Sarah Paine - Why Putin and Xi can't escape geography

00:00:00Good evening.It's such a pleasure to be with you. I'mgoing to make an argument today abouthow the world is organized or at leasthow different types of empires back inthe day tried to organize it. It turnsout that continental and maritime powerstried to organize the world in verydifferent ways and that these have realimplications in our own day. Uh and I'mgoing to be using terminology fromgeopolitics and also grand strategy.What is that? Geopolitics is theinfluence of geography on politics andgrand strategy is grand in the number ofinstruments of national power that itintegrates. And you're thinking, "Well,what are they?" And think about who sitson a cabinet around a president, whogets convened. Those are the elements ofnational power, right? So, you've gotthe State Department, diplomacy, themilitary, you've got finance,agriculture, you got a whole long listof people and you want to integratetheseuh these things.But, before I get going, I'm going togive you a umuh sneak detour, a really whirlwind tourof American history, which I'll get donereally fast, along with a tour of someof the great geopoliticians.

00:01:15And uh before I will after thatappetizer, I will deliver the promisedmain course. Okay, this is June 6th,1944, D-Day, Normandy landings, wheresea power, maritime power meets landpower.It turns out maritime powers are theexception and continental powers are therule. Why? Cuz maritime powers, if needbe, can defend themselves primarily atsea with their navies. Whereas, acontinental power simply cannot. ThinkUkraine. A navy's not going to save themfrom Russia. So, uh this is the firstdistinguishing characteristic between amaritime and continental power, whetherit is feasible to defend yourself at seaor not. And from this comes someimplications that if you sit in acontinental world, you had better havehave a competent army. And if you're amaritime power to defend yourself,you're better have a pretty good navy.But these implications go beyond themilitary to economics and politics aswell, and I'll go into these. But thiscountry began its life as a continentalpower, all about expanding to guesswhat? Here, right? To the West Coast.And the United States tried invadingCanada a couple times, not a new idea.In 1775 and 1812,

00:02:32the British won thosethings and we had to back off on thatidea. And then you get here PresidentMonroe declaring the Monroe Doctrine,which is a classic continental spheresof influence stay out of my backyardmoment. Uh the only trick was that theUnited States was so weak in those daystelling the Europeans to stay out of theAmericas was just on the wish list. Itwas impossible to deal with. But if youlook at the United States, how it becamethe United States, it's all aboutterritorial expansion to reach the WestCoast. And unlike a typical continentalpower, which does this with massedarmies, the United States preferredcheckbook diplomacy. So when NapoleonBonaparte was short of cash in 1803,that's when the Louisiana Purchase ismade. And then when the Russians wereshort of cash, a perennial problem,that's when the United States bought notonly Alaska, but the northern part ofthe the West Coast. But when the checkswere not accepted, which is whathappened with Mexico,the United States did the standardmassed armies approach in theMexican-American War, and that's how theUnited States gets Texas. So that thenext check offered, the Mexicans accept,and that's the Gadsden Purchase, whichgets the United States Tucson, Arizona,and other places.

00:03:48The longest counterinsurgency in thiscountry's history was against the nativepopulation that put up a really bitterstruggle. So, though it's not thelongest counterinsurgency is not therecent stuff in the Middle East. It'sabout what we did to the nativepopulation here that eventually had togive up. And Americans had a name fortheir national expansion. It wasmanifest destiny. The idea that it wasobviousfate of America or the United States tocontrol a good part of North America.And they were all about territorialexpansion in this paintingwhich hangs in the I think it's thewestern staircase as you're getting intothe chamber of the House ofRepresentatives. It goes by thepolitically correct title nowadays awestward ho. Well, that's not the titlewhen it was painted. It was westward thecourse of empire takes its way.Americans were all about expansion andproud of it. However, a different viewstarts emerging in the late 19th centurypropelled by it was Captain and laterAdmiral Alfred Thayer Mahan who is byfar the most famous professor everassociated with the Naval War Collegewhere I spent 24 years of my career.And when he's looking at the world hegoes, "Actually, power in the

00:05:03positionin the world really isn't a function somuch of continental expansion andconsolidation, but really it's about allthe wealth you can accrue from trade."And he thought there were certainprerequisites tofollow a maritime security paradigm.What are they? One, you need a moat. Youcannot be subject toinvasion right across your border orit's over. Secondly, you need a denseinternal transportation grid in order toget the goods out in peacetime. You needreliable egress by sea to get the navyout in wartime. And you need a densecoastal population. These are the peoplewho are going to be running all thecommerce. Andyou also need stable governmentinstitutions that are going to be stablein the sense that they're going to funda navy and that they're going to passlaws that are going tomake commerce happen. If you look atthese prerequisites and you look atChina and Russia today, neither one hasthe full list, far from it. Neither onehas a moat. Both of them have moreneighbors than any two other countrieson the planet and many of thoseneighbors don't like them at all forexcellent reasons.Russia has a lamentable internaltransportation grid, whereas China's hasbeen improving. Neither one has reliableegress by sea,

00:06:18surrounded as they are bynarrow,in the case of China, island clusteredseas with a whole and Russia as well,loads ofneighbors. These places tend to getblockaded and closed down in wartime.Russia has reliable egress up north.Well, great, no one lives there. What doyou want to do? Go pet a polar bearpolar bear? It will not work out. Inaddition,on dense coastal population, yes, Chinahas dense coastal population, but again,it's onto a narrow sea. Russia does nothave a dense coastal population upnorth. AndRussia's never had a commerce-driveneconomy. China much more so under DengXiaoping, but recently Xi Jinping hasbeen privileging the crony sector overthe private sector and neither one hasstable government institutions. What'sthe litmus test for that one?That would be transparent regularelections and dictatorship for life doesnot remotely qualify. So, China andRussia certainly have maritimeambitions,but I'm not clear they actuallyunderstand what goes intoa full maritime paradigm. Anyway,there was a counter-argument to Mahanthat comes a generation later by aBritain, Sir Halford Mackinder,

