By James R. Holmes
Yesterday, over at Foreign Policy, the Naval Diplomat held forth on the evolution of Chinese sea power over the next decade or so. Check it out. Bumper sticker: it's tough to predict how swiftly and surely PLA Navy hardware and crews will mature, but China will remain a seafaring power in the broadest sense of the term. It will remain a power to reckon with.
Surly lot that they are, the editors refused to let me ramble on ad infinitum about this big, squishy subject. Forsooth! One major idea left quivering on the cutting-room floor was that naval competition is a relative, rather than absolute, process. Or rather, maritime balances are relative things. Asian geography situates so many powers so close to one another that land and air forces can shape events at sea. Indeed, Corbett could've been writing about present-day Asia when he defined maritime strategy as the art of determining "the mutual relations of your army and navy in a plan of war."
Read the full story at The Diplomat