mean the decline of it at sea or in a particular region. Whereas even the British was in decline vis-à-vis the US, it’s navy and strength against Germany was not. As many of the rising powers initiated wrong-timed quests for regional and maritime hegemony, understanding the current status of the US hegemony in Asia is crucial.
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Hegemony could be divided into four different dimensions which did not decline in equal terms and simultaneously. The American economic hegemony started to decline vis-à-vis Asia even since the 1980s. The Chinese GDP was at the ‘0,3 trillion$ in 1985’ which raised to ‘14,7 trillion$ in 2020 whereas Beijing narrowed the gap of 10 trillion$ in 2008 to 6 trillion$’. (Cheng & Lee, 2021) After President Trump decided to withdraw from multilateral trade agreements, Washington was now out of the Asian trade blocks like Trans-Pacific Partnership. Even after the excessive attempts to stabilize the trade, China favoured ‘310 billion$ of positive trade deficit vis-à-vis the US in 2020 which was raised from the negative 6 billion$ in 1985’. (US Census Bureau, 2021) While the retrenchment in the political dimension was just a development since the 2010s. Washington, today, has problematic relations with its old allies in the region like Pakistan, Philippines and still limited ones with former non-aligned South Asian states. China with its excessive Belt and Road Initiative and its ambitious diplomatic strength has increased its overall relationship with many of the regional states. Different from the economy, American retrenchment in terms of politics is less obvious as Washington still has a considerable political reputation in the continent. In terms of cultural or soft hegemony, the US suffered much in the Asian perceptions. In Japan, the positive image of the US was fell to ‘41% in 2020 from 77% in 2000’, whereas the rates in South Korea declined to ‘59% from an 80% in 2018’, in Australia to ‘33% from 66% in 2013’. (Wike & Janell Fetterolf, 2020) American withdrawal from Afghanistan, military bases problems in Okinawa, Japan, and the Chinese initiative to mediate inter-Korean relations crucially damaged the American image as a stable and credible ally. Stephen Walt underlined that as a regional power becomes more and more powerful, ‘the other powers in the region tend to appease and bandwagon with the proximate power’. (Walt, 1985, p. 17) Beijing, with its sky-rocketing capabilities, increasingly become a proximate power of Asia when it compared with Washington.
In terms of military and especially naval power, the same argument could not be accepted. Since the US’ Pivot to Asia policy, Washington decided ‘to relocate six of its carriers strike groups and the majority of its submarine forces to the Asia-Pacific’. (Ross, 2013, p. 26) The US now continues to expand its bases across the continent. Washington expanded its US Marine base in Darwin, Australia whereas other traditional bases like Guam, Philippines, Japan, and one in the Diego Garcia see huge development. Also in terms of maritime coalitions, Washington engaged in new coalitions with the UK and Australia as AUKUS that focused on submarine development and the Quad Initiative that includes major regional powers like Japan, India, and Australia. As American-Russian rivalry increasingly developed on the basis of a traditional nuclear deterrence path rather than a naval one, the US now has the real chance to make Asia-Pacific its principal naval theatre. Ross underlined that, unlike Britain, ‘Washington does not need self-restraint to give up its maritime hegemony in the Pacific’. (Ross, 2018,
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p. 36) Any Chinese strategy and move will now undertake under the clear reconnaissance of the US as Britain did against the German Empire in the early 1900s.
5.2) Current American Naval Strategy in the Asia-Pacific Region
American naval strategy in the Asia-Pacific region was grounded on some unchanged principles since the Second World War. As the geographical status-quo changed less in the region compared with the Atlantic and Mediterranean theatres, the Asia-Pacific region was characterized as a stable military theatre for Washington. However, the rise of China in line with the total economic and political rise of the continent since the 1970s has changed this reality. Moore defined the concept of pivot as ‘a change in the path of a state’s strategy’. (Moore, 2017, p. 3) In terms of naval strategy, the Pacific turned as the principal theater for the US Navy since the Obama Administration. Even this, making a workable and ambitious naval strategy to control Asian waters is not easy as China is a ‘home team’ while the US is in an ‘away game’. (Haddick, 2014, p. 203) Being a home team allows China to profit from the preponderance of geographical proximity to theatre against the US. An away game requires constant forward-deployed preparedness of the forces which needs extensive budgetary allocation from the public funds. This part will not extensively focus on the already well-discussed unchanging principles in the American naval strategy in Asia. Instead, it will first define how these principles affected Washington’s relations and perceptions towards Beijing and the current efficiency of these concepts. Then it will try to address the capacity of the latest American Maritime Strategy to respond to changing dynamics and risks in the Asia-Pacific region.
The island chains that we talked about in the part of China takes an important role in the current American naval strategy. The history of the strategic value of these islands originated from Western strategic thought and historical experiences. American Generals and Admirals in WWII has experienced the hardships of seizing the islands against Imperial Japan with high costs. Front deployments on existing islands for projecting power through the Asian mainland constituted a great advantage for Washington. ‘Former US State Secretary Dulles emphasized that the loss of Taiwan will mean a breach in island-chain that will utterly end the balancing in the Pacific.’ (Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 76) The island chains for the US consist of three different sets of island chains. The first one was started from the Sakhalin to Natuna Islands, the Second was started from the Aleutian Island that extends to Guam and Palau, while the last one was started from Alaska that stretches to Hawaii and New Zealand. Historically, the first island chain was served for the tactical needs of the US Navy like area-denial, expeditionary deployment, and reconnaissance, whereas, the Second one was considered for strategic ones like supply and long-range bombing. Rhodes underlined that, now, the Second Island Chain has increasing importance as it was serving as ‘cloud islands’ which could ‘support exposed first-chain bases
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with profoundly loaded bombers and intermediate-range missiles’. (Rhodes, 2019, p. 49) As Beijing focused on A2/AD within the First Island Chain, the US continues to develop the Second one as a one for strategic deterrence that protects the First one from distance. In 2021, Washington started a modernization program for the base in Guam which includes stationing Iron Dome Air Defence System on the island. (Associated Press, 2021) The extensive American build-up in the Second Island Chain also affects the perception of Beijing, whereas, the excessive deployment of A2/AD forces by China become degraded. Guam now turned into an island-in-being which potentially threatens the Chinese dream from the distance. As aware of this danger, China also created extensive preventive strike plans against the heart of the Second Island Chain, the island of Guam. In 2020, ‘a PLAAF propaganda video shared a simulated attack to Guam’ which created an extensive reaction from the public. (Reuters, 2020)
While the future and value of the First Island Chain also constitute great importance. As China increasingly focuses on A2/AD capacity in those islands, the American position also becomes problematic. Castex underlined that ‘technology could offer a state to overcome the problem of geography in one way’, but still the same technology would put it in a vulnerable position due to its already disadvantageous geography. (Castex, 2017, p. 271) In response, Washington increasingly re-fortify this island chain with similar capabilities. Andrew Krepinevich underlined in an important research that covered allied US-Japan regional security architecture. His report emphasized ‘an Archipelagic Defence which created by Japanese and America deployment of counter-area-denial capabilities which could be extended to Philippines and Vietnam’. (Krepinevich, 2017, p. 87) The concept was focused on strengthening the US position in an eventual first strike by the Chinese forces which will allow the American allies to wait and concentrate with forces provided by the Second Island Chain. Some experts share their criticisms against the dependency on these island chains, as they are not crucial at all. Christian Whiton claimed that Taiwan is not a ‘liability’ for the US that could Washington risk a Third World War, whereas, Taipei could ‘hold at their own feet’ against China. (Whiton, 2021) The American guarantee for Taipei is a crucial one to hold the promises of American assurance to the other regional allies, whereas, the loss of the First Island Chain will retreat the US to Guam which will turn it to a quasi-Asian power. This research also revealed, when a hegemonic power loss its geographical advantage it will need to rely on its fleet where a single defeat will mean an end for the hegemony as happened in the Peloponnesian and Russo-Japanese War. The island-chain strategy of the US increasingly turned out as a one for strategical deterrence, but its reliability is still exceedingly dependent upon the continuity of the commitments and will of Washington for providing support to this costly deployment.
The warnings of Mahan and the American experience of Pearl Harbour still constitute an important basis of American naval strategy in the Pacific. The US Navy serves for rapidly responding to a threat that
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could source from Asia, whereas, the sea constitutes a lifeline for American defence architecture. In a Congressional hearing, legendary US Admiral Chester Nimitz defined the role of the navy as ‘keep the war away from the home.’ (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1961, p. 907) Today, the US Navy carries the majority of the American efforts of forward-deployment both in supply and fire-power. Washington have ‘one aircraft carrier, two amphibious assault ships, 12 surface vessels, and ten submarines’ which was not enough to impose a costly defeat to Beijing. (Shelbourne, 2021) But different from the period of WWII, American forward-deployment increasingly focused on providing deterrence. Yoshihara and Holmes defined American forward-deployment in the Cold War as ‘tripwire forces’ which did not position for winning a war but to guarantee the deterrence. (Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 304) China increasingly focusing on killer-mace capabilities against a carrier strike group. But one should be aware that the loss of a forward-deployed strike group will not mean loss of the will to engage in a naval war. This deployment also has a significant political value. Krepinevich underlined that the US and its allies should continue to forwardly deploy their forces ‘to avert Beijing to push regional states for bandwagoning with it’. (Krepinevich, 2017, p. 49) As conditions changed in the Asia-Pacific, whereas, the PLAN become a modern and effective fighting force, the US forward-deployment also started to grow. But Krepinevich warned that an increase in forward-deployment by the US and allies will end with ‘a decrease of the deterrent power of the deployment as it is now focused on showing power at sea rather than vice-versa’. (Krepinevich, 2017, p. 57) The reason and structure of forward-deployment were so important that they directly had an impact upon the relationship between rising and hegemonic power. Whereas both unintentional Athenian forward-deployment and intentional British one against the Germans led the process that advanced to a war. Now, Washington, who focused on a pivot to Asia has to define the main purpose of its forward deployment which is crucially related to other factors.
