THE FUTURE OF SEA POWER

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The Future of Sea Power
security affairs commensurate with China’s renewed great power status and now-indelible interests
on every continent.’
18 Thomas Vien, ‘The Grand Design of China’s New Trade Routes’, Stratfor, 24 June 2015, www.
stratfor.com/analysis/grand-design-chinas-new-trade-routes.
19 PK Balachandran, ‘Sri Lanka To Build Naval Base At Hambantota’, The Indian Express, 23
July 2015, www.newindianexpress.com/world/Sri-Lanka-To-Build-Naval-Base-At-Hambantota/2015/07/23/article2936420.ece.
See also Gurpreet Singh Khurana, ‘“Sea-based” PLA Navy
may not need “String of Pearls”’, Center for International Maritime Security, 12 August 2015,
http://cimsec.org/sea-based-pla-navy-may-not-need-string-pearls/18053.
20 James Hardy and Sean O’Connor, ‘IMINT confirms Type 041 visit to Karachi’, IHS Jane’s Defence
Weekly, 8 July 2015, www.janes.com/article/52843/imint-confirms-type-041-visit-to-karachi.
21 Louis Ritzinger, ‘The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor’, The National Bureau of Asian Research,
5 August 2015, www.nbr.org/research/activity.aspx?id=589.
22 See Tu Debin, ‘Research on China’s Maritime Transportation Security and Thoughts on its Protection’.
23 Pakistan has promised to establish a 12,000-man security force to protect Chinese nationals
working on the pipeline project. See Ritzinger,‘The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor’.
24 Even so, the completion of China’s various pipeline projects will not significantly replace seaborne
energy imports. See Andrew Erickson and Gabriel Collins, ‘China’s Oil Security Pipe
Dream’, Naval War College Review, Spring 2010, pp. 88-111, www.andrewerickson.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/China-Pipeline-Sealane_NWCR_2010-Spring.pdf.
25 See a review of Bobo Lo’s ‘Russia and the New World Disorder’ in The Economist, 1 August 2015,
www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21660069-without-foreign-policy-rethink-russiadoomed-irrelevance-and-decline-blind-alley.
26 Oil and gas revenues make up half of the Russian government’s income. Income for Gazprom,
one of Russia’s biggest energy firms, is expected to fall by almost 30 per cent in 2015. See
Fareed Zakaria, ‘From Russia to Iran, the consequences of the global oil bust’, The Washington
Post, 20 August 2015, www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-consequences-of-the-oilbust/2015/08/20/7c98defe-4770-11e5-846d-02792f854297_story.html.
27 See June Treufel Dreyer, ‘China and Russia: A Limited Liability Partnership’, Foreign Policy
Research Institute, February 2015, www.fpri.org/articles/2015/02/china-and-russia-limited-liability-partnership.
28 See Gilbert Rozman, ‘The Russian Pivot to Asia’, The Asan Forum, 1 December 2014, www.
theasanforum.org/the-russian-pivot-to-asia.
29 The Russians and Chinese conducted their largest-ever naval exercise off Vladivostok, JOINT
SEA II, in late-August 2015, a follow-on to the notable joint exercise JOINT SEA held in the Mediterranean
in May 2015, China’s first in the region. JOINT SEA II involved over 20 warships from
both countries’ navies, including the PLAN 20,000-ton amphibious transport dock Changbaishan,
and the PLAN completed its first joint overseas beach landing, which was followed soon
after by the Japanese honing their amphibious skills on the California coast. See Sam LaGrone,
‘China, Russia Land 400 Marines in First Joint Pacific Amphibious Exercise’, US Naval Institute
News, 26 August 2015, http://news.usni.org/2015/08/26/china-russia-land-400-marines-in-firstjoint-pacific-amphibious-exercise.
30 See David Axe, ‘Russia’s Navy Is More Rust Than Ready’, War is Boring, 14 August 2015, http://
warisboring.com/articles/russias-navy-is-more-rust-than-ready. Axe writes, ‘Russia is a geriatric
maritime giant surrounded by much more energetic rivals.’ Interestingly enough, Russia’s new
Maritime Doctrine 2015, issued on Navy Day on 26 July 2015, calls upon the Navy to focus principally
on the Arctic and the Atlantic. See Nikolai Novichkov, ‘Russia’s new maritime doctrine’,