00:07:33who'slooking at the world and looking atBritain's problems and he thinks thatactually Russia occupies the bestgeopolitical location on the world, notGreat Britain, cuz in this is a map fromhis 1904 article, and he defines as thepivot area, Eurasia is the part of theworld he's focusing on, and it's whereRussia is, and he also calls it thegreat heartland, and he said, "Look,that area, the pivot area, is thecitadel of land power on the greatmainland of the world. It is thegreatest natural fortress on the world.Why? Because it's insulated bymountains, deserts, uh frozen seas, andrivers that uh exit onto the oceans invery inaccessible places during wartime.And therefore, it is impervious to seapower. The Britain can't really get itat that this area." And he said, "But ifyou occupy the heartland, this pivotarea, you have the possibility fordefense in depth, strategic orretreat, and self-sufficiency.So, the heartland is not insulated bythe sea, it's insulated from the sea.And a maritime power like Britain, if itwants to influence the heartland, it's

00:08:48got to do it on the periphery. In thosedays, it would be through havingcolonies in these very uh strategiclocations. In our own day, it would behaving allies with bases in theselocations."Uh this man, Nicholas Spykman, was alsovery concerned about who controlsEurasia. He felt that the country thatcontrols Eurasia could well control theworld. And he had much to worry aboutwhen he completed his very importantwork in 1943, the year he dies. He's a anaturalized American citizen from theNetherlands, then under Nazi occupation,and he felt that the Nazis had comereally close to dominating Eurasia in1941. And here's what he said, "Despiteoccupying thethe safest position of any nation in theworld, we Americans have been involvedin two devastating World Wars in thespace of a quarter of a century. And inthe second one, i.e. the ongoing one, weare were one point at in serious dangerof defeat.The expectations of US statesmenregarding the outcome of their actionswere consistently wrong.And their thinking about nationalsecurity generally failed to providesuccessful answers. Sound familiar?Uh in addition,

00:10:03he's looking at theworld "Look, the influence of the UnitedStates can be brought to bear on Europeand Far East only by means of seaborntraffic. And the power of the states ofEurasia can reach us effectively only bycrossing the seas. And this is truedespite the development of air powerbecause big things go by sea, and theystill do. Therefore, US security was afunction of sea power, and thatsanctuary at home, and by that I mean ininvulnerability to attack is a functionof a maritime shield. And Spykman'sreally concerned who control controlsthe Rimland of this great heartland,friend or foe. And here's why. TheUnited States will have to depend on hersea power communication across theAtlantic and the Pacific to give heraccess to the old world. And the effectof this of this act access is going todelimit what sort of foreign policy theUnited States can have. And what theUnited States requires is a continentalally who can provide a base from whichland power can be exercised. What he'ssaying in World War II, victory in thatthing is going to depend on alliancesand allies. Critical.All right.

00:11:18So, that was the horsd'oeuvre. I've done the World One tourof American history settled in a fewminutes or less. You should be happyabout that one. And then I've given yousome of the most famous geopoliticiansthere are a synopsis of what their ideasare. But here's mythis is the main course. First I'm goingto talk about continental empiresbecause they come first in human historyand then I'll turn to maritime empireswhich come later. But then there's theindustrial revolution and the post WorldWar institutional framework that opensthe possibility of a maritime globalorder. So that's my game plan. Oh, Iforgot one thing.I don't know whether you all likeanimals or not but we at the Naval WarCollege love animals.And so we often refer to continentalpowers as elephants and maritime powersas whales. Bonus terminology.All right, I'm going to start out withChinaas a not Russia which Mackinder waspreoccupied withas the original land power and here isSunzithe preeminent theorist Chinese theoriston matters of strategic in his Art ofWar. And Sunzi's providing advice tokings on how to stay on the throne,

00:12:33toconquer neighbors and do it efficiently.And in this world you've got lots ofneighbors any of which can invade at anytime. Third party intervention is thenorm in this world. And if you thinkabout this bookit makes no references to maritimewarfare at all and it makes onlytangential references to riverinewarfare and you go well why is that?Well it's excellent reasons. He iswriting about the world of continentalempires in existence long before themaritime things get going. And if youthink about the great civilizations ofEurasia often at their basis is theirgreat continental empires and acivilization answers the questions howshould I live and how should I interactwith others and is basically a worldorder unto itself. And civilizationshave often fought with each other tomake their rules universal.All right.Uh whirlwind tour of China and what itlooks like to be uh continental empire.So, here's a precipitation map. Here'swhere it doesn't rain very much. Here'stemperatures. That's where it's awfullycold. Here's topography. That's whereit's flat. So, if you notice if you wantto grow things, you need it where it'swarm enough, it rains enough, etc. Andhere's a really good topographical

00:13:49mapand it gives you an understanding of whyfamine afflicted China for so manycenturies of its history and why it'sdependent on food imports today. It'sjust too much of the real estatevertical to grow things on.And then here's an ethnic map. You cansee the consolidated pink area. That'swhere the Han, the preponderant ethnicgroup of China live. And then they'resurrounded with all these heterogeneousareas around them. You can go, "Hmm, Iwonder what's going on there?"And then here is a simplified ethnicmap. It shows China proper and thecurious might ask, "How did the Han windup with all the prime real estate?" Cuzwhat's arable is there.And the answer would be, "Well, theylaid waste to the competing Zunghar andTibetan empires." Bet you've never heardof the Zunghars. They were wiped out bythe Qing Dynasty a long time ago. Andin the continental world, you're facedwith a binary choice or uh you eitherbecome Han or they will kill you. Andso, you got to get out of dodge and fleesouth or do something else. And uhgenocide is what happens to the losersin continental warfare. And apparentlyin our own day, the Uyghurs are slatedfor genocide.All right.