The last concept that we will focus on will be the doctrine of the Air-Sea Battle. It was an important concept that gave the US the flexibility to plan a military victory in two domains. Even it focusses on decisive victory, its limitations to two domains of the sea and air gave the US Navy to engage in limited operations in the Pacific. The Pentagon defined the concept in 2013 as ‘providing networked and integrated warfare capabilities between various operational commands and concepts’. (Air Sea Battle Office, 2013, p. 4) As the command of the seas become wider with the latest expansion with the inclusion of space, electromagnetic spectrum, and cyber domains. Again, Pentagon emphasized the doctrine ‘to pursue deep-strike against enemies’ strategic targets to deny the enemy freedom of manoeuvre with various conventional and unconventional forces’. (Air Sea Battle Office, 2013, p. 6) The concept itself, like the 1980s Maritime Strategy, focused on a total victory against possible aggression [in this case against Beijing] which is not realistic under the nuclear umbrella. John T. Hanley underlined that the concept ‘gave the exercise of command to the higher service commands rather than autonomously to
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combatant commanders and to provide active support to allied forces’. (Hanley, 2014, p. 24) The concept was an important one since it gave the ultimate ratio for deterring Beijing by providing bases to escalate the war to a bigger one. However, the concept takes huge reaction from China as it made the ‘first-strike’ as unavoidable one that could easily escalate the crisis due to problematic offensive and defensive intentions at sea. (Moore, 2017, pp. 10-11) In 2015, the concept was re-designed by the Pentagon which made it more ambitious and riskier to implement. The name of the concept was dropped ‘while the land and C5ISR dimensions were included in the concept’ to address Chinese decision to employ theatre commands to manage maritime conflicts. (LaGrone, 2015) An inflexible doctrine like the 1980s Maritime Strategy would cripple American hands in a crisis as Chinese maritime strategy and identity are much dynamic and complex than the Soviet one.
Until here, this research analysed the existing concept of American naval strategy. Yoshihara and Holmes underlined that ‘every American maritime strategy that based on post-Mahanian principles was succeeded by a Mahanian-one’. (Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, p. 250) The latest American maritime strategy, Advantage at Sea, was published in December 2020. We mentioned the document in various parts and occasions of this research. The document could be accepted as an awaited full-Mahanian strategy, while thirty years later, Washington used the ‘at sea’ rather than the concept of the ‘from the sea.’ But the document was relatively shorter as it addressed some issues and problems. The document is limited in its arguments and expectations as it did not have the aptitude to stress contemporary problems at Asia-Pacific and also at home. The last section of this part will try to underline possible political, technical, and domestic risks that the US faces in implementing its maritime strategy and its effects on Sino-American relations.
Alliances constitute an important dynamic that affects the relationship between rising and hegemonic power. They have a crucial impact upon creating war as we witnessed in the cases of the Peloponnesian War and WWI, whereas, alliances like NATO and the Warsaw Pact were more stable due to the advent influence of ideology and nuclear primacy. As the US in an away game within the Pacific, maritime alliances signify great importance. US Maritime Strategy underlined that ‘a robust and global maritime alliances will serve as an enduring advantage’ against the rivals. (US Navy, 2020, p. 21) Not only in practical terms, but the US should also continue to have stable allies to provide political conformity that will support its maritime hegemony. Edward Luttwak, however, has warned that ‘a forward deployment and latent naval suasion could be a black check for regional allies.’ (Luttwak, 1985, p. 97) The majority of the scholars underlined that what pushed Sparta and Britain to a war with their rising opponents was crucially linked with alliance dynamics. In conformity with the already existing examples, maritime alliances in Asia has huge territorial and geographical dimension. Allison offered negotiating a ‘long peace’ with China could be a solution to avert a war. (Allison, 2018, p. 227) As negotiations based upon
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relative gains and compromises, American maritime alliances make such a solution problematic. The US should have to support its allies in the crisis in the ECS and Taiwan to block the Chinese initiatives to retake regional waters. While for the crises in the SCS same could already be late, as China secured its position and turned them to a negative aim, whereas, a blank-check would mean a war in not favouring conditions. Washington should well define its red-lines to its allies to avoid possible escalations in a scenario of territorial crisis. But it should not refrain from supporting allies as the lack of them will mean the lack of American presence and legitimacy in the region. Dibb warned that the uncertainty in the American policies could ‘fray’ the existing alliance structure in the region. (Dibb, 2001, p. 37) Such kind of retrenchment from the commitments could lead to the disruption of the balance of power politics in the Pacific. Washington should share the burden with allied forces by helping and encouraging them to develop and modernize its defence posture on their feet to support their geographical claims. Castex warned that maritime coalitions are ‘not idyll but based on temporary interests’ but a possible end of it with policies could also mean the end of the strategy. (Castex, 2017, p. 217) The US should continue its intense peace-time conversations with its allies to protect its strategy from the internal swings of the American policy.
Both the whole maritime domain and the Asia-Pacific region witnessed huge technical changes. Castex harmonised the fall of the British hegemony with the ‘growing complexity of the maritime domain with the emergence of submarines and aircrafts’ that made London’s conventional dependency to surface fleet problematic. (Castex, 2017, p. 57) The fall of Carthage’s and Spain’s maritime hegemony was also crucially tied with the changing technical conditions. This section will give three examples that both the American supreme command structure and the US Navy should deal with to successfully compete with China. Castex warned that one should be beware of ‘mental laziness’ when making an ‘abstract strategy’ in the changing conditions. (Castex, 2017, p. 21) As current American strategy also has an abstract conception of showing power at sea, the strategy makers and implementers should be aware of the risks of the new maritime era.
The Cold War has seemed like an anomaly of great power rivalry as strategy and military balance were defined under the advent of nuclear weapons. Such nature of American-Soviet rivalry based upon ideological divergences based on a balance of terror had a different kind of strategic thought. This problem was defined by the very nature of the Soviet Union who is primarily dependent upon the existence of nuclear weapons and deterrence. Current Sino-American relations, however, constitute a different kind of relationship. The latest American Maritime Strategy only mentioned the branch’s role in nuclear deterrence in the pages of annexes. The document underlined that ‘the navy will continue to modernize the deterrent platforms and C3 to provide nuclear deterrence in any scenario.’ (US Navy, 2020, p. 22) The document is significant when it is compared with the previous ones as nuclear
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deterrence had a minimal place when it compared with other aspects of naval power. Even this, the US continues to arm itself with both high and low-yield nuclear capabilities and firepower. US Navy announced its plan ‘to procure Zumwalt-class stealth destroyers with hypersonic intermediate-range missiles’ which will turn the ship into a surface deterrent platform that cooperates with Columbia-class submarines. (Trevithnick, 2021) Such kind of development will convert billion-dollar worth super destroyers to modern-day gunboats that have limited use. The American focus on the value of nuclear weapons should be determined by the degree of the Chinese focus on the value of nuclear deterrence. China uses the ‘no-first-use principle combined with a minimal deterrence where Beijing will limitedly employ nuclear power to counter a possible nuclear attack that will put its survival in danger’. (Xia, 2016) Washington should take the Cuban Missile Crisis and the ill-fate of Moscow’s situation in the crisis to close examination. If the US would not protect its asymmetrical naval advantage vis-à-vis Beijing and limits its political manoeuvrability to nuclear deterrence, it will fall in a vulnerable position in the regional crises. 2018 Nuclear Posture Review of the US underlined that Washington, now, ‘has strategical nuclear build-up based upon extended nuclear deterrence with bilateral agreements’. (Department of Defence, 2018, p. 37) Both strategy makers and the US Navy should continue to create alternative non-nuclear approaches like a new flexible response as the Pacific is currently evolving to a theatre where non-nuclear limited conflicts could occur.
China’s use of the Maritime Militia and employment of the Cabbage Strategy creates an important unique example for hegemonic and rising power relationships. The militia’s movements were ‘planned in Provincial Military Affairs Meetings’ which create a fusion of civil, local, and central military affairs. (McDevitt, 2020, p. 228) This unique control and command system provide great grey zone capabilities to China. Krepinevich warned that ‘Chinese ambitions to engage in grey zone warfare will eventually harm the Archipelagic Defence’s deterrence ability due to the ambivalent threshold of escalation’. (Krepinevich, 2017, p. 99) But it also constitutes an important danger as the US did not practice how to control the maritime escalations that include civilian and non-military features. Harassment of the USNS Impeccable by Chinese militia-fisherman under the command of the provincial and State Oceanic Administration in 2009 surfaced the risk of this issue. Since 2009, Washington take little progress in countering the Chinese maritime grey zone activities. The American Maritime Strategy enforced and tasked the US Coast Guard to ‘undertake global missions against illegal maritime claims which expanded to respond to the dangers with non-lethal tools in the crisis’. (US Navy, 2020, pp. 11-12) Washington has to continue developing alternative scenarios and extensive partnerships with regional allies to learn and counter the Chinese militia’s attempts to secure the strategic manoeuvres of the PLAN and Beijing. Whereas, it should draw absolute red-lines in several theatres like the ECS and Taiwan to limit the seizure of the upper hand by Beijing without firing a shot.
