---
author: Dwarkesh Patel
date: '2026-06-09'
guest: ''
layout: post.njk
source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS1NZLgKM2c
speaker: Dwarkesh Patel
tags:
- geopolitics
- grand-strategy
- sea-power
- containment
- international-order
title: 陆权与海权的地缘政治逻辑与大战略组织模式比较
summary: 演讲者探讨了陆权大国与海权大国在组织世界方式上的根本差异。陆权国家倾向于领土扩张、追求自给自足与排他性势力范围；海洋大国则依赖海上自卫、追求贸易财富、公海共有领域与基于规则的秩序。面对大陆型挑战与无赖行为，演讲者主张通过联盟、外交与制裁等手段以可承受成本进行遏制，并指出外交协商是避免第三次世界大战的唯一双赢路径。
insight: ''
draft: true
series: ''
category: geopolitics
area: geopolitics
project: []
people: []
companies_orgs: []
products_models: []
media_books: []
status: evergreen
---
### 导言：陆权、海权与大战略
晚上好。非常荣幸能来到这里。今天我想谈一个论点，关于世界是如何被组织的，或者至少是过去的各类帝国曾如何试图去组织它。事实证明，陆权大国与海权大国试图组织世界的方式截然不同，而这些在今天依然具有真正的现实意义。我将使用地缘政治学和大战略的术语。
Original English
Good evening. It's such a pleasure to be with you. I'm going to make an argument today about how the world is organized or at least how different types of empires back in the day tried to organize it. It turns out that continental and maritime powers tried to organize the world in very different ways and that these have real uh implications in our own day. Uh and I'm going to be using terminology from geopolitics and also grand strategy.
Original English
What is that? Geopolitics is the influence of geography on politics and grand strategy is grand in the number of instruments of national power that it integrates. And you're thinking, well, what are they? And think about who sits on a cabinet around a president who gets convened. Those are the elements of national power, right? So you've got the state department, diplomacy, the military, you've got finance, agriculture, you got a whole long list of people. and you want to integrate these uh these things.
Original English
But before I get going, I'm going to give you a um a sneak detour, a really whirlwind tour of American history, which I'll get done really fast along with a tour of some of the great geopoliticians. And uh before I will after that appetizer, I will deliver the promised main course.
Original English
Okay, this is June 6th, 1944, D-Day, Normandy landings, where sea power, maritime power meets land power. It turns out maritime powers are the exception and continental powers are the rule. Why? Because maritime powers, if need be, can defend themselves primarily at sea with their navies. Whereas a continental power simply cannot, think Ukraine, a navy is not going to save them from Russia. So uh this is the first distinguishing characteristic between a maritime and continental power whether it is feasible to defend yourself at sea or not.
Original English
And from this comes some implications that if you sit in a continental world you had better have a competent army and if you're a maritime power to defend yourself you better have a pretty good navy. But these implications go beyond the military to economics and politics as well. And I'll go into these,
Original English
but this country began its life as a continental power all about expanding to guess what here, right? To the west coast. And uh the United States tried invading Canada a couple times. Not a new idea. In 1775 and 1812, the British won those things and we had to back off on that idea. And then you get here, President Monroe declaring the Monroe Doctrine, which is a classic continental spheres of influence, stay out of my backyard moment. Uh, the only trick was that the United States was so weak in those days, telling the Europeans to stay out of the Americas was just on the wish list. It was impossible to deal with.
Original English
But if you look at the United States, how it became the United States, it's all about territorial expansion to reach the West Coast. And unlike a typical continental power which does this with massed armies, the United States preferred checkbook diplomacy. So when Napoleon Bonapart was short of cash in 1803, that's when the Louisiana purchases made. And then when uh the Russians were short of cash, a perennial problem, that's when the United States bought not only Alaska but the northern part of the the West Coast.
Original English
But when the checks were not accepted, which is what happened with Mexico, uh the United States did the standard mass armies approach in the Mexican-American War, and that's how the United States gets uh Texas. So that the next check offered the Mexicans accept. And that's the Gatston purchase, which gets the United States, Tucson, Arizona, and other places.
Original English
The longest counterinsurgency in this country's history was against the native population that put up a really bitter struggle. So the it's not the longest counterinsurgency is not the recent stuff in the Middle East. It's about what we did to the native population here that eventually had to give up. And the Americans had a name for their national expansion. It was manifest destiny. the idea there was an obvious uh fate of America or the United States to uh control a good part of North America and there were all about territorial expansion and this painting which hangs in the I think it's the western staircase as you're getting into the chamber of the house of representatives it goes by the politically correct title nowadays a westward hoe well that's not the title when it was painted it was westward the course of empire takes its way Americans were all about expansion and proud of
Original English
However, a different view starts emerging in the late 19th century propended by it was captain then later Admiral Alfred the Mahan who is by far the most famous professor ever associated with the naval war college where I spent 24 years of my career and what he's looking at the more he goes actually power in the position in the world really isn't a function so much of continental expansion and consolidation but really it's about all the wealth you can acrue from trade and he thought there were certain prerequisites to um follow a maritime security paradigm.
Original English
What are they? One, you need a moat. You cannot be subject to uh invasion right across your border or it's over. Secondly, you need a dense internal transportation grid in order to get the goods out in peace time. You need reliable egress by sea to get the navy out in wartime. And you need a dense coastal population. These are the people going to be running all the commerce. And uh you also need stable government institutions that are going to be stable in the sense that they're going to fund a navy and that they're going to pass laws that are going to u make commerce happen.
Original English
If you look at these prerequisites and you look at China and Russia today, neither one has the full list. Far from it. Neither one has a mode. Both of them have more neighbors than any two other countries on the planet. And many of those neighbors don't like them at all for excellent reasons. Russia has a lamentable internal transportation grid whereas China's has been improving. Neither one has reliable egress by sea surrounded as they are by narrow uh in the case of China island clustered seas with a whole and Russia as well loads of of neighbors. These places tend to get blockaded and closed down in wartime.
Original English
Russia has reliable egress up north. Well, great. No one lives there. What do you want to do? go pet a polar bear, polar bear, it will not work out. In addition, uh on dense coastal population, yes, China has dense coastal population, but again, it's onto a narrow sea. Russia does not have a dense coastal population up north. And uh Russia's never had a commerce-driven economy. China much more so under Dang Xiaoping, but recently Xiinping has been priv privileging the crony sector over the private sector.
Original English
And neither one has stable government institutions. What's the litmus test for that one? That would be transparent regular elections and dictatorship for life does not remotely qualify. So, China and Russia certainly have maritime ambitions. Uh but I'm not clear they actually understand what goes into uh an full maritime paradigm.