00:15:04I'm going to give you awhirlwind tour, sanitized version ofChinese history. The Han start up upnorth in the Yellow River Valley andthey spread and they spread and they dofun stuff like they build walls, theybuild more walls, not a new idea. Andthen they shrink back and oh, that badbad time. But then they're back. Andthen oh, I don't know what happenedthere, but anyway, they're they'rethey consolidated and then there's thisthing which looks like any other dynastyexcept a little bigger. Uh not so. TheYuan Dynasty are Mongols, they're notHan. This is an occupation dynasty andthat map's inaccurate. Cuz here's thereal story. The Mongols start out eastof Lake Baikal and then they spread inconcentric rings more or less over theEurasian plain in another time ofclimate change when their herds theyjust had to move south or everyone'sgoing to freeze to death. The Chineseact like it's like any other dynasty.No, it's not. It's the Pax Mongolica.It's a Mongol world order when the Hanwere subjugated people. But they comeback with the Ming Dynasty. But then theMing succumb to the second largestempire in Chinese history, anotherconquest dynasty. These folks aren'tHan, they're Manchu.And what's fascinating is today whenChina claims whatever its historicallands are, they

00:16:19either choose the MongolYuan Dynasty or the Manchu Qing Dynastywhen the Han were subjugated people. Sotry tountangle that logic. I'm not even goingto go there. Um but the point was not tomake that snide remark, although I didmake that snide remark. Uh but ratherto show you that there's been lots andlots of expansion, lots and lots ofshrinkage, and lots and lots ofbloodshed while this is taking place.China has been raising armiesdenominated in hundreds of thousands ofpeople for thousands of years. The Westdoes not do this at least not on aregular basis until the Napoleonic Wars.Uh it's a brutal world.Now,Mackinder didn't much care about Chinaone way or the other because in hislifetime uh China was a country in freefall. So he's focusing on Russia, thecontinental empire. Mackinder's reallyconcerned about Russia also because it'sbuilding railways that are going to giveit all these internal lines ofcommunication and Mackinder thinksthat's going to work really well forthem in wartime. Whereas Britain isstuck with exterior lines ofcommunication. Exterior cuz you're goingby sea and theon the periphery of things. So, if youlook at the Russians, they're likeMongols in reverse. They start in Moscowand then Moscow lays wait to the othercities princely city-states. And afterthat, they're after

00:17:35furs making moneythat way. And the Russians keep goinguntil they run into countries that fightback. So, to show you how this works,this is the Russian Empire at its heightin 1914. So, you can see Moscow at thehistoric capital and you can look at thecolors there and see ooh, theadministrative units are fairly smallaround Moscow and they get really big asyou go out into Siberia. And these arecivil administrative units. And here's aclearer map, except it's not reallyclear. The the bigger these units,they're provinces, they're calledguberniya in Russian, or governorates.But anyway, these provincesuh are are standard administrativeunits. But for the recently ingested andyet to be digested, they're putting intheir different units called oblast,oblasti. And you can't see them on amap, they're on great print. So, thisshows you more or less where they'relocated. Outlined in red is where theseplaces are. These are the places inprocess of being digested. So, these arecivil borders. These are the militaryborders that are superimposed over this,but only on the conquered areas do youhave governor-generalships.The general should give you a hint ofwhat's really going on. And who'sconquered? Finland, Poland, Ukraine,Caucasus,

00:18:50all the khanates of Turkestan,Siberia. And China has also done this ofhaving provincial boundaries that comeand go and move around and alsosuperimposing military regions that alsomove around. Whereas if you look at likethe United States boundaries of states,they really haven't changed. It's yougot one set of states and then that'sthat. But the what's What's on here isthese boundaries are a mechanism ofingesting, digesting, and if you can'tfully digest and turn everybody into aregular province, at least you canneutralize these ethnic groups.All right. So, Mackinder's all about theadvantages of internal lines ofcommunication. Well, it comes with acorresponding disadvantage, which ismultiple neighbors. And these areRussia's no-kidding security threatscirca 1900. And from west to east there,Britain, Germany, Austria-Hungary, theOttoman Empire, China, and Japan. Thissecurity world is really different fromBritain's 360°you can't get me moat. Lots of peoplehave come to get Russians over theyears. And Russians have foughtconstantly with Germans, theAustro-Hungarian Empire, the OttomanEmpire. They have uh sufferedcatastrophic defeats to the Mongols, theSwedes, initially to Napoleon, theGermans

00:20:05in World War I.And uh in the Cold War, but each timethe central position allowed them torise again. In this world, power is afunction of land. Neighbors aredangerous, even the itty-bitty ones. Ifthey're unstable, that instability canooze over the border. Worse yet, ifthey're um strong, stable neighbors andthey have an idea that you're going tobecome a menu item for them, that's evenworse. So, in a maritime power, the armyis for expeditionary warfare. What's theexpedition? You cross the ocean and gosomewhere else. That's the expedition.Uh-uh in this world. Purpose number oneof an army in this world is you protectthe ruling machine. So, if you thinkabout the People's Liberation Army, it'suh goal number one, uh mission numberone is to keep the Communist Party inpower. That's not what the armies are inthe maritime world. It's alsosecondarily is garrison the empire,prevent defections. And then thirdly,it's for border defense. And as you'refighting at the border,whatever you win, you keep, right? Asyou're expanding outwards, you hope. Inthis world, away games are a rare event.Most of the fighting's occurring righton the border. So, these are statisticsabout deaths, not just casualties,

00:21:21wounded people. This is dead people. Uhthese are the sunk costs, all right? Noone's breathing life into these people.They're sunk casualties. So, if you'relooking at uh Axis military deaths, yougot 3.2 million dead German soldiers, 1and 1/2 million uh Japanese, 330,000Italians. Now, let's look at the Alliedland powers. 8 and 1/2 million deadRussian soldiers,nearly a million dead Poles, 1.3 milliondead Chinese, and 340,000 deadFrenchmen. Okay, look at the maritimepowers. By some statistics, Britain andthe United States, Britain with 326,000deaths, United States 295,000. By somestatistics, they suffered fewer deathsthan Italy or France. And France wasn'tin the war that long. And then when youadd in all the civilian deaths, thenumbers for the continental powers gocatastrophic, whereas they hardly budgefor the maritime powers. So, you've gotover 7 million dead Germans, over 25 and1/2 dead Russians, almost 7 million deadPoles, 11 million dead Chinese, nearly amillion dead Frenchmen. So, the deathsfor the the land powers are measured inuh millions, whereas the maritimepowers, it's a hundreds of thousands,

00:22:36still not a great number. And what'sgoing on here? It's because you're notinsulated by the oceans. So, thefighting tends to be on home territory.If that's the case, you're ruiningcivilians at a really rapid clip. And nocountry in its right mind wants to fighton the main front if there arealternatives. But this is thecontinental powers' unavoidable agonythat when the ainvades,you got a choice on that day. Eitheryou're going to capitulate or you'regoing to fight and you're doing it onthe neighbor's timing. That's Ukraine'sproblem. Whereas if you're a maritimepower observing someone else beinginvaded cuz in theory it's pretty toughto invade you by sea, it's a major pointof strategy as to whether you're goingto intervene at alland if you are, what is the timing? Whatinstruments of national power are yougoing to use? And these are things thatthe United States needs to think aboutvery carefully before it intervenes allover the place and over extends. Butthere advantage is if you winthiskind of warfare. If you think aboutRussians, enormous sacrifices. I've justlisted that for Stalin, it means hedominates Eastern Europe or Russia doesfor the duration of the Cold War, butunderstand