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Both Chinese capabilities and the world witnessed some serious developments in weapon and control and command systems. One of them was the extensive use of artificial intelligence in maritime platforms and weapons. Beijing develops autonomous surface and sub-surface ‘intelligent’ platforms that employ different degrees of self-operation. (Kania, 2019, p. 13) AI constitutes an important part of the Chinese military thinking as this technology could level American technological supremacy. AI gives PLAN the opportunity of conducting simultaneous high-speed and complex operations that could create a shock in the rival navies and forces. (Matsumoto M. N., 2019, p. 14) The US Navy also gave similar importance in ensuring the needs of balancing the Beijing in the matters of AI. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday underlined that ‘the unmanned vehicles will constitute 60% of the US Navy in the 2030s’. (Chief of Naval Operations Public Affairs, 2021) Both Washington and Beijing make much in creating intelligent ships and weapons which would eventually start a new kind of naval race and balance with less stable and less-human controlled dimensions.
Another technological risk is the re-widening of the notion of sea control to new domains like outer space, electromagnetic spectrum (EMS), and cyberspace. China increasingly ‘employ outer space surveillance and communication capabilities to counter the US advantage at sea’. (Qi, 2006, p. 63) Whereas, the US Navy should strive for the dominance of both information and electro-magnetic domain either in space or at land within cyberspace. As cyberspace and attacks constitute risks of unknowns and American perception over Beijing’s cyber-intentions were already worse, a naval escalation due to cyberspace is not a far-reaching problem but a real one. US Navy’s Cyber Power Report underlined that the opponents of the Navy could employ ‘advanced persistent threats’ (APT) within a larger A2/AD network. (US Navy, 2012, p. 2) Such kind of threat underlines the possibility of a crisis-time information blockade against the US Navy which would eventually turn the ships and connected platforms into blind-eye that push them to stand alone in an open sea of conflict within a far-away theatre. Such kind of blinding of the US Navy ships in Asia would eventually mean the loss of all technological advantages that will allow Chines A2/AD capabilities to hunt them one by one. Navy announced ‘the branch’s full participation in the Integrated All-Domain Warfare and Joint All-Domain Control and Command Systems (JADC2) concepts’. (US Navy, 2020, p. 17) Such concepts have tasked the Navy to support other branches while carrying out its missions, whereas, proliferating from the all-domain C5ISR network would give the navy the resilience. One should be aware that these concepts are still not mature and have a long process to determine the necessary guidelines and capabilities to support the branches. In 2021, US General John Hyten warned that in an exercise US military failed to achieve its long-awaited concept of ‘information dominance’ against a possible opponent with aggressive methods. (Copp, 2021) The US Navy, like all other branches, was far from achieving what was called information dominance.
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As the notion of sea control is increasingly tied with controlling the information and EMS domains, things become complex than ever.
US Navy also undertake a defensive role against the rising missile threats by Beijing. As Beijing increasingly fortifies its missile arsenal with developing means, the freedom of the navigation environment in the Asia-Pacific also becomes problematic. PLAN’s long-range anti-ship cruise missile ‘YJ-18 with a range of 290 nautical miles could unbridle a threat for the US ships which was even out of the range of the naval manoeuvre zone’. (Yoshihara & Holmes, 2018, pp. 160-161) US Navy employs new air-defence missiles that could engage with both cruise and ballistic missiles. Even with this, the development of hypersonic missiles and steady indoctrination of them negatively connate the US Navy’s developing defensive capabilities. Navy’s SM-6 air defence missile, contrary to the first test, ‘failed in its second test to intercept a ballistic missile’ which would eventually put American efforts to boost the missile against hypersonic glide missiles. (Reuters, 2021) The US Navy should introduce necessary programs to meet rising Chinese missile capabilities, which will eventually fasten the process of the naval arms race between two countries.
Not only in terms of technical details, but the US Maritime Strategy also has some same grave problems that are sourced from domestic and economic constraints. In 2012, Pew Research showed that only ‘28% of the 52% of the Americans see China as a military threat’. (Haddick, 2014, p. 204) Those domestic perceptions and political problems in the American Maritime Strategy did not cover in the latest document as the US military has a strong principle to not involve in political matters. The document only underlined that the branch’s will to have ‘greater stability and predictability in the future budgets’. (US Navy, 2020, p. 16) Apart from technical problems in the American maritime identity, the US Navy also faces some domestic budgetary issues. Ross warned over a risk of ‘Lippmann Gap’ where Washington could suffer from failure of balancing the costly squandering of resources in Asia. (Ross, 2013, pp. 35-36) For 2022, ‘the US Navy asked for 211.7 billion$ which is a rise from 207.9 billion$ in 2021 but with real inflation, it was a decrease of 2.2%’. (Kenney, 2021) As the COVID-19 pandemic harmed American growth rates and boosted inflation, US Navy would need to compete with other rising branches while the military also has to compete with other civilian branches like health, social security, and simply infrastructure. In 2019, a poll of Gallup revealed that ‘29% of the Americans believe the US spends too much on military’ while ‘43% believe current spending is enough’ to compete with rival powers. (Hicks, 2020) The Navy needs to persuade both the Government and taxpayers to finance such a resource-intensive branch of the military. A public poll in 2014, indicated that ‘the US Navy is the least prestigious branch of the military’ in the eyes of the public which would eventually harm the hands of the Navy to demand more resources. (Larter, 2014) It is a shocking public view for maritime hegemonic states as both Dutch and British examples had a surely different point of view. US Navy
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declared itself as the Nation’s ‘most persistent and versatile manoeuvre force for future challenges’. (US Navy, 2020, p. 21) Both Government and the Navy itself have to prove this in front of the public eyes to answer the problems in American maritime and naval identity.
As we underlined earlier, ideological problems put a huge threat of re-strain over the naval power. This is not different for the hegemonic power. The right-leaning populism of former President Donald Trump also constituted a big problem for Asian commitments. ‘His shocking threat to South Korea and Japan to end security commitments against North Korea without a better economic arrangement take huge reaction from the Asian allies’. (Hancocks, 2016) The opposite side of the political spectrum also constitutes an important issue. Left-leaning Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders heavily underlined the priority of focusing on domestic social and economic problems, in the international ones the issues like climate change and gender equality constituted important dynamics. He defined American commitments to Asian allies as ‘too costly and could not be sustainable in the long-term’. (Friedman U. , 2020) His support from the young Americans put the future military budget and allied support in a problematic position in Asia. Washington should be well aware that current political and social dynamics are highly different from the Cold War period. Asia is much different in social structures and values in terms of Cold War Europe. The American stress on Liberal ideology and democracy could end with the potential alienation of the countries like Vietnam and Singapore. The US should distance its naval power from the contractions and contradictions of ideology to avoid the mistakes of Spartans, Ming China, and the Dutch.
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As we underlined until here, contemporary US naval strategy has some problematic aspects in terms of both continuation of the older concepts while also implementing an abstract strategy in a relatively complex environment. Whereas, some of these issues should be addressed by the navy itself, while some were harder and long-term and should be addressed by policy. Castex underlined that sometimes policies could be ‘conservative’ and ‘defensive’ in the long term, which could be followed by ‘inchoate, uncertain, and changing’ ones, which would end with an ‘incoherence and a lack of direction at strategy’. (Castex, 2017, p. 229) A maritime hegemon could not have a such kind of luxury like as a post-modern navy. US should address the growing incoherence between policy and maritime strategy with deciding a clear path to its grand strategy and should address the domestic issues that constrain Washington to answer the challenges that would pose by China. As Sparta failed, the US, could not have the luxury of ‘selective engagement’ since Chinese GS is a complex one that requires day-to-day competition in various fields. A British-like self-restrainment will also end with a catastrophe to the US. As different from the British abdication from Latin America, the current value of Asia is enormous to ignore. ‘Asia’s share in the world GDP constitutes 50% in 2020’. (Valdai Club, 2020) In line with this economic
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performance, the region is the busiest maritime region in the world where any voluntary self-limitation would mean an abdication from the position of maritime hegemony. The American naval identity in the Asia-Pacific is closely knotted with the existence of American hegemony in the world. It is the position that Washington would choose to defend or to leave which will also end the traditional American balance of power grand strategy which was in practice since WWII.
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6) CHINA AND MARITIME HEGEMON: AVOIDING THUCYDIDES’ TRAP AT SEA
After a long and detailed analysis, this research provided an outlook of how China and the US as the current case of rising and hegemonic power relations seemed. This last part will wrap up these issues to the main analogy of Thucydides’s Trap at Sea. This part will guide the readers of this research to the current status of the eight common mistakes that did by the historical examples. Graham Allison underlined that in all of the historical cases ‘changed choices could have provided unalike consequences’. (Allison, 2018, p. 233) This research agrees with what he underlined. Thucydides’s Trap is a matter of choice rather than a given destiny for two rival and competent powers. It is a matter of connected mistakes that triggered a mechanism of distrust that created a devastating end for both or one side of the rivalry. But it is a crucial one as the analogy itself means and requires the advent reallocation of scarce resources of the public richness. Allison himself underlined the view of Thucydides’s position with these words;
“In their drama, the gods scripted Oedipus to kill his father and marry his mother. From his assigned role there was no escape. But Thucydides disagreed. He had a distinctly different concept of human affairs. Indeed, he defined a new discipline of history in which men, not gods, were the chief actors. Destiny dealt the hands, but men played the cards.” (Allison, 2018, p. 233)
It was destiny that give the geography to both states, commonly accepted values that give the reasons, while it is the public that gives the resources to make ships. Now it would be politicians to send these ships to their courses around the world. While it would be the strategy implementers like Captains and Political Commissars to interpret those roles and advent situations that they could face. Men and women in ships, even how much technology was advanced, were still alone on the grey ships with power in the middle of a big blue world. Destiny dealt the hands, but men and women floated the ships…
Warning 1) The case of the US and China is an active one that is still in development but current developments show that both states have a risk of making timing errors.
