If you’re mindset is that somebody has to rule the world, does that mean rule the land, seas, or both? From Sean Ring at dailyreckoning.com:
For over a century, two dead advisors have shaped the way great powers view the world.
On one side, we have Alfred Thayer Mahan—the American naval officer who believed sea power determined global supremacy. According to Mahan, controlling the oceans means controlling trade. If you control trade, you control wealth. If you control wealth… well, you get the picture.
On the other side is Halford Mackinder, the British geographer who argued the exact opposite. Forget the seas, he said. Whoever controls the “World Island”—Eurasia—controls the world. Railways, rivers, pipelines, and land empires are what count. Not frigates and aircraft carriers.
Mahan and Mackinder are no longer with us, but their ideas continue to influence the world today.
And we’re watching it unfold.
It’s Mahan’s World… For Now.
The United States and the United Kingdom—Mahan’s spiritual children—have long benefited from an ocean-based order. Ruling the waves built their prosperity and power. The British Empire’s reach was maritime. The U.S. Navy now patrols every major sea lane. The dollar reigns supreme because oil, commodities, and trade settle in greenbacks. That world—the Mahan world—is why Americans live like kings while land powers like Russia and China have spent decades playing catch-up.
But Mahan’s world has limits. Especially when you try to keep your rivals bottled up in theirs.
That’s precisely what the U.S. has tried to do with China.
