Sea Power And American Interests In The Western Pacific

This book examines the strategic choices that American and Chinese decisionmakers face regarding sea power in the Western Pacific, shaped by geography, history, technology, and politics. In particular, the author explores the potential for cooperation on maritime security in the Western Pacific, and how the United States might pursue such cooperation as part of a broader strategy to advance its interests in the region.

This analysis examines the evolving contexts of U.S. maritime power in the Asia-Pacific region. It assesses its historical growth, changes as the result of major geopolitical shifts, and the impact of both the Cold War and Post-Cold War periods. Special emphasis is put on the ways the Post-Cold War era is affecting, and may influence, U.S. strategy generally and with special reference to naval power. It also examines the way in which Asian maritime power affects the geopolitical circumstances of the region and, in turn, the United States' strategy in the region.

This book examines the strategic choices that American and Chinese decisionmakers face regarding sea power in the Western Pacific, shaped by geography, history, technology, and politics. In particular, the author explores the potential for cooperation on maritime security in the Western Pacific, and how the United States might pursue such cooperation as part of a broader strategy to advance its interests in the region.

The challenges to American security in the Western Pacific, the seas that surround Europe, and the Persian Gulf are growing. At the same time, U.S. military commanders seek more naval forces to protect America's interest in the safe transit of American goods, deterrence in a proliferating world, and the defense of our key allies. At the same time U.S. defense budgets are shrinking. American seapower has not been as small as it is today since before World War I. Unless reversed, U.S. seapower will continue its decline into the indefinite future as politicians ignore the widening gulf between the cost of modernizing and expanding American seapower, and the resources devoted to this most strategic arm of the nation's defense. Seablindness explains the dilemma. It looks at the consequences of neglect including the effect of increased deployments on families, global scenarios set in the immediate future, the views of America's most knowledgeable military officers, the anxious reactions of U.S. allies, and hard facts to show how a lack of political will is dismantling the nation's global reach and with it, our position as the world's great power.

This book offers an assessment of the naval policies of emerging naval powers, and the implications for maritime security relations and the global maritime order. Since the end of the Cold War, China, Japan, India and Russia have begun to challenge the status quo with the acquisition of advanced naval capabilities. The emergence of rising naval powers is a cause for concern, as the potential for great power instability is exacerbated by the multiple maritime territorial disputes among new and established naval powers. This work explores the underlying sources of maritime ambition through an analysis of various historical cases of naval expansionism. It analyses both the sources and dynamics of international naval competition, and looks at the ways in which maritime stability and the widespread benefits of international commerce and maritime resource extraction can be sustained through the twenty-first century. This book will be of much interest to students of naval power, Asian security and politics, strategic studies, security studies and IR in general.