Kaplan Paints in a Monsoon

by Bill Doughty

Robert Kaplan paints words from a palatte of nearly forgotten colors and memories.

In “Monsoon” -- a top pick on the CNO’s Professional Reading Program, Kaplan literally (and littorally) travels the breadth of the Indian Ocean and, like an artist, reveals the people, places and history of the dynamic and vital IO Rim.

His words evoke sights, smells, tastes, dimensions and sensations for the reader.

Case in point:

“A few minutes from the Shah Jahan Mosque is the necropolis on Makli Hill: tombs from the Samma, Arghun, Tarkhan, and Mughal periods, made of sandstone and glazed bricks.  These, too, were dynasties with both Turkic and Mongol blood.  And yet the tombs remind one of so many similar buildings in India, demonstrating that what we think of as Indian is itself a mélange of Near Eastern cultures.  Everywhere there are brick plinths, rectangular pillars, imposing ramparts, and cracked bulbous domes.  The buckling, glazed brick is peeled away in layers, like old mascara, with faint touches of milky blue.  These lonely monuments appear to soar into the clouds, each occupying its own little hill.  Some, with their intricate fretwork, have an almost Byzantine stateliness.  Others bear the proportions and complexity of the pharaonic buildings at Karnak.  All stand in majestic separation from one another amid a destitute wasteland, with garbage everywhere, like at so many historical and cultural sites in Pakistan. It is as though in the last sixty years -- unlike during the dynastic centuries recounted by these tombs -- there has been no state here; nothing but marauders.”

This is beautifully constructed prose, and there is a lot of it.  Kaplan’s words frame the abstract into the tangible and help us understand people and situations in Oman, Baluchistan, Bangladesh, several regions of India, Burma, Sri Lanka and Zanzibar and along the Indus River. 

Camões

Several diverse and sometimes unexpected themes link his narrative.  These include the voyages of Zheng He and Vasco de Gama; the poem “The Lusiads”  (“Os Lusíadas”) by Luís Vaz de Camões; environmental and seismic issues, including climate change, tsunami; the influence of world religions; and, of course, the drift of monsoon seasons and winds.

“The southwest monsoon that arrives in the Bay of Bengal in early summer provides a new dimension to rain.  This is the time of tropical cyclones, and it is as though the ocean was continually emptying itself upon you.  For days at a time, the sky is a low, claustrophobic vault of angry clouds.  Absent sunlight, the landscape -- however intrinsically rich in color, with mountains of hibiscus and bright orange mangoes, and the flowing saris of women -- becomes scrubbed over in a grainy mist.  Mud is the primary color, but it is not depressing.  It is the coolness that you notice first, not the leaden darkness.  You are filled with energy.  No longer are your clothes dissolving in sweat or your knees hollow from the heat.  No longer is the air something thick and oppressive that your body needs to push against.”

Kaplan notes that a million ships pass through the Indian Ocean straits each year.  Countries like India and China are building more ships, competing for resources and influence as they develop various cooperative relationships.

Kaplan’s canvas is wide.  He combines long and deep descriptions with sudden flashes of pinpoint insights expressed in just one or two sentences.  Some examples:

• “The Indian Ocean is small in a cultural sense but too vast even in the jet age for one power to gain real sway over it.”

• “History is as much a series of accidents and ruined schemes as of great plans.”

• “The Indus signals the western edge of the Subcontinent, from where its political unity was frequently breached by invaders coming out of the plateau and deserts of Afghanistan, Iran, and Baluchistan.  It is thus a lesson in the feebleness of borders.”

• Regarding India’s democratic spirit: “A spirit that is truly breathtaking in terms of what it can overcome. That is india’s ultimate strength.”

• “Strategic, romantic, and a moral catastrophe, Burma is a place that tends to consume people.”

• “The future of American power is related directly to how it communicates its concern about issues like climate change to Bangladeshis and others.”

Jakarta, Indonesia

As a book of thoughtful influence and reflection, “Monsoon” is an important read on the two-year anniversary of the Tohoku earthquake/tsunami March 11 and U.S. Navy’s humanitarian response.  Next year will be the ten-year anniversary of the Indian Ocean Tsunami which slammed Indonesia at the end of 2004.  The U.S. Navy’s humanitarian response was a milestone cultural and historical event that, according to Kaplan, made a difference for the littoral nations throughout the region.

“Monsoon: the Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power” is presented in three parts, with the third predominantly focused on China and filled with naval power insights -- from Alfred Thayer Mahan in the late 1800s to current scholars from the U.S. Naval War College today, including James R. Holmes and Toshi Yoshihara.

Robert D. Kaplan

Kaplan’s analysis in Chapter 15 -- “China’s Two-Ocean Strategy?” -- is especially important to the U.S. Navy especially since Kaplan presciently touches on budgetary challenges, which he wrote two years before the threat of the Sequester, starting to bite this month. 

