“As different streams having different sources all mingle their waters in the sea, so different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee”[1]
Might it be possible in this ‘Asian century’ that a natural global commons endures which spans the Pacific and Indian Oceans? A common bond which transcends the multiplicity of national interests of Indo-Pacific governments? Not everyone is convinced, suggesting a commitment to such a ‘commonality of purpose’ is far from universally acknowledged.
“We are facing challenges including rapid military modernisation, tension over territorial claims, heightened economic coercion, undermining of international law, including the law of the sea, through to enhanced disinformation, foreign interference and cyber threats, enabled by new and emerging technologies.”[2]
However, to affect such an honourable goal there is no greater resource available to leaders in our vast region, no more powerful instruments to maintain or help forge a peace, than their navies and those brave souls who expose themselves daily to the perils of the deep for the benefit of humankind. It is unfortunate that too frequently they are caught within a battle of political narratives.
Indo-Pacific Construct
While the domain of biogeography recognises an exceptionally high species richness in the tropical waters of the Indian Ocean, the western and central Pacific Ocean and the seas connecting them in the vicinity of Indonesia, geopolitically, the concept first circulated in the Weimar republic. The German Karl Haushofer, in an Orwellian attempt to restructure the global political landscape, aimed to galvanise Asian anti-colonialism as a maritime route out of Germany’s geopolitical predicament. Employing evidence from marine biology, oceanography, ethnography, and historical philology Haushofer envisioned a sympathetic Indo-Pacific establishing India and China, as allies, against “Euro-America”.[3] The term Indo-Pacific then fell into neglect, probably due to the distractions of another World War and the subsequent bipolar and global Cold War.
Generations later, when addressing the Indian Parliament in 2007, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe stated:
“The Pacific and the Indian Oceans are now bringing about a dynamic coupling as seas of freedom and of prosperity. A ‘broader Asia’ that broke away geographical boundaries is now beginning to take on a distinct form. Our two countries have the ability — and the responsibility — to ensure that it broadens yet.”[4]
Julia Gillard’s 2012 White Paper ‘Australia in the Asian Century’ conceptually described the term Indo-Pacific as the “western Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean.”[5] Successive US Presidents, Obama, Trump and now Biden have connected both oceans. Barack Obama to outlining plans for an Indo-Pacific Economic Corridor (IPEC) and Donald Trump by presenting his vision of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Hanoi summit.
Thalassocracies
The first navy to be transcendent across Prime Minister Gillard’s Indo-Pacific belonged to the Chola Empire. At its peak between 900 and 1100 AD it had a remarkable strength of around a million sailors. Supported by a coast guard force to protect home bases and local trade, it possessed nine battle fleets based in various locations ranging from the present day Aceh to Angkor Wat and southern Sri Lanka. Their navy enabled the Cholas to achieve a political, military and cultural hegemony over a vast maritime empire stretching from the Maldives to the Philippines and north India with trade links from Rome to China. It was a precursor for the influence a future thalassocracy was to exert across the whole Indo-Pacific.
In an era when Defence’s first strategic objective is to “deploy military power to shape Australia’s strategic environment”[6] and our navy’s mission is to: ‘prepare Naval Power in order to enable the joint force in peace and war’, Australians can take pride in their navy’s heritage. The RAN’s forbears did more than any other to shape the geo-political development of this vast region. They directly determined the development and traditions of many modern Indo-Pacific navies, even into the present century. For Great Britain no truer words could describe the Royal Navy’s importance to its very national existence than the words carved into stone along the facade of the Britannia Royal Naval College at the beginning of the twentieth century:
It is on the Navy, under the providence of God, that our wealth, prosperity and peace depend.
In the West, from the development of His Majesty’s Indian Navy in the second quarter of the nineteenth century and the later creation of Pakistan and Burma’s navies. Across South East Asia and the Straits Settlements’ and the Malayan Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. To the Antipodes and Australia’s own five colonial navies supported by the Australia Squadron. The presence of the indefatigable HMS New Zealand at Jutland with its Commanding officer wearing a Maori piupiu and hei-tiki into battle. To the very far North in Asia this unique thalassocracy exerted its influence spanning centuries. In Japan, where in 1870 the Emperor’s decree determined that the Royal Navy should serve as the model for the Imperial Navy’s expansion, a decade in which Lieutenant Commander Archibald Douglas developed the Tsukiji Naval Academy. A visible reminder of the pre-eminence of British warship building rests today adjacent to Japan’s Yokosuka base. The only remaining pre-Dreadnought battleship, Vice Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō’s Flagship during the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War, Mikasa was ordered from the Lancashire shipyard later to build all Britain’s nuclear submarines. She was part of a fleet that within just a decade was to become the fourth most powerful.
