Donald Trump Should Look South to Compete with China: China is still Mahanian. Twenty-one years ago I closed out my very first hefty journal article, over at Comparative Strategy, with an offhand observation that the works of Alfred Thayer Mahan, the fin de siècle American maritime historian and theorist, had found favor in a Communist China that had cast its gaze seaward in search of economic prosperity and martial clout. Just as Mahan molded geopolitical thought in the Kaiser’s Germany during his lifetime—that was my article’s subject—he could do so in China a century hence.
As indeed he has. Mahan’s ideas radiate allure for seagoing societies beyond his life and times—and beyond North America.
Exhibit A: last Thursday the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Xi Jinping, descended on Lima, Peru, to start a weeklong diplomatic tour of South America. Xi will round out his travels by visiting Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to take part in a Group of 20 summit. There’s a Mahanian tinge to his itinerary. The CCP supremo joined Peruvian president Dina Boluarte at a virtual ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new Peruvian seaport of Chancay, some forty-eight miles north of Lima. Beijing bankrolled the project to the tune of $1.3 billion.
And gained a lodgment for Chinese sea power on this side of the Pacific Ocean. Money well spent.
As a rule the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLA Navy) dominates discourses about China’s seaward........