Respected thinkers Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore and Pankaj Mishra of India and Great Britain (author of the insightful “From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals who Remade Asia”), both referenced in Monsoon, warn Americans about seeing Asia (and China, in particular) through an American prism that assumes people in the region want to be just like us.  Many people in and around the Indian Ocean hunger for freedom and democracy, but we would be best served if we see their region through their eyes.  Kaplan helps make that happen.  He helps us see the big picture.

China and 'Best Case, Nuanced Scenario'

Review by Bill Doughty

“Monsoon” by Robert D. Kaplan provides a panoramic sweep of the Indian Ocean and its relevance to world commerce, with a special discussion of China, the United States Navy, and energy.

“Forty percent of seaborne crude oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz at one end of the ocean,” he writes, “and 50 percent of the world’s merchant fleet capacity is hosted at the Strait of Malacca, at the other end, making the Indian Ocean the globe’s busiest and most important interstate.”

Citing the International Energy Agency’s “World Energy Outlook 2007,” presented in Paris, Kaplan writes, “The world’s energy needs will rise by 50 percent by 2030, and almost half of the consumption will come from India and China.”  What are the political realities of growing economic stakes, finite energy resources and heightened nationalism in the face of globalization?

Kaplan’s observations conclude in a pivotal chapter, “China’s Two-Ocean Strategy?”

“[As] China rises economically and politically, taking advantage, in effect, of America’s military quagmire in Iraq and Afghanistan, a new and more complex order is gradually emerging in the maritime rimland of Eurasia, which includes not only the Indian Ocean but [also] the western Pacific.  What follows is an analysis of a U.S. Navy that has already reached the zenith of its dominance, faced with a rising Chinese maritime presence that, along with the rise of India, could over time herald the end of Western control over these waters.”

Kaplan evaluates the shrinking U.S. Navy -- from 6,700 ships at the end of World War II, 600 ships during the Cold War, to fewer than 280 ships today.

At the same time, “China yearns for an authentic blue water, or oceanic, navy...” in both the Indian and Pacific Oceans, Kaplan posits.  Add Japan, India and other Pacific nations to the mix and this will lead, he concludes, to an increasingly complex global power arrangement, one that is not bipolar or suicidal.  In fact, China already cooperates with other nations, including the United States in combatting a mutual enemy -- piracy.

Ship's Serviceman Seaman Qing Su, right, from New York, translates for a U.S-China combined visit, board, search and seizure (VBSS) team comprised of Sailors from the guided-missile destroyer USS Winston S. Churchill (DDG 81) and the Chinese People's Liberation Army (Navy) frigate Yi Yang (FF 548) during a bilateral counterpiracy exercise in the Gulf of Aden, Sept. 17, 2012. The focus of the exercise was American and Chinese naval cooperation in detecting, boarding, and searching suspected pirated vessels. (Photo by MC2 Aaron Chase)

Kaplan cites the cooperative strategies espoused by (now retired) Adm. Michael Mullen, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former Chief of Naval Operations who, in 2007, said, “the economic tide of all nations rises not when the seas are controlled by one [nation] but rather when they are made safe and free for all.”

“Monsoon” is a key read on current CNO Adm. Jonathan Greenert’s Professional Reading Program list in the “Operate Forward” category.  

These past two blogposts only begin to scratch the surface of this great book.  “Monsoon” demanded two posts to showcase both its science and art.  This book is essential to understanding the sweeping history, present reality and potential future of the region.

As for the future, Kaplan writes, “Strong American-Chinese bilateral relations going forward is not only plausible, but might be the best-case scenario for the global system in the twenty-first century...”

“Therefore, the most likely scenario in my mind for relations with China is something quite nuanced: the United States will both compete and cooperate with China.  The American-Chinese rivalry of the future could give new meaning tot he word ‘subtlety,’ especially in its economic and diplomatic arrangements.  Yet, if this relationship has its hard edges, I expect one of those will be where the two countries’ navies interact: in the Greater Indian Ocean and western Pacific.”

Mutually Assured Destruction, with it’s apt acronym, created an uneasy and dangerous peace during the Cold War.  Today, the intertwined economic and energy dependency of the largest economies of the East and West may achieve a mutually assured peace.  Kaplan shows that readers and leaders on all sides need to understand how the winds are blowing across the Indian Ocean in order to fully see the big picture.

Chinese sailors render honors to Secretary of the Navy the Honorable Ray Mabus during a visit to the People's Liberation Army (Navy) hospital ship Peace Ark (866) Nov. 29, 2012. Mabus visited Ningbo, China to discuss the United States' new defense strategy, deepening military-to-military engagements, rebalancing toward the Pacific and fostering a positive, cooperative and comprehensive relationship with China. (U.S. Navy photo by MCC Sam Shavers)

Geography: Bigger Splash than Godzilla

by Bill Doughty

Robert D. Kaplan's amazing "The Revenge of Geography" explores history, geopolitics and "the battle against fate" through his own ideas and by incorporating the ideas of other strategic thinkers like Mackinder, Mahan, Spykman and Braudel.

His work explains how and why the Navy balances power in oceans far from the continental United States, and his conclusion leads to a provocative proposal much closer to home.

