Sea Power in the Asia-Pacific at the Turn of the Millennium

‘Earth’ is a very bad name for our planet; ‘Oceania’ would be better. Two thirds of it is covered by sea and although the world’s inhabitants live on that relatively small part of the surface that is above water, most live close to the ocean, some 70 per cent of the world’s population living within 100 miles of a coastline. The historic importance of water transport as, until the last century and a half, the only effective long-distance medium has had indelible effects on patterns of trade and population distribution, not least in the Asia-Pacific. Moreover, sea transport still has vital advantages over other modes for the carriage of all but those items with the highest value to weight ratios. It is cheaper to transport a tonne of coal 5000 miles in a bulk carrier than 500 kilometres by rail. Shipping dominates world trade, some 90 per cent by volume going by sea (US Office of Naval Intelligence 1997). Although Paul Kennedy’s neo-Mackinderite analysis of the declining utility of sea power dominated discourse on the subject until recently mature consideration leads one to question it, especially after victory in the Cold War can be added to World Wars One and Two as ‘three in a row’ for maritime against continental coalitions. Thanks to Sumida (1997) we know that Mahan must not be bowdlerised and misinterpreted as he so often was from 1890 onwards. The latter’s ideas were richer and more diverse than implied by the first section of The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, a section that it turns out was forced on him by his publishers.