00:23:52that that kind of territorialdomination comes at a huge price. Thevalue of the object had better be worthit before you try it.In this world, there are certain rulesfor playing this game. Rule number one,no two-front wars. I've shown you allthe neighbors. If they gang up on you,it will be game over in a very bad wayfor you. Secondly, no great powerneighbors. Why? Because today's friendcan be tomorrow's foe and that spellstrouble. So what do you do?You take on your neighbors sequentially,right one at a time. You set them up tofail, you destabilize the rising, youingest the failing, and you set upbuffer zones in between, and you awaitthe opportune moment to pounce andabsorb. This is Vladimir Putin's game.Uhbetter yet, you get the neighbors to dothe work for you. How? You sow theirmutual resentments, you get them tofight each other, you deluge them withfake news so that Russia can play therole of the jackal state, which is oncethe neighbors have sufficiently weakenedthemselves and weaken each other thatRussia can move on in and steal a killmade by others.This theory of security has certainproblems. One, you're surroundingyourself by failing states. You can lookat Russia and Chinaand they're surrounded by some of themost dysfunctional places on the

00:25:07planetand you go, "Gee whiz, are they unluckyor they complicit?"And moreover, there no enduringalliances in this world because theneighbors figure it out. The hegemonicpower is just a long-term problem. Andthere's also no council on when to quit.Like how much territory do you takebefore you choke on it? And it turns outthat there's been a tendency over thecourse of China's and Russia's longhistories to overextend and this helpsaccount for the implosions of variousempires and dynasties. Now, before youdismiss this security paradigm,understand it was very effective. Uhcertainly prior to the IndustrialRevolution, no one cared in this in thisworld about collateral damage or killinga bunch of innocent people. Thisparadigm is all about killing people,breaking things to take territory. Andyou've seen it operating in real time inyour own lives in Syria, Ukraine, andother places.Um this is why those ancient ruins, theones that still remain, are ruinous areruins because this sort of warfare isruinous.>> [snorts]>> All right, here is one of the preeminenthistorians of the late Tsarist period,Vasily Klyuchevsky, who's describing hiscountry. He said, "The history

00:26:22of Russiais a history of a country in process ofcolonizing itself.Her area in of colonization grows intandem with her national territory, attimes shrinking, at times expanding,age-old movement. Therefore, the periodsin our history are the stages which ourpeople have gone through in theoccupation and development of the landacquired by them. There is absolutely nomention of the people who actually liveon this land. It's like irrelevant fromhis point of view. But this is the wayRussians have long looked at things thatif you have small neighbors, uhsomeone big may take them over, and ifum the even worse of the strong the weakbecome strong on their own right, it'sdangerous. So, you want to keep movingoutwards and uhuh expanding. And here a generationearlier you have Fyodor Dostoevsky,uh the novelist, the author of Crime andPunishment and other light reads. Herehe is confiding in his diary. In Europe,we are hangers-on and slaves, whereas weshall go to Asia as masters. In Europe,we are Asiatics. We're in Asia, we tooare Europeans. Our civilizing mission inAsia will bribe our spirit and drive usfurther. So, this idea of empire is verydeeply rooted in Russian thinking. Andhere is Count Sergei Witte. He'sprobably

00:27:37the most distinguished publicservant in the late tsarist period. Hewas a finance minister. And he's lookingat the world in 1903, and he goes,"Look, the problem for Russia is toobtain as large a share as possible ofthe outlived oriental states." And he'sthinking of the Ottoman Empire, butparticularly of China. And he goes,"Look, Russia historically,geographically has the undisputed rightto the lion's share of the expectedprey. And this elemental movement ofRussia began a long time ago with Ivanthe Terrible, aptly named. And theabsor- absorption by Russia of aconsiderable portion of the ChineseEmpire is only a question of time,unless the Chinese get their acttogether." So, here you have a statesmanat the highest levels of the Russiangovernment who is looking at Russiannational security, it's all aboutterritorial expansion. Well, Putin alsolooks at the world this way, apparently.The problem for the likes of Putinis if a continentaluh power botches strategy, its knownworld can vanish forever. And this iswhat happened to Imperial China,Imperial Russia, and many venerablecivilizations. I love this photograph ofa aristocrat's whimsical palace. It'slong gone as a result of one of the mosthorrific genocides of the 20th

00:28:52centurywhen the communists made good theirpromise to get rid of entire socialclasses and I mean get rid of like goneforever. And with the BolshevikRevolution and the ensuing Russian CivilWar followed by collectivization andthen the Great Purges that finished thejob. This is the continental world. Itis a world without insurance policies.Okay, now for the maritime world. It isa different event. I love this picture.I've no idea how accurate it is, but Ithink it illustrates the point. So,Spykman is talking about all of thesedifferent rimlands and things. And youyou look at the Atlantic Ocean. It's thecenter of the world economy in the 19thcentury and it's all about the rimlandproducing all of this wealth and thenyou put it on ships and you send it backand forth so that the seas are a commonsthat you want to share. The whole pointis you want to get goods going from portto port. And in our own highly networkedage, think about it, the seas of theoriginal network that potentiallyconnected everyone to everything.All right, the genesis of this maritimeworld, Imaybe it goes back further, but as farback as I go, is the Athenian Empirethat sees hugging the shores of theAegean Ionian Seas and it's all aboutthe trade

00:30:07that's accruing there that'spaying for their empire. The Romanslikewise are another rimland empire verydifferent from the consolidated empireslike Russia and China. And think aboutthe terminology Mediterranean metamiddle terranean land. So, it's the seain the middle of the land. Whereas theterminology for ChinaJungs central gua kingdom. So, it's thekingdom among the kingdoms. Oneterm emphasizes the centrality of thesea, the other the centrality of theland. Different way of looking atthings. And here's the Byzantine Empire,another rimland empire. And then for awhile no one in controls the rimlandsanymore. And in part what's going onis there's always been a lot of money tobe made on East-West trade. It used togo by camels, among other things, on theSilk Road. But whoever controlled thewestward toll booth on that thing madeloads of money because that's where itsplits, right? And it's going to go onthe southern or northern shores of theMediterranean. A lot of fighting overthat piece of territory. For a while,the Muslim conquest settled it. Theycontrolled it. And then while that'sthose things are going on, ourthere is continental consolidation goingon in Europe. And both modern Germanyand modern France trace

