Rejuvenating the Monroe Doctrine
James Holmes, the J.C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the U.S. Naval War College, reminds us in The National Interest that the Monroe Doctrine is under challenge by the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and China’s Mahanian sea power strategists. Holmes is the co-author (with Toshi Yoshihara) of China’s Naval Strategy in the 21st Century: The Turn to Mahan. Mahan is, of course, Alfred Thayer Mahan, the great American historian and sea power strategist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Back in 2008, Holmes and Yoshihara warned us in that book that, “Mahan’s writings and theories on sea power furnish an indispensable framework for understanding China’s emerging maritime strategy.” So it has come to pass, as China seeks to use sea power in its broadest sense “in search of economic prosperity and martial clout.”
That is what Xi Jinping was doing in Lima, Peru, last week, where he participated in a virtual ceremonial ribbon-cutting for the deepwater Chancay port, which was financed by a $1.3 billion investment from China. This is the latest venture in China’s Belt and Road Initiative in which China uses its economic power to enhance its global geopolitical footprint. Xi said, “China is willing to work with the Peruvian side to take the Chancay project as a starting point to forge a new maritime-land corridor between China and Latin America.”
NBC News describes Chancay as a “megaport” that China intends to use as a “major shipping hub between Asia and South America.” Holmes, in his National Interest piece, describes the port as a “lodgment for Chinese sea power on this side of the Pacific Ocean.”
China’s Mahan was Admiral Liu Huaqing, who served as commander of the PLAN from 1982 to 1987, and led a major shift in Chinese naval strategy from “Coastal Defense” to “Offshore Defense.” Holmes and Yoshihara called Liu “a central figure in China’s dramatic turn to the seas.” They cited Liu’s memoirs in which he favorably referenced Mahan’s works as furnishing a theoretical weapon for great powers to expand and seek hegemony. Holmes and Yoshihara also noted that Chinese naval strategists in the 21st century looked to Mahan for geopolitical guidance.
Chinese strategists interpret sea power in broad Mahanian terms that, Holmes notes, include trade, supply chains, merchant vessels, diplomacy, and access to overseas ports. Holmes calls this activity “maritime entrepreneurship.” And Xi has taken this activity to the Western Hemisphere in an unambiguous challenge to Pres. James Monroe’s doctrine.
The brains behind the Monroe Doctrine, which was announced by Monroe in December 1823, was Secretary of State John Quincy Adams. The doctrine sought to prevent further foreign (in those days European) colonization in the Western Hemisphere. Until the Obama administration, every American president invoked the doctrine as a geopolitical necessity for U.S. security.
In 2013, Obama’s Secretary of State John Kerry declared that the Monroe Doctrine was dead. Obama’s diplomacy served as an invitation to China to exert economic and political influence in the Western Hemisphere. China was quick to grasp the implications of this American retreat.
During his first term as president, Donald Trump sought to revive the Monroe Doctrine by announcing at the U.N. that the United States “reject[s] the interference of foreign nations in this hemisphere.” Later, Trump’s national security adviser told a Miami audience that “the Monroe Doctrine is alive and well.” (READ MORE: With Trump’s Presidency, the China Hawks Are Back)
Holmes hopes that a second Trump administration and a GOP-led Congress will be “mindful of [China’s] hemispheric challenges.” He reaches back to another great American geopolitical thinker, Nicholas Spykman, who, he writes, “cautioned Americans not to assume Latin America was their natural preserve.” Spykman was writing when Hitler’s Germany sought to expand its influence in Latin America. China today poses a much greater hemispheric threat than Germany ever did in the 1940s.
Holmes’ article reminds us that the geopolitical competition with China is not limited to the Western Pacific or even the greater Indo-Pacific — it is global. It will define world politics for the foreseeable future.
READ MORE from Francis Sempa:
Is Biden Trying to Start World War III Before Trump Takes Office?
With Trump’s Presidency, the China Hawks Are Back
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The Growing Irrelevance of the Mainstream Media
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