Original English
Anyway, um there was a counterargument to man that comes a generation later by a Britain, Sir Halford McKiner, who's looking at the world and looking at Britain's problems and he thinks that actually Russia occupies the best uh geopolitical location in the world, not Great Britain because and this is a map from his 1904 article and he defines as the pivot area. Eurasia is the part of the world he's focusing on and it's where Russia is and he also calls it the great heartland and he said look that area the pivot area is the citadel of land power on the great mainland of the world it is the greatest natural fortress on the world why because it's insulated by mountains deserts uh frozen seas and rivers that uh exit onto the oceans and very inaccessible places during wartime time and therefore it is impervious to sea power that Britain can't really get at at this area
Original English
and he said but if you occupy the heartland this pivot area you have the possibility for defense in depth strategic uh retreat and selfsufficiency so the heartland is not insulated by the sea it's insulated from the sea and a maritime power like Britain if it wants to influence the heartland land. It's got to do it on the periphery. In those days, it would be through having colonies in these very uh
Original English
strategic locations. In our own day, would be having allies with bases in these locations.
Original English
Uh this man Nicholas Spikman was also very concerned about who controls Eurasia. He felt that the country that controls Eurasia could well control the world. and he had much to worry about when he completed his very important work in 1943, the year he dies. He's a naturalized American citizen from the Netherlands, then under Nazi occupation, and he felt that the Nazis had come really close to dominating Eurasia in 1941.
Original English
And here's what he said. Despite occupying the uh the safest position of any nation in the world, we Americans have been involved in two devastating world wars in the space of a quarter of a century. And in the second one, i.e. the ongoing one, we are at one point uh and in serious danger of defeat. The expectations of US statesmen regarding the outcome of their actions were consistently wrong and their thinking about national security generally fail to provide successful answers. sound familiar?
Original English
Uh in addition, he's looking at the world and he said, "Look, the influence of the United States can be brought to bear in Europe and Far East only by means of seaborn traffic and the power of the states of Eurasia can reach us effectively only by crossing the seas." And this is true despite the development of air power because big things go by sea and they still do. Therefore, US security was a function of sea power and that sanctuary at home and by that I mean in invulnerability to attack is a function of a maritime shield.
Original English
And Spikman is really concerned who control controls the rimland of this great heartland, friend or foe. And here's why. The United States will have to depend on her sea power communication across the Atlantic and the Pacific to give her access to the old world. And the effect of this of this act access is going to delimmit what sort of foreign policy the United States can have. And what the United States requires is a continental ally who can provide a base from which land power can be exercised. What he's saying in World War II, victoring that thing is going to depend on alliances and allies. critical.
Original English
All right. So, that was the ordev. I've done the whirlwind tour of American history. Settled in a few minutes or less. You should be happy about that one. And then I've given you some of the most famous geopoliticians there are, a synopsis of what their ideas are. But here's my uh this is the main course. First, I'm going to talk about continental empires because they come first in human history. And then I'll turn to maritime empires which come later. But then there's the industrial revolution and the postworld war II institutional framework that opens the possibility of a maritime global order. So that's my game plan.
Original English
Oh, I forgot one thing. Um I don't know whether you all like animals or not, but we at the Naval War College love animals. And so we often refer to continental powers as elephants and maritime powers as whales. Bonus terminology.
Original English
All right, I'm going to start out with China as not Russia, which McKinder was preoccupied with, uh, as the original land power. And here is Sununza, uh, the preeminent theorist, Chinese theorists on matters of strategic in his art of war. And Sununza is providing advice to kings on how to stay on the throne, to conquer neighbors, and do it uh, efficiently. And in this world, you've got lots of neighbors, any of which can in invade at any time. Third party intervention is the norm in this world. And if you think about this book, it makes no references to maritime warfare at all. And it makes only tangential references to rivering warfare. And you go, well, why is that? Well, it's excellent reasons. He is writing about the world of continental empires in existence long before the maritime things get going.
Original English
And if you think about the great uh civilizations of Eurasia, often at their basis is their great continental empires. And a civilization answers the questions uh how should I live and how should I interact with others and is basically a world order unto itself. And civilizations have often fought with each other to make their rules universal.
Original English
All right, a whirlwind tour of China and what it looks like to be a continental empire. So, here's a precipitation map. Here's where it doesn't rain very much. Here's temperatures. That's where it's awfully cold. Here's topography. That's where it's flat. So, if you notice, you want to grow things, you need it, where it's warm enough, it rains enough, etc.
Original English
And here's a really good topographical map. And it gives you an understanding of why famine afflicted China for so many centuries of its history and why it's dependent on food imports today. It's just too much of their real estate's vertical to grow things on.
Original English
And then here's an ethnic map. You can see the consolidated pink area. That's where the Han, the preponderant ethnic group of China live. And then they're surrounded with all these heterogeneous areas around them. You go, hm, I wonder what's going on there.
Original English
And then here is a simplified ethnic map. It shows China proper. And the curious might ask, how did the Han wind up with all the prime real estate? Because what's arable is there. And the answer would be, well, they laid waste to the competing Zongar and Tibetan empires. I bet you've never heard of the Zongars. They were wiped out by theQing dynasty a long time ago. And in the continental world, you're faced with a binary choice or uh you either become Han or they will kill you. And so, you got to get out of dodge and flee south or do something else. And uh genocide is what happens to the losers in continental warfare. And apparently in our own day, the Weaguers are slated for genocide.
Original English
All right I'm going to give you a whirlwind tour sanitized version of Chinese history. The Hans start up north in the Yellow River Valley. And they spread and they spread and they do fun stuff like they build walls and they build more walls. Not a new idea. And then they shrink back and oh that bad bad time. But then they're back and then oh I don't know what happened there but anyway they're they're oh they consolidated and then there's this thing which looks like any other dynasty except a little bigger.
Original English
Uh not so the Yan dynasty are Mongols. They're not Han. This is an occupation dynasty and that map's inaccurate because here's the real story. The Mongols start out east of Lake Bal and then they spread in concentric rings more or less over the Eurasian plane in another time of climate change when their herds they just had to move south or everyone's going to freeze to death. The Chinese act like it's like any other dynasty. No, it's not. It's the Pax Mongolica. It's the Mongol world order when the Han were subjugated people.
Original English
But they come back with the Ming dynasty. But then the Ming succumb to the second largest empire in Chinese history, another conquest dynasty. These folks aren't Han, they're Manchu. And what's fascinating is today when China claims whatever its historic lands are, they either choose the Mongol Yan dynasty or the Manchu Ching dynasty when the Han were subjugated people. So try to unc uh untangle that logic. I'm not going to go there.
