Eurasia's Maritime Rise and Global Security

From the Indian Ocean to Pacific Asia and the Arctic

Geoffrey F. Gresh

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9783319718057
• eBook ISBN: 9783319718064
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Globalisation
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book explores Eurasia's growing embrace of its maritime geography from the Indian Ocean to Pacific Asia and the Arctic. In an age of climate change, the melting of the Arctic will transform Eurasia's importance, in addition to influencing the political, economic, and military dynamics across Eurasia's main maritime regions. These emerging shifts have already begun to alter maritime trade and investment patterns, and thus the global political economy. It also creates a rising threat to the current status quo of world order that has long been dominated by the Atlantic World. This edited volume showcases some of the world's leading experts and examines Eurasia from a saltwater perspective, analyzing its main maritime spaces in a threefold manner—as avenue, as arena, as source—to show the significance of this geostrategic change and why it matters for the future of the world's oceans.

© The Author(s) 2018

G. F. Gresh (ed.)Eurasia’s Maritime Rise and Global SecurityPalgrave Studies in Maritime Politics and Securityhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71806-4_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: Why Maritime Eurasia?

Geoffrey F. Gresh¹

(1)

College of International Security Affairs, National Defense University, Washington, DC, USA

Keywords

Maritime SpaceMaritime GeographyMain MaritimeMaritime securityMaritime SecurityNorth Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

End Abstract

A geopolitical and economic shift is upon us, emerging across Eurasia’s diverse maritime regions. Eurasian powers, including Russia, China, and India, have increasingly embraced their maritime geography as they seek to expand and strengthen their burgeoning economies, enhance their military power projection capabilities to protect strategic national interests, and magnify their global influence. At the same time, this increased economic and military competition and power projection at sea has been exacerbated by climate change and the melting of the Arctic. During the upcoming century, the melting of the Arctic will transform Eurasia’s importance and likely speed up political, economic, and military competition across Eurasia’s main maritime regions—from the Indian Ocean and Pacific Asia to the Arctic—for the first time in modern history. This shifting dynamic has already begun to alter maritime trade and investment patterns and thus the global political economy. It also creates a rising threat to the current status quo of world order that has long been dominated by the Atlantic World and the United States specifically. This volume examines Eurasia from a saltwater perspective, analyzing its main maritime spaces in a threefold manner—as avenue, as arena, as source—to show the significance of this geostrategic shift and Eurasia’s enhanced embrace of the sea.¹

Maritime Eurasia stretches from the Strait of Gibraltar and the Mediterranean in the west to the South China Sea, the East China Sea, and the Sea of Japan/East Sea in the east. It also stretches from the northerly reaches of the Arctic to the southern portions of the Indian Ocean . With more than 90 percent of the world’s goods arriving via the sea, the maritime space remains prominent in an increasingly interconnected era. As Sir Walter Raleigh noted, “Whosoever commands the sea, commands the trade . Whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the World, and consequently the world itself.”² The control and security of the maritime trading routes or sea lanes of communication are therefore essential and will continue as such for India, China, Russia, Japan, South Korea, and others as they more actively expand into Eurasia’s blue water spaces.

Eurasia’s vast maritime regions also include some of the world’s most important strategic maritime chokepoints— the Danish Straits , the Suez Canal, the Bab el-Mandeb, the Strait of Hormuz, the Straits of Malacca, and the Bosphorus Straits. Eurasia’s maritime domain also possesses 27 of 30 of the world’s largest container ports.³ Trade between Asia and either Northern Europe, the Mediterranean, or the Middle East amounted to an estimated 25.5 million TEUs on an annual basis in recent years, making the East-West and West-East trade routes some of the largest and busiest in the world.⁴ China in particular was recently named as the world’s largest trading partner, surpassing the United States with about $4 billion in annual trade volume. Some estimates also predict that China will dominate 17 of the world’s top 25 bilateral trade avenues.⁵

These trends in trade align with eastern Eurasia’s growing population—estimated at 60 percent of the world’s population, with China and India accounting for 40 percent of it—and quest to secure more economic or natural resources .⁶ Furthermore, since the 1990s 42 percent of the world’s expanding energy consumption is directly linked to India and China . On the supply side, Eurasia—mainly the Middle East and Central Asia—accounts for 66 percent of proven oil reserves and an estimated 71 percent of proven natural gas.⁷ Of the world’s proven natural gas reserves, Russia possesses 17 percent of it and will gain an even larger market share when the Arctic opens up due to its vast and untapped natural resources.⁸ The continued challenge for the continent’s growing economies—and even those of the status quo powers such as South Korea and Japan—is that most of these resources must traverse the sea and travel via some of the world’s most dangerous maritime chokepoints . More than 50 percent of the world’s oil is shipped via the sea, for example, while the Strait of Hormuz alone handles more than 20 percent of it or an estimated 17 million barrels of oil per day.⁹ In a similar manner, approximately 85 percent of China’s oil imports transit the Strait of Malacca . Anything that threatens the closure of such a vital and narrow waterway could have devastating world economic and political consequences.¹⁰

