To Rule Eurasia’s Waves: The New Great Power Competition at Sea. Geoffrey F. Gresh. Yale University Press, New York, 2020. 363 pages, 5 maps
Reviewed by Mark Bailey PhD
This is an interesting new work, and one which is timely given the long-term deterioration in the strategic situation Australia has faced in North Asia since 2012.
The book itself presents as rather austere. It is printed in the USA and in common with many other American printings of recent times is of medium quality when compared (say) to Seaforth’s books. If in your bookcase, it’s one to take a little extra care with. The book conducts a ‘tour’ in a sense, starting in the Black Sea and proceeding around Eurasia ‘anti clockwise’, ending in Siberian north-east.
The book starts with a brief survey of maritime strategy. Gresh adopts a generally continentalist view and discusses maritime geoeconomics. The first chapter tracks the development of the Russian, PRC and Indian economies over the last few decades, based on Eurasia having about 60% of the global population. Gresh ties this to the rise of regional navalism, and it is important to note the term: this delineates the difference between continental powers turning to the sea for specific reasons and seapowers. This is a difference Gresh does not fully apply, although he does discuss Sir Julian Corbett in Chapter 1. This continentalist thread seems confirmed with the constant reference to ‘sea lines of communication’ which is how continental-minded strategists attempt to model maritime trade and conceptually turn it into ‘railways and roads on the blue bit of the map’.
This is followed by a survey of Russian naval history and the re-emergence of the importance of the Black and Baltic seas in the 2000’s: prescient in view of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There is a fascinating description of the Sino-Russian maritime partnership in European waters.
A good description of maritime geoeconomics in the Mediterranean follows, describing the increasing complexity of the maritime ties in that sea. Gresh’s progress continues as the maritime geoeconomics of South-west Asia, the Indian Ocean’s northern littoral and eastern areas are examined. This clearly reveals the solid research behind this work. The modern description of the region’s return to the ancient balance of Asian power between India and China is covered. This uses the lens of China’s belt and road initiative in regional ports such as Hambantota in Sri Lanka. India has been developing its seapower since the 1990s, carefully balancing commercial use of its EEZ and its growing maritime trade with increasing seapower. In accord with its own interests (including its energy and raw materials imports from the Indian Ocean littoral) India must dominate the northern Indian Ocean and exclude China from it. The growing Chinese dependence on maritime trade also places India’s boot on their oil supply from the Persian Gulf. Both nations know this. This part of the book is a valuable contribution. The chapter on China and the South China Sea is well researched, comprehensive and well worth reading; yet it is already slightly dated; such is the pace of regional events. Treated as a snapshot to 2020, it has great value as a baseline history until that year.
Gresh’s overall approach is that of a continental thinker examining the growth of navalism in continental powers. This is a conventional approach and contains its flaws. This ‘conventional’ consideration is continued in Chapter 8, which is the book’s only major disappoint. What is explored is an imaginary ‘climate change melted Arctic Ocean’ scenario. A cursory examination of the work of the various cryosphere institutes indicates that the Arctic cryosphere is expanding as the current grand solar minimum deepens, as it will until mid-century. Predictions of an ice-free Arctic by 2008, 2013, 2015, 2016 etcetera per works like Peter Wadham’s now-amusing 2017 polar potboiler ‘A Farewell to Ice’ simply have not occurred. This is not to decry Gresh’s methodology in the slightest, it’s just that a more useful and realistic model would have been the current and real Sino-Russian trade expansion underway in the Seas of Japan and Othotsk. The growing networks of integrated maritime traffic, rail and pipeline networks there are shaping the real geoeconomic situation in north Asia.
Overall, this is a well-researched, useful and thought-provoking book. The methodology used to examine the growing great power competition at sea is excellent. It has clear limitations. There is a sense of being confined to a conventional continental assessment of seapower: the book is not seapower-oriented. The greatest disappointment is the use of an irreal ‘ice-free Arctic Ocean’ assessment model as a substitute for the complex real-world developments actually happening in North Asia’s colder seas and complex continental rail, road and pipeline networks. However this should not deter ANI members from acquiring this interesting new work.