Kaplan introduces us to Frenchman Fernand Braudel's broad history over time, "in which every detail of human existence is painted against the canvas of natural forces."

Braudel perceived history in three varying wavelengths of time: at the base, (1) landscape that is "slow, imperceptibly changing geological time." Next, (2) a faster wavelength with "systemic changes in demographics, economics, agriculture, society and politics." Finally, (3) the shortest-term  cycle, "the daily vicissitude of politics and diplomacy that are the stuff of media coverage." Kaplan writes:

"Braudel's analogy is the sea: in the deepest depths is the sluggish movement of water masses that bear everything; above that the tides and swells; and finally at the surface, in (Oxford archeologist Barry) Cunliffe's words, "the transient flecks of surf, whipped up and gone in a minute."

That puts into perspective Monica Lewinsky, Youtube cat videos, the Kardashians, Donald Sterling and most other popular culture -- even Godzilla. They're just sea spray in the wind.

Kaplan is instead concerned with the depths of geography and history over millennia -- the influence of mountains, deserts, rivers, oceans and natural resources, especially oil -- and the impact of population growth, urbanization, global climate change, democracy and overall human nature.

Published in 2012, two years before Putin took Crimea and threatened an invasion of Ukraine (which held faux elections this weekend), Kaplan explains why the Russian president had his sights on Ukraine, "suddenly challenging Europe." Russians were deprived of the benefits of the Renaissance because of invasions by Mongols. Russia was attacked on both sides in the previous century, by Japan and Germany. Because of their place in geography and history, Kaplan says, they continue to gravitate to autocratic leaders and blind nationalism.

"Truly, the Russian climate and landscape are miserably rugged and as such hold the keys to the Russians' character and to their history," Kaplan writes.

Writing more than a century ago, many years before the World Wars, creation of the Soviet Union and Cold War, Rear Adm. Alfred Thayer Mahan in "The Problem of Asia" discussed Russia's vulnerability, being so far from the Indian Ocean. Mahan predicted that Russia's dissatisfaction would readily take the form of aggression.

Writes Kaplan, "Mahan emphasized the importance of China, Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey. It is no coincidence that in 1900 he is able to identify the pivotal states of geopolitical significance in our own time: for geography is unchangeable."

However, Kaplan acknowledges that a warming Arctic is creating new sea power lanes, the widening of the Panama Canal will create significant changes in our hemisphere, and communication technology is changing geography virtually.

Cobra Gold opening ceremony in 2014, Photo by Spc. Tyler Meiester.

Naval War College professors James Holmes and Toshi Yoshihara, whose work is discussed in detail in Kaplan's "Monsoon," contribute their study of China's maritime perspective in "Revenge." Other NWC professors, Andrew Erickson and Lyle Goldstein, show how the politics in he South China Sea make it an Asian Mediterranean in the twenty-first century and where the future for the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force may be as part of a "concert of power" with other nations.

Millions of mainland Chinese visit Taiwan in 270 flights per week, where they can visit book stores and see free-spirited political talk shows on TV.  According to Kaplan, "a more open China is certainly more of a possibility than a repressive one."

"Navies have multiple purposes beyond fighting, such as the protection of commerce. Sea power suits those nations intolerant of heavy casualties in fighting on land. China, which in the twenty-first century will project hard power primarily through its navy, should, therefore, be benevolent in the way of other maritime nations and empires in history, such as Venice, Great Britain, and the United States: that is, it should be concerned mainly with the free movement of trade and the preservation of a peaceful maritime system."

In "Revenge" Kaplan explores not just Russia and China in great detail but also India, Pakistan, Iran and Turkey. His is a sweeping description of migration, invasion, revolution, religion, peace and war.

France's Fernand Braudel, 1902-1985.

Among other thinkers and authors cited in "revenge" are Thucydides, Herodotus, Toynbee, Solzhenitsyn, Darwin, Jared Diamond, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Samuel Huntington, Nikolas Gogol, W. Bruce Lincoln and George Orwell.

In 2014's world of big ideas and big thinking, Thomas Piketty is the rage, with his bestselling "Capital In the Twenty-First Century" warning about the dangers of income inequality and wealth disparity.

But another Frenchman, Fernand Braudel (who wrote about the Mediterranean and North Africa's Sahara while a captive of the Nazis in World War II), is presented by Kaplan in the context of today's challenges.

"In an era of climate change, of warming Arctic seas opening up to commercial traffic, of potential sea-level rises that spell disaster for crowded, littoral countries in the tropical Third World, and of world politics being fundamentally shaped by the availability of oil and other commodities, Braudel's epic of geographical determinism is ripe for reading. In fact, Braudel with his writings about the Mediterranean establishes the literary mood-context for an era of scarcity and environmentally driven events in an increasingly water-starved, congested planet."

Kaplan brings his insights home in the final chapter, "Braudel, Mexico and Grand Strategy," where he says our country's destiny is north-south, not the "sea-to-shining-sea" east-west.