The case of China and the US is still active, which one could only make a hypothetical analysis of timing error. A timing error is one that had a significant impact on the outcome of the cases. In this case, we could say that both states had a significant risk of falling in a timing error. US report underlined that Beijing is, now, in ‘the first phase of its maritime program which is between 2020 to 2035 that focused on enduring the China’s growth’. (US Secretary of Defence, 2019, p. 1) China improved its maritime
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capabilities much since the 1980s. ‘Beijing could deploy a Carrier Strike Group to the Indian Ocean between the years of 2022 and 2023’. (McDevitt, 2020, p. 70) But even with these developments, a conflict with the US in the 2020s would eventually be a timing error for Beijing. RAND report underlined that, in a maritime balance of power situation, both sides will have ‘a disputed chance of victory due to the heavy losses’. (Gompert, Cevallos, & Garafola, 2016, p. 73) The period of 2020 to 2035 would be a period of maritime balance of power while the 2050s could also become one due to the constrained capabilities of both states. In a conflict that will occur in 2025, China still experiences ‘modest losses’ while in a lengthened one it will become a ‘very heavy loses’. (Gompert, Cevallos, & Garafola, 2016, p. 40) Not only in terms of military losses China could experience more in a conflict that was initiated by a timing error. Both Imperial Germany and Imperial Japan experienced such a burden in history. As China could not win a war in 2025, significant costs of such a conflict ‘could end China’s development miracle’. (Gompert, Cevallos, & Garafola, 2016, p. 68)
The period of 2035 to the 2050s was defined by the US report as a period of ‘world-class navy’. (US Secretary of Defence, 2019, p. 1) Such a period would be the one that could be the period of opportunistic aggression as the balance of power would turn to a slight Chinese advantage vis-à-vis the US. But such a prediction could only be possible if the US would continue in its current position. By 2035, as Beijing’s modernization was completed, China would have six aircraft carriers, probably nuclear-fuelled ones that could overhaul the US Navy with other sorts of vessels. (McDevitt, 2020, pp. 182-184) The period between 2035 and the 2040s would be the period of greater uncertainty for the case of the US and China. In such a scenario, it is possible that the US would shift to a British-like voluntarily self-restrainment or worse a Dutch-like violent attempt to block the rise of the new power even if it would cost for the future of its hegemony. The second part of the timing error would eventually settle by the choices of the US.
Allison underlined that a hegemonic power could initiate a ‘preventive intervention’ as Britain planned in the American Civil War. (Allison, 2018, p. 199) As Britain lost the opportunity to preventively curtail the rise of the US and shifted to a voluntarily self-restrainment, the current status of Washington also has such a risk. If the US engaged in a conflict with China in 2015, it would experience ‘modest loses’, but in 2025 it would increase to ‘significant loses’. (Gompert, Cevallos, & Garafola, 2016, pp. 37-40) In terms of military power, the US is in a problematic condition just like Britain at the end of the 19th Century. As the US Navy ‘over-stretched to various parts of the world with financial limitations, in terms of military power, the time is with Beijing for now’. (Yoon, 2015, p. 55) Not only like Britain, but the US also has significant similar points with the Dutch hegemony of the 17th Century. Even with the English rose, the Dutch civilian maritime capabilities were curtailed by domestic problems like population and political crisis. McMahon warned that ‘in terms of civilian shipping, the time also long-
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overdue for the US’, where future will bring more civilian maritime power to Beijing. (McMahon, 2021, p. 109) The timing issue is a critical one that would surely affect the outcome of this relationship. It could be like the Dutch and English case, in which, both states could suffer from timing errors or could be like the British and American ones. Sun Tzu’s advocations’ were an important one that both states should remember. The one ‘who knows when to fight or not will be the victorious’ side of this case. (Tzu, 2014, p. 8)
Warning 2) China and, possibly, the US is subjected to a geographical, political, and economic sense of strangulation due to the nature of the international system.
States that use common maritime trade routes were more exposed to misunderstandings of a sense of strangulation. Both Washington and Beijing excessively depend upon maritime trade routes of East Asian seas. Wu Xiaoyan defined that ‘China’s stress on the security of the SLOCs is not quite optimistic’. (Xiaoyan, 2014, p. 19) We could defend three different types of geographical sense of strangulation that could push China to disproportionally react to any kind of action. The first one is the ideological strangulation, whereas, Beijing is under containment by the states of the First Island Chain and beyond. For example, Global Times defined Washington’s Quad initiative between Asia’s major democracies as a ‘sinister gang that encircles China.’ (Global Times b, 2021) The second one is the economic one that is sourced from the First Island Chain and Malacca Strait. The global choke-point control strategy of the US acts as a clear fleet-in-being that could threaten Chinese SLOCs at any time. Even Collins’s warning could ease the pressure on China, as ‘the impact of any blockade would continue to hit global economy for years’. (Collins, 2018, p. 51) Given the CCP’s promise to keep economic development in place, it did not have any chance to become off-guard against a maritime blockade. And the third and last sense of the strangulation was again caused by the First Island Chain itself, like Russian Empire, China has a grave fear of its dispersed fleets’ future in a conflict due to the American allied fortresses like Taiwan and Japan.
When the issue came to the US such kind of geographical sense of strangulation is less significant. But this does not mean the US is immune from such a danger. The risk that Washington faces is also different from the historical cases of the Dutch and British. The US is a state with heavy reliance on imports. Different from using common maritime trade routes, China is one of the US’s top trading partners. A RAND report underlined that, even without a blockade, ‘the US will lose 15% of its bilateral trade with China in a limited conflict’. (Gompert, Cevallos, & Garafola, 2016, pp. 43-44) This would push Washington to reach alternative sources under the advent pressure of a war that could not calculable. Another risk is due to China’s excessive control of civilian maritime shipping. With SOEs, China could impose a civilian-backed, blockade against the US in a crisis. Or vice-verse any American blockade would mean the loss of the Chinese civilian freight ships which would roughly equal to half of the
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world’s maritime fleet. Such a scenario is a risky decision for Washington to take. In 2021, with limited disruption of maritime trade with the twin crisis of Ever Given and COVID-19, ‘global import cost rates increased 11% and consumer prices could increase 1,5% until 2023’. (Cheng, 2021) This would also have a significant impact on the Chinese and American economies. Such an impact would lead to a ‘1,2% increase in inflation levels at the US while with a loss of 1% of industrial production in the US and EU compared with 0,2% in the Beijing’. (Cheng, 2021) A geographical sense of strangulation could be a starting point for the US and Beijing to overcome their differences as their perceptions differ much, also the international community has a great interest to solve this issue.
Warning 3) Both China and the US have different kinds of overstretched naval commerce agendas that are based upon different values.
The introduction of the Belt and Road Initiative created an extensive understanding of maritime commerce. Different from the Soviet Union, China’s maritime trade ambitions were much significant. BRI gave enormous leverage to China to control the world’s maritime trade with its Maritime Silk Road. McMahon underlined that the Chinese control on container-shipping and port infrastructure will give it a ‘political leverage’ over other states. (McMahon, 2021, p. 105) China uses its commercial and economic muscle to spare Taiwan from its historical alliances. Investment recipient countries like Greece and Hungary rejected the European Union’s attempt to declare a condemnation of Beijing’s human rights violations. In Southeast Asia countries like Myanmar and Cambodia, who are the economic and political allies of Beijing in ASEAN, blocked the condemnation of Beijing’s move over the SCS. US Report that published in 2019, underlined that the initiatives like BRI and Made in China 2025 created a concern about the intentions over Beijing. (US Secretary of Defence, 2019, p. 2) It is clear that BRI is not a colonial project like Imperial Japan or Imperial Germany had, but the US increasingly sees it as a rival process to the American leverage at the world. It has a great potential ‘to create export markets and to provide money and job back at home’. (McMahon, 2021, p. 21) Such kind of leverage was an increasing luxury for a rising state that could not easily be set aside. As the program’s success came under huge stress due to debt problems with the pandemic, the protection of it under the intense pressure will require more Chinese efforts (even coercive ones) to persuade the new third parties to support or to force the re-payment of the debts that already exist.
Doshi underlined that ‘BRI is an alternative process of financial support to the world after the 2008 Financial Crisis’. (Doshi, 2021, p. 246) In both terms of the values and priorities, China underlined the differentiated world vision of its maritime commerce. In 2017, Xi Jinping declared the BRI as a continuation of ‘the basis of peaceful co-existence’, where Beijing has ‘no will to intervene in domestic affairs of the states’. (Xinhua, 2017) It is the complete opposite stance that the US took after the Cold War who used its economic strength to promote Liberal and democratic values. Apart from the economic
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value of China’s overstretched maritime commerce, its maritime strategic meanings are another point of divergence. Mingjiang Li underlined that, with BRI, the PLAN needs to ‘go out’ towards the Indian Ocean and to Africa. (Li M. , 2020, p. 181) Even how much an economic program’s values and goals are unique, a navy could only serve it in two ways. Either without staying at home ports or with going out to support what China now-have. The latest defence document of China underlined the second option. Beijing settled the ‘protection of over-seas rights and interests of the Chinese people, institutions, and organizations’ as one of the roles of the PLA in the new era. (The State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China, 2019, p. 14) Like Ming Dynasty experienced, protecting overseas interests and maritime commerce will eventually need the use of force and having a deterrent force as occurred in the crisis between China and Ceylon.
