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Maritime Strategy: Check and Countercheck
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10043 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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4 / 1986 |
1,527 Words |
| Author
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Ray S. Cline
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Casual reference to 16 oceanic "chokepoints" popped up in one of President Ronald Reagan's recent press conference comments on the strategic importance of air and sea bases in the Philippines. This nationally televised reminder of a fundamental geopolitical bit of wisdom received little notice amid the firestorm of commentary surrounding the change of government in Manila. Both the public and media pundits alike could benefit if they paid close attention to the bedrock strategic concepts that determine the general thrust of U.S. policy-making.
Preserving American military presence in areas near the narrow sea passages of the world, the ones President Reagan called chokepoints, is an essential piece of bedrock geopolitics. It needs hammering home so that a consensus will always form in support of the concept Reagan brought up in his passing remark. The great American air base at Clark Airfield and the even more vital naval base at Subic Bay in the Philippines provide the underpinning of American military power in the West Pacific. This fact goes far to explain why Washington had to play an active role in Manila, trying to restore stability and responsible government in the climate of the collapsing authority of the Marcos government.
Sixteen is not a magic number and some military experts might choose a few more or a few less to identify the sea passages critically important for maritime traffic in peacetime and control by navies in time of war. Sixteen is good enough, however, and the picture of the globe and the sea-lanes conjured up by the string of chokepoints is one that should be indelibly imprinted on the mind of every American citizen who thinks about national security and international affairs. Nothing is more important than using narrow sea passages for peacetime commerce and being able to dominate their use in a war or in a lesser military confrontation like the U.S. blockade in the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.
"Choking" one or more of the 16 most important sea passages is the way international conflict is most likely to begin in many parts of the world. How the United States naval and air forces are able to respond to threats against freedom of the seas is likely to mark the difference between a short-of-war crisis safely managed and an incident that escalates to widespread hostilities. This response, of course, depends on military deployments and access to naval and air bases in the vicinity of strategic chokepoints.
To get to anywhere on the other continents, especially to Eurasia and Africa on the other side of the globe, Americans must cross the oceans. Our country borders the Atlantic on the east, the Pacific on the west, the Arctic to the north of Alaska, and by transit in either direction thousands of miles away into the Indian Ocean--the only one of the great seas that does not wash our shores.
Of course, these oceans all are really joined together and constitute one body of water separated by narrow passages between the continent and major islands where the four-and-three-quarter billion people and most of today's economic resources are.
Since more than 90 percent of the commerce crossing the seas is shipborne, the old-fashioned geo-political idea of controlling sea-lanes and checkpoints is as timely as it was when Alfred Thayer Mahan and Halford Mackinder opened up the study of the idea of sea
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