What these numbers obscure are the significant technological advances
and tonnage increases that characterize the ships that have recently entered
service in all of the Asian navies. In Table 1.2, for example, the significant drop
in the number of Chinese submarines over this fifteen-year period reflects
the mass retirement of obsolete vessels. The concurrent introduction of modern
boats, both imported and indigenously built, should in theory more than
compensate for the quantitative losses, preserving or enhancing combat power.
Similarly, the relative stagnation in the number of Japanese platforms does
not account for the fact that cutting-edge equipment has replaced older pre-
decessors. In any event, all five navies have enjoyed varying degrees of recap-
italization—portending a highly competitive naval environment in the coming
years.
China has undergone the most comprehensive across-the-board moderniza-
tion, defying even the most extravagant predictions from just a decade ago.
The fifth largest fleet in the world, the Indian Navy, aspires to be a blue-water
navy in the coming decades. Japan’s modestly named Maritime Self-Defense
Force plans to put to sea at least two ‘‘helicopter destroyers’’ that are, by even the
most restrictive definition, prototypes for aircraft carriers. By the end of this
decade, South Korea will become the third country in the region (following
the United States and Japan) to deploy state-of-the-art Aegis destroyers. Taiwan
will possess four very capableKidd-class destroyers, the precursor to the Aegis
warships, by the end of 2007. At nearly 10,000 tons, these vessels displace twice
as much as the largest vessels currently in the island’s inventory.Sea-Power Theory and the Asian Maritime Environment
From the brief regional overview above, it should be evident that Asia’s entry
into the sea is not a passing phenomenon. The geographic, historical, economic,
and military imperatives are simply too compelling to be ephemeral. While the
specific circumstances facing the Asian nations are crucial to understanding
how events will unfold in the oceanic arena in the twenty-first century, a review
of sea-power theory will supply a broad analytical framework by which to assess
patterns of behavior on the part of the region’s maritime aspirants. Insight into
their likely interactions at sea will follow.
What does it mean to say Asia is looking seaward? To portray this seaward turn
in strictly military terms is not enough. A navy unguided by larger political or
economic purposes is little more than a‘‘luxury fleet,’’ to borrow a term from
one prominent historian.^12 Nor is seagoing trade and commerce, as manifest in
massive tankers and container ships and the terminals that service them, the
end-all-and-be-all of maritime affairs. Maritime affairs is an intensely multidisci-
plinary subject, spanning political science, military strategy, economics, history,
and culture, not to mention mathematics, the natural sciences, and engineering.6 Asia Looks Seaward