While the case of the US is different when it is compared with the historical position of hegemonic powers. The latest American Maritime Strategy put a little stress and detail on protecting the global trade. The document re-instigated the US Navy’s role in ‘protecting the global maritime commerce’ both in modern and post-modern terms. (US Navy, 2020, p. 9) Different from the primary era of the post-Cold War and even the era of the Cold War, American overseas economic ambitions are lesser. Even with Beijing’s ambition for starting the BRI, Washington did not have some kind of extensive economic program since the Marshall Fund. Back-dropped American maritime commerce due to the loss of the American flagged ships and sea-faring people also deepened this process. The US is still a maritime-dependent hegemon like the Dutch and British. Under Secretary of the Navy Thomas B. Modly underlined that ‘the American sea trade grew from the 230 billion to 880 billion$ from the 1980s’. (Modly, 2019) As US maritime commerce become more vulnerable due to the dependency on foreign-flagged ships and the market, its sensitivity for home-bound maritime commerce will also become a great issue to protect with all costs. The American withdrawal from pacts like TPP made things more problematic as the US lost its political channel of communique to protect its regional trading interests. Even Washington, for now, did not have a global vision of maritime trade, its dependency on the sea trade for sustaining its market is the one that could produce tensions.
Warning 4) Both China and the US experienced misunderstandings of identities, whereas, same is possible in the current status of their naval identities.
Misunderstandings of maritime identities are due to misunderstandings of perceptions. As understanding intentions always remained problematic, the state’s ability to make clear and true decisions was also limited. Robert Jervis underlined that ‘every war has a loser which was a state that made the worst
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calculations when it decided to enter a war’.8 (Jervis, 1988, p. 677) China and the US historically and mutually experienced misunderstandings of intention and perceptions like happened in the Taiwanese Crisis and Korean War. Schelling underlined that the US and China experienced an ‘unexpected war’ due to the communication failure in the Korean War which was related to misunderstandings of commitments. (Schelling, 1966, p. 55) Washington’s failed expectation over the seriousness of Mao Zedong, to intervene in the Korean War beside North Korea, had a huge impact upon the result of the war. A similar misunderstanding has also experienced by China in the Taiwan Crisis of the 1950s. Premier of China Zhou Enlai criticized President Truman’s move in its support to Taiwan as a ‘violent, predatory action against the PRC which has a will of the armed aggression.’ (Cole, 2014, p. 51) Not different from the 1950s, as both countries’ capabilities grew, the same kind of misunderstandings occurred more. The Chinese military thought also has different focuses from the US which could again create strategic misunderstandings. Different from Washington’s historical focus on decisive victory, the Chinese focus on ‘war control’ where Beijing managed to control limited wars to protect ‘national stability and development.’ (Gompert, Cevallos, & Garafola, 2016, p. 14) Sea in a clear sense is one of the flashing points of these misperceptions just like the historical cases.
Even, how much Chinese maritime thoughts and ambitions were defined as peaceful by Chinese politicians, problems continue to exist. As we witnessed in the case of ‘harmonious ocean’ Chinese vision on the oceans was different from the historical ones in the rhetoric. Xiaoqin underlined the words of PLA General Zhang Qinsheng who claimed that ‘a nation’s capacity is determined by what it has rather than what it use and it still depends upon cultural factors like Government’s ideas, foreign policy and simply strategy.’ (Xiaoqin, 2011, p. 18)
With this rhetoric, China believes that its capabilities did not matter but its intentions. But Eyre Crows’ arguments were also still having a truth that capabilities also matter much. For example, even how much Pericles pushed for a Pan-Hellenic Navy, its extensive leverage to the Athenian Navy made it impossible to accept by the Spartans and its allies. This position was also supported by the current US and Allied view who sees Chinese far-seas post-modern and peaceful missions like anti-piracy and friendly port-calls as a modern and Mahanian threat of blue-water navy. Schelling underlined that the genuine risk of war is not sourced from the ‘accidents’ of the military machine but through a process of ‘unpredictability in credibility.’ (Schelling, 1966, p. 93) His emphasis was essentially true for naval power which includes a diplomatic power in itself. Those grey painted ships, even how much peaceful in conduct, have a coercive identity of state power and prestige. Even how much wisely conducted, a maritime strategy is zero-sum in its nature. A ship could either be in a port or at sea. When it was at sea, the intentions matter
8 The author honours and tributes his thanks to Robert Jervis who lost his life on the 9th of December 2021 for his excessive and precious contributions to the literature of Security Studies.
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less but capabilities, but when it was at in port both matters much. Since the crisis like Lanzhou and USS Decatur and the Maritime Militia and USNS Impeccable occurs Chinese maritime capabilities have become an issue of fear. The latest American Maritime Strategy also showed such kind of position as it clearly defined Beijing as a number one competitor of the US Navy. Allison warned both countries against a ‘chicken-game at sea’ that could end with an accidental collision. (Allison, 2018, p. 170) There is no guarantee for one more US Navy Captain to change his or her ships’ course under the harassment of a Chinese vessel. American freedom of navigation operations could end with a full-fledge bilateral crisis.
As hostilities at sea increased, the American decision to forward-deploy more forces and strengthen alliances also become solid. As we witnessed, commitments that China gave to North Korea in the Korean War or by the contemporary US to its allies ‘could harm a state’s freedom action which could end with bad decisions’ according to Jervis. (Jervis, 1988, p. 693) Forwardly-stationing even a ship with no aggressive task could make things worse as we witnessed in the Peloponnesian War and Tangiers Crisis. Luttwak underlined that ‘latent naval suasion has some unwanted effects due to navies’ special capabilities, characteristics, and its wide mobility’. (Luttwak, 1985, p. 86) China’s rising fear of containment is an example of such a misunderstanding of maritime identities. Retired US Navy Admiral Captain James E. Fannel called ‘the US to confront China to stop its ‘bad behaviour at sea’ with a whole-of-government approach.’ (Fanell, 2020, p. 39) Parallel with his thought, strategies like Air-Sea Battle and Archipelagic Defence and partnerships like QUAD and AUKUS, solidify the Chinese fear of containment and first strike. Zhang Wemnu warned that possible ‘American efforts to contain China will be a repeat of the mistakes of the past great powers’. (Wemnu, 2004, p. 29) Today, his position over the containment still finds its place in the official narratives. China even went further in 2021 over its fear of containment. Chinese Ministry of Defence declared the US as ‘the biggest threat to world peace’. (AP News, 2020) Such kind of bold declaration is an unbelievable act of misunderstanding of perceptions that include a clear one at sea. RAND report warned the US ‘to not isolate China unless war requires it to do so’. (Gompert, Cevallos, & Garafola, 2016, p. 72) China and US should acknowledge both sides’ perception of malign behaviours at sea could strengthen the misunderstanding of maritime identity to a crisis-time. Robert Jervis warned that ‘in a crisis-instability, states could be pushed to strike first’. (Jervis, 1988, p. 684) History was full of proofs for this argument at sea. China and the US should well-analyse each other differences and continue to learn from history. Both states also have to provide day-to-day level coordination and communication even at the minimal level of individual ships of the navies. For avoiding this crucial mistake, that could set a clock to war at sea, both sides have to give an ear to Sun Tzu. ‘If you know the enemy and know yourself, your victory will not stand in doubt; if you know Heaven and know Earth, you may make your victory complete.’ (Tzu, 2014, p. 31) Both states
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when studying each other, also have to well-study the sea and learn the opportunities and dangers that it brings to avoid a costed defeat.
Warning 5) Both China and the US have a differentiated and complex relationship between their domestic character and politics and with their naval strategies.
China and the US have this kind of problematic relationship between their maritime identities. Like IGN, China also employed its navy to motivate its people to support the maritime ambitions of the state. Zhang Wei underlined that ‘relatively, sea power had a historical impact on the momentous rejuvenation of the Chinese society’. (Wei, 2015, p. 91) Not only in terms of motivations, in technical development there is a similar pattern with Imperial Germany’s Flottenverein with Chinese aircraft carrier ambitions. Even though their doctrination was remained problematic as Beijing’s current capabilities did not pose a meaning to deploy aircraft carriers, they had great prestige and value in front of the eyes of people. In 2019, on Chinese social media network Weibo, ‘the hashtag #AircraftCarrierShandong take more than 300 million views’ while most of the people, like Imperial Germans, asked for ‘more aircraft carriers that named after their home regions’. (Xuanzun & Yuandan, 2019) Nationalism rallies Chinese maritime ambitions just like the historical cases. Shi Xiaoqin defined the PLAN as a ‘passive reply for profound hurts of the Chinese’ that were inherited from its Century of Humiliation. (Xiaoqin, 2011, p. 20) The Chinese people with their extensive focus on national prestige could push CCP to make its maritime position ambitious. As capabilities and expectations increased, a possible crisis like the Accidental Bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade by the US in 1999, could limit the Government’s ability to manage the crisis. Even this, the Government still has neglect and non-unanimity over the future and role of the Navy as ideological reasoning of Marxism inherits. Xi Jinping, now, bided for a position where he need to satisfy the nationalist enthusiasms for a strong navy while also one to limit them under the advent guidance of Communist values.