Neither Russia nor Korea escaped the Royal Navy’s attention in support of British Grand Strategy. From the 1854 siege of Petropavlovsk during the Crimean War to the deployment of Sir Alexander Buller’s China Station squadron in December 1897. The latter, overshadowing the Czar’s Navy:
“Proved to be an effective instrument of British coercive diplomacy, demonstrating Britain’s resolution to protect its interests, thereby stiffening the resolve of the Korean government in Seoul to resist Russia’s demands.”[7]
There was to be no let up. In the new century, even during the inter-war punctuation mark in naval affairs. On the China station:
“The Admiralty secretly circumvented the Washington Treaty by developing military aviation capabilities at Hong Kong under the guise of imperial policing.”[8]
Heading Eastwards across the broad Pacific. Past so many islands influenced by visits of British tars including Hawaii, the one US state that still encompass the Union Flag in its state flag and where, with the assistance of British mariners, King Kamehameha I was able to found the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1795.
To the Western shores of the Americas. The establishment in 1854 of the Esquimalt Naval Base, the home of the Commander in Chief, Pacific and now home to the Royal Canadian Navy. Finally to South America where a hero of Chile, Admiral Lord Cochrane, a naval mercenary extraordinaire, led his cohort of expat British Officers to glory as Chile established its independence. Where later the Royal Navy based its Pacific Station in Valparaiso before departing mid-century to Esquimalt. Half a century later and the Royal Navy’s presence was felt during the Peruvian-Chilean War of 1879 – 1881. Today an ex-Royal Navy frigate is the fifth to bear the name Almirante Cochrane. Close ties remain between the two navies, notwithstanding being hemispheres and oceans apart.
The Royal Navy operated ultimately with impunity on the far side of the world. From Arctic to Antarctic it facilitated the exploitation of ‘wealth’ and ‘prosperity’ upon which the nation and its Empire depended. Today, Indo-Pacific navies, whether brown, green or blue water, serve their respective governments to secure those same benefits. As the Australian Defence Minister attests, Australia’s like-minded friends: “share our interest in ensuring continued peace and prosperity. They want to see the Indo-Pacific Operating System characterised by order and stability.”[9]
Geo-Politics and the Indo-Pacific
When considering nations and their navies with respect to “security, prosperity and good order” in the Indo-Pacific, one has to look beyond Australia’s 2012 White Paper vision – across both oceans and all points of the compass. Post World War Two, the hegemony of Empire yielded to the impressive sea power of the USN. Within the US Indo-Pacific area of responsibility is roughly half the earth’s surface. In the 36 nations the Command considers (and it excludes the Americas) live more than 50% of the world’s population, several of the world’s largest militaries, five nations allied with the US through mutual defence treaties and two of the three largest economies. More than one third of the nations are vulnerable being smaller island nations. The US considers the Indo-Pacific as a geopolitical and geo-economic space central to defending the global interests of the US. Its geographical boundaries are not precisely defined. It extends across the entire Indian Ocean, from U.S. overseas territories such as Guam and American Samoa in the West Pacific to U.S. states such as Hawaii and California, and includes all nations bordering these two oceans.[10]
The Indo-Pacific is this century’s focus of great power competition. The US identifies China as an adversary, undermining the rules-based order.
“The US is not asking nations to choose between China and the rest of the world, but we are asking them to choose a future that supports democracy, enables economic prosperity, and protects human rights… China’s militarization of the South China Sea…a clear example of Beijing’s unwillingness to abide by international rules and norms.”[11]
President Biden’s Interim National Security Strategic Guidanceagenda is intended to “strengthen our enduring advantages, and allow us to prevail in strategic competition with China”[12] It is hardly surprising that China would consider the US descriptions of an Indo-Pacific concept and Trump’s FOIP as a containment policy. In 2018 Foreign Minister Wang Yi declared the concept of the Indo-Pacific “as short-lived as the foam on the two seas”[13] and Chinese officials consistently refer only to an ‘Asia-Pacific’ region.
