Alternate visions grappling for supremacy over the structures and norms of global politics and power is at the very center of strategic competition. In this struggle, comprehensive national power across all dimensions of diplomacy, information, military, and economic might, often below the threshold of armed conflict, are means to the broader end of national prestige and supremacy on the world stage. From Athens and Sparta to the United States and the Soviet Union, history is replete with competitions over the balance of power and the assertion of the dominant state’s values, norms, and power.
History may not repeat itself, but it often rhymes, and modern competition has similar rhythmic tones to the past. Competition has historically played out most dramatically between maritime and continental powers, each party wielding strengths and mitigating vulnerabilities as it seeks to impose an international order that serves its interests. The dynamic interplay of maritime and continental powers occurs because of a fundamental difference in national statecraft and prioritization.
Continental powers emphasize territorial control, overland trade routes, and maintaining security through land-based military capabilities. They prefer to focus on immediate border threats and influencing the affairs of neighboring states to maintain border or territorial security. Continental powers traditionally utilize territorial conquest or overland trade to address national resource constraints. Historical continental powers include states such as Sparta, Rome, dynastic China, the Mongol Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Habsburg monarchy, Napoleonic France, and Imperial Russia and Germany. Although these states would acquire and often utilize naval forces, their primary imperative was territorial expansion for state security, creating a centralized economy, and a unified national culture. These priorities would often lead continental powers to govern through centralized governance to maintain territorial security and political rule.
Modern continental powers like the Soviet Union and now China that have built naval capabilities have largely done so not to challenge Western sea control, but to defend their own littoral territories and claims. These states built naval forces that complement their objectives as continental powers—namely, that of maintaining territorial integrity. China currently has the largest navy in the world in terms of total number of vessels and shipbuilding capacity, but it is designed for littoral control not power projection or oceanic trade protection. While continental powers do not fear the strategic impacts of naval power, they do tend to act in a way that reflects an apparent concern over seapower as the enabler of ideas that could undermine the political stability of the state.
Maritime powers have unique strategic attributes making them distinctive from their continental counterparts. Where continental powers see territory to be taken, maritime powers see markets to facilitate cumulative economic growth. The development of maritime power in part originates out of the necessity of trade. Early Mediterranean trade networks supplied the land empires of the Near East with commodities such as timber, tin, and copper. These early Mediterranean trading states laid the foundation of maritime power identity, which is characterized by control of trade and trade routes, an emphasis on commerce, and more inclusive forms of government such as republics or constitutional monarchies. Historical examples of maritime powers include Athens, Carthage, Venice, the Dutch Republic, and the British Empire. Maritime power states evolved out of the periphery of early civilization, not at the center as great continental powers did, and thus had to rely on more open societies to enable trade and commerce to meet their resource needs.
While the United States does not strictly meet the criteria of a seapower state as laid out by Alfred Thayer Mahan in 1890, the Western liberal order is largely shaped by the political, cultural, and intellectual history of seapower states and protected by the United States security umbrella. The United States was born out of a maritime power, the British Empire, and its early identity was shaped by its reliance on Atlantic trade, but the acquisition by conquest and purchase of a continent morphed its identity. Modern American views of seapower are strategic rather than cultural, but naval power continues to be a defining feature of American military might. The United States inherited the mantle of international hegemon from the British after World War II, placing it at the center of the contest between maritime and continental powers that continues today.
Modern Competition
Modern-day strategic competition between the United States and China follows along the historical trend lines defining the relationships between maritime and continental powers. The United States and China’s competition spans across five areas of interstate contention: different political systems, contrasting ideologies, competing economic visions, informational misalignment, and military tension. Current strategic competition between the United States and China features all five facets of competition and encompasses competing visions for global order.
The current system of the liberal rules-based international order is championed by the United States. Both the United States and its Western allies and partners reap benefits from it. Built by the victors of World War II, the order is defined by the primacy of law. It is characterized by a set of norms and principles seeking to promote peace and prosperity by expanding free trade, collective defense, and the spread of democratic governance. These core principles built into the liberal international order are in accordance with maritime power identity, mirroring maritime states’ reliance on commerce and open governance. The United States inherited its own maritime power identity from the British and built a system of open governance with naval and air forces that have the capabilities to protect global commerce and project power abroad. This rules-based order, however, is under strain, as the reemergence of continental powers such as China challenge the United States in all aspects of national power, threatening to subvert or supplant the Western liberal order.