The US was also under the advent pressure of domestic politics but with a slightly different characteristic. The American people have a differentiated view of the threat posed by China when compared with its Government. The future generations, look more in and landward, with the developing mediums of communication like the Internet. For example, Geoffrey Till underlined that ‘the image of seafaring came under great pressure as people travel by air which pushed them to a sea-blindness’. (Till, 2009, p. 104) With mounting domestic issues and international ones like climate and gender, the American people are less concentrated on a seaward expansion. Washington, with its deep domestic problems, could ‘respond to an armed conflict in a most acceptable way.’ (Dibb, 2001, p. 32) McMahon also warned that ‘with a possible end of the Jones Act that supported already weak American merchant fleet’ would push American civilian maritime identity to ‘disappear’. (McMahon, 2021, p. 88) Swinging election results among the two sides of the political spectrum is also another problem. For example,
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even former President Trump questioned the Asian alliances of the US, he had the ambition to have a 600-ship fleet US Navy to create more jobs. (Larter D. B., 2016) Such a plan is hard with realities on the ground. A significant fleet development, without creating proper strategic adjustments and doctrinal use, would be a blank check for China to escalate the relationship as misunderstandings were already at their place. A naval power supported by domestic hysteria would be a factor to set the clock for a disaster. Department of Defence and the US Navy, now, have to rally the masses to support the world’s strongest navy which could bring more problems. But a possible attempt to exploit these weaknesses by China would be a political error and red flag for Beijing. Domestic conditions could easily change in an advent situation of crisis. For example, after the cross-strait crisis in 2021, ‘52% of American people supported to militarily defend Taiwan in an invasion attempt by Beijing which was rise from 40%’. (Bing, 2021) Any attempt to exploit both countries’ domestic problems would be a prescript for a catastrophe as the misunderstanding of perceptions persists.
Our last focus on the issue will be on Graham Allison’s emphasis on the domestic problems. He called both leaders to ‘hold the solemn challenges at home and brand them as their priorities.’ (Allison, 2018, p. 239) His emphasis is valuable in its moral message and correctness. It would be an interesting and unique case if both countries would focus on domestic problems-first rather than dealing with each other. Such a case would make this research and probably all the resources allocated to big and sophisticated grey-painted ships obsolete. But as earlier arguments of Thucydides underlined, it is not suitable for human nature to live behind the secure walls of their cities. If they would decide to get out and engage, power is still the main currency that works in international politics.
Warning 6) Both China and the US have an uncompromised grand and naval strategy which could become worse in the near future.
Grand Strategy is an important component of a nation’s road map to success. Security of a ship, like a state, is not guaranteed when navigating with maps, but without maps, it is a guarantee for accidental disasters at sea. A grand strategy is an art of solving complex paradoxes for achieving the national goals that are derived from communal values. Chinese values in grand strategy have inner-contradiction that affects the outcome of the issue. Wu Xiaoyan defined China’s core interest as ‘good affairs with neighbours and peaceful development’. (Xiaoyan, 2014, p. 22) But these goals were increasingly combined with the protecting Chinese image and territorial integrity (which even includes lands did not under the sovereignty of China). This trade-off would create an important paradox for the Chinese GS that should be addressed. A nation could not have all of its goals once if the rival party did not conduct a serious mistake. Another paradox that the Chinese GS would face is the very value of sea power and China’s value that gave to it. We underlined earlier that a new school that prioritizes landward goals rather than seawards was formed within the scholars of China. For example, Professor Wang Jisi called
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his country to a shift for ‘Marching West Strategy (Xijin)’ rather than the costly maritime one. (Jisi, 2012; Scobell, et al., 2020, p. 20) Such kinds of pressures could harm China’s attempt to provide a balance between maritime and continental domains. A political re-orientation demanded by Land School could eventually harm newly developed Sino-Russian Friendship that secured the Northern border after centuries. It could also divide the PLA, as IJN, who divided over the eastward or southward expansion of Japanese interests. As the Chinese naval strategy showed us, with the existing grand strategy, China’s maritime power development is incomplete as it is not enough to solve the dichotomies of preparing maritime strategy. Even Beijing shifted to ‘an ambitious and global grand strategy, the one for the elites and the PLA has remained on the domestic and regional arena with strong ideological emphasis’. (Scobell, et al., 2020, p. 21) As China’s maritime capabilities increase, the question of how to use it remains came under great debates that could push Beijing to mistakes that have crucial results. Edward Luttwak underlined a similar position in which he defined China’s maritime ambitions as ‘strategic illogicalness’ due to the rise of the Chinese coercive capabilities that frightened its neighbours. (Luttwak, 2016, p. 249) Even the Chinese GS witnessed a shift in the 2010s, this shift is more like an ambitious continuation of what this research called the ‘phony grand strategy’ of the 1990s.
While the case of the US is even more problematic as it lacks a grand strategy for the long-term future. The only case that a hegemonic power has lacked a grand strategy in this research was the Russian Empire in the Russo-Japanese War. The long endured strategy of blocking any Eurasian power to challenge the US was failed by the rise of China. Now, Washington has to create a new one to challenge this rise when people did not have a real will to do so. Different from Beijing, it must start from the very beginning. Allison argued that ‘the US should appreciate and understand the core interests of the Chinese’. (Allison, 2018, p. 235) But it is also having to be done vice-versa. As he also underlined, ‘Washington has to define and separate its core interests from the others.’ (Allison, 2018, p. 235) But he misses an important point, this redefinition process should be done with continuous communication and coordination with the regional allies as any perceptual shock will push regional allies’ to bandwagon with China or push Beijing to challenge the will of the US, as happened in the case of Philippines. Another problem is the lack of common value orientation and perception of China in the US society. ‘Washington has a bureaucratic and institutional resistance against a change in the strategy.’ (Haddick, 2014, p. 215) Not only at governmental level, but private industries also continue to work with Chinese companies to keep market prices low. After settling the GS, Washington should modify existing concepts in its naval strategy to whether focusing on deterrence of attrition or for annihilation warfare. Most challengingly, as this research revealed, the US should create a unified national political program based on shared interests and values vis-à-vis China as a lack of it means a complete lack of the hope for success. Washington needs a successful revival of grand strategy even they like it or not.
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Warning 7) Both China and the US, now, have a sense of balanced fleets but in the future, both states could experience a problem of concentrated and inflexible fleets.
It is less likely for China to choose a concentrated fleet when compared with the examples like La Jeune Ecole and the Soviet Union. McDevitt underlined that ‘China did not reveal exact number and strength of its naval fleet’. (McDevitt, 2020, p. 71) The current maritime modernization of Beijing was blue water and a balanced fleet. But one should be well aware that the Chinese modernization would see a problem of aging naval platforms when it came to the 2040s, as existing ships become outdated which would again require crucial allocation of resources in an age when the Chinese economy came into the stress of population and possible unknown effects of climate change and global macro-economic issues. China, by 2035, ‘would continue to be the world’s largest naval force with a fleet of 425-ships’ if there would be no major war or domestic problems. (McDevitt, 2020, p. 183) But this would not guarantee a flexible balanced fleet like in the cases of IGN and IJN. If China primarily targets the American and allied ships in design, and vice-versa, the fleet that it had could turn to an inflexible one that has doomed to fight rather than deterre.
When it came to the issue of balancing fleets, the US could have seemed like a state which did not have such a problem. Under the security of billion or even trillion dollars’ worth of aircraft carriers, submarines, and others, one could accept Washington as an ultimate power with a balanced fleet. But such kind of quality could be a problem in an advent situation of war. Ross underlined that China has an advantage of ‘quantity’ by having a wide range of cheaper ship designs that could be built with its enormous shipbuilding industry. (Ross, 2018, p. 30) WWII signified the importance of such kind of situation where the Third Reich’s stress to obtain the most qualitative weapons caused the delay and problems in mass production. Contrary to this, allied and significantly the American dependency on producing middle-quality weapons fostered the speed of production which delivered an advantage against the Axis powers. Too expensive and sophisticated platforms like aircraft carriers, destroyers, and others could turn the American Navy into a concentrated fleet in the long run. As we witnessed in the only example of a hegemonic power with a concentrated fleet, it ended with the war, due to the sense of advantage that provided to a rising power. Beijing, increasingly, plans its A2/AD capacity against the deterring sophisticated platforms that the US could never risk.
In 2021, the American Congress ‘blocked the US Navy’s efforts on early-retirement of the LCS’ and also underlined that ‘compensating the retirement of Ticonderoga-class cruisers came under huge delays’. (Episkopos, 2021) This kind of problem in compensating the American ships in a peacetime environment could put Washington and the Navy in a less favourable position in a limited war with China. A RAND report underlined that in a limited war that could happen in 2025, even with a lengthened clash, Washington could not gain a ‘decisive military-operational advantage’ against China.
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(Gompert, Cevallos, & Garafola, 2016, p. 40) The fate of Zumwalt-class destroyers should be a lesson for the US Navy. The Navy is also well aware of this problem as they underlined that the branch will take necessary lessons from the projects like DDG-1000 and LCS’s to provide better ‘land testing of technologies and technical-supplying support to new ships and crews’. (US Navy, 2021, p. 10) What US Navy had to do is to create reserve shipbuilding programs and designs with possible unmanned, A2/AD capable, and navigable ships with less sophisticated technology. Given the current tense and uncertain situation with Beijing, the US could not wait until the end of the technical and designing process of unmanned ships to mitigate and replace the costly surface fleet without any action. The US should create redesigned and modernized interim programs for conventionally-fuelled aircraft carriers, submarines, and cruisers or even corvettes possibly with regional allies. It also needs to create extensive programs to support the shipbuilding industry in a competitive state-sponsored market and prepare these industries to build such kind of reserve designs as a compensation for possible damaged high-value units.