Both major players on the world’s stage seek policy acclamation. It has become impossible to ignore the many interwoven international and supranational influences affected. Many are the examples. APEC includes Canada and Russia in the Arctic and in the south New Zealand, Chile and Australia with their Antarctic territories. The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership stretches from Mexico in the East to Singapore in the West with Taiwan and China currently competing for membership. Next year sees the fortieth anniversary of UNCLOS[1], together with its International Seabed Authority. The stars recently have aligned for the ‘Quad’ and AUKUS while China and Russia’s combined military exercises continue to grow, emphasising the structural realism of the their relationship. Individually, New Zealand’s 2021 Defence Assessment sees strategic competition as one of only two ‘principal challenges’ and China’s rise the ‘major driver of geopolitical change’ while France’s 2019 publication “France and Security in the Indo-Pacific” described the continued international focus on the region’s importance and Germany sent its first warship in 20 years for a goodwill visit to the region.
Advantage Navy
The security and prosperity of many Indo-Pacific nations depend upon the sea for resources, for trade and the seabed for future exploitation and communications cables. Navies sit athwart diplomatic, military and constabulary roles. By their judicious employment a nation can influence and promote national objectives. Some warships may carry thousands of times the payload of an aircraft, move large numbers of personnel and equipment over significant distances and contain substantial combat power. Vessels remain at a high readiness for long periods and can be deployed rapidly. In modern times this was never more ably demonstrated than by the Royal Navy’s swift departure from the UK and Gibraltar to the Falklands and the departure of the CVN USS Washington, still in deep maintenance, from Yokosuka, following the Fukushima nuclear emergency.
Warships do not challenge the sovereignty of foreign powers like a land presence or military overflight. Replenishment at sea sustains operations, projecting power for months at extended ranges. Constrained only by water depth, restricted only by internal and territorial waters, their effects can be expanded with embarked amphibious assets and aircraft. Submarines can operate undetected. Inherently flexible, exercising overtly or covertly beyond the horizon, navies are immediately responsive to government direction – at peace one minute, ready to fight the next. [14]
Mission statements of Indo-Pacific navies vary widely, reflecting government policy priorities. From the grandeur of the USN’s “to maintain, train and equip combat-ready Naval forces capable of winning wars, deterring aggression and maintaining freedom of the seas” to Cambodia’s modest “defend the national coastline and to police territorial waters.” Bangladesh, India and Malaysia refer to ‘maritime interests’, Fiji, New Zealand and Indonesia include ‘Exclusive Economic Zones’ (EEZ). Referring to rescue missions, Brunei and Fiji acknowledge a humanitarian capability. With aspects of defence, many include sovereignty or governance, however only Malaysia nobly mentions ‘regional integrity’ and Japan the ‘safety of maritime traffic’.
There are many international agreements which can be supported in principle or action by all the navies of the Indo-Pacific. Conventions and conferences ranging from the 1954 Prevention and Control of Marine Oil Pollution; Human Smuggling in 1957; maritime counter-terrorism; in 1958 the Conventions on the High Seas, the Continental Shelf, the Zones Adjacent to the Territorial Sea; the Protection of Fish Stocks and Other Living Stocks on the High Seas against disruption of Marine Life chains. However, the reality of national bureaucracies and how governments execute power can trump all the good intentions of the region’s professional mariners.
“We’re confronted by assertive authoritarian rivals who see the global context as a continuous struggle in which all of the instruments of national power are used unconstrained by any distinction between peace and war.”[15]
Commonality of Purpose – Diplomacy
Diplomacy is the first instrument of national power. Each nation has selfish strategic factors driving its perception of what it requires for security, prosperity and good order (for ease – SP&GO) to support a ‘commonality of purpose’. Each will understand how its navy can collaborate in its national interest and each may respond to maritime diplomatic initiatives in different ways. Post 911, the US were keen to develop a commonality of purpose to defeat terrorism. In 3 years between 2003 and 2006 President Bush signed up 70 nations to support his Proliferation Security Initiative, yet even the US Congressional Research Service couldn’t define what ‘support’ actually meant and China and India were notable abstentions. In parallel Bush’s Commander in the Pacific, Admiral Tom Fargo, in 2004 raised the issue of a Regional Maritime Security Initiative. His vision was to develop a partnership of willing regional nations to identify, monitor, and intercept transnational maritime threats under existing international and domestic laws. In other words supporting maritime SP&GO. Together with the lack of sufficient maritime security in the age of the ‘Global War on Terror’, Fargo was concerned about the rise of piracy in the Strait of Malacca, proposing US-led deterrent patrols.
