FROM THE EDITORS

• Published in: Naval War College review Vol. 72; no. 1; pp. 3 - 4
• Main Author: Ayer, Robert
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Naval War College 01.01.2019
• Subjects: Circulation; Companies; Editors; Mail; Management; Naval warfare; Networks; Ownership; Postal & delivery services; Public enterprise; Subscriptions; Trade relations; Greece; Washington DC; Indian Ocean; United States > US; China; Africa; Chicago Illinois; Latin America
• ISSN: 0028-1484; 2475-7047

The Trump administration's evident determination to reorder fundamentally the nation's trade relationships with friends and adversaries alike arguably has served as a salutary warning to the current Chinese leaders in particular that they no longer can expect to carry on business as usual with the United States. On the other hand, it also has had the unintended consequence of obscuring larger issues in the U.S.-Chinese relationship. China is not just a trading partner that long has gotten away with sharp practice; it is increasingly clear that the Chinese aspire to challenge and eventually supplant the United States as the world's leading power. This case is laid out in authoritative detail in two contributions in this issue. James E. Fanell, in "China's Global Naval Strategy and Expanding Force Structure: Pathway to Hegemony," focuses on the PRC's massive naval buildup of recent decades and its implications for China's increasingly bold global engagement and presence. In "Ships of State?," Christopher R. O'Dea provides a complementary analysis of the second prong of China's global maritime strategy, its so-called Belt and Road Initiative. O'Dea demonstrates that Chinese state-owned companies have built a global network of ports and associated logistic facilities and infrastructure, ostensibly for commercial purposes, that seems nonetheless designed to support military power-projection operations over the longer term as well as to acquire economic and political leverage over host countries. A largely unrecognized but alarming harbinger of things to come is China's effective control of the Port of Piraeus in Greece, but this is only one example among a great many that extend throughout the Indian Ocean to Africa and even Latin America. Captain James Fanell, USN (Ret.), served most recently as Director of Intelligence and Information Operations for the U.S. Pacific Fleet; Christopher O'Dea is a Chicago-based international commercial analyst. As naval combat between major powers becomes less theoretical as a scenario than at any time since the end of the Cold War, the maritime dimension of World War II is more worthy of revisiting than ever. In "Operation RHINE EXERCISE, May 18-27, 1941," Milan Vego provides a detailed, operational-level analysis of one of the major encounters at sea between British and German surface forces in that conflict: the hunt for and eventual destruction of the German battleship Bismarck in the North Atlantic in the spring of 1941. Milan Vego is a professor of joint military operations at the Naval War College. Be on the lookout: The Naval War College Press is about to publish the second volume in our John A. van Beuren Studies in Leadership and Ethics. Assembled by general editor Timothy J. Demy of the NWC faculty, the book will be an anthology of Naval War College Review articles from the last decade on the subject of leadership and ethics, with some additional material. It will be available from the Government Publishing Office at www.gpo.gov/.