Warning 8) Both countries, now, in a process of determining their new grand and maritime strategies for an escalated rivalry between two powers.
As we underlined earlier, the analogy of Thucydides’s Trap was for answering the questions of why wars were occurred and were inevitable or not. But this research differentiated the questions to answer how mistakes of both rising and hegemonic powers prepared a course that led to a war or vice-versa how it prevented one. The case of the China and the US is an active one without outcome. So this part will not hypothetically try to make a future prediction over whether both states could shift to a mixed grand strategy. Instead, it will assess the existing suggestions made by other scholars. But before starting it, one should be aware that both China and the US increasingly furthering their capabilities for a possible war of annihilation. While the possibility of the other mistakes on the ground also makes this situation problematic.
In terms of long-term grand and maritime strategy of attrition is also a possibility to occur. Both China, with its ambitious Belt and Road Initiative, Digital Firewall, and rising A2/AD capabilities increasingly fortify itself for a long and maybe peaceful strategic attrition campaign. While many also advocate similar preparations for the future of the US grand and maritime strategy. Fanell advocated the US to prepare ‘a containment of China economically until stopping its dangerous naval arms race.’ (Fanell, 2020, p. 39) Current developments also evolve in such a nature, where, both states were preparing for long-term strategic attrition against each other. But such a strategy is not the best option for the well-being of both states. According to Collins, ‘an attrition strategy is a risky and time-consuming one’. (Collins, 2018, p. 50) Historical accounts also prove this point. British strategist Liddell Hart underlined such kind of risk. He warned over the strategy of attrition as ‘many civilized states collapsed due to
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domestic attrition rather than annihilation’. (Hart, 2015, p. 498) The latest example of the collapse of the Soviet Union signified the continuity of this trend. In terms of strategy, strategic attrition like the Cold War was depended upon the balance of power dynamics. Balance of power politics is usually accepted as a way to prevent war as similar capabilities would tend to avert war as its devastation would be unbearable. Haddick warned that ‘the history is full of the cases where the balance of power dynamics was failed due to many reasons’. (Haddick, 2014, p. 216) Balance of power is not a solution but a postponement of a war between two equivalent powers. The mistakes that this research underlined should be well-considered to create a workable balance of power dynamics at sea between China and the US. Such a strategy would mean continuous allocation of scarce resources for an unending process of attrition until one party or both will devastate with this spending.
While the other strategies like appeasement and selective engagement are also problematic. An appeasement strategy was defied as an ‘idiotic’ concept by Hart that could undermine deterrence. (Hart, 2015, p. 497) Appeasement is a self-prophetic egoism of a hegemonic power, who has a wrong perception of a rising power as a manageable one. China’s moves in the SCS has showed rightfulness of this concept as appeasing China with giving its limited demands will harm the American hegemonic position much. A strategy of selective engagement is also problematic as we witnessed between Athens and Sparta. When a rivalry between two powers widened to more than one field, a selective engagement would not produce a result. McDevitt underlined that the Obama Administration mitigated the SCS issue by ‘focusing on other global issues’, while the Trump Administration focused on selectively engaging with ‘a focus on economic rivalry’. (McDevitt, 2020, p. 144) The change of the status quo in the SCS is closely related to the former American Administration’s appeasement and selective engagement policies vis-à-vis China. Another dynamic for mitigating a maritime rivalry was attempted in the 1920s with the Washington Naval Arms Limitation Treaty. After 100 years, such a scenario is not also suitable for both states. Castex defined these talks as ‘neo-politics’ but criticized them as ‘artificial and unrealizable’ due to the struggling nature of life. (Castex, 2017, p. 234) His position is also true for today. Edward Hallett Carr criticized international arms-control treaties as ‘instruments of power’ where the powerful claim the sanctity of the treaties over the fragile. (Carr, 1945, pp. 189-190) Under the misunderstandings and problematic perceptions, arms control arguments could be more devastating. The Japanese decision to go to war with the US was ironically fuelled by the unequal burdens of the Washington Treaty over the Japanese maritime identity. China has a similar view of suspicion of the West and their terms of conduct. It is also not technically feasible, as it would eventually be impossible since China’s fused civilian and militia capabilities could not be suitable for enforcing the check and balances of such a maritime arms limitation treaty.
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The latest suggestion over the Sino-American rivalry was made by Joseph Nye. He argued ‘that neither China nor the US sees themselves as an existential threat’. (Nye, 2018) But the reality of this relationship is much more essential, complex, and different from the ones argued by him. He argued that ‘current global problems like climate change, infectious diseases, and others would require a positive-sum view and a cooperative rivalry’. (Nye, 2018) Such kind of concept is also morally and ethically valuable one supported by the Neoliberal worldview. But such a theory should be extended, as there are grave problems that affect this relationship. First, both China and the US did not have common values and a world view. Second, both China and the US even on the topics like climate change could not create jointly recognized check-and-balances systems. The third and the last one is, the arguments of Joseph Nye did not include the maritime rivalry among two states, which is zero-sum and based on basic dichotomies in its nature even its importance. If the US desired a cooperative rivalry at sea with China, the Chinese concept of ‘harmonious ocean’ with its post-modern focus could be a good starting point for talks. But for now, neither the US show such kind of self-restraint, as nor China did.
***
For the last word, when readers of this research compare table 3 for the US and China rivalry with table 2 of historical cases, he or she will realize that the case resembles the case of the United Provinces (or Dutch) vs the English case. China and the US have a great risk to become that case rather than the others. But this did not mean the case was also determined to develop like that. The case of the Dutch and English was an important one, as both states suffered from similar and common mistakes whereas the result was determined by the history itself. The result of the case of China and the US would also determine by which country would make more mistakes in their rivalry process. But as history favoured the British in that case, there is no guarantee that history would provide the same favour to China. The case was ended with war as both Dutch and British suffered from serious mistakes that we underlined throughout this research. It is also crucial for politicians and strategy implementers to study that case in detail. Thucydides underlined a concept of ‘possession for all-time’ which emphasized the ‘tragic and heart-breaking war that caused by failure of creating a genuine peace when there is a time and reason for it. (Walling, 2013, p. 81) We are, now, at the ‘possession for all-time’ when both China and the US have a time and reason for creating a genuine peace. The essence of the decision was coming from mutual understanding, coordination, and communication. Sea is a good domain to start such a dialogue as it is a global common that served humanity and advanced history with its changing currents. This is a period before the genuine storm, and it is time to prepare the ships for it or to change our course with well-prepared maps to safe-ports. The captains are on boards, whereas, the rest of the ship is awaiting their decisions.
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Error / Case Timing Error Geographical Sense of Strangulation Overstretched Naval Commerce Misunderstanding of Naval Identities Contradictory Naval and Domestic Politics Uncompromised Grand and Naval Strategy Inflexible and Concentrated Fleets Outcome The United States vs China B (P) R to B (P) B to R (P) B B B No to B (P) ND
Table 3: Possible eight common mistakes between the US and China. (Done by: R: Rising Power, H: Hegemonic Power, B: Both, No: No Mistake.) (Outcome Part: ND: Non-Determined) (P: Possible Mistake).
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7) CONCLUSION
This research provided an outlook of how rising powers used their maritime power and which mistakes they did in their power transition process with the hegemonic power. The research answered its main question as a state’s maritime strategy that formulated its maritime identity triggered a chain of choices and possible mistakes. The first hypothesis revealed that historical rising powers maritime identities significantly affected the perceptions of rising powers that led to a Thucydides’s Trap. The second hypothesis underlined that the material and ideational dynamics have crucial influence over China’s maritime strategy and identity development. The last one showed that Chinese maritime identity has similar problems, perceptions, and an influence over the American maritime hegemony in East Asia. This research also briefly proposed some possible ways to avoid the mistakes that this research underlined.
In terms of literature, this research bridged an interesting gap between intertwined disciplines like History, Maritime Strategy, International Relations, and Chinese Studies. Its historical part and scientific history method contributed to the field of history as to understand how complex historical cases could be studied with the use of a similar pattern. It also contributed to the war studies and maritime strategy as it linked the historical narrations of Corbett, Mahan, and Castex with current maritime issues and literature. It also used a material field to understand its influence over the non-material but ideational issues. In terms of International Relations, it contributed to understanding how the maritime power transition process was influenced by the maritime strategy and power. The study furthered Graham Allison’s Thucydides’s Trap analogy which is a long criticized and discussed one. In terms of Chinese Studies, this research provided a contemporary analysis of how China developed its maritime strategy, identity, and how it could influence its relations with maritime hegemony. Different from previous and precious works on Chinese maritime power, this research provided a more politically and culturally elaborated understanding of the subject.
This research also supported the analogy and theory of Thucydides’s Trap to become more solid and comprehensive in a holistic analysis. It addressed the problem of Western-focused understanding of the history with understanding how Chinese history and character influenced this analogy at sea. The criticism over Allison’s Western-focused understanding of the analogy was also build-as a binary way of the relationship that concerns both rising powers and hegemons. Its separation of historical cases to different categories with different characters also helped it to overcome the issue of overgeneralization. Kouskevelis’s emphasis on understanding the analogy from the historical mistakes rather than a road map was also take an important part in this research. It also broadened the over-simplified Power
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Transition Theory to include ideational, non-numerical, and non-material factors. It also adopted a purely theoretical analogy into a practical dimension that influences day-to-day politics.