Sensing their maritime sovereignty was under threat, both Malaysia and Indonesia strongly objected and as a result the initiative was dead in the water. By 2005 then US Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Mike Mullen was positing another vision, that of a ‘1000-Ship Navy’.
“A fleet-in-being, if you will, made up of the best capabilities of all freedom-loving navies of the world … a fully interoperable force – an international city at sea.”[16]
Such a guiding role by the USN, even though participation was voluntary, made some more states hesitant. Nowhere more than in archipelagic South East Asia, the junction of the Indo-Pacific. Security multilateralism is difficult and suspicions of US motives were questioned, particularly by Islamic states.
“Despite Admiral Mullen’s words, navies are not designed to be ‘freedom-loving’ but tools of their political masters. No other navy will contribute or benefit except as a direct result of its own government’s policy decisions to support, acquiesce, or obstruct the progress of a ‘1000-Ship Navy’.[17]
More recently, marking the 30th anniversary of relations between China and ASEAN last November, President Xi stated
“China resolutely opposes hegemonism and power politics, wishes to maintain friendly relations with its neighbours and jointly nurture lasting peace in the region and absolutely will not seek hegemony or even less, bully the small.”
At the same virtual leader’s meeting President Duterte of the Philippines then described an incident just two days earlier when Chinese coast guard ships blocked Philippine boats carrying supplies to troops at a disputed South China Sea shoal, forcing them to turn back. [18]
Despite such diplomatic faux pas, Indo-Pacific navies from nations supporting a rules-based order can be employed to send powerful diplomatic messages, through such events as supportive port visits, coordinated FONOPs,[2] and timely HADR[3]. Initiatives such as the US Theater Security Cooperation Programs and Australia’s DCP and PMSP[4] transmit essential narratives of support rather than domination to smaller nations across the region.
Commonality of Purpose – Information
The most profound change in the Indo-Pacific since the days of Empire has been the development and immediacy of communications whether official, private, individual or en masse. The complex effects of state and societal mass media interaction is now also reflected in military developments. Samuel Butler first warned of the dangers of Artificial Intelligence 150 years ago in his philosophical novel Erewhon.[5]
“The more highly organised machines are creatures not so much of yesterday, as of the last five minutes… I fear none of the existing machines; what I fear is the extraordinary rapidity with which they are becoming something very different to what they are at present.”[19]
Information is omnipresent thanks to technology. From an SP&GO perspective information can be an essential friend. The development in this century of a satellite based Automatic Identification System (AIS) has undoubtedly enhanced maritime safety and anti-piracy initiatives, while advances in maritime domain awareness provided by software such as container tracker, track and trace, support national and international maritime security in anti-narcotics, smuggling and international maritime crime. However, elements of technological innovation can also be employed to frustrate naval innovation affecting force structure, force generation planning, international engagement and future operations.
“The sheer proliferation of new technology, and the speed with which it is being adapted for military purposes, compounds the complexity of strategic decision-making.”[20]
Navies face an era of information ubiquity and no previous form of warfare has evolved as quickly as cyber. In September 2021, Nicolas Chaillan the US Air Force’s first Chief Software Officer resigned in frustration. Suggesting that China had already won the ‘tech war’ to achieve global dominance, Chaillan described some US cyber defences as being at ‘kindergarten level’, criticising Google’s unwillingness to work with the Pentagon in stark contrast with the relationship of Chinese companies that worked with the PRC, with little in the way of ethical concerns.[21] Such information challenges can be partially met by Indo-Pacific navies working together to develop greater interoperability and understanding. During the last two decades 31 nations in the region, including China, have agreed multinational standing operating procedures (MNFSOPs) to address sudden crises. The result of the 2000 Asia-Pacific Chiefs of Defense conference, the SOPs provide clear understanding of agreed planning, command, control and coordination processes.
