Whither Taiwan’s maritime defense?
The ghost of Alfred Thayer Mahan can help strategists analyze the challenges and opportunities confronting Taipei in this age of surging Chinese military might. Best known as the author of The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783, the 19th century’s most influential treatise on maritime affairs, Mahan was a keen student of the relationship between geography and maritime strategy.
Indeed, he cut his intellectual teeth appraising “the inherent advantages of the various ports and coastlines of the Caribbean Sea” and the Gulf of Mexico.
In 1897, he assessed the potential of Hawaii, beseeching the US government to annex the archipelago. None of the islands he examined were identical to Taiwan. Nevertheless, the similarities and differences illuminate how the Republic of China (ROC) Navy can relate strategy to the island’s distinctive geography.
Mahan devised a simple formula to assess a site’s potential as a naval base. The first and foremost virtue of a harbor or an island like Jamaica or Cuba was its “situation,” or geographic location. For Mahan, the US’ sea power “Copernicus,” an island situated near or astride heavily trafficked sea lanes, was best suited to safeguard friendly and threaten enemy shipping.
Strategic position was necessary, but insufficient for a good base. The most promising geographic location in the world was worth little if the fleet couldn’t hold its own seaports. The second attribute of a prospective base, therefore, was “strength” or defensibility. This referred either to imposing natural defenses or suitability for defensive emplacements like shore artillery.
The last metric for gauging the worth of a base was “resources” to support fleet operations and the port itself. Resources could be either natural — say, a verdant countryside surrounding the port — or transported in and stockpiled.
Hawaii bore the least resemblance to Taiwan. The archipelago occupied the intersection of sea lanes connecting the Central American Isthmus — the future site of a transoceanic canal — with East Asia. It also offered a way station for shipping between Canada and British holdings in the Pacific, most notably Australia. However, Hawaii, unlike Taiwan, lay amid a vast, vacant oceanic expanse.
Jamaica held a central position flanking all major routes to the isthmus. It would make an acceptable naval station, but only for a navy dominant enough to compensate for the island’s relatively small size, meager resources and the presence of nearby Cuba, which would inevitably overshadow the island.
Likewise, Taiwan must worry about a nearby military power, but its size and resource endowment vastly outstrip Jamaica’s.
Which leaves Cuba. For Mahan, Cuba held “pre-eminent intrinsic advantages” because it adjoined all routes to the isthmus and ranked high by the measures of strength and indigenous resources.
A navy based in Cuban harbors could influence shipping everywhere in the Gulf and Caribbean.
The island boasted size and strength. Cuba was “not so much an island as a continent” with bountiful resources, an elongated shape and multiple harbors that made it tough to blockade. Even a lesser navy could shift operations from “side to side,” finding “refuge and supplies in either direction.” Such a navy could hope to defy a superior fleet operating nearby.
Though far larger, Cuba comes closest to approximating Taiwan’s strategic circumstances.
Like Cuba, Taiwan straddles important sea lanes, those running along the East Asian seaboard. It possesses strength, with multiple ports and rugged coastlines that a savvy ROC Navy can exploit.
And the island can provide for many of its needs out of its own resources, letting it hold out against superior forces for a time.
However, like the Cuba of Mahan’s day, Taiwan finds itself under the shadow of a continent-spanning nation starting its ascent to great sea power.
Indeed, Taiwan’s predicament is worse than Cuba’s. While Cuba lies only 145km off US shores, the nearest US port, Key West, was and remains a minor base for the US Navy. Mounting a blockade of Cuba from Gulf Coast ports like faraway New Orleans or Pensacola would have posed severe challenges.
By contrast, the Chinese coastline roughly parallels Taiwan’s west coast, letting Chinese forces operate against the island along multiple axes using a variety of sea and land-based weaponry.
Some Mahanian advice: Design ROC Navy strategy and forces to exploit such advantages as the island does possess. A navy made up of small craft that nimbly shift from side to side, finding refuge and supplies in numerous coastal sites, could defy a Chinese offensive for long enough to matter.
James Holmes is an associate professor of strategy at the US Naval War College. The views voiced here are his alone.
The conflict in the Middle East has been disrupting financial markets, raising concerns about rising inflationary pressures and global economic growth. One market that some investors are particularly worried about has not been heavily covered in the news: the private credit market. Even before the joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, global capital markets had faced growing structural pressure — the deteriorating funding conditions in the private credit market. The private credit market is where companies borrow funds directly from nonbank financial institutions such as asset management companies, insurance companies and private lending platforms. Its popularity has risen since
The Donald Trump administration’s approach to China broadly, and to cross-Strait relations in particular, remains a conundrum. The 2025 US National Security Strategy prioritized the defense of Taiwan in a way that surprised some observers of the Trump administration: “Deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority.” Two months later, Taiwan went entirely unmentioned in the US National Defense Strategy, as did military overmatch vis-a-vis China, giving renewed cause for concern. How to interpret these varying statements remains an open question. In both documents, the Indo-Pacific is listed as a second priority behind homeland defense and
Every analyst watching Iran’s succession crisis is asking who would replace supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Yet, the real question is whether China has learned enough from the Persian Gulf to survive a war over Taiwan. Beijing purchases roughly 90 percent of Iran’s exported crude — some 1.61 million barrels per day last year — and holds a US$400 billion, 25-year cooperation agreement binding it to Tehran’s stability. However, this is not simply the story of a patron protecting an investment. China has spent years engineering a sanctions-evasion architecture that was never really about Iran — it was about Taiwan. The
In an op-ed published in Foreign Affairs on Tuesday, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) said that Taiwan should not have to choose between aligning with Beijing or Washington, and advocated for cooperation with Beijing under the so-called “1992 consensus” as a form of “strategic ambiguity.” However, Cheng has either misunderstood the geopolitical reality and chosen appeasement, or is trying to fool an international audience with her doublespeak; nonetheless, it risks sending the wrong message to Taiwan’s democratic allies and partners. Cheng stressed that “Taiwan does not have to choose,” as while Beijing and Washington compete, Taiwan is strongest when
RSS