USS Independence (LCS 2) in Manzanillo, Mexico. Photo by PO2 Trevor Welsh

"While we have spent hundreds of billions of dollars to affect historical outcomes in Eurasia, we are curiously passive about what is happening to a country with which we share a long land border, that verges on disorder, and whose population is close to double that of Iraq and Afghanistan combined." We should pay attention to Mexico in part because, "American GDP (is) nine times that of Mexico" -- the largest income gap of any tow countries next to each other in the world.

Kaplan's startling conclusion in "The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflict and the Battle Against Fate" is that Mexico may be more important than China.

Is Singapore the Israel in 'Asia's Cauldron'?

Review by Bill Doughty

In "Asia's Cauldron" Robert D. Kaplan combines insights from his "Monsoon" and "The Revenge of Geography" and shows where the future is unfolding, per his subtitle: "The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific."

Kaplan gives us a priceless short history of the region. He describes the landscape and maritime environment in the context of global power politics as he draws parallels – for example, between Singapore, a key ally in the region, and Israel; both nations were created in the past century. In the case of the more ethnically diverse Singapore:

"It was thrown out of a Malay-dominated federation in the 1960s because Singapore's leaders insisted on a multiethnic meritocracy. Thus, Singapore found itself alone amid a newly constituted and hostile Malaysia, which controlled Singapore's access to freshwater, while a pro-communist Indonesian demographic behemoth was breathing down Singapore's neck. Singapore was as small and alone in its region as Israel was in its; it was no irony that Israel played a large role in training Singapore's armed forces."

"While Singapore has only 3.3 million citizens, it boasts an air force the same size as Australia's, whose population is 23 million. 'Like the Israelis, the Singaporeans believe in air superiority. They pay their pilots well. they have AWACS,' a defense official from a neighboring country told me. In addition to its one hundred or so fighter jets, Singapore has twenty missile-carrying ships, six frigates, and, notably, six submarines – an extraordinary number given that far more populous countries in the region like Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam have fewer."

PEARL HARBOR (June 24, 2014) Republic of Singapore frigate RSS Intrepid (F 69) moors to the pier at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam for the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) 2014 exercise, which concluded Aug. 1. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Tiarra Fulgham/Unreleased)

Other countries get the Israel comparison treatment, too, including Taiwan, which Kaplan says has survived because of "feverish, innovative diplomacy":  "More isolated than the Israelis, the Taiwanese were less bitter about it. No one in Taipei had chips on their shoulder. It was a place you instantly liked."

Kaplan finds other parallels with people and geography. The Caribbean of previous centuries is compared with the South China Sea, and "the South China Sea is the Mitteleuropa (German for Central Europe) of the twenty-first century." Kaplan describes the years leading up to World War I when Kaiser Wilhelm II built up his navy as President Theodore Roosevelt was anxious to prevent "a strong Germany from replacing a weak Spain" near United States shores. Strategic thinking and naval advances led to the creation of the Panama Canal, which opened one hundred years ago this month, Aug. 15, 2014.

Mark Twain said, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Parallels and predictions are fraught with imperfections as history rhymes rather than repeats. Sometimes rhymes are beautiful sonnets, other times limericks.

"Future predictions are obviously dangerous because of the flaw of linear thinking: current trends rarely continue as they have in the past," Kaplan acknowledges.

Statue of Adm. Koxinga in Tainan, Taiwan

Reading Kaplan is like reading the best excerpts from the best books in the stacks of the best libraries. His bibliography weaves in such diverse sources as Aristotle, Sun Tzu, Thucydides, Machiavelli, John Stuart Mill, Lee Kuan Yew, Barbara Tuchman, University of Hawaii historian Leonard Andaya, Joseph Conrad, Steven Pinker, Mingjiang Li and Jonathan Fenby.

Some interesting insights from "Asia's Cauldron," in random order:

• Seventy percent of modern Taiwanese are part aboriginal, "Malay in origin."
• The last three chiefs of the Malaysian Navy are graduates of the U.S. Naval War College.
• Early Chinese explorer Cheng Kung, or Adm. Koxinga (feted in both mainland China and Taiwan) had a Japanese mother.
• According to Kaplan: "After Singapore, postnational Malaysia, with all of its Islamic pretensions, is America's most reliable – albeit quietest – ally around the South China Sea (though Vietnam may soon surpass Malaysia in this regard)."
• On Eastern and Western views: "The Western – and particularly the American – tendency is to be suspicious of power and central authority; whereas the Asian tendency is to worry about disorder."
• Indo-Asia-Pacific: By 2050, seven of nine billion people in the world will live in Asia, the Middle East and East Africa.
• The Philippines has an "aesthetic of material devastation" brought on, in part, according the Kaplan, by America's colonial blunder and Spain's colonization via Mexico in the Philippines.

Martial law declared Sept. 21, 1972.

The Philippines stands in in sharp contrast to the Asian tigers like Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam, Kaplan says. The culture of corruption, bureaucracy and inequality in the distribution of wealth is a legacy perpetuated by former President Ferdinand Marcos and his First Lady Imelda Marcos.