00:31:23their origins tothe empire created by Charlemagne at theturn of the 8th and 9th centuries. Andthen if you go to the end of the firstmillennium, you look at Europe. No onecontrols the rimlands, but you've gotthese large states that things havecoalesced into. And then the Crusades,in part, are a fight of these largerpowers in Europe to try to come back andget that toll booth back again, whichthey fail. Instead, the Ottomans have itfor a long time. And this is when theEuropeans have to get clever cuz theywant to trade with Asia. So they how arewe going to go by ship? And we'll go thelong way around. And it's the Spanishand the Portuguese that try this. Exceptthey bump into the New World. New tothem, not so much to other people. Andthey also got a lot of gold and silverhere. And so they forget about thespices, silk on the high-end dinnerware,and they're going to do heavy metalinstead. However, it's the Dutch who arethe real followers or of maritimeempire,which is very much defined by theirtrading bases. Their problem is theirlocation in Europe is vulnerable.And it's not surprising that it is amember of the Dutch Republic, HugoGrotius, who's the founding father ofinternational law. Why? Becausemaritime empires want to be able

00:32:38to usethe seas as commons, don't want peoplepirating their trade, and would likeeveryone to have rules so that everybodycan trade in safety. So, here's HugoGrotius in his Mare Liberum, Freedom ofthe Seas,writing that every nation is free totravel to every other nation and tradewith it. And then in his Law of War andPeace, he cites a Roman jurist, so thisis going way back, "To all men belongthe use of the sea." And then he quotesa Byzantine compilation of Roman law,i.e. going way back in Western thinking,"By natural law, the following arecommon to everyone: the air, flowingwater, the sea, and in consequence, theseashore." Well, this is very much aproduct of Western civilization, but notnecessarily shared by others. Forinstance,in 1996, China signed the UN ratifiedthe UN Convention on the Law of theSeas, UNCLOS.Anduh except China says that freedom ofnavigation does not extend within 200nautical miles of their coastline.Except under UNCLOS, the number is 12nautical miles. And in the East andSouth China Seas, these numbers make adifference. All right, the British arethe real uh pioneers of maritime empirecuz they don't suffer the Dutch problemthat Napoleon

00:33:53eventually takes care ofthe Dutch and integrates them into theFrench empire. But the Britain theBritain's have this 360° moat. They'rethe onlyuh power in Europe that doesn't need tomaintain a large standing army becauseif Britain could maintain a competentnavy, no army's going to reach Britishshores cuz they're going to be drownedat sea. So, that Britain could take aweakness, its dependence on trade, andturn it into a strength. So, the thetrade is going to finance the navy, it'sgoing to protect both uh Britishhomeland and some of the trade, and thenBritain is going to be compoundingwealth while its neighbors are busy A,that these neighbors have to fund largearmies that umuh can be economy killing and also canbe coup generating that are going to beconstantly fighting with each other anddestroying wealth in the process. So,while a navy could provide Britain witha prevent defeat strategy, I know it'sgoing to get to Britain, but it couldn'tA navy's insufficient for a delivervictorystrategy. It's not going to eliminatethese continental problems.But, if Britain can keep compoundingwealth over time and then its neighborsare busy busy destroying wealth at arapid clip, then the difference

00:35:08inwealth is going to get larger and inthat sense things will get better forBritain.And the Britain's uh after much trialand error came up with a way ofintegrating multiple instruments ofnational power to deal with thisgentleman on the horse.Oh, by the way, if you want to see thehorse's skeleton, you can go to theBritish Army Museum in in uh London, butthat's another story. Anyway, grossstory, but anyhow, uh here's a good oldNapoleon and the Britain's trieddifferent things uhand eventually figured out the problemis that navies are rarely decisive inwartime. You've got to have otherinstruments to integrate. Armiessometimes can be, but and so this iswhere the Britain's come up with grandstrategy. They coined the term becausethey need to to do it. And here's theirproblem. On the eve of the NapoleonicWars, says Europe has a bunch ofconsolidated states east and west andthen there's this big tidbit zone in themiddle. It's called the Holy RomanEmpire, but it's really a tidbit zone.And Napoleon eats up the tidbits andthen you get to 1812 and this is themaximum extent of the French Empire andthis is when the guru of Westernwarfare, Carl von Clausewitz, is comingup with his ideas about ground warfare.It's a really bad year for everybody.

00:36:24Uhnot for Napoleon, but everybody else.And uh this is when the Britons arethinking aboutuh how are you going to use maritimepower to deal with us? And, here's whatthey come up with. Their strategy forelephant hunting. How do you deal with acontinental power that's trying to upendthe trading system on which you'remaking money? So, rule number one is youkeep the home economy growing. That isnumber one, because that's going toproduce the money that's going to fundyour military, fund your allies, allowyou to do everything. Secondly, don'tlet the elephant forage. You want toclose down enemy trade through blockade,uh commerce raiding. So, you're going tothrow it back on its own dwindlingresources and its increasinglyembittered allies. Rule number three,you want to rent an elephant. You wantto find the continental power that ismost directly threatened by yourcontinental problem. And, you want toarm, fund, do whatever you can to keepthem in the fight, cuz that's the mainfront of whatever this war is. Rulenumber four, Britain needs to find atheater that is peripheral to that maintheater, where access by sea is muchmore efficient than access by land, andwants to and you want to fight there.Why?Because it's going to do several thingsfor you. The attrition between theperipheral theater and the main theateris going to add

00:37:39up, that's good. You'regoing to force the enemy to fight withdivided attention, and ideally, if it ifit's a uha really good theater, you're going torelieve uh some of the pressure on themain front as your enemy's going to haveto divert resources. Rule number five, arule that Britain broke at great cost inWorld War I.Do not take on the enemy main forcedirectly. You certainly do not do thatas an opening move. Think about it, acontinental power's major strength isits army. That is not Britain's greatstrength. Britain's great strength isits navy, its ability to generatewealth, and therefore its ability tosurvive protracted war. Don't play thecontinental game, it won't be good foryou. And rule number six,if you're going to fight on the mainfront, only do it after you have reallybled that elephant so that it's beengreatly weakened and you only do it withlots of friends, gang up on them.As much as a continental power wouldmight want to play this game, it cannot.Why?One is insufficient maritime access.When Mahan talked about egress to thesea, basically they're living they're onthese narrow seas that are blockaded,which means you cannot get your surfacefleet out reliably in wartime.