Commonality of Purpose – Military
“The Chinese nation has always loved peace…. Since 2012, China’s armed forces have deployed vessels on over 4,600 maritime security patrols and 72,000 rights protection and law enforcement operations, and safeguarded maritime peace, stability and order.”[22]
Defence White Papers are written as much for external as internal audiences with carefully constructed messages in their texts. Most Indo-Pacific navies will identify with many of the PRC’s military objectives. Who could argue with: “to deter and resist aggression; to safeguard national sovereignty, territorial integrity, security, maritime rights and interests and security interests in outer space, electromagnetic space and cyberspace? However, in democracies it is very unlikely a Defence White Paper will contain objectives to support ‘sustainable development’ ‘political security’, ‘unity’ and ‘social stability’ while the perceived need to “crack down on proponents of separatist movements such as “Tibet independence” and the creation of “East Turkistan” and “oppose and contain “Taiwan independence” are peculiar to the autocratic nature of the Chinese Communist Party.
So when embracing the opportunities for naval cooperation across the Indo-Pacific, including many opportunities for discourse, agreements and possible future codes of conduct, one has also to recognise the immediacy of tensions regarding territorial claims as well as political pressures regarding relations with countries like Myanmar, North Korea, Russia, Taiwan and China.
Each Indo-Pacific nation has an interest in supporting maritime humanitarian aid and responses to effect disaster relief which in turn enable strong relationships to endure in times of crises. Regionally, navies will be more effective in a crisis if they train and exercise together. In that respect, the first ASEAN ADMM-Plus Humanitarian and Disaster Relief (HADR) and Military Medicine Exercise conducted in Brunei in 2013 and held back-to-back with the 2nd ASEAN Militaries’ HADR Exercise was a welcome first step on a steep staircase to reach the level required to combine and address the effects of a similar event to the 2004 Aceh Boxing Day Tsunami.
Commonality of Purpose – Economic
The final instrument of national power is easily abused in a maritime context. The threat of employing navies to corruptly influence vulnerable nations by offering maritime assets and infrastructure is a real one.
“Beijing is leveraging its economic instrument of power in ways that can undermine the autonomy of countries across the region… funds come with strings attached: unsustainable debt, decreased transparency, restrictions on market economies, and the potential loss of control of natural resources.”[23]
The accidental grounding of the container ship Ever Given in the Suez Canal in 2021 highlighted the importance of the free flow of maritime trade to the world economy. Lloyd’s List estimated that each day the canal was blocked disrupted $US 9 billion of goods. By value, approximately 70 percent of international trade goes by sea, one third of which passes through the South China Sea. Working together, as demonstrated off the Horn of Africa, navies can protect trade routes against piracy supporting Article 100 of UNCLOS, and provide confidence to the international economy. Navies support their administrations by protecting assets in their EEZs, oil and gas platforms being a prime example. The vast seas of the Indo-Pacific are a focus for the low risk, high value enterprise of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. While AIS transponders can be switched off, navies with their intelligence collection sensors and links to other agencies can contribute to data analysis, information sharing and ultimately arrests and detention that support a healthy maritime economy.
Conclusion
The essay title alludes to the existence of a natural global commons in the Indo-Pacific, existentially a highly desirable, unselfish state of affairs. Very regrettably, suggesting that the nations of Oceania and those skirting the vast shores of the Indian and Pacific oceans have committed to such a concept promoting ‘security, prosperity and good order’ is akin to suggesting that there were no slaves on Sir Thomas More’s island of Utopia.
Unipolarity is no more. Where a White House insider once boasted “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality” we are now witness to an alarming bipolarity, two competitors facing off across a nervous Indo-Pacific.[24] Depending on perspective, we are hostage to either a panda or eagle in the room. At present China is exploiting a ‘community of common destiny’ during a ‘period of strategic opportunity’. Its methods a clear disputation against a maritime ‘commonality of purpose’ often demonstrated by the majority of Indo-Pacific nations.[25]
Retaining the moral high ground anchored securely in a functioning legal international rules-based order while supporting common maritime interests is essential. By requiring their navies to constantly train, exercise and operate together, there may still be time for freedom loving nations to develop a maritime synergy in the cause of deterrence. As Winston Churchill said “there is at least one thing worse than fighting with Allies and that is fighting without them.”[26]
(C) 2022 Tom Frederick
[1] The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea
[2] Freedom of Navigation Operation
[3] Humanitarian Aid and Disaster Relief
[4] Defence Cooperation Program and Pacific Maritime Security Program
Pacific Maritime Security Program
[5]
Ironically
in the age of Covid Butler foresaw disease as a crime for which people were
imprisoned.