American occupation of the Philippines that ended just over 100 years ago was seen as a "model of enlightenment," as Kaplan quotes Stanley Karnow, author of "In our Image."  Kaplan writes:

"The Philippines, in turn, affected the destiny of twentieth-century America to a degree that few faraway countries have. Ohio judge William Howard Taft's leadership of the Philippine Commission propelled him to the presidency of the United States. Army Captain John 'Black Jack' Pershing, who would head the expedition against Pancho Villa in Mexico and command American forces in World War I, was promoted to brigadier general over nine hundred other officers after his stellar performance in leading troops against Islamic insurgents in the southern Philippines. Douglas MacArthur, son of Army General Arthur MacArthur, came to the Philippines to command an American brigade and returned for a second tour of duty as the indigenous government's military advisor. One of Douglas MacArthur's aides in Manila was a middle-aged major, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who honed his analytical skills for World War II by attempting to organize a Philippine national army. The Japanese victory over General Douglas MacArthur's forces on the Philippines, MacArthur's last stand on Corregidor in Manila Bay before retreating to Australia, the subsequent Japanese atrocities committed against both American and Filipino prisoners of war during the Death March on the nearby Bataan Peninsula, and MacArthur's triumphal return to the Philippines in the battle of Leyte Gulf, all became part of the Homeric legend of World War II that bound Americans to their military, and gave the American and Filipino people's a common historical inheritance."

Gen. MacArthur inspects the beachhead at Leyte Gulf, Oct. 24, 1944.

The Philippines remains crucial, he says, in large part because of its location and potential. "And yet, despite a century's worth of vast annual outlays of American aid, the Philippines has remained among the most corrupt, dysfunctional, intractable, and poverty-stricken societies in maritime Asia, with Africa-like slums and Latin America-style fatalism and class divides." Kaplan makes no Israel comparisons with the Republic of the Philippines, instead raising the risk of the Philippines becoming "Finlandized" by China.

Read "Asia's Cauldron" to see Kaplan's recommendation for a nuanced approach to the region, to interaction with China and to debates about contested islands, rocks and shoals in the Pratas, Paracels and Spratleys. This book shows how the U.S. Navy is viewed by key nations throughout the region who are embracing capitalism and seeing the benefits of freedom, critical thinking, and cooperation.

A case for optimism in a world where history rhymes rather than repeats: "The sea, unlike land, creates clearly defined borders, and thus has the potential to reduce conflict ... It is because of the seas around East Asia that the twenty-first century has a better chance than the twentieth of avoiding great military conflagrations."

LUMUT, Malaysia (June 18, 2014) A sailor from the Royal Malaysian Navy shakes hands with a Sailor from the guided-missile destroyer USS Pinckney (DDG 91) after playing the Malasian game takraw. Pinckney participated in exercise Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training (CARAT) 2014. 
(U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist First Class Tim Miller/Released)

Blue Age II: China, Russia, Mahan & Law

Review by Bill Doughty––

In Part I of our review of Gregg Easterbrook’s “The Blue Age: How the US Navy Created Global Prosperity –– and Why We’re in Danger of Losing It” we explored his thesis that the United States Navy is a force for good, keeping peace and stability on the seas, promoting prosperity, and reducing worldwide poverty.

Easterbrook says, “The United States would do well to recognize how many of its advantages are gifts of the sea.” Keeping sea lanes open the global commons from other nations’ ill intent and also from piracy means “open highways without trolls or tolls.”

Then-CNO Adm. Gary Roughead visits PLAN hospital ship Daishandao in Qindao, China in 2009,

Former Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead is quoted twice in “The Blue Age.” Roughead says, “Land and air forces can win disputes, but it is the Navy that keeps disputes far from our shores.” Easterbrook quips, “Keeping disputes far from our shores looks better all the time.

”In Part I of our review of “The Blue Age,” we also presented Easterbrook’s conclusion that thinker-strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan was fundamentally wrong in some of his beliefs that, in fact, may have led to two world wars –– and may be influencing China today in the PRC’s expansionist policies, which parrot some of Mahan’s own views.

We also touched on Easterbrook’s conclusion that a continued era of peace and prosperity requires nations' commitment to following international laws, which will lead to more international cooperation. That’s especially important for the world’s two biggest powers.

“The question of whether the blue age will continue comes down to this: whether the United States and China, the two most important nations of history, can get along,” Easterbrook writes. Can maritime cooperation be achieved on the “outlaw ocean” through empathy and mutual respect?

“Walking in another’s shoes is the essence of human understanding,” Easterbrook contends. 

So, what is it like in China’s shoes?

Lights of Beijing and Tianjin, captured by the International Space Station orbiting 264 miles above, May 1, 2021. (NASA)

Evidence of China's rapid rise within one generation can be seen from space. But the affluence comes with effluence. "China must control its greenhouse emissions, the worst in the world." Easterbrook says, “Life is stressful in China, corruption permeates government, elections are rigged, and there is no freedom of speech or religion. These said, China’s living-standards, improvements and poverty reduction from 1995 to 2020 rank high in any accounting of the human family’s great accomplishments.”

