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 quest. That’s understandable. There’s glamour to a navy. A hulking PLA Navy aircraft carrier or guided-missile destroyer exudes drama that a freighter hauling raw materials or finished goods across the main just doesn’t. But here’s the rub. That humble merchantman is just as an important a part of Chinese sea power as a ship of war—arguably more so. So says Alfred Thayer Mahan. He pronounces commerce king in nautical ventures.

In fact, Mahan declares a society’s propensity to trade the chief measure of its fitness for saltwater pursuits. Trade and commerce enrich a nation, furnishing a maritime-minded government the wherewithal to fund a naval protector for trade. Pursued with vigor, a virtuous cycle between trade and military endeavors churns to life.

Seafaring nations cast what Mahan likens to a “chain” of sea power. They muster domestic industrial might to produce wares for sale to overseas trading partners. That’s the homeward link in the chain. They construct fleets of merchant vessels to transport those wares and warships to act as guardians for mercantile ships traversing the sea. That’s the central link. And they seek out commercial, diplomatic, and military access to foreign ports—connecting domestic industry with foreign customers. That’s the third, distant link. Sea power is an armed version of the supply chain beloved by economic geographers. The Mahanian chain connects sellers at home to buyers abroad while ensuring that commercial traffic voyages to and fro stay unmolested.

Xi Jinping just cast another link in China’s sea-power chain in coastal Peru. Mahan would instantly grasp such maritime entrepreneurship.

Will the PLA Navy try to base warships at Chancay? I doubt it, although the prospect of a hostile naval bastion in South America bears monitoring. However. The writings of another geopolitical thinker of repute, Yale professor Nicholas Spykman, are worth pondering as U.S. leaders look southward. Writing during World War II, Spykman cautioned Americans not to assume Latin America was their natural preserve simply because the United States was the Western Hemisphere’s foremost economic and military power. Half the globe is a large place, and U.S. influence dwindled with physical distance. The Axis could make mischief for the United States in its own neighborhood.

For instance, the Brazilian capital of Brasilia lies about equidistant from New York City, still the cultural and economic capital of our east coast, and from Lisbon, Portugal, the capital of the former Portuguese Empire of which Brazil constituted a major part. In other words, U.S. leaders wield no special influence in Latin America south of the continental bulge where Brazil juts into the South Atlantic. Now, as in Spykman’s day, extraregional contenders could court South Americans for commercial, diplomatic, and military purposes of their own. The United States had—and has—to work for sound relations with its southern neighbors. If it neglects South America, it vacates maneuver space for China in the Americas.

Physical proximity and policy attention matter now—as ever.

U.S. neglect, then, is China’s advantage. As Beijing funds projects that bolster economic development in recipient countries—bear in mind that development is Job One for any developing country—it purchases a diplomatic lever vis-à-vis Latin American governments. CCP leaders could threaten to withhold largesse for future infrastructure efforts or curtail existing ones should a government enact policies that displease them. Policies such as aligning with the United States on security-related matters. Party leaders could compel Latin Americans to choose between prosperity and hemispheric solidarity.

There’s no guarantee they would tilt the United States’ way under duress. This is a savvy strategy on Xi Jinping’s part.

One hopes the incoming presidential administration and Congress are mindful of hemispheric challenges such as these. Latin America merits attention in its own right, but it also represents a southerly vector in the U.S. strategic competition against China. No longer is this a straightforward east-west competition across the Pacific, if indeed it ever was. It’s all around us. Officialdom must learn to think vertically as well as horizontally.

The ghosts of Mahan and Spykman demand no less.

About the Author: Dr. James Holmes 

Dr. James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College and a Faculty Fellow at the University of Georgia School of Public and International Affairs. The views voiced here are his alone.