00:38:54Second, it means your your merchantmarine is going nowhere. And inaddition, these continental problemsoften have a surfeit of neighbors andyou some of which might invade it. So,it can't play this game. But, if Britaindidand kept at it, it could set itself andits enemies on opposing trend lines. So,the the war is going to increasinglyencroach on enemy territory with themain theater and the more peripheraltheaters, which is going to underminethe enemy economy, productive capacity,morale, and together this is going toundermine the ability for your enemy tocontinue fighting. In effect, it's astrategy of protracted war, butBritain's going to win by exhausting theother guy first. And if you look thinkabout it, the focus isn't primarily onthe military instrument of nationalpower, it's actually much more abouteconomics, coalitions, institutions, butthey're prerequisites for it. You can'tplay it if you do not have sanctuary athome. Sorry about the double negative,but the point is people are going toinvade over your borders or level yourindustrial base, you have a hard timetrying to do this. Moreover, it requiresaccess, access to peripheral theaters,access to your uh alliance partners,access to overseas markets. It alsorequires institutional stability at home

00:40:09in order to follow a stra consistentstrategy over a long period of time.These are some of the characteristicsthat Mahan would later emphasize. Allright, after the Napoleonic Warsuh there followed a century ofunprecedented prosperity in Europe wherethere was no uh continent-wide waragain. During this period there weresome smaller wars. And it meant to bewhere they're just making a lot of moneyplaying the maritime game, which is justtrade according to the rules, compoundwealth, don't level each othersbuildings, you'll make money.But World War I came, never mind. Allright, now I'm into the seconddistinguishing characteristic betweenmaritime and continental powers. Thefirst one was the ability or inabilityto defend at sea. Here's the second one.Continental powers face contiguousthreats. So they have to focus onnational security and often they want toinsulate themselves from neighbors andthey want exclusive zones to do this andthey often want those exclusive zones toextend out into their the seas aroundthem. Uh maritime powers think this iscrazy land because they've got therelative security of the moat, no one'sgoing to invade them. So they're goingto focus on national prosperity andtrade is the the path to prosperity andto security because

00:41:25you this is themoney that's going to pay foreverything. So they want maritime accessto markets. So they want to operate withthe oceans being commons and they wantit to go all the way up from port toport cuz you can't trade unless you goport to port. So from thesedistinguishing characteristics you gettwo mutually exclusive world orders outof this. One of them is we're going todivide the world up into very largespheres of influence, each a world untoitself. And the other one is no no no nono, we're going to operate underuniversal rulesuh and the seas are going to be open toeveryone. Okay.The Industrial Revolution upends empiresof both types.And it's going to usher in uh a maritimerules-based global order. And it's agame changer because it introducescompounded economic growth, which isindeed revolutionary, and it arises overa combination not just of technologicalchanges, but also institutional changes.What are institutions? It's how weorganize each other, right? We join intosome larger institution, and then it'shas some purpose in organizing people todo things more efficiently. So, in theearly phases, it's starting with steampower, industry,

00:42:41textiles, insurance,and banking. You can't do the tradewithout insurance and banking for yourloans and things, institutions. And inits later phases, it's about railways,telegraph, steam traps, mass markets,trade,general staffs, armaments. And what'sgoing on is the currency of power haschanged. Power is a function of landback in the day. Why? Because land iswhere you get the commodities that youcan sell, and alsothis is where you're going to ruralareas is where you're going to get yourpeasant conscripts to to field your massarmies. Well, once wealth is a functionof of commerce, industry, and trade, itisn't land anymore. And this upends theworld. If you think about the worldtoday, who's rich, who's poor, who'spowerful, who's not, it's often thedegree to which the country isindustrialized. And it the industrialrevolution opens up the beginnings of aglobal trading order, where you'retrying to umuhthrough trade negotiations to minimizetransaction costs so everybody can makea lot of money, and this is a processthat is still ongoing in our own day.Trade negotiations continue eternally.But it upends the traditional

00:43:56balance ofpower. The traditional societies aresuddenlyuh their paradigm security paradigms nolonger work. And uhChina back in the 19th century wasuh just opposeduh this incoming maritime order. In ourown day, ISIS or whatever is left of it,uh absolutely reviles the liberaleconomies and societies that arefavoring this sort ofuh trading order.If you look at uh the big yellow areathat uh Mackinder cared about withrailways cuz that railways are a productof the Industrial Revolution, he wasthinking all in terms of an integratedtransportation grid there. Another wayof looking at this map is umthe Roman, British, and Mongol empiresall share a piece of real estate. Itwould be the western terminus of theSilk Road. So, in the continental world,that Silk Road is a really big deal, andthat is prime real estate. However,another piece of the IndustrialRevolution is the Suez Canal,which is going to wreck the camel tradeon the going uh on the Silk Road becauseonce the canal is built, even withsteamships, but thethe canal even more so, it is so muchcheaper to send things by

00:45:11ship than totry to walk it over Eurasia with draftanimals, and it just upends theeconomics of the continental worldversus the maritime world. And I let'sfast forward 100 years to the 1967uh war where you've got Israel fightinguh Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, and as partof Egypt's strategy, it doesn't wantIsrael using the Suez Canal, so theysink a bunch of block ships here. So,that's the operational effect. Israel isnot going to be using Suez Canal, buthere is the strategic effect, the onesthat actually count in this life. If youlook at before the war, um mostWhat is it? Almost 90% of ships were50,000 deadweight tonsuh or less, and this is numbers ofships, right? And so, they could allmake it through the Suez Canal, whichcould take ships up to that size. Butthenthe Suez Canal is is closed down from1967 to 19uh72-ish.And so that's a long time in worldtrade. Well, look at the adjustmentsthat take place. All of By the time yougetuh later, you getby '72, you got almost

