Maritime power, a solution against dictatorial continental powers
- The advantages of free trade
- Creating disorder
- The disruptive powers
- Is there a solution?
- Conclusions
But in reality, there have always been differences over the model of government, the struggle for resources and geopolitics, with two clear perspectives: Continental Power vs Maritime Power. For continental powers, the index of power is territory. To this end, they devote vast resources to defence, as they need a great enemy to justify their power and fabricate security threats that lead to more wars.
In contrast, maritime states, which rely on the sea to defend them from their adversaries, consider wealth, not territory, to be the source of power, and promote international trade. This has given rise to a rules-based maritime order that protects all who accept this model. China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia want to undermine this order because their leaders believe that more liberal societies pose an existential threat to their visions of government and national security.
The United States can prevail in this Second Cold War, as it did in the first, if it sticks to the strategies of maritime power that brought prosperity over the last 50 years. But if it returns to a continental paradigm, erecting barriers, threatening its neighbours and undermining global institutions, it is likely to fail.
The advantages of free trade
About half of the world's population lives by the sea, coastal areas generate two-thirds of the world's wealth, 90% of traded goods reach their destination via the oceans, and submarine cables account for 99% of international communications traffic. The seas connect everyone to everything. No single state can keep them open on its own, but a coalition of coastal states can make them safe for transit. Countries that benefit from the maritime order are much richer than those that seek to undermine it. Even those who seek to overthrow this system, such as China, have benefited after joining the maritime order at the end of the Cold War. The economies of Iran and Russia are only a fraction of what they could be if they joined that rules-based order.
Creating disorder
Continental hegemonic powers destabilise neighbouring countries by flooding them with fake news to foment internal resentment and regional disagreements. These powers follow two rules: avoid wars on two fronts and neutralise neighbouring great powers. But as a consequence of their expansionism, continental powers often overextend themselves geographically, become isolated, and eventually risk collapse, as happened to the USSR, Japan, and Germany in World War II.
But it also happened to the United States after the First World War, when, with the sentiment of ‘America First,’ they enacted tariffs that deepened the Great Depression and set the stage for a repeat of world war. In contrast, after World War II, unlike after the first, Washington did not sink into isolationism, helping its partners rebuild and acting as guarantor of an international system it created in cooperation with its post-war allies to preserve peace. These institutions flourished in Europe until Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.
The disruptive powers
Putin has made clear his intention to expand Russia's borders. His initial goal is control of Ukraine. ‘There is an old rule: wherever a Russian soldier sets foot, it is ours,’ Putin said. But Ukraine may be only the first of his targets.
As during the First Cold War, Moscow seeks to dismember the West from both outside and within. Since the Bolshevik Revolution, Russians have excelled at propaganda. They used it to successfully promote communism around the world, and now Russia uses propaganda to spread the fiction that NATO threatens Russia, not the other way around.
Social media has increased Russia's ability to sow discord abroad, such as the war in Ukraine that separates the United States from Europe and the different European states from each other, weakening both NATO and the EU. It helped promote Brexit, generate massive migration flows by supporting the forces of dictator Bashar al-Assad during the Syrian civil war, and destabilise Africa, sending refugees to Europe en masse. This facilitates the rise of the isolationist right on the continent.
As for China, its decision to integrate into the current world order suggested that, despite its authoritarian government, it might be adopting a maritime perspective. And it built a large navy. But it cannot deploy it reliably in times of war because of the narrow, shallow, insular and enclosed seas surrounding its coasts. This makes it very similar to Germany, which built large navies that it could not reliably use in either of the two world wars. China is even more dependent on trade and imports than Germany was at the time, particularly for energy and food.
As Ukraine has demonstrated with the sinking of Russian ships, drones can close off narrow seas. China has thirteen neighbours on land and seven at sea, and it has no shortage of disagreements with them. These neighbours can block China's merchant traffic and make its naval navigation dangerous, but most of its coastal neighbours, on the other hand, do not need to cross the South China Sea to reach the open sea: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand, as well as Taiwan, have alternative coastlines on the open sea, making them difficult to blockade.
Like Russia, China maintains a continental perspective. In addition to territorial claims on Japan and the Philippines and its threat to seize Taiwan, Beijing covets territories in Bhutan, India, and Nepal. The Chinese still have two names for themselves: ‘the central kingdom’ or the even grander ‘all under heaven’—a complete world order that extends itself and all the lands it conquers.
Beijing, unlike Moscow, has not yet launched open wars of aggression. But it wages financial warfare with its predatory Belt and Road Initiative loans, or in Africa, which indebt their beneficiaries. It wages cyber warfare, hacking into other countries' critical infrastructure and stealing their secrets. It is engaged in a war for resources by limiting exports of rare earth minerals, an ecological war by damming the Mekong and Yarlung Tsangpo rivers in Southeast Asia and flooding the United States with fentanyl, or even by raiding Indian territory.
Is there a solution?
The West should exploit the great strength of the maritime world against the great weakness of the continental powers: their different capacities for generating wealth. They should be excluded from the benefits of the maritime order by sanctioning them until they stop violating international law, abandon war and embrace diplomacy.
Unlike tariffs, which are imposed on imports to protect domestic producers, sanctions outlaw selective transactions to penalise disruptive actors. One of the basic factors in America's victory in the Cold War was its clever policy of alliances. The United States should therefore focus on maintaining not only its own prosperity, but also that of its partners, so that they can unite against aggressors. And they should include countries that are harassed by dictatorial continental powers, whose resistance weakens their enemies. The West must now help Ukraine for as long as necessary. The longer the conflict in Ukraine drags on, the weaker Moscow will become, exposing it to possible Chinese predation. If Russia's current regime were to fall, the ensuing succession struggle would force it to scale back its foreign commitments, as happened with the Soviet Union during the Korean War, when Stalin's death brought about the rapid conclusion of that conflict.
Conclusions
The stakes in the clash between the continental and maritime orders, based on rules, have never been higher. If the conflicts in Ukraine, across Africa, and between Israel and Iran expand and merge, a catastrophic Third World War could ensue. Unlike previous wars, everyone would be exposed to nuclear attacks and their toxic consequences. But Washington's musings about absorbing Canada, appropriating Greenland and reclaiming the Panama Canal will, at worst, break Western alliances. A bad strategy could transform the United States from an essential power to an irrelevant one, as former partners form new alliances that exclude Washington.
Europeans will grow stronger together, leaving the United States weaker and alone. In the worst-case scenario, Washington could become the main shared adversary of China, Iran, North Korea and Russia, with no allies to help it. But even then, it might have to fight Beijing alone. And it might struggle to prevail. China has almost three times the population of the United States and a much larger manufacturing base. It possesses nuclear weapons that can reach US territory and may have no moral qualms about using them, and the United States may also be less reluctant to deploy its arsenal.
At the end of World War II, the US had gained allies around the world. But that moral capital, earned at a high price, is being lost. The return to the principle of ‘America First’ is reducing the number of allies around the world. And it must be acknowledged that over the past 80 years, the US has already created many enemies who would enjoy seeing the United States overthrown. Although it is difficult to do so, the United States should review its actions in recent months, both in its tariff policy and in its mediation in the war in Ukraine, allying itself with the invader and showing contempt for its European and Asian partners. It is a proven fact that this attitude can bring nothing good, either for the United States or for global peace and order.
Juan Ángel López Díaz, Marine Corps Colonel (Retired)
Naval Thought Centre (EGN) and Eurodefensa España