Review | How the US should respond to China’s rising sea threat examined in new book
- US maritime strategy must be geared toward China’s growing power at sea, argues the new edition of Red Star Over the Pacific
- Authors are convinced that reunification with Taiwan would not sate China’s regional or global ambitions
Red Star Over the Pacific, Second Edition: China’s Rise and the Challenge to US Maritime Strategy, by Toshi Yoshihara and James R. Holmes. Published by Naval Institute Press
The renowned British geopolitical theorist Halford Mackinder wrote that great statesmanship requires “geographical capacity” and “an insight into the minds of other nations”.
He explained geographical capacity as a “mind which flits easily over the globe, which thinks in terms of the map, which quickly clothes the map with meaning [and] which correctly and intuitively places the commercial, historical or political drama on its stage.”
American statesmen who want to develop these qualities to approach the 21st-century world should consult the new edition of Red Star Over the Pacific, written by Toshi Yoshihara of the US Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, and James Holmes of the Naval War College in the state of Rhode Island. The book combines brilliant geopolitical insight, a careful review of Chinese naval writings, and a thorough knowledge of Chinese and American naval weapons systems, tactics and strategies – both historical and contemporary.
The statesmen and peoples of Asia-Pacific can also gain insights from this book on how an important segment of the US policymaking community thinks about China’s rise, the regional and global geopolitical impacts of that rise, and how the US should react.
Yoshihara and Holmes have mined the relevant Chinese naval and political sources to support their argument that China’s turn to the sea is a “permanent … factor in Asian affairs” that cannot be wished away and that poses a regional, and potentially global, geopolitical challenge to the United States.