Command, Strategic Contest, and Confidence-building in the South China Sea

Abstract

Abstract Wealth and power have steered global prestige from East to West and back again. History s serial relocations of economic growth and corollary power changed the character of the South China Sea into a conflictual conduit for Eastern and then Western colonialism, a strategic sea space in world war, and now a cockpit of contest to maintain or revise the rules-based international order. For the first time in several centuries, a Chinese blue water navy is projecting power across the Indo-Pacific and prosecuting a national maritime security strategy to transform the South China Sea into China s sovereign territory. In large part, the winner of the Sino-American struggle for preponderance in the South China Sea will steer the course of the twenty-first century in the Indo-Pacific.