Julian Spencer-Churchill
A survey of every war with a significant naval campaign since 1200 validates the theory of nineteenth-century naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan that a decisive naval battle dramatically increases the prospects of winning a war. Mahan emphasized that a nation’s success is achieved by focusing on sea control and spurning distractions, such as the loss of insecure island bases. Naval historian Admiral Herbert Richmond agreed with Mahan that once sea control is attained, islands can be easily recaptured.
For the United States, this means that it must resist the temptation to use its blue-water fleet to intercept a sudden Chinese amphibious assault on Taiwan proper and instead concentrate on luring China’s fleet into a decisive battle under more favorable circumstances. Although the amassing of a Chinese escort fleet in the Taiwan Strait, made vulnerable by its need to optimize the protection of an amphibious force, is a tempting target for a concentrated attack of carrier air wings and sea and sub-based stand-off weapons, it will be a battle at a time and place of China’s choosing, and therefore a likely trap. Furthermore, the United States should not risk its blue water fleet, which needed to enforce a blockade, against a regional brown water fleet, the possible outcome of which could be a Chinese victory and the United States’ loss of naval supremacy in the Pacific.
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