Original English
Um but the point was not to make that snide remark, although I did make that snide remark. uh but rather to show you that there's been lots and lots of expansion, lots and lots of shrinkage and lots and lots of bloodshed while this is taking place. China has been raising armies denominated in hundreds of thousands of people for thousands of years. The west does not do this at least not on a regular basis until the Napoleonic Wars. Uh it's a brutal world.
Original English
Now, Mckender didn't much care about China one way or the other because in his lifetime, uh, China was a country in freef fall. So, he's focusing on Russia, the Continental Empire. Mckendra is really concerned about Russia also because it's building railways that are going to give it all these internal lines of communication. And Mckinder think that's going to work really well for them in wartime, whereas Britain is stuck with exterior lines of communication. Exterior because you're going by sea in the uh on the periphery of things. So if you look at the Russians, they're like Mongols in reverse. They start in Moscow and then Moscow lays weight to the
Original English
other city princely city states and after that they're after furs making money that way. And the Russians keep going until they run into countries that fight back.
Original English
So to show you how this works, this is the Russian Empire at its height in 1914. So you can see Moscow at the historic capital and you can look at the colors there and see ooh the administrative units are fairly small around Moscow and they get really big as you go out into Siberia and these are civil administrative units and here's a clearer map except it's not really clear the the bigger these units they're provinces they're called gubeni in Russian or governorates but anyway these provinces uh are are standard administrative units but for the recent ly ingested and yet to be digested. They're putting into different units called obelist obelisty and you can't see them on map. They're on gray print. So this shows you more or less where they're located. Outlined in red is where these places are. These are the places in process of being digested.
Original English
So these are civil borders. These are the military borders that are superimposed over this. But only on the conquered areas do you have governor general ships. The general should give you a hint of what's really going on. And who's conquered? Finland, Poland, Ukraine, caucuses, all the conates of Turkystan, Siberia, and China has also done this of having provincial boundaries that come and go and move around and also superimposing military regions that also move around. Whereas, if you look at like the United States boundaries of states, they really haven't changed. Just you got one set of states and then that's that. But the what's going on here is these boundaries are a mechanism of ingesting, digesting, and if you can't fully digest and turn everybody into a regular province, at least you can neutralize these ethnic groups.
Original English
All right, so Mckinder is all about the advantages of internal lines of communication. Well, it comes with a corresponding disadvantage, which is multiple neighbors. And these are Russia's, no kidding, security threats, circa 1900. and from west to east there Britain, Germany, Austria, Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, China and Japan. This security world is really different from Britain's 360 degree. You can't get me moat. Lots of people have come to get Russians over the years. And Russians have fought constantly with Germans, the Austrahungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire. They've uh suffered catastrophic defeats to the Mongols, the Swedes, initially the Napoleon, the Germans in World War I and uh in the Cold War, but each time the central position allowed them to rise again. In this world, power is a function of land. Neighbors are dangerous. Even the itty bitty ones, if they're unstable, that instability can ooze over the border. Worse yet, if they're um strong, stable neighbors and they have an idea that you're going to become a menu item for them, that's even worse.
Original English
So, in a maritime power, the army is for expeditionary warfare. What's the expedition? You cross the ocean and go somewhere else. That's the expedition. Uh-uh. In this world, purpose number one of an army in this world is you protect the ruling regime. So if you think about the people's liberation army, it's uh goal number one or mission number one is to keep the communist party in power. That's not what the armies are in the maritime world. It's also secondarily is garrison the empire, prevent defections. And then thirdly, it's for border defense. And as you're fighting at the border, whatever you win, you keep, right? As you're expanding outwards, you hope. In this world, away games are a rare event. Most of the fighting is occurring right on the border.
Original English
So these are statistics about deaths, not just casualties, wounded people. This is dead people. Uh these are the sunk costs or no one's breathing life into these people are sunk casualties. So if you're looking at uh axis military deaths, you got 3.2 million dead German soldiers, one and a half million uh Japanese, 330,000 Italians. Now let's look at the Allied land powers. 8 and a half million dead Russian soldiers, nearly a million dead Poles, 1.3 million dead Chinese, and 340,000 dead Frenchmen. Okay, look at the maritime powers. By some statistics, Britain and the United States, Britain with 326,000 deaths, United States 295,000. By some statistics, they suffered fewer deaths in the than Italy or France. And France wasn't in the war that long.
Original English
And then when you add in all the civilian deaths, the numbers for the continental powers go catastrophic whereas they hardly budge for the maritime powers. So you've got uh over 7 million dead Germans, over 25 and a half dead Russians, almost 7 million dead Poles, 11 million dead Chinese, nearly a million dead Frenchmen. So the deaths for the the land powers are measured in uh millions. Whereas the maritime powers, it's hundreds of thousands. Still not a great number. And what's going on here? It's because you're not insulated by the oceans. So the fighting tends to be on home territory. If that's the case, you're ruining CI civilians at a really rapid clip. And no country in its right mind wants to fight on the main front if there are alternatives. But this is the continental powers unavoidable agony that when the neighbor invades, you got a choice on that day. either you're going to capitulate or you're going to fight and you're doing on the neighbors timing. That's Ukraine's problem.
Original English
Whereas, if you're a maritime power observing someone else being invaded, because in theory, it's pretty tough to invade you by sea, it's a major point of strategy as to whether you're going to intervene at all, and if you are, what is the timing? What instruments of national power are you going to use? And these are things that the United States needs to think about very carefully before it intervenes all over the place and overextends. But there are advantages if you win uh this uh kind of warfare. If you think about Russians uh enormous sacrifices, I've just listed that for Stalin. It means he dominates uh Eastern Europe or Russia does for the duration of the Cold War. But understand that that kind of territorial domination comes at a huge price. The value of the object had better be worth it before you try it.
Original English
In this world, there are certain rules for playing this game. Rule number one, no two front wars. I've shown you all the neighbors. If they gang up on you, it will be game over in a very bad way for you. Secondly, no great power neighbors. Why? Because today's friend can be tomorrow's foe. And that spells trouble. So, what do you do? You take on your neighbors sequentially, right? One at a time. You set them up to fail. You destabilize the rising. You ingest the failing. And you set up buffer zones in between. and you await the opportune moment to pounce and absorb. This is Vladimir Putin's game. Uh better yet, you get the neighbors to do the work for you. How? You sew their mutual resentments. You get them to fight each other. You deluge them with fake news so that Russia can play the role of the jackal state, which is once the neighbors have sufficiently weakened themselves and weaken each other, that Russia can move on in and steal a kill made by others.
Original English
This theory of security has certain problems. One, you're surrounding yourself by failing states. You can look at Russia and China and they're surrounded by some of the most dysfunctional places on the planet and you can go, gee whiz, are they unlucky or are they complicit? And moreover, there are no enduring alliances in this world because the neighbors figure it out. The hegemonic power is just a long-term problem. And there's also no counsel on when to quit. like how much territory do you take before you choke on it? And it turns out that there's been a tendency over the course of China's and Russia's long histories to overextend. And this helps account for the implosions of various empires and dynasties.