In a deceptively easy style but with academic rigor, Easterbrook explains some of China’s feelings of victimization, its previous isolation, and its lack of enlightenment about human rights. He looks at the history of East/West interaction over centuries in or affecting China. And he shows some of the hypocrisy in dealing with the Middle Kingdom, including in recent history.

For example, President Trump’s second Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, lectured Chinese leaders about their lack of democracy, then –– in an attack on our own democracy –– “told the world from the podium of the Department of State that the [U.S.] election outcome would be ignored and Trump would remain president.” Then there's the January 6, 2021 insurrection, seen by the world.

“Walking in China’s shoes does not mean excusing failings, including oppression of the Uighurs and Tibetans, betrayal of Hong Kong, stifling of free speech, ‘labor camps’ that are actually prisons, no constitutional rights, corruption top to bottom. In China there is plenty of disgrace to go around. 

“Above all these, 1.4 billion human beings are living close together in a place that’s polluted and depleting its aquifers at an alarming rate. Modern China may not remain stable. Unstable societies may lash out. If China lashes out, the sea is the most likely setting.”

Easterbrook reminds his readers, “Capital C Communism has not failed some of the time; it has failed all of the time.” In large part, because the individual has a need to live free, not as vassals of an authoritarian state.

“The Western view of the world –– unbraced by the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, and increasingly by Japan and South Korea –– is the Enlightenment conclusion that the individual is more important than the state. The view is morally correct, is self-evident under natural law, is true in a metaphysical sense that exists independent of the empirical. The individual is more important than the state. That’s five hundred years of Western thought in one sentence.”

And individuals, once recognized as such, have rights, including the right to own property.

“The right to property is deceptively important, as it has been contested by many social systems, including fascist, autocratic, and communist. If at root your property is yours, just as your thoughts are yours, you have an incentive to build, create, and trade, profiting while helping others. If at root your property belongs to the commissar, prince, or Gauleiters, why work hard? That far-left and far-right nations are economically sluggish compared with the for-profit nations is explained in this way.”

Easterbrook warns against “fear of outsiders and assumption that change is automatically bad. Whatever might be true in a perfect world, in the actual world, opposition to change is a formula for being left behind.”

Ukraine President V. Zelensky meets Cmrs. John D. John, CO of USS Ross (DDG 71) during Exercise Sea Breeze 2021, Odessa, Ukraine. (MC2 Grosvenor)

Enlightened change is needed in strengthening international codes and conventions governing the world’s oceans. For example, there is a need for enforcing laws, including “against naval assaults, such as the one Russia staged in 2014 at Crimea.”

And what about Russia?

Then-Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Adm. James Stavridis holds a press conference with Russia Chief of Defense, Nov. 1, 2010. (Sebastian Kelm)

“Blue Age” evaluates the threat posed by Putin’s Russia as it also tries to build a modernized fleet as it rattles its scimitar at its neighbors, especially now against Ukraine.

“Since Russia about a decade ago gave up its hope of European Union membership, turning cold to the West, the Kremlin has resumed longing for the kind of maritime power that great nations possess. Russia’s moves against Crimea and Ukraine were seen in the West as owing to Putin’s ego. To the Kremlin, they were an attempt to fulfill centuries of Slavic desire for year-round access to warm waters.”

But intrusions into another nation is just one issue.

“A true global governance system for the blue water would eliminate flag-of-convenience loopholes, protect workers in fishing and shipping, impose strict antipollution rules, and create clear agreements about the mining of minerals on the seafloor. Prototype vessels that vacuum up nodules from the seabed discharge effluent that can pollute the towering deepwater columns essential to marine life, including the marine plants that release oxygen. If sea mining is to become common, a much better system, with close supervision, is required.”

Hope for better oversight rests in a document that is already in front of the international community, the “Law of the Sea.”

“No matter what, we need America to ratify the Convention on the Law of the Sea,” Easterbrook pleads. “The US position on this treaty is irrational. Irrational has been doing quite well in Washington, D.C., lately. But there must be international consensus on how to govern the seas. The sooner the world acts on this, the better.” International agreement and enforcement would protect fishing grounds and habitats, energy resources, and internet communication cables.

Easterbrook notes, “Since 1994 nearly every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the leadership committee for the US military, has expressed support for the Law of the Sea.”

As for nuclear arms control:

“When he was president, Jimmy Carter, a former navy officer who had been the XO of a submarine, joined the Soviet Union in signing the treaty called SALT II, which aimed to reduce strategic nuclear weapons. SALT II begat an arms control regime now called NEW START. At the end of the Carter presidency, the United States and Soviet Union possessed about 54,000 nuclear bombs, according to the Federation of American Scientists; today the total is down to about 9,900. In 2009, Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize for advocating elimination of nuclear explosives.”

After Trump took the United States out of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2018, the Russian Federation also withdrew. China was not a signatory.

Easterbrook says, “Full elimination of nuclear arms might backfire by allowing great-power fighting to resume –– but the smaller the inventory the better.”

