For the time being the region's pre-eminent naval power, America, is showing little sign of concern.
Feeling threatened by American naval power, China has been modernising its missiles, submarines, radar, cyber-warfare and anti-satellite weapons.
The history of the past two centuries offers an answer: only if China projects naval power into the Pacific.
The USS Theodore Roosevelt was one of the key elements of Nato's naval power in the 1999 Kosovo conflict with more than 3, 400 combat missions launched from its deck.
To the students of war, the conflict seemed to vindicate Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, an adviser to McKinley, who had in 1890 written a book preaching the importance of naval power.
According to reports, Mr. Mabus stated that the immediate challenges to stability across the Pacific did not stem from China's growing naval power, but the threat from pirates, terrorists and illegal fishing.
They also favor naval power, but ships take a much longer time than planes to get places in the vast expanses of the Western Pacific, and the Navy has little in the way of long-range aircraft.
Advocates of close relations with China maintain that its military strength has been overrated by Americans in search of an enemy: they point to China's lack of long-range naval power and the poor training of its air-force pilots.
As a non-member, the U.S. retained the full panoply of tools to parry the first Russian ploy: bilateral diplomacy, relations with the four other littoral states who share our interest in blocking such Kremlin overreach, economic and financial pressure and, if all else failed, naval power.
In fact, SLCMs permit virtually every combatant ship in the inventory to enjoy a crucial capability which once resided exclusively in the relatively small number of aircraft carriers: the ability to defend itself and to project naval power over great ranges by holding at risk enemy shipping and targets ashore.
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Explaining the rise of Barcelona as a naval power to rival Italian city-states like Pisa and Genoa, he notes the balanced diet of Catalan sailors: more biscuit and cheese than the Venetians, less wine than the Neapolitans, but plenty of garlic, onions and spices to make hard biscuits more palatable.
They downed a Dutch fleet in 1741, a rare example of an Asian state inflicting a naval defeat on a European power.
The British and French government, as the protectors of the Arab state, shall agree that they will not themselves acquire and will not consent to a third power acquiring territorial possessions in the Arabian peninsula, nor consent to a third power installing a naval base either on the east coast, or on the islands, of the red sea.
White starts by pointing out that Asia has lived under and benefited for some sixty years from a unchallenged and unchangeable U.S. strategic military and geopolitical primacy, based primarily on naval, nuclear, and air power.
First, as a maritime power we and our allies and friends are critically dependent on naval forces to a measure far beyond that of a land-power like the Soviet Union.
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So it's easy to agree with the naval experts who say you need carriers to be a power on the seas.
Canada's government has moved to reassure allies, following the arrest of a naval officer charged with handing over secrets to a foreign power.
It is distinct from Congress' power to enact laws that govern the land and naval forces.
Its large banking sector has suffered losses on Greek bonds, and its biggest power station has been knocked out by munitions exploding on a naval base.
It made an about-turn in its support for a controversial free-trade deal with America, which it had proposed when in power, as well as for the construction of an unpopular new naval base.
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Within the organisation, however, the fear is that its cherished autonomy and ability to compromise the so-called ASEAN way is under threat from big-power rivalries, however reluctant China and America may be to risk naval escalation.
President Dmitry Medvedev has gone further, using naval clout in the South Atlantic as proof that Russia is returning to great-power status.
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How many more naval exercises and weapons shipments will it take for Putin to tip the balance of power in Latin America in his favor?
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