Original English
Now, before you dismiss this security paradigm, understand it was very effective. Uh certainly prior to the industrial revolution, no one cared in this in this world about collateral damage or killing a bunch of innocent people. This paradigm is all about killing people, breaking things to take territory. And you've seen it operating in real time in your own lives in Syria, Ukraine, and other places. Um, this is why those
Original English
ancient ruins, the ones that still remain are ruinous are ruins because this sort of warfare is ruinous.
Original English
All right. Here is u one of the preeeminent historians of the late Tsarist period, Vasilei Kuchescu, who's describing his country. He said the history of Russia is a history of a country in process of colonizing itself. Her area in of colonization grows in tandem with her national territory at times shrinking at times expanding age all movement. Therefore the periods in our history are the stages which our people have gone through in the occupation and development of the land acquired by them. There is absolutely no mention of the people who actually live on this land. It's like irrelevant uh from his point of view. But uh this is the way Russians have long looked at things that if you have small neighbors uh someone big may take them over and if um the even worse of the strong the weak become strong on their own right it's dangerous so you want to keep moving outwards and uh expanding and here a
Original English
generation earlier you have dsttovski uh the novelist the author of crime and pun punishment and other light reads here he is confiding in his diary in Europe we are hangers on and slaves slaves whereas we shall go to Asia's masters in Europe we are Asiatics where in Asia we too are Europeans our civilizing mission in Asia will bribe our spirit and drive us further so this idea of empire is very deeply rooted in Russian thinking and here is
Original English
couns period he was a finance minister and he's looking at the world in 1903 and go look the problem for Russia is to obtain as large a share as possible of the outlived oriental states. And he's thinking of the Ottoman Empire, but particularly of China. And he goes, look, Russia historically, geographically, has the undisputed right to the lion's share of the expected prey. And this elemental movement of Russia began a long time ago with Ivan the Terrible, aptly named. And the absorption by Russia of a considerable portion of the Chinese empire is only a question of time unless the Chinese get their act together. So here you have a statesman at the highest levels of the Russian government who is looking at Russian national security. It's all about territorial expansion. Well, Putin also looks at the world this way. Apparently
Original English
the problem for the likes of Putin is if a continental uh power botches strategy, its known world can vanish forever. And this is what happened to Imperial China, Imperial Russia, and many venerable civilizations. I love this photograph of a aristocrats whimsical palace that's long gone as a result of one of the most horrific genocides of the 20th century when the communists made good their promise to get rid of entire social classes and I mean get rid of like gone forever and with the bolevik revolution the ensuing Russian civil war followed by collectivization and then the great purges that finished the job. This is the continental world. It is a world without insurance policies.
Original English
Okay. Now for the maritime world, it is a different event. I love this picture. I have no idea how accurate it is, but I think it illustrates the point. So, Sikman is talking about all of these different rimlands and things. And you you look at the Atlantic Ocean, it's the center of the world economy in the 19th century, and it's all about the rimlands producing all of this wealth. And then you put it on ships and you send it back and forth so that the seas are a commons that you want to share. The whole point is you want to get goods going from port to port. And in our own highlyworked age, think about it, the seas of the original network that potentially connected everyone to everything.
Original English
All right. The genesis of this maritime world I uh maybe it goes back further, but as far back as I go, is the Athenian Empire that is hugging the shores of the Aian Ionian seas. And it's all about the trade that's acrewing there that's paying for their empire. The Romans likewise a ve another remland empire very different from the consolidated empires like Russia and China and think about the terminology Mediterranean meta middleterranean land so it's the sea in the middle of the lands whereas the terminology for China junga jung's uh central gua kingdom so it's the kingdom among the kingdoms one term emphasizes the centrality of the sea the other the centrality of the land different way of looking at things
Original English
and here's the Byzantine Empire another Rimland Empire and Then for a while, no one encro controls the rimlands anymore. And in part, what's going on is there's always been a lot of money to be made on East West trade. It used to go by camels among other things on the Silk Road. But whoever controlled the Westworth toll booth on that thing made loads of money because that's where it splits, right? And it's going to go on the southern or northern shores of the Mediterranean. A lot of fighting over that piece of territory. for a while the Muslim conquest settled it. they controlled it and then uh while that's uh those things are going on or some there is continental consolidation going on in Europe and both modern Germany and modern France trace their origins to the empire created by Charlemagne at the turn of the 8th to 9th centuries and then if you go to the end of the first millennium you look at Europe no one controls the rimlands but you got these large states that things have coalesed into and then the crusades in part are a fight uh of these larger powers in Europe to try to come back and get that toll booth back again, which they fail.
Original English
Instead, the Ottomans have it for a long time. And this is when the Europeans have to get clever because they want to trade with Asia. So, they we're going to go by ship and we'll go the long way around. And it's the Spanish and the Portuguese that try this except they bump into the new world. New to them, not so much to other people. And they also go, "Oo, lot of gold and silver here." And so they forget about the spices, silk, and the high-end dinner wear and they're going to do heavy metal instead.
Original English
However, it's the Dutch who are the real followers or of maritime empire uh which is very much defined by their trading bases. Their problem is their location in Europe is vulnerable. And it's not surprising that it is a member of the Dutch Republic, Hugo Grodius, who's the founding father of international law. Why? Because maritime empires want to be able to use the seas as commons, don't want people pirating their trade, and would like everyone to have rules so that everybody can trade in safety. So here's Hugo Grodius in his Mara Liberum, freedom of the seas, uh, writing that every nation is free to travel to every other nation and trade with it. And then in his law of war and peace, he cites a Roman jurist. So this is going way back. To all men belong the use of the sea. And then he quotes a Byzantine compilation of Roman law i.e. going way back in western thinking by natural law the following are common to everyone the air flowing water the sea and in consequence the seashore. Well this is very much a product of western civilization but not necessarily shared by others.
Original English
For instance, in 1996, China signed the UN ratified the UN convention of the law of the seas. UNLOS and uh except China says that freedom of navigation does not extend within 200 nautical miles of their coastline. Except under UNL, the number is 12 nautical miles. And in the East and South China Seas, these numbers make a difference. All right. The British are the real uh pioneers of maritime empire because they don't suffer the Dutch problem that Napoleon eventually takes care of the Dutch and integrates them into the French Empire.
