Eurasian Maritime Geopolitics

Reviews the strategic geography of the sea lanes from Northeast Asia through the Indian Ocean to Europe since the Middle Ages, noting how changing technology and economic patterns have transformed the global significance of those passage ways, especially since the end of the Cold War.

Eurasian Maritime Geopolitics by Kent E. Calder examines the strategic geography of the sea lanes from Northeast Asia through the Indian Ocean to Europe, through which much of the world's energy and information flow. Calder shows how changing technology and economic patterns have profoundly transformed the global significance of those passageways since the end of the Cold War, with fateful consequences for the strategic calculations of both the United States and a rising China. The decline of the US shipping and shipbuilding sectors, coupled with the rise of their Chinese counterparts, is a major part of this hybrid equation.

The book provides readers a history of the changing economic role of the sea lanes as well as the decline of US maritime competitiveness. It chronicles how maritime flows of energy, commodities, and information through submarine cables have increased. Calder's clear eyed assessment documents the uncertainties relating to Eurasian sea lanes stretching from Taiwan to the Red Sea and beyond in the post-Ukraine world.