Will China soon rule the waves?

00:00 10:58

Peter Frankopan has narrated this article for you to listen to.

On Sunday morning, a communications cable between Sweden and Lithuania was damaged, almost certainly deliberately. Just hours later, the C-Lion cable, the only data link between Finland and central Europe, was severed by what authorities have diplomatically called an ‘external impact’. Most would call it sabotage. In a week where the Biden administration finally gave Kyiv authorisation to use longer-range missiles against targets in Russia, few should think it is a coincidence.

Sir Walter Raleigh said that ‘whoever commands the sea commands the trade’ and that ‘whoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world – and consequently the world itself’. To understand how the English (and then the British) managed to build a global empire, these comments should be observed. Investment in shipbuilding, cannon-casting and map–making, coupled with experience at sea, enabled Britannia to rule the waves.

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Raleigh’s rule still holds true today, 450 years later, as competition to control the seas intensifies once again. We live in a period of many revolutions. One of the most important is the struggle for maritime dominance. In the 16th century, the challenge was to find new worlds, to exploit them and to use the advantages against adversaries closer to home at a time of intense religious, political and economic rivalry. Today, as the world order creaks under the pressures of competing visions and sharpened ambitions, we’re entering a new age of tension and change.

Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, Chief of the Defence Staff, put it bluntly this month. The West has entered ‘a new era of competition and contest that will last for decades and has the potential to be more disruptive to our economy and our security than anything Britain has experienced in modern times’.