Original English
But the Brit the Britain have this 360 degree moat. They're the only uh power in Europe that doesn't need to maintain a large standing army. Because if Britain could maintain a competent navy, no army's going to reach British shores because they're going to be drowned at sea. so that Britain could take a weakness, its dependence on trade and turn into a strength. So the tra the trade is going to finance the navy. It's going to protect both uh British homeland and some of the trade. And then Britain is going to be compounding wealth while its neighbors are busy a they neighbors have to fund large armies that um uh
Original English
can be economy killing and also can be coup generating that are going to be constantly fighting with each other and destroying wealth in the process. So while a navy could provide Britain with a prevent defeat strategy i.e. no one's going to get to Britain but it couldn't a navy's insufficient for a deliver victory strategy. It's not going to eliminate these continental problems. But if Britain can keep compounding wealth over time and then its neighbors are busy busy destroying wealth at a rapid clip, then the difference in wealth is going to get larger and in that sense things will get better for Britain.
Original English
And the Britain's uh after much trial and error came up with a way of integrating multiple instruments of national power to deal with this gentleman on the horse. Oh, by the way, if you want to see the horse's skeleton, you can go to the British Army Museum in in uh London, but that's another story. Anyway, gross story. But anyhow, uh here's a good old Napoleon. And the Britain try different things uh and eventually figured out. The problem is that navies are rarely decisive in wartime. You've got to have other instruments to integrate. Armies sometimes can be, but and so this is where the Britain come up with grand strategy. They coined the term because they need to to do it.
Original English
And here's their problem. On the eve of the Napoleonic Wars, says Europe has a bunch of consolidated states, east and west, and then there's this big tidbit zone in the middle. It's called the Holy Roman Empire, but it's really a tidbit zone. And Napoleon eats up the tidbits. And then you get to 1812, and this is the maximum extent of the French Empire. And this is when the guru of western warfare Carl Fonclausitz is coming up with his ideas about ground warfare. It's a really bad year for everybody. Uh not for Napoleon but everybody else. And uh this is when the Britons are thinking about how are you going to use maritime power to deal with this?
Original English
And here's what they come up with their strategy for elephant hunting. How do you deal with a continental power that's trying to upend the trading system on which you're making money?
Original English
So rule number one is you keep the home economy growing. That is number one because that's going to produce the money that's going to fund your military, fund your allies, allow you to do everything.
Original English
Secondly, don't let the elephant forage. You want to close down enemy trade through blockade uh commerce rating. So you're going to throw it back on its own dwindling resources and its increasingly embittered allies.
Original English
Rule number three, you want to rent an elephant. You want to find the continental power that is most directly threatened by your continental problem and you want to arm, fund, do whatever you can to keep them in the fight because that's the main front of whatever this war is.
Original English
Rule number four, Britain needs to find a theater that is peripheral to that main theater where access by sea is much more efficient than access by land and wants to and you want to fight there. Why? because it's going to do several things for you. The attrition between the peripheral theater and the main theater is going to add up. That's good. You're going to force the enemy to fight with divided attention. And ideally, if it if it's a a a really good theater, you're going to relieve uh some of the pressure on the main front as your enemy's going to have to divert resources.
Original English
Rule number five, a rule the Britain's broke at great cost in World War I. Do not take on the enemy main force directly. You certainly do not do that as an opening move. Think about it. A continental power's major strength is its army. That is not Britain's great strength. Britain's great strength is its navy, its ability to generate wealth, and therefore its ability to survive protracted war. Don't play the continental game. It won't be good for you.
Original English
And rule number six, if you're going to fight on the main front, only do it after you have really bled that elephant. So that has been gravely weakened and you only do it with lots of friends. Gang up on them.
Original English
As much as a continental power would might want to play this game, it cannot. Why? One is insufficient maritime access. When Mahan talked about egress uh to the sea, basically they're living they're on these narrow seas that are blockaded which means you cannot get your surface fleet out reliably in wartime. Seconds your merchant marine is going to nowhere and in addition these continental problems often have a surfet of neighbors and some of which might invade it. So it can't play this game.
Original English
But if Britain did and kept at it, it could set itself and its enemies on opposing trend lines. So that the war is going to increasingly encroach on enemy territory with the main theater and the more peripheral theaters which is going to undermine the enemy of economy, productive capacity, morale, and together this is going to uh undermine the ability for your enemy to continue fighting. In effect, it's a strategy of protracted war, but Britain's going to win by exhausting the other guy first.
Original English
And if you look, think about it, the focus isn't primarily on the military instrument, national power. It's actually much more about economics, coalitions, institutions, but they're prerequisites for it. You can't play it if you do not have sanctuary at home. Sorry about the double negative, but the point is if people are going to invade over your borders or level your industrial base, you have a hard time trying to do this. Moreover, it requires access access to peripheral theaters, access to your uh alliance partners, access to overseas markets, and it also requires institutional civil in order to follow a str consistent strategy over a long period of time. These are some of the characteristics that man would later emphasize.
Original English
All right. After the Napoleonic wars, uh there followed a century of unprecedented prosperity in Europe where there was no uh continentwide war. Again, during this period, there were some smaller wars and it meant that people were just making a lot of money playing the maritime game, which is just trade according to the rules. Compound wealth, don't level each other's buildings, you'll make money. But World War I came, never mind.
Original English
All right. Now I'm into the second distinguishing characteristic between maritime and continental powers. The first one was the ability or inability to defend at sea. Here's the second one. Continental powers face contiguous threats. So they have to focus on national security and often they want to insulate themselves from neighbors and they want exclusive zones to do this and they often want those exclusive zones to extend out into their the seas around them.
Original English
uh maritime powers think this is crazy land because they've got the relative security of the moat. No one's going to invade them. So, they're going to focus on national prosperity and trade is the the path to prosperity and to security because you this is the money that's going to pay for everything. So, they want maritime access to markets. So, they want to operate with the oceans being commons and they want it to go all the way up from port to port because you can't trade unless you go port to port.
Original English
So from these distinguishing characteristics, you get two mutually exclusive world orders out of this. One of them is we're going to divide the world up into very large spheres of influence, each a world unto itself. And the other one's no no. We're going to operate under universal rules. Uh and the seas are going to be open to everyone.
Original English
Okay. The industrial revolution upends empires of both types. And it's going to usher in uh a maritime rules-based global order. And it's a gamecher because it introduces compounded economic growth which is indeed revolutionary. And it arises over a combination not just of technological changes but also institutional changes. What are institutions? It's how we organize each other, right? we join into some large institution and then it's has some purpose and organizing people to do things more efficiently. So in the early phases it's starting with steam power iron industry textiles insurance and banking you can't do the trade without insurance and banking for your loans and things institutions and it's later phases it's about railways telegraphs steam trips mass markets trade uh general staff's armaments and what's going
Original English
on is the currency of power has changed power is a function of land back in the day why because land is where you get the commodities that you can sell And also uh this is where you're going to in rural areas is where you're going to get your peasant conscripts to to field your mass armies. Well, once wealth is a function of of commerce, industry, and trade, it isn't land anymore. And this upends the world. If you think about the world today, who's rich, who's poor, who's uh powerful, who's not, it's often the degree to which the country is industrialized. And it the industrial revolution opens up the beginnings of a global trading order where you're trying to um uh through trade negotiations to minimize transaction cost so everybody can make a lot of money and this is a process that is still ongoing in our own day. trade negotiations continue eternally but it upends the traditional balance of power that traditional societies are suddenly uh their paradigm security paradigms no longer work and uh China back in the 19th century was uh just opposed uh this incoming maritime order in our own day ISIS or whatever is left of it uh absolutely reviles the liberal economies and societies that are favoring this sort of uh trading border.