Regarding submarines armed with such weapons, he writes, “Having them underwater and constantly changing position tells any leader that a nuclear first strike will fail. At least, any rational leader.”

“For now, nuclear deterrence clearly discourages war.”

Mahan (September 27, 1840 – December 1, 1914) died decades before nuclear weapons were developed. He was an extremely devout orthodox Christian who believed humans were preordained toward violence and war, as shown by Susanne Geissler, author of “God and Sea Power: The Influence of Religion on Alfred Thayer Mahan” (Naval Institute Press, 2015).

Geissler writes, “It is important to grasp that because of his theological views, Mahan did not view human nature as constantly improving … Therefore, he thought war never could or would be eliminated.” Geissler’s biography is indispensable in helping understand Mahan’s linear thinking and inability to consider a world at peace.

Alfred Thayer Mahan attended the First Hague Conference in 1899.

Mahan was against international “universal arbitration,” even after attending the First Hague Conference in the summer of 1899 as a member of President McKinley’s U.S. delegation. “The idea was that if international disputes could be arbitrated, war could be avoided,” Geissler writes. “In Mahan’s view, arbitration was even worse than war in that it coerces the conscience and binds it ahead of time to unforeseen situations.”

[Of note, the League of Nations created the not-so-permanent “Permanent Court of International Law,” known as the "World Court,” in 1920; the court held its first session exactly one hundred years ago today, January 30, 1922 at the Hague, Netherlands. The United States never joined the World Court, and the court disbanded one year after WWII ended.]

Mahan’s beliefs were anchored in his interpretation of the Bible, sticking with Genesis but also solidly in the New Testament. “Based on his belief in original sin and the innate depravity of humankind, he believed that war was intrinsic to the human condition.”

Captain Mahan, front row, fifth from left, was CO of USS Chicago, circa 1893-95. (NHHC)

Among other revelations from Geissler, Mahan was against women’s rights to vote or hold political office, based on his belief in scripture. He supported annexation of Hawaii near the turn of the century but “also expressed concern about the ‘great number of Chinese’ who lived in Hawaii and whether the islands would become ‘an outpost of European civilization or of the comparative barbarism of China,’” in his words.

Geissler’s “God and Sea Power” is a compelling read, especially helpful in further explaining Easterbrook’s critique of Mahan in “The Blue Age.”

Easterbrook has his own list of related and recommended books. And there are a number we’ve featured here on the Navy Reads blog, including Robert Kaplan’s “Monsoon,” James Stavridis’s “Seapower,” Eri Hotta’s “Japan 1941,” Evan Thomas’s “Sea of Thunder,” and Hampton Sides’s “In the Kingdom of Ice.”

Like Steven Pinker, author of "The Better Angels of Our Nature," Easterbrook is an optimist. After all, he is the author of "The Progress Paradox" and "It's Better Than It Looks." He notes how the United States has a vast array of strong allies, while Russia and China have only a handful of friends; in Russia's case: Iran, Syria, and Venezuela. Easterbrook lauds the fact that at least until 2016 China had been previously invited to the Rim of the Pacific exercise at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and PLA(N) ships were welcomed with a spirit of aloha.

U.S. and Chinese leaders watch as Keiki Hula dancers perform during an arrival ceremony for three People's Liberation Army-Navy ships, Luhu-class destroyer Qingdao (DDG 113), Jiangkai-class frigate Linyi (FFG 547) and a Fuqing-class fleet oiler as they arrive in Hawaii for a scheduled port visit, Sept. 6, 2013. Over the weekend, Chinese and U.S. leaders conducted dialogues to build confidence and mutual understanding between the two nations. The port visit was part of the U.S. Navy's ongoing effort to maximize opportunities for developing relationships with foreign navies to build trust, encourage multilateral cooperation, enhance transparency, and avoid miscalculation in the Pacific. (MC2 Nardel Gervacio)

Easterbrook is hopeful for a true win-win in the future, where cooperation can be achieved and conflict can be prevented, thanks to a strong U.S. Navy and "gifts of the sea."

Climate Change as Serial Killer

by Bill Doughty

Climate change has been a killer for millennia, according to Eugene Linden, author of "The Winds of Change" (Simon & Shuster, 2006).

"Earthrise" in 1968. Photo courtesy of NASA.

His examination of the history of climate-as-assassin – and key questions in the debate – shows what may be in store with a warming earth, melting ice and the effect on in the invisible "ocean conveyor" on what Bill McKibben described in "Eaarth": "a blue-and-white marble floating."

Seen clearly from space for the first time in the early days of space exploration, earth is revealed as an ecosystem of sea, land and sky – "vast ocean, air currents and weather systems" – a home world alone in the vastness of space. Balanced. Interconnected.

Over time earth has experienced the extremes of heat, cold, floods and droughts. But thanks to a rare synergy of offsets – the position of large land masses, contours of the ocean floor, the reflective power of ice and snow, and tilting of earth's spin axis, among others – the period over the past 10,000 years has been relatively calm for our planet.

In other words, "This is about as good as it gets," according to Linden.

But the serial killer waits to strike again. Climate change has killed entire species, disrupted humanity and changed cultures.