[1] The Hindu monk Swami Vivekananda addressing the World’s Parliament of Religions, 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. Quoting from the Bhagavad Gita.
[2] Peter Dutton, The Canberra Times, 5th December 2021
[3] Hansong Li, Cambridge university Press The “Indo-Pacific”: Intellectual Origins and International Visions in Global Contexts | Modern Intellectual History | Cambridge Core
[4] Shinzo Abe. MOFA: Speech by H.E. Mr. Shinzo Abe, Prime Minister of Japan, at the Parliament of the Republic of India “Confluence of the Two Seas” (August 22, 2007)
[5] Australian Government White Paper: Australia in the Asian Century, page 74.
[6] 2020 Defence Strategic Update, Government of Australia.
[7] John Berryman. British Imperial Defence Strategy and Russia: The Role of the Royal Navy in the Far East, 1878–1898, University of London. https://www.ijnhonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/pdf_berryman.pdf
[8] MJ Heaslip. Changes and challenges: The Royal Navy’s China Station and Britain’s East Asian empire during the 1920s. University of Exeter, November 2018. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwi6vonV4df0AhUDxTgGHaAICe0QFnoECAMQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fore.exeter.ac.uk%2Frepository%2Fbitstream%2Fhandle%2F10871%2F37423%2FHeaslipM.pdf%3Fsequence%3D1%26isAllowed%3Dy&usg=AOvVaw1s9nNeTtDdc4ZiiclF3JjL
[9] Peter Dutton, The Canberra Times, 5th December 2021
[10] Department of Defense, Indo-Pacific Strategy Report. Preparedness, Partnerships, and Promoting a Networked Region, June 2019 https://media.defense.gov/2019/Jul/01/2002152311/-1/-1/1/DEPARTMENT-OF-DEFENSE-Indo-Pacific-STRATEGY-REPORT-2019.PDF
[11] Esper. As Prepared Remarks by Secretary Esper at the German Marshall Fund in Brussels > U.S. Department of Defense > Speech
[12] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/NSC-1v2.pdf
[13] Feng Liu, “The Recalibration of Chinese Assertiveness: China’s Responses to the Indo-Pacific Chal-lenge”, Chatham House International Affairs 96, no. 1, 1 January 2020.
[14] The maritime domain described in ADF C-0 Australian Military Power Ed 1
[15] General Sir Nick Carter UK Chief of the Defence Staff, Australian Department of Defence Media Release, Defence Cooperation & Collaboration in a Competitive Age. 27 October 2021
[16] Admiral Mike Mullen USN, Remarks as delivered for the 17th International Seapower Symposium Naval War College, Newport, RI, 21 September 2005. The symposium’s theme was ‘A global network of maritime nations for a free and secure maritime domain’.
[17] Page 234, Papers in Australian Maritime Affairs No 21 – Australian Maritime Issues 2007 SPC-A Annual.
[18] China will not seek dominance over South-East Asia, Xi Jinping says at ASEAN conference – ABC News
[19] Samuel Butler. Erewhon, Chapter 23 in ‘The age of the machine’1872.
[20] Defence challenges 2035: Securing Australia’s lifelines, Lowy Institute
[21] Ex-Air Force Tech Boss Eviscerates Pentagon For Already Losing The AI Race Against China (Updated) (thedrive.com)
[22] China’s 2019 Defence White Paper.
[23] Admiral Philip S. Davidson, Commander, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, February 12, 2019
[24] “Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush”. The New York Times Magazine. Suskind, Ron (October 17, 2004).
[25] The Concept of ‘Community of Common Destiny’ in China’s Diplomacy: Meaning, Motives and Implications – Zhang – 2018 – Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies – Wiley Online Library
[26] The power of alliance | Comment | Encompass (encompass-europe.com)