Original English
If you look at uh the big yellow area that uh McKinder cared about with railways because that railways are a product of the industrial revolution. He was thinking all in terms of an integrated transportation grid there. Another way of looking at this map is um the Roman, British and Mongol empires all share a piece of real estate. It would be the western terminus of the Silk Road. So in the continental world that silk road is a really big deal and that is prime real estate. However, another piece of the industrial revolution is the Suez Canal, which is going to wreck the camel trade on the going on the Silk Road because once the canal is built, even with steamships, but the the canal even more so, it is so much cheaper to send things by ship than to try to walk it over Eurasia with draft animals. and it just upends the economics of the continental world versus the maritime world.
Original English
And uh let's fast forward a 100 years to the 1967 uh war where you've got Israel fighting uh Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. And as part of Egypt's strategy doesn't want Israel using the Suez Canal. So they sink a bunch of block ships here. So that's the operational effect. Israel is not going to be using Suez Canal. But here is the strategic effect the ones that actually count in this life. If you look at before the war, um most what is it almost 90% of ships were 50,000 dead weight tons uh or less. And this is numbers of ships, right? And so they could all make it through the Suez Canal, which could take ships up to that size. But then the Suez Canal is is closed down from 1967 to 19 uh 72ish. And so that's a long time in world trade. Well, look at the adjustments that take place all of by the time you get uh later you get by 72 you got almost 30% of the number of ships not the capacity are these huge ships that never had existed before they're not going to make it through the Suez Canal and Suez Canal has since been widened but still the biggest ships can't make it through and so then if you look at the cost of sending oil from the Persian Gulf to Rotterdam in the Netherlands if you're going to send it in an itty bitty ship through the canal, it might be a little over $13 per ton to send it. Whereas, if you're sending in a big ship the long way around Africa, I believe it's a third that price. So, um, strategic effect of things unexpected. That overhead cost in shipping is is uh the size of ship gets over a lot of it. It's not about distance.
Original English
And here's the other guy who really re revolutionized maritime trade, Malcolm Mlan, who I bet you've never heard of, but now I'm going to fix that. He ran a um trucking company and he decided to put the chassis his trucks minus the chassis on ships, what we call containers, uh above decks, below decks. And when he did this, he reduced the cost, loading costs from nearly $6 a ton from to less than 20 cents. And then port time is again much reduced. So ships are out about making money. And then for those of you who are skeptical about international organizations, here's one you've never heard of. The International Organization for Standardization then standardized these container sizes to fit one if by truck, two if by railway cars and thousands if by sea. And this just plummets transport cost. But so before you dismiss international organizations, understand here's a little one you've never heard of that has made massive changes in your lives. Okay? And it leads to plummeting transport costs for the duration of the 20th century.
Original English
And our latest uh dictator for life, Xiinping, he's got this belt road thing that he thinks is going to be a good idea. Uh good luck with that one. And here are the statistics that back me up. Until 1960, the average tanker size was 20,000 dead weight tons. And if you look at our own day, the smallest ultra-large uh crude uh tankers are a quarter of a million dead weight tons. I believe the longest train can take maybe 600 containers uh on a good day. Uh whereas the largest container ships can take over 21,000 car with cargos valued over $1 billion. So it is so much cheaper to send things by sea and oh on the belt road thing it would be nice if the whole thing were continuous. It's not. It would also be nice if we're all the same gauge. It's not. So you're loading unloading. Loading unloading. What a mess.
Original English
Also, not only is it far cheaper to send things by sea, it is far more secure. If you're going to run the belt road thing, uh or it's it's the belt part of it, the land part. Um you've got to control the whole thing end to end. You're going through some of the most unstable places there are. Good luck with that one. Whereas in the maritime world, if it is uh unstable or they do block ships and close down the Suez Canal, well, forget it. Just go the long way around. It'll be fine. And also for China with its geographical setup as it is, uh the seas are going to be open to it only in peace time. In wartime, this has nothing to do with anyone doing anything to them. It's just facts. It is surrounded by loads of neighbors, shallow seas, lots of islands that are completely blocked. They're blocked in uh from the the high seas and for very predictable points. In wartime, those places become kill zones. merchant traffic cannot make it through those places unless you're friendly with everybody which China currently is and maybe it'll change. Um and uh even your surface ships won't make it out. So a peace is definitely the better thing.
Original English
Uh if you look at the end of the last cold war to sadly we're into the second one but look at how world trade just takes off. It was the miracle of your lifetimes. It lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. Uh the problem for the likes of Putin is that this wealth uh producing trade was not uh happening at his house but the houses of those vested in the trading order not in extortion. But with the second cold war we're into more inefficient things again.
Original English
All right. This brings me to the third distinguishing characteristics of continental and maritime powers. It has to do with the transportation revolution. So continental powers historically have leveraged interior lines of communication that allowed them to garrison their empire, deploy their armies against neighbors, and then to form a contiguous alliance system. And that worked well when uh power was a function of land. Well, that's not true anymore. The maritime powers uh are using these exterior lines of communications, the ones by sea, to give them access not just to the people right next to them, but to the entire globe, which opens the possibility for them to form a global alliance system. And from this reliance on interior versus uh exterior lines of communication, it gives you the possibility of what sort of alliance systems that you can have. All right. The industrial revolution put continental empires on notice. Not simply because land transport is so much uh more expensive than sea transport, but but because it opened the possibility of a positive sum world order. The land
Original English
empire MO of beating up all your neighbors, well, it's negative sum. What do I mean by that? Is you're fighting over territory. You're damaging the goods while you're fighting. So whatever someone lost in pristine territory now looks like this and uh it's negative sum. You're destroying wealth at a very rapid clip. Whereas the maritime world is no boys don't do it that way. You want to have trading partners. You want to have it win-win so everybody makes money so we have compounded growth. Uh and this maritime uh order is focusing on freedom of navigation, free trade, international laws and institutions that facilitate trade in order to minimize transaction costs so we can maximize the money.