00:46:2630% of the numberof ships, not the capacity, are thesehuge ships that never had existedbefore. They're not going to make itthrough the Suez Canal. And Suez Canalhas since been widened, but still thebiggest ships can't make it through. Andso then if you look at the cost ofsending oil from the Persian Gulf toRotterdam in the Netherlands, if you'regoing to send it in an itty-bitty shipthrough the canal, it might be a littleover $13per ton to send it. Whereas if you'resending in a big ship the long wayaround Africa, I believe it's a thirdthat price. So um strategic effect ofthings, unexpected. That overhead costin shipping is is uh the size of shipgets over a lot of it. It's not aboutdistance. And here's the other guy whoreallyrevolutionized maritime trade, MalcolmMcLean, who I bet you've never heard of,but now I'm going to fix that. He ran aum trucking company, and he decided toput the chassis the his trucks minus thechassis on ships, what we callcontainers. Uh above decks, below decks.And when he did this, he reduced thecost loading cost from nearly $6 a tonfrom to less than 20 cents. And thenport time is again much reduced, soships are out about making money. Andthen for those of you who are skepticalabout international organizations,here's one you've never heard

00:47:41of.The International Organization forStandardization then standardized thesecontainer sizes to fit one if by truck,two if by railway cars, and thousands ifby sea. And this just plummets transportcosts. But so before you dismissinternational organizations, understandthat here's a little one you've neverheard of that has made massive changesin your lives.Okay, and it leads to plummetingtransport costs through the duration ofthe 20th century.And our latest uh dictator for life, XiJinping, he's got this Belt Road thingthat he thinks is going to be a goodidea.Uh good luck with that one, and here arethe statistics to back me up.Until 1960,the average tanker size was 20,000deadweight tons.And if you look at our own day, thesmallest ultra-large uh crude uh tankersare a quarter of a million deadweighttons. I believe the longest train cantake maybe 600 containersuh on a good day. Uh whereas the largestcontainer ships can take over 21,000 uhcar uh with cargoes valued at over $1billion.So, it is so much cheaper to send thingsby sea. And oh, on the Belt Road thing,it would be nice

00:48:57if the whole thing werecontinuous. It's not. It would also benice if were all the same gauge. It'snot. So, you're loading, unloading,loading, unloading. What a mess. Also,not only is it far cheaper to sendthings by sea, it is far more secure. Ifyou're going to run the Belt Road thing,uh or it's it's the belt part of it, theland part, umyou've got to control the whole thingend to end. You're going through some ofthe most unstable places there are. Goodluck with that one. Whereas in themaritime world, if it is uh unstable, orthey do block ships and close down theSuez Canal, well, forget it. Just go thelong way around. It'll be fine. Andalso, for China, with its geographicalsetup as it is, uh the seas are going tobe open to it only in peacetime. Inwartime, this has nothing to do withanyone doing anything to them. It's justfacts. It is surrounded by loads ofneighbors, shallow seas, lots of islandsuh that are completely blocked uhthey're blocked in fr- uh from the thehigh seas and from very predictablepoints. In wartime, those places becomekill zones. Merchant traffic cannot makeit through those places unless you'refriendly with everybody, which Chinacurrently isn't, maybe it'll change.Andeven your surface ships won't

00:50:12make itout. So, a peace is definitely thebetter thing.If you look at the end of the last ColdWar, too, sadly we're in the second one,but look at how world trade just takesoff. It was a miracle of your lifetimes.It lifted hundreds of millions of peopleout of poverty.The problem for the likes of Putin isthat this wealth producing trade was nothappening at his house, but the housesof those vested in the trading order,not in extortion. But with the secondCold War, we're into more inefficientthings again.This brings me to the thirddistinguishing characteristics ofcontinental and maritime powers.It has to do with the transportationrevolution. So, continental powershistorically have leveraged interiorlines of communication, that allow themto garrison their empire, deploy theirarmies against neighbors, and then toform a contiguous alliance system. Andthat worked well whenpower was a function of land. Well,that's not true anymore. The maritimepowersare using these exterior lines ofcommunications, the ones by sea, to givethem access not just to the people rightnext to them, but to

00:51:27the entire globe,which opens the possibility for them toform a global alliance system. And fromthis reliance on interior versusexterior lines of communication, itgives you the possibility of what sortof alliance systems that you can have.All right, the industrial revolution puta continental empires on notice, notsimply because land transport is so muchmore expensive than sea transport butbut because it opened the possibility ofa positive sum world order. The landempire MO of beating up all yourneighbors, well, it's negative sum. Whatdo I mean by that? Is your fighting overterritory, you're damaging the goodswhile you're fighting. So, whateversomeone lost in pristine territory nowlooks like this. And it's negative sum.You're destroying wealth at a very rapidclip. Whereas the maritime world is,"No, boys, don't do it that way. Youwant to have trading partners. You wantto have it win-win. So, everybody makesmoney. So, we have compounded growth.And this maritimeorder is focusing on freedom ofnavigation, free trade, internationallaws and institutions that facilitatetrade in order to

00:52:42minimize transactioncosts so we can maximize the money. Andthe insurance system for all of this isalliance system. So, most countriesaren't maritime by geography, but ifthey all gang up together and theycoordinate diverse instruments ofnational power when they're dealing withthese rogue continental states that wantto upend the trading system, they canturn out in force to protect the rulesthat protect them all. And here's theultimate insurance policy that wascreated by the greatest generation whichwere the conscripts of World War I. Thepeople who were told to go up and overtrenches and to see how that would go.And the ones who survived came back andtried to raise their families during theGreat Depression. And then the by thetime they were of the age to bestrategic leaders,they're off sending their own kids tofight World War II. And they concluded,and this isthis generation is in Europe and theUnited States both. They concluded thatthe solution to great depressions andworld wars was institution building on aglobal scale, and they builtinstitutions that have lasted to thepresent and held the peace until in theindustrialized world until VladimirPutin decided to wear his magic, butthey create the UN,