China, which prioritizes state territorial and political security, has been deeply skeptical of Western liberal democracies and is looking to change the international order into a system that, historically, China had successfully implemented and greatly benefitted from, known as Tianxia. At its core, Tianxia, meaning “all under heaven,” is a unique Chinese concept, deeply rooted in classical Chinese philosophy and thought. In implementation, it allowed dynastic China to control its immediate neighbors as tributaries and maintain control and influence over East Asian nations for millennia. With philosophical roots as deep as the Zhou Dynasty (1046–221 BCE), the concept of Tianxia is that of a hierarchical, orderly world, with China at the center and satellite, or tributary, states on the periphery. The model represents that of a hub and spoke and is organized so that the edges revolve around the center like planets orbiting a star. Structured to be able to maintain territorial and political control of neighbors and borders, a Tianxia system is similar to previous continental systems, but with an additional cultural hierarchy. It includes an incentive structure under which the greater the cultural, political, and economic compliance to the Chinese Communist Party, the greater the legitimacy endowed on the nation. The greater the submission, or tribute, to the party, the greater the rewards. A China-led system stands in stark contrast to the liberal rules-based international order and represents the gravest challenge to United States hegemony.
Maritime Advantages
The United States must leverage its maritime power advantages to successfully compete with China or be destined to repeat the failures of past competitions. Historically, naval forces struggle to engage resilient, well-protected land defenses—as Lord Admiral Horatio Nelson succinctly put it, “A ship’s a fool to fight a fort.” Mainland China functions as a continental fort from which it can advance its objectives, undermine the US-led order, and when Beijing so chooses, force the capitulation and reintegration of Taiwan. Efforts by the United States to assault the fort of mainland China using political, informational, or economic means have not been successful, so upholding the rules-based order means competing in the periphery and holding China’s global interests and influence at risk in places such as Africa and South America. The United States must utilize the asymmetric advantages of a maritime power to create the dilemma: Does China continue to seek confrontation and risk losing assets and influence abroad, or does is instead seek cooperation with the United States within the rules-based order? The United States must flex its maritime power advantages more effectively and learn from previous maritime power examples of how to use that might to maintain distance from the fort and weaken it from afar.
A prime example from which the United States can learn is the competition between the British Empire and Napoleonic France. Throughout the Napoleonic period, the British were able to wear down the French forces from afar utilizing their maritime advantages by maintaining control of the seas, implementing trade blockades, and employing diplomatic and economic leverages to keep allies in the fight against Napoleon. These advantages enabled the British to effectively chip away at French power over time. Learning from this example, the United States should emphasize its own similar advantages of naval superiority, alliance networks, and economic power to effectively compete with China and emplace capabilities to prevail in conflict if it were to occur.
A course of action available to the United States is to set conditions for a multidimensional blockade. This would entail not just a naval or trade blockade, but extend to diplomacy, information and influence, and cyber, to ensure that a hostile China can be comprehensively isolated. The United States needs to ensure it has the necessary capabilities to isolate the continental fort to disturb the enemy plans and strengthen the hand of the United States and its allies. By setting the necessary conditions, the United States can also use its leverage to remove any constraints on a friendly or cooperative China. In previous warfare in the modern period, the state, or states, that controlled the flow of trade on the seas has been able to wear down the adversary over time. Besides the example of the British against Napoleonic France, similar dynamics played out with the British against Imperial Germany and the United States against Imperial Japan.
Setting the conditions militarily would mean investing in the diplomatic, economic, informational, and military tools—such as naval, cyber, space, special operations, and irregular warfare capabilities—to hold Chinese assets and interests at risk outside of mainland China. These capabilities give the United States the flexibility to engage, or not, on its own terms at times and places of its choosing. These also enable the United States to address hybrid threats below the threshold of war while being able to prepare any operational environment in the event of conflict. Modernizing naval capabilities, diplomatic relationships, and economic resilience over time can yield powerful advantages if conflict occurs, but diplomacy is required to ensure these capabilities can be wielded to the greatest effect.
To be successful the United States needs to reinvest in diplomacy and cultivate its greatest assets, its allies and partners, to leverage the unique strengths they can wield, while also developing new partnerships that can offset its own vulnerabilities. Greater investment in diplomatic muscle can enable the United States to rely on the strengths of our allies for collective defense and enable access, basing, and overflight for military assets. Through diplomatic efforts, the United States must reinvigorate the rules-based international order, as well. This can be done by negotiating positions of influence in multilateral and minilateral institutions, forging more beneficial trade relationships with new partners, and streamlining development and infrastructure deals with potential partners. These actions targeting potential partners in Africa and South America, for instance, would strengthen an enforcement of a comprehensive, multidimensional blockade by ensuring the United States has the partners necessary to isolate any malign actors.
The ongoing competition between the United States and China will shape or alter the global system of power whether the United States or China emerges successful. By learning from historical competitions and utilizing the asymmetries afforded to a maritime power, the United States could chart a course that avoids a deeply destructive conflict and reinvigorate a world order that has brought about unparalleled peace, stability, and prosperity.
Matthew Sansone currently works on a competition and irregular warfare portfolio for the Joint Chiefs of Staff Office of Irregular Warfare and Competition. Previously, he handled a strategic competition portfolio at State Department and is a former US Navy SEAL. Matthew has his master’s degree in international relations from American University’s School of International Service and has previously written about ongoing US-China strategic competition within Africa.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
Image credit: Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Tyler Wheaton, US Navy