Abstract
The South China Sea is a semienclosed sea at the intersection between East Asia and the Indian Ocean region. It exhibits characteristics similar to the Mediterranean Sea and the Caribbean Sea, as well as some revealing differences. Both the similarities and the differences commend sea-power theorist Alfred Thayer Mahan’s analysis of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea to present-day students and practitioners of maritime strategy. Mahan classified strategic features- especially prospective sites for naval stations- by their positions, strength, and resources. This article adds a metric to his analytical template, namely, the state of relations with countries host naval bases. He applied much the same framework to narrow seas, such as international straits, while also sizing up these passages’ widths, lengths, and difficulty of transit. Here too an element warrants adding, namely, the underwater terrain- its topography and hydrography.
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