In terms of methodology, this research also employed various methods to reach its wide range of hypotheses. Its use of the multiple-case study method gave it a chance to evaluate different rising and hegemonic powers with similar factors which allowed the researcher to test the analogy of Thucydides’s Trap. Even its complex structure, the method of simplification created eight similar mistakes that rising and hegemonic powers suffered in their relationship. The mixed-use of both system and unit-level analysis allowed us to create a general framework of how state or unit-level decisions influenced inter-state systems and vice-versa. Not only revealing it, but it also provided an outlook of how this binary level of analysis affects day-to-day politics and vice-versa. Another strength of this work is the inclusion of oppositional cases that end with different results or experience different conditions for avoiding a trap of pre-determinism. Oppositional cases showed us that the eight mistakes that we covered in this research had a grave impact on the failure of hegemonic powers. It also revealed that both states who suffered from the same dynamics entered in a process that was not easily pre-determined. This research also used soft-positivism as its guidance point. Given the scarcity of the works that used this methodology, it gave the readers and future researchers to use both ideational and material factors to create a general framework of action in International Relations. It tried to create a compromise between material and ideational realities and long criticized theories and methodologies to create a single frame of understanding.
Sea power like all other components of the power in International Relations has different kinds of definitions and explanations. This research showed that sea power is a holistic concept that is intertwined with its other definitions and meanings. All possessive national capabilities, relational, and psychological views, and meanings of sea power create a whole that served to Thucydides’s Trap at Sea. Also, even the development of alternative mediums and strategic technologies like nuclear weapons, the sea, and its control with military power is still an important factor. Just like the other previous rising and hegemonic powers, China and the US will also have to face each other in the sea domain. For that reason, sea power and its place is not only a strategic relationship between the US and China but also its political impact should be considered more. No new theoretical or strategic concept that did not cover the sea as a domain could provide a solution for this strategic rivalry.
This research revealed that both natural and ideational, national characteristics played an important part in what we defined as a maritime power, strategy, and identity development. Even both positive and negative aspects of a national character are not a destined pre-determiner of sea power and identity. The natural limitations could be overcome by the right choices and strategies while favourable natural conditions could become dysfunctional by social and ideational factors. But all national characteristics
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have an impact upon the grand strategy, maritime strategy, and remained active in affecting the perception side of the Thucydides’s Trap at Sea. In historical and national factors, China has great similarities and also differences with the Western examples of maritime powers. What created China as a successful maritime state and power, until now, is the right choices of the Government and people while also the favourable international environment. But one should be well aware neither the continuity of the right choices nor the favourable international environment is the destiny of China. It would require constant review and national concord for the sustenance of these favourable conditions.
A grand strategy could be considered as a road map to make the right choices. Setting such a strategy need careful assessment of self and others. National character, values, and capabilities also play an important role in setting it. It highly influences the maritime strategy and identity, whereas, in a binary way the maritime strategy also re-shapes the course of grand strategy. As a rising power, China could not have accepted as a sole case in terms of grand strategy. It has positive and negative aims. While also experiencing regime insecurity due to its dependence on providing development. Beijing defined its maritime and naval power as a means of grand strategy rather than an end for it. Deng Xiaoping’s grand strategy could be accepted as different from the historical ones with its focus on self-limitation. While his successors’ terms could be defined as a phony grand strategy where China’s actions and beliefs contradicted due to the constraints over the state power. Even today, China’s Grand Strategy could be seemed as stable and clear, it approached a crossroad that could require redesigning that could also change the place of maritime strategy vis-à-vis the grand one. Xi Jinping’s efforts to develop the Chinese Grand Strategy in line with his dream for China are still problematic in its nature. Not only due to inner contradictions and capability problems, but China also did not shape its future Grand Strategy vis-à-vis the maritime hegemon, the US. Just like the previous years, the coming years continue to be crucial for Beijing as any failure to create a balanced grand strategy and a balanced relationship between grand and maritime strategy could lead to a disaster.
After the development of sea power with blending national character and grand strategy, a state moves to implement a maritime strategy. It is a crucial process since the material foundations of a navy affect a state’s maritime identity and perception of how a hegemon state sees these material capabilities. As Beijing approaches a crossroad and its maritime capabilities grew, it has to clarify its maritime strategy that would also settle its maritime identity vis-à-vis the US and other allies.
A maritime identity is a part of state identity. It derives from material factors, the ships, that floated a nation’s values, policies, strategies, and identities. This research created two types of maritime identities which were Periclean and Post-Periclean Navies. A Periclean identity signified a state with a defensive navy, with an attrition grand strategy, littoral sea-denial, focused on operational active defence, a concentrated navy, and a view of sea power as a means of grand strategy. While post-Periclean identity
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is an offensive navy, with a mixed grand strategy, sea-control, focused on a decisive battle, a balanced navy, and see sea power as an end of grand strategy. All those cases ended with a failure of maritime strategy and identity with the eight common mistakes. This research underlined that Chinese maritime strategy and identity are different from the historical examples. It could neither be accepted as a Periclean nor a Post-Periclean due to its ideational and material constraints. It also revealed both China’s home-grown maritime strategies and identities were not enough to determine the relationship between the US and its allies. This problem of Chinese maritime identity also makes predicting and governing the future of Beijing’s rivalry with Washington at sea harder. China’s both civilian maritime and naval power is highly capable at least on paper. But its maritime strategies and intentions were not open for making clear-cut further analysis. It should create a direction for its ambitious shipbuilding program which requires more transparency. This research also revealed that, historically, ill-grounded maritime build-ups ended with a disaster with hegemonic power as the nature of the sea power is highly problematic due to the dichotomies.
Seas’ geographical and political special character made it harder to control or divide when compared with the land. A maritime hegemony has both material and ideational aspects. This means a hegemonic state need to have both material sea power and ideational acceptance by the third-party littoral states. It should ensure friendly high-seas while neutral littoral waters to project power towards the land domain. In terms of maritime hegemony, the US has no difference from the previous maritime hegemons as it needs both coercive and benevolent hegemony vis-à-vis the challenging states.
Today, Washington has grave problems with its grand strategy as its social and political fragmentation create a failure of a unified view of China. It should start from the very beginning as Washington should settle grand values and interests vis-à-vis China. Also, it has to take necessary actions to protect the country’s civilian maritime power as no hegemonic power without a civilian interest at sea achieved to continue its position. Washington could only manage its perceptual decline over the economy, politics, and perception in Asia with a proper re-organization of political life and domestic problems at home. Civilian maritime power is one of the unavoidable steps that this great national rejuvenation includes.
Then, the US should start to address the main problems in its maritime strategy for Asia. It should reconsider the old concepts like forward-deployment, island-chains, Archipelagic Defence, and air-sea battle. Those reconsiderations should be based upon deciding whether the US would prefer a mixed or a long-term attrition grand strategy vis-à-vis China. The main discussions of the American naval strategy in Asia will be set by the choice of whether the notion of deterrence will prevail or the US will look for a navy that could annihilate the enemy. Washington should have managed its maritime alliances by drawing clear red lines and settling its maritime interests. The US should also address the technical issues like the future of nuclear weapons, grey zone/hybrid warfare at sea, autonomy and artificial
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intelligence, cyberspace, EMS, and missile defence. Also, the US has non-military and non-strategic problems with domestic perceptions, limitations, political divergences, and budgetary constraints. Without addressing these problems, the US could not declare itself and its maritime strategy as safeguarding the nation. All recodifications in the strategy would eventually shape the Chinese response and also the view of the US which would eventually lead to changes in Chinese maritime strategy. Such changes could bring more pressure and risks over the development of Thucydides’s Trap at Sea between the US and China.
This research signified a primary work on understanding the relationship between history, sea power and strategy, and International Relations. Even how much it is inclusive, such a work would inevitably look for simplification of historical cases and have some limitations. But it creates a new framework to analyse the relationship between a rising and hegemonic power. It encourages people to use soft-positivism and scientific history methodologies in future researches on the issue. The author also encourages readers to conduct more research on the historical cases of sea powers and especially the English and Dutch rivalry case to understand the current world dynamics. The research also revealed that conducting more research in contemporary sea power is an urgent issue as the sea is still an indivisible part of human social interaction. This research could have remained limited in understanding the maritime hegemons as it primarily focused on maritime rising powers. But its framework for understanding maritime hegemony could help future research works to analyse the historical examples and also future examples of maritime hegemony. It also revealed that academic notions like identity and practical ones like strategy could work in harmony as the sea is an interesting domain that has an indispensable ideational and maritime impact. The research and author expect both academic scholars and also strategy-makers and implementers to master the binary way of the use of sword and pen. In International Relations, like a human body, a warship could not be separated from the material and ideational realities of the owning state, the view of the rival state, and from the sea itself.
As the last word, one should remember that history is a collective process of learning through experiences. As Thucydides underlined, we should not be worried about the rivalry between the US and China, what we should be worried about is the mistakes that this rivalry could produce. It is now the time for both the US and China to look back and learn from the mistakes of the previous rival powers. Both world and the people of the two countries await what wise politicians and good warriors do. As Horatio Nelson told to his men two centuries ago on the deck of HMS Victory. History and humanity, now, expect every man and woman to do their duties. This duty is to provide a better future and use of the seas for the inhabitants of this unique and beautiful blue planet.
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