Download INT104 Week 5

Kim Erich
60210515
INT104
Weekly Assignment
Week 5: ASIA’S MEDITERRANEAN Strategy, Geopolitics, and Risk in the Seas of the
Indo-Pacific
I.
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Between US and China, they had create the trusty relationship between the two
nations and China into the liberal global order hoping that Beijing would
eventually become a pillar of the international order, sharing with America the
burden of maintaining the post–World War II system.
After many years of bilateral engagement over political, economic, and security
issues appeared irrelevant in the face of China’s massive growth in power and
influence, much of which seemed aimed squarely at reducing America’s role in
the Indo-Pacific region.
China’s plan and strategies of controlling maritime and air space, which is called
the second-island chain. Effectively responding to China’s challenge requires
adopting a larger geostrategic picture of the entire Indo-Pacific region and
America’s position in it.
It is helpful to briefly review the evolution of geopolitical thought in relation to
this region.
II.
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Mackinder’s famous 1904 article, “The Geographical Pivot of History,” in fact
discussed only briefly the idea of the heartland, essentially steppe Eurasia, as the
ultimate goal of any world power.
The great struggles for world power that followed on the heels of Mackinder’s
article in fact took place in the rimlands.
Four decades after Mackinder’s original thesis, Spykman returned to the Rimland
thesis and further modified it to take into account recent great-power warfare in
the twentieth century. Spykman claims challenged Alfred Thayer Mahan’s
famous assertion in the influence of seapower upon history that control of the
high seas rightly was the great goal of the maritime powers.
During World War II era, the United States dominated the oceans and most of the
skies, it was the last major war where command of the ocean, whether the high or
inner seas, was a strategic necessity.
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