00:53:57the IMF, NATO, thepredecessor institutions of the WorldTrade Organization, and also of the uhthe European Union. And their idea iswe must hash out our differentdifferences with diplomats and lawyerscuz when you send the soldiers in, it isuhwhatever gains you think you're goinggoing to get are going to be inferior towhat you would have done with thediplomats. It's it's too ruinousfighting each other.All right. So, if you look at where thefighting that did go on in the Cold Warcuz it was cold in the industrializedworld, but it was really hot elsewhere,a lot of it's on this Mackinder's InnerMarginal Crescent, which is where themaritime and continental worlds hit. So,if there's civil wars going in there, uhthe one side of the Cold War wants toput its finger on the scale, and theother one wants to put its finger on thescale, and there we go. And that is allwealth destroying and helps explain whygrowth rates and things weren't as uh oror globally had problems cuz you'redestroying wealth. All right. Themaritime world is invisible, and thistook me 15 years to get teaching at thewar college to notice the obvious.Sometimes the obvious come becomesobvious by stating it. Let's see if itworks for you.The continental world's visible cuz it'sabout positive

00:55:13objectives. It's allabout making things happen. So, you wantto take territory,you can see it. Either you did or youdidn't. But the maritime world is aboutnegative objectives. It's preventingthings from bad things from happening.And um you can never prove that youprevented anything. Maybe no one wastrying anything to begin with. And uhit's invisible, right? The thing youprevented never happened. Surprise,surprise, you can't see it. But in thecontinental world, it's all aboutpositive operational objectives. You'reyou're destroying neighbors to taketheir territory. But, at the strategiclevel, you're destroying wealth at amassive clip. That is a problem.Whereas, the maritime world, it'sinvisible of all the bad things thatyou're preventing anyone messing withthe international trading order whichyou're making your money from, in part,and a lot of domesticactivity as well.Um and navies, their missions, moreoften than not, are also about negativeobjectives. Not all of them. What arethey?Uh and think about naval missions. Mostof them happen in peacetime.Yeah, wartime happens, too. But, fornavies, it's mostly in peacetime. Andwhat are they up to?Uh mission number one is prevent thedestruction of the global tradingsystem. That would be important. Uh

00:56:28uh your prosperity is hinges on thatone.Uh the second I'm really importantmission is prevent limits on freedom ofnavigation cuz if you cannot get goodsto port to port, it's pretty useless.And thirdly, it is to uh deter con-expansion into taking over big countriestaking over little countries. Thinkabout it. The bedrock principle ofinternational law is sovereignty. Ifwe're all going to be invading eachother, what international law is there?And the antidotes to rogue behavioruh in this maritime world are alliances,diplomacy, sanctions, embargoes,containment, numerous instruments ofnational power. And navies are aboutdeterrence, blockade, and commercerating. What you're doing is you'repreventing the continental problem, theelephant, from foraging. You're justsaying, "You're getting a timeout fromthe glo- the rules-based order cuz youcan't behave yourself." And you can go,"Well,uh the continental problem's stillthere." Well, what's interesting, so youall know about compounded growth. It'spowerful, right? Over generations. Whatpeople don't think about this back tonegative objectives. Sanctions are likeeconomic chemotherapy. What you're doingis presentingpreventing one or two percent growth perannum even with leaky sanctions, right?Well, then you go, so what? Well, no,

00:57:44sovery what is the difference over severalgenerations is the difference betweenNorth and South Korea. I get it NorthKorea is still there, but they got amuch smaller piggy bank than they wouldhave otherwise. And yeah, you're notgetting rid of the problem, but if therogue state has nuclear weapons and yougo, "Oh gee, we just want to get rid ofit." Really you want to have a nuclearwar to get rid of North Korea? Isn't itThis world is not about the operationalwin of totally eliminating a problem.It's rather it's containing it atacceptable cost. So, the NorthKoreans want to live miserable lives athome, have fun with it. Go livemiserable lives at home. And it's beingcontained at acceptable cost. That'swhat's going on.Okay, the optimists at the end of theCold War thought surely everyone wantsto join the maritime party. Not so. Thecontinental maritime difference ofopinion continues and I guess you likethe slide here of Mr. Fit and Misfit,Vladimir Putinand Kim Jong-un. They want to upend thismaritime order. They want to hollow outinternational institutions, upendinternational law, kill off our alliancesystem so we can return the world intowarring spheres of influence and that wecan live the sort of squalid lives theircitizens have to live.

00:58:59Okay, tosummarize,there are very different geopoliticsassociated with continental and maritimepowers and these discriminating factorsare the inability or ability to defendprimarily at sea, a focus on insulationfrom versus access to the world, and areliance on interior versus exteriorlines of communication. And theseaccidents of geography have predisposeddifferent preferences. One, acontinental power typically looks atterritory as something you might want totake. Whereas, a maritime power is, "No,no, no, that's a market. I want to makemoney there." And uh who wants to owntheir domestic problems?And then there areuh the continental power wanting to beself-sufficient. Whereas, a maritimepower is, "Hey, I'm going to trade forthat. Uh I want access to markets. I'mgoing to make a lot more money thisway." And the continental desire forexclusive zones, whereas a maritimesaying, "No, we want commons. We want toshare the seas, space, cyber, uh and theair, that this is the way to do stuff."And then many people notice that mostcountries, except for a few islands,uh they aren't strictly maritime or orif they're completely landlocked, Imean, most countries

01:00:14are not strictlymaritime or continental by geography,but there's a corollary. Alliances canbestow a collective maritime positionand power package to those countriesthat join in. Gets large enough thateven though they they themselves are notmaritime alone, but together they canbe. And this choice about which way togo is very financially consequential inour own dayuh because typically continentaliststend to be dictators, not always, butthey typically. And uh they're all aboutuh hemorrhaging cash to dominate theirown citizens and their neighbors.Whereas, a maritime power is, "Go."That's nuts. Why would you ever dothat?" And they they're keeping thegrowth compounding. And if you thinkabout China, it has benefited more thanany other country from rejoining thefamily of nations in this maritime worldunder Deng Xiaoping. But this ca- uh thelegacy of history and the bur- theburden of history, uh thesecontinentalist outlooks like, "I We needto take Taiwan." Really? Umuh weigh heavily. and uh the choice isconsequentialand there is only one win-win solution.

01:01:29It's however flawed this internationalorder is, it's a work in progress andthe only win-win solution is to deploythe diplomats and lawyers to hash outthese things in international forumsbecause if we're all going to sendsoldiers, we're going to get a thirdworld war with nuclear fallout effectsand we'll see whether humanity makes itif this is the it's tremendouslyconsequential particularly at thisjuncture in history. Anyway, thank youfor your attention and I appreciate youall coming.>> [applause]