Japan's Post-Mahanian Maritime Strategy.

ABSTRACT #1Japan's Post-Mahanian Maritime StrategyThis paper will assess the dynamics of maritime security in Northeast Asia using the theories of Alfred Thayer Mahan, the U.S. naval officer who, writing around the turn of the nineteenth century, contended that "sea power" was founded on the "three pillars" of international commerce, naval stations scattered along the sea lanes to support the operations of fuel-thirsty warships, and, most importantly for him, a powerful battle fleet. Mahan's works exhibited a strong geographical hue, urging the United States to build a fleet capable of defending the Caribbean sea lanes against the largest concentration of naval forces likely to be hurled against it. Only by securing the Caribbean basin, its "Mediterranean," declared Mahan, could the United States dig an isthmian canal and wrest away its rightful share of the Asia trade.We have unearthed considerable evidence suggesting that China will pursue a Mahanian maritime strategy as its diplomatic, economic, and military power waxes. Influential Chinese strategists talk of "absolute control" over China's littoral waters, through which the shipments of raw materials upon which the nation's economic growth has come to depend must pass. In so doing, they routinely invoke Mahan's writings. If indeed Beijing follows Mahan's path to sea power, it will regard the Yellow, East China, and South China seas much as Mahan regarded the Caribbean: as an expanse in which naval dominance is vital to national prosperity.If so, an increasingly assertive Chinese maritime strategy will intersect with that of Japan, which has been rethinking its own approach to the uses of sea power, in large part because it relies on the same sea lanes for its own imports of oil, gas, and other commodities. Whether Tokyo would entrust the safety of its seaborne commerce to a China jealous of its "Caribbean" is an open question. Also problematic for Sino-Japanese relations are conflicting claims to islands whose adjacent sea beds purportedly contain major oil and gas reserves.Yet few, if any, Japanese strategists look to Alfred Thayer Mahan for guidance. They do not quote Mahan; nor do they urge Tokyo to found its maritime strategy on Mahanian precepts or some distinctively Japanese derivative thereof. Why is that so? Was Mahan discredited by association with the Japanese militarism of the 1930s and 1940s? Was he simply forgotten during the postwar years, when large segments of the Japanese populace looked with revulsion on the use of military force? Upon what maritime theories will Tokyo base its emerging naval strategy, if not those of Mahan? With what effect?By venturing some answers to these questions, the study will show how Japanese strategy may evolve over the next decade and how the strategies deployed by Tokyo and Beijing may interact. Our findings and recommendations will be of immediate use to policymakers in Tokyo, as well as to policymakers and alliance managers in Washington, which, if recent events are any guide, will depend increasingly on the U.S.-Japanese alliance to sustain its East Asia strategy in the coming years. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]