Sarah Paine

It's very difficult.

Usually...

In a war, we've already done narrow seas, right?

The North Sea, the Baltic, the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, they shut down in wartime to commercial traffic.

It simply can't make it through.

And surface fleets have great difficulty.

And if the neighbors, as Ukraine has shown, just buy the right drones and

since the sea's a little bigger, buy some submarines, some plain shore artillery.

That might be enough to just close down China's merchant marine, certainly the merchant marine, but also its navy.

So if you want to go the other way of, well, what about Xi Jinping doing a surprise visit on the West Coast?

There's a lot of open ocean.

Hawaii would be the nearest big island.

It's a long way away, and Hawaii's dependent on imports for everything.

It's not very useful.

But for the United States going the other way, the islands get bigger and better the closer to China that you get.

So I'll leave you with Alfred Thayer Mahan, captain and later admiral, by far the most famous person ever associated with the U.S.

Naval War College, where I spent my career.

Here are his prerequisites for playing the maritime game.

One, you need a moat.

You've got to have insulation from attack if you want to play this game.