而这一切的保险机制就是联盟体系。因此，大多数国家从地理上看并不是海洋国家，但如果大家联合起来，协调运用各种不同的国家力量工具，那么在面对这些想要颠覆贸易体系的无赖大陆国家时，他们就能全力出动，捍卫保护他们所有人的规则。
Original English
And the insurance system for all of this is alliance system. So most countries aren't maritime by geography, but if they all gang up together and they coordinate diverse instruments of national power, when they're dealing with these rogue continental states that want to upend the trading system, they can turn out in force to protect the rules that protect them all.
这就是“最伟大的一代”所建立的终极保险单。他们是一战的应征入伍者，是那些被要求跃出战壕、看看战况如何的人。幸存下来的人回到家乡，努力在大萧条时期抚养家庭。接着，到了他们步入战略领导层年龄的时候，嗯，他们又送自己的孩子去打二战。这一代人在欧洲和美国皆是如此，他们得出的结论是：解决大萧条和世界大战的办法是在全球范围内建立制度。他们建立的机构一直延续至今，并在工业化世界维系了和平，直到弗拉基米尔·普京决定 word kismagic。
Original English
And here's the ultimate insurance policy that was created by the greatest generation, which were the conscripts of World War I, the people who were told to go up and over trenches and to see how that would go. And the ones who survived came back and tried to raise their families during the Great Depression. And then by the time they were of the age to be strategic leaders, um they're off sending their own kids to fight World War II. And they concluded and this is uh this generation is in Europe and the United States both. They concluded that the solution to great depressions and world wars was institution building on a global scale. And they built institutions that have lasted to the present and held the peace until in the industrialized world until Vladimir Putin decided to word kismagic.
但他们建立了联合国、国际货币基金组织、北约、世界贸易组织的前身机构，以及呃欧洲联盟的前身机构。他们的理念是：我们必须与外交官和律师一起化解我们的分歧，因为一旦派出军队，呃，无论你认为自己会获得什么收益，都会逊色于你本可以通过外交官所达成的结果。彼此交战双方两败俱伤。
Original English
But they create the UN, the IMF, NATO, the predecessor institutions of the World Trade Organization and also of the uh the European Union. And their idea is we must hash out our diff differences with diplomats and lawyers because when you send the soldiers in, it is uh whatever gains you think you're going to get are going to be inferior to what you would have done with the diplomats. It's it's two ruinous fighting each other.
好了，如果你看冷战期间确实发生战火的地方——因为在工业化世界它是冷的，但在其他地方却非常激烈——很多战斗都发生在麦金德的边缘新月地带（intermarginal crescent），也就是海洋世界与大陆世界交汇的地方。因此，如果那里发生内战，呃，冷战的一方想在那边施加影响、偏向天平，另一方也想施加影响，事情就这样开始了。而那全都是毁灭财富的。这有助于解释为什么全球的增长率等指标会出现问题，因为你在摧毁财富。
Original English
All right. So if you look at where the fighting that did go on in the cold war cuz it was cold in the industrialized world but it was really hot elsewhere. A lot of it's on this Mckinder's intermarginal crescent which is where the maritime and continental worlds hit. So if there are civil wars going in there uh the one side of the cold war wants to put it finger on the scale and the other one wants to put its finger on the scale and there we go. And that is all wealth destroying. It helps explain why growth rates and things weren't as uh or globally had problems because you're destroying wealth.
### 海洋世界的消极目标与海军使命
好了。海洋世界是隐形的。这花了我15年在战争学院的教学时间才注意到这一显而易见的事实。有时候，显而易见的事只有在被说出来时才会变得显而易见。让我们看看这对你们是否适用。大陆世界是可见的，因为它是关于积极目标的，全都是为了促成事情的发生。比如你想夺取领土，你可以亲眼看到，要么拿下了，要么没拿下。但海洋世界是关于消极目标的，是为了防止事情、防止坏事的发生。而且嗯，你永远无法证明自己阻止了什么；也许一开始根本就没有人企图做什么。而且呃，它是看不见的，对吧？你阻止的事情从未发生过，毫不意外，你自然看不到它。
Original English
All right. The maritime world is invisible. And this took me 15 years teaching teaching at the war college to notice the obvious. Sometimes the obvious come becomes obvious by stating it. And let's see if it works for you. The continental world is visible because it's about positive objectives. It's all about making things happen. So you want to take territory. You can see it. Either you did or you didn't. But the maritime world is about negative objectives. It's preventing things from bad things from happening. And um you can never prove that you prevented anything. Maybe no one was trying anything to begin with. And uh it's invisible, right? The thing you prevented never happened. Surprise, surprise. You can't see it.
但在大陆世界里，全都关乎积极的行动目标。你在摧毁邻国以夺取他们的领土；但在战略层面上，你正在以巨大的速度摧毁财富。那是一个问题。而在海洋世界，你所防止的所有坏事都是看不见的——任何扰乱国际贸易秩序的行为都被遏制，而你的收入一部分正来自于此，当然国内也有大量的活动。
Original English
But in the continental world, it's all about positive operational objectives. You're destroying neighbors to take their territory. But at the strategic level, you are destroying wealth at a massive clip. That is a problem. Whereas the maritime world, it's invisible of all the bad things that you're preventing. Anyone messing with the international trading order, which you're making your money from in part, a lot of domestic activity as well.
嗯，海军的任务往往也关乎消极目标，虽然并非全部。它们是什么呢？呃，想想海军的使命，大多数都发生在和平时期。是的，战时情况也会发生，但对于海军而言，大部分是在和平时期。那么它们在做些什么呢？呃，第一使命是防止全球贸易体系遭到破坏。那至关重要。呃、呃，你们的繁荣就维系于此。呃，第二项真正重要的使命是防止对航行自由的限制，因为如果你无法把货物从一个港口运到另一个港口，那它就毫无用处。第三，是呃阻止呃扩张侵占，防止大国吞并小国。想想看，国际法的基石原则是主权。如果我们都要互相入侵，那还有什么国际法可言？
Original English
Um, and navies, their missions more often than not are also about negative objectives. Not all of them. What are they? Uh, and think about naval missions. Most of them happen in peace time. Yeah, wartimes happens too, but for navies, it's mostly in peace time. And what are they up to? Uh, mission number one is prevent the destruction of the global trading system. That would be important. Uh, uh, your prosperity is hinges on that one. Uh, the second really important mission is prevent limits on freedom of navigation because if you cannot get goods to port to port, it's pretty useless. And thirdly, it is to uh deter uh expansion into taking over big countries taking over little countries. Think about it. The bedrock principle of international law is sovereignty. If we're all going to be invading each other, what international law is there?
