PrintJune 7, 2004
China's Creeping Expansion in the South China Sea
Perhaps blinkered by its focus on the immediate threats from the Middle East and North Korea, America is passively allowing a very dangerous course of events to unfold elsewhere, in another region vital to our national interests. Unless we awaken, and take action, we may someday find ourselves facing an even more formidable set of problems than our current struggle for survival in the War on Terror.
In April I traveled to Beijing to deliver a paper on "'Command of the Sea' and the Proliferation Security Initiative" at an annual symposium on maritime security held by the Ford Foundation and the China Institute for Contemporary International Relations. I left China troubled about the future of the Asia—Pacific region. Why? For what might seem like an odd reason: Many influential naval strategists in China today are followers of Alfred Thayer Mahan, the influential maritime thinker of the Theodore Roosevelt era.
That could portend friction in the Asia—Pacific region or, in...(Read Full Article)