Analytical Framework

Throughout this volume, three main argument strands are asserted by all of the authors regarding how Eurasia’s maritime space has grown in significance. Specifically, it looks at how Eurasia’s maritime space is used:

• As avenue
• As arena
• As source

To quote maritime historian John Curtis Perry:

[The Ocean] is an avenue for the flow of goods and resources, traditionally for people as well as ideas, and an arena for struggle and combat. Furthermore, the sea provides a source of foodstuffs and minerals, and will offer perhaps much else in the future. Now a frontier of opportunity, it is also a frontier of challenge. How we can exploit these resources without severely damaging the natural environment or inflaming national passions is a daunting task, especially in Pacific Asia where tensions are already high.¹¹

During the upcoming century, Eurasia’s maritime avenues, arenas, and vital resources will grow in importance if current political, economic, environmental, and military trends continue apace at their present levels. At the same time, the changing nature of the ocean and rising sea levels will act as a devastating source and force that threatens the livelihood and economies of Eurasia’s coastal nations.

In an age of complex interdependence, some believe that rising globalization and growing international commercial ties have contributed to the relative peace that we see today, especially on the high seas.¹² Moreover, some of the threats faced at sea such as piracy, for example, can be addressed through collective security or multilateral cooperation such as the Combined Task Force 150 counter-piracy operations in the western Indian Ocean . But there is also a competing school of thought that refers in part to the classic work of the naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan . In his famous The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783, Mahan writes about how a nation’s wealth is tied to both sea power and maritime trade. A nation cannot have domestic prosperity without maritime dominance.¹³ Mahan believed that commercial rivalry did not necessarily result in greater stability or peace but rather that it could transform into a more competitive or adversarial relationship with a potential for escalating into conflict.¹⁴ If tensions escalate further in line with Mahan’s sea power theory, it could have devastating repercussions for both the global political economy and Eurasian powers who increasingly rely upon the sea, including established regional powers such as South Korea and Japan. The United States will also likely be implicated and immersed into any conflict to defend its security treaty allies such as Japan, South Korea, or Taiwan.

Though other works have applied either a neoliberal or Mahanian-like thinking to specific cases or specific oceans such as the Indian Ocean , South China Sea, or Pacific Asia, no book has yet to tackle Eurasia’s maritime space as a whole and from an interdisciplinary perspective.¹⁵ Some prior works have attempted to analyze the Indo-Pacific as a collective region, but they still fall short in providing a more comprehensive analysis that integrates both climate change and/or military, economic, and security challenges associated with the growing rivalries of the continent.¹⁶

With this volume’s unique maritime perspective, the contributors portray a complex dynamic across Eurasia’s maritime regions that will continue to evolve and grow more accentuated with a warming planet over the next century. Though the contributors might differ in what they believe as Eurasia’s top maritime priority or concerns for the future, this volume provides keen insights into how Eurasia’s maritime space has transformed in recent years, in addition to how it will affect many of the current dynamics and alliances that we often take for granted in the current international system. Whether one believes it or not, Eurasia’s maritime rise has begun with significant implications for the future of global security.

Volume Overview

For the organization of this volume, the authors have been divided among the three main oceanic regions associated with Eurasia’s maritime spaces: the Indian Ocean , Pacific Asia, and the Arctic. With any good maritime study, however, it is important to note that some of the chapters have regional overlap or address topics that apply to the larger Eurasian continent. Climate change , energy security, and the shipping industry, for example, are not always bound by a specific region. That said, most of the chapters do fit well into one or more of the three specific oceanic regions highlighted above, and the last section takes on a more future leaning approach related to the future of Eurasia and the world’s oceans. As a volume that is interdisciplinary in nature, it represents vital perspectives from the private and public sector, as well as regional maritime trends, linked to the great importance of the past, present, and future of a maritime Eurasia. Additionally, for each regional ocean, the authors either touch upon one or all three of the maritime themes of ocean as avenue, arena, or source, thus making an important contribution to our larger understanding about Eurasia’s growing maritime significance.

The Indian Ocean

In Chap. 2, Rockford Weitz begins by examining ocean as avenue and the debates over the importance of some of Eurasia’s essential southern maritime chokepoints from a shipping and private sector perspective. Strategic chokepoints are geographic constraints shaping sea routes and the global shipping industry and, therefore, create numerous business opportunities for those industries that support global shipping, including port operations, ship repair, bunkering, and ship brokering and chartering. As Weitz discusses, global shipping companies do not view maritime chokepoints as strategically important but rather as simply a geogra...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: Why Maritime Eurasia?
• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Back Matter