Akkadian victory stele of Ram-Sin

"It's not climate, but climate change that throws civilizations into a tailspin," Linden writes.

Africa and Mesoamerica experienced drought that collapsed cultures including the Mayans. Ancient civilizations thought they had displeased the gods. The Anasazi disappeared. The Akkadian civilization disintegrated as warming climate dried the lands and hot winds blew away topsoil.

Linden cites the works of Barbara Tuchman ("A Distant Mirror"), Jared Diamond ("Guns, Germs and Steel") and, interestingly, Adam Smith ("The Wealth of Nations") as well as David Keys, author of "Catastrophe: An Investigation Into the Origins of the Modern World."

"Keys does not shy away from big ideas. In 'Catastrophe' he argues that by unleashing the plague from the south and causing barbarians to move westward from Asia, the climate upheavals of 536 played a key role in the end of the Roman Empire, the rise of Islam, and other events that marked the end of ancient times and set the stage for the emergence of the modern world. It's a sweeping claim, so bold that it almost begs contradiction, even from those willing to posit the consequential role of climate in human affairs. When a civilization is in decline, after all, the agent of its end might be entirely different from the cause of its decline. When pneumonia kills an aged patient in failing health, is pneumonia the killer, or merely the final nudge? As Keys exhaustively documents, by the sixth century, the Roman Empire was senescent, with little sense of purpose, kept together principally by the fear of the gathering barbarians at the gates who were constantly probing for opportunities and signs of weakness."

Bruegel's Triumph of Death

Climate warming unleashes invasive species and diseases – bark beetles, rats, hantavirus, mosquitoes, fleas and ticks. The result is millions of deaths, including from plagues. The Black Death started in China, came down the Silk Road to Crimea, and then in 1346 moved westward to Europe.

Climate change may be a killer, but it also opens the way for ecological opportunity. Just as Kaplan does in "Monsoon," Linden sees synergy in climate, weather and geography: "Climate does not control geography, of course, but climate can override the advantage that geography might otherwise confer."

Preparing a gravity core for deployment.
(Photo by Mary Carman, Woods Hole)

Researchers, including Navy veteran Lloyd Keigwin of Woods Hole's McLean Laboratory, are studying the effects of and on the ocean as a result of abrupt climate change. Are oceans stable? How will currents and civilization change in a warmer climate? What can we learn by studying paleoclimate in the Holocene, including the "Little Ice Age"?

Ice, caves, lake sediment, tree rings and dirt blown over ice are witnesses to the serial killing, the silent witnesses or proxies that help scientists examine the past.

A clear and present danger comes periodically in the form of El Niño, "the killer next door."

"In the rogue's gallery of climate killers, El Niño may be a mere foot soldier, but because we are repeatedly reminded of its depredations, it looms large in the minds of those who study the impact of climate on history," Linden writes.


El Niños in India and China over the past century and a half killed substantially more than the 60 million people who perished during World War II, according to Linden and his source, Cesar Caviedes ("El Niño in History: Storming Through the Ages"). Is it possible that a warmer world will invite more severe storms?

Earth's system for achieving balance on the blue-and-white marble (with an El Niño pictured in red) is interconnected and not completely understood, but Linden shows in research, timeline and graphs how science is searching for answers to questions in his final chapter, "Going Forward":

"Where are we headed? Is climate changing? If so, are we causing these changes? What changes lie in the future? Are we better prepared to deal with climate change? Can we do anything to halt climate change or ameliorate its effects?"

Navy leaders recognize that climate change can accelerate instability and conflict, degrade the environment and cause food and water scarcity, disruption and migration – requiring significant humanitarian assistance.

In 2009 the Secretary of the Navy outlined goals for reducing use of fossil fuels and embracing new sustainable, renewable and nonpolluting forms of energy. Also in 2009 the Chief of Naval Operations created Task Force Climate Change (TFCC) to address the naval implications of a changing Arctic and global environment. 

The Navy participates with the U.S. Coast Guard and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the National Ice Center, whose mission is to "provide the highest quality, timely, accurate, and relevant snow and ice products and services to meet the strategic, operations, and tactical requirements of the United States interests across the global area of responsibility."

Last month the U.S. and China, the world's biggest polluters, signed a climate agreement to significantly reduce emissions over the next decade and beyond. A United Nations climate summit in Lima, Peru shows hope for the world in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and making significant progress in next December's global climate treaty meeting in Paris, France. 

Is cooperation in fighting a serial killer among the New Year's resolutions through 2015 and 2016?

140318-N-RB579-607 ICE CAMP NAUTILUS (March 18, 2014) Chief Machinist's Mate (Nuclear) Aaron Cook braves the cold while supervising a work party at Ice Camp Nautilus, located on a sheet of ice adrift on the Arctic Ocean, during Ice Exercise (ICEX) 2014. ICEX 2014 is a U.S. Navy exercise highlighting submarine capabilities in an arctic environment. (U.S. Navy photo courtesy of Lockheed Martin by Dr. Amy Sun/Released)