### 制裁、遏制与可承受成本
在这样一个海洋世界里，应对无赖行为的解药是联盟、外交、制裁、禁运、遏制以及多种国家力量工具；而海军则负责威慑、封锁和通商破坏（commerce rating）。你所做的，就是防止大陆型问题、防止这头大象去四处觅食。你只是在说：由于你举止不端，你在全球基于规则的秩序中被暂停活动（timeout）了。
Original English
And the antidotes to rogue behavior uh in this maritime world are alliances, diplomacy, sanctions, embargos, containment, numerous instruments of national power, and navies are about deterrence, blockade, and commerce rating. What you're doing is you're preventing the continental problem, the elephant from foraging. You're just saying you're getting a timeout from the glo the rules-based order because you can't behave yourself.
你可能会说，好吧，大陆型的问题依然存在啊。很有趣的是，你们都知道复合增长，在数代人的时间里，它非常强大，对吧？然而，人们在回到消极目标这一点时，并没有考虑到这一点。制裁就像经济上的化疗。你所做的，即使是在制裁存在漏洞的情况下，也是阻止每年（per animal）百分之一或二的增长，对吧？然后你会说：“那又怎样？”噢，不。几代人之后所产生的差距，就是北韩与南韩之间的差距。我明白，北韩依然存在，但他们的储蓄罐比原本能够拥有的要小得多。是的，你并没有消除这个问题；但如果这个无赖国家拥有核武器，而你说：“噢天哪，我们想除掉它。”真的吗？你想要打一场核战争来除掉北韩吗？对吧？这个世界不是为了彻底消除问题的行动胜利，而是以可承受的成本将其遏制。因此，如果北韩人想在国内过悲惨的生活，随他们去吧，去国内过悲惨的生活吧。呃，它正在以可承受的成本被遏制，情况就是这样。
Original English
And you can go, well, the continental problem's still there. Well, what's interesting, so you all know about compounded growth. It's powerful, right? Over generations. Well, people don't think about this back to negative objectives. Sanctions are like economic chemotherapy. What you're doing is presenting pre preventing one or two percent growth per animal even with leaky sanctions, right? Well, and you go, "So what?" Well, oh no. So very what is uh the difference over several generations is the difference between North and South Korea. I get it. North Korea is still there, but they got the much smaller piggy bank than they would have otherwise. And yeah, you're not getting rid of the problem, but if the rogue state has nuclear weapons and you go, "Oh gee, we want to get rid of it." Really? You want to have a nuclear war to get rid of North Korea? Isn't it? This world is not about the operational win of totally eliminating a problem. It's rather it's containing it at acceptable cost. So the North Koreans want to live miserable lives at home. Have fun with it. Go live miserable lives at home. And uh it's being contained at acceptable cost. That's what's going on.
### 地缘政治偏好总结
好的。冷战结束时的乐观主义者认为，所有人肯定都想加入海洋阵营。事实并非如此。大陆与海洋的分歧依然存在。我想你们喜欢这张展示“合适先生与不合群先生”（Mr. Fit and Misfit）——弗拉基米尔·普京和呃金正恩的幻灯片。他们企图颠覆这种海洋秩序。他们企图掏空国际机构、颠覆国际法、摧毁我们的联盟体系，从而让世界倒退回相互交战的势力范围，让我们过上他们的公民不得不承受的那种凄惨生活。
Original English
Okay. The optimist at the end of the cold war thought surely everyone wants to join the maritime party. Not so. The Continental Maritime difference of opinion continues. And I guess you like the slide here of Mr. Fit and Misfit, Vladimir Putin and uh Kim Jong-un. They want to upend this maritime order. They want to hollow out international institutions, upend international law, kill off our alliance system so we can return the world into waring spheres of influence and that we can live the sort of squaled lives their citizens have to live.
好的，总结一下：呃，大陆大国和海洋大国所关联的地缘政治截然不同。这些区分因素包括：主要在海上进行防御的能力或无力、关注于与世界隔绝还是接入世界，以及依赖内线交通线还是外线交通线。这些地理上的偶然因素预先注定了不同的偏好：
第一，大陆大国通常把领土视为自己可能想要夺取的东西；而海洋大国则是：“不、不、不，那是一个市场，我想在那里赚钱。而且呃，谁愿意去背负他们的国内问题呢？”
再者，大陆大国希望实现自给自足；而海洋大国则说：“嘿，我要通过贸易来获取那些。呃，我需要进入市场。他们通过这种方式会赚更多的钱。”
还有，大陆大国渴望建立专属排他区域；而海洋大国则表示：“不，我们想要公海与共有领域（commons），我们想要共享海洋、太空、网络呃以及空域，这才是办事的途径。”
然后，许多人注意到，除了少数岛国外，大多数国家并不是严格意义上的海洋国家，或者如果他们是完全内陆的国家——我的意思是，从地理上讲，大多数国家并不是严格意义上的海洋国家或大陆国家；但存在一个推论：联盟可以为这些国家赋予集体的海洋地位和综合实力包。
Original English
Okay. To summarize, uh there are very different geopolitics associated with continental and maritime powers. And these discriminating factors are the inability or ability to defend primarily at sea, a focus on insulation from versus access to the world and a reliance on interior versus exterior lines of communication. And these accidents of geography have predisposed different preferences. one, a continental power typically looks at territory as something you might want to take. Whereas a maritime powers, no, no, no, that's a market. I want to make money there. And uh who wants to own their domestic problems? And then there are uh the continental power wanting to be self-sufficient. Whereas the maritime say, hey, I'm going to trade for that. Uh I want access to markets. They're going to make a lot more money this way. and the continental desire for exclusive zones whereas the maritime saying no we want commons we want to share the seas space cyber uh and the air that this is the way to do stuff and then many people notice that most countries except for a few islands uh they aren't strictly maritime or or if they're completely landlocked I mean most countries are not strictly maritime or continental by geography but there's a correlary alliances can bestow a collective maritime position and power package to those countries
加入进来的……变得足够大，以至于尽管他们自身单靠自己并不属于海洋国家，但联合起来他们可以成为海洋力量。在当今时代，关于走向哪条道路的选择在经济财政上具有非常重大的影响，因为大陆主义者往往是独裁者——虽非总是如此，但通常是这样——而且他们全都在大量耗费资源（hemorrhaging ash）来控制他们自己的公民和邻国。而海洋大国则会认为，那简直不可理喻，为什么会有人那么做？海洋大国在让增长持续复合累积。如果想想中国，在邓小平领导下重新融入国际大家庭和这个海洋世界，中国从中获益超过了其他任何国家。但是这种……历史的遗留和历史的负担，这些大陆主义的观念——比如“我，我们需要拿下台湾”——确实沉重地压着心头。这个选择意义深远，并且只有一个双赢的解决方案。无论当前的国际秩序存在多少缺陷，它始终是一项仍在完善中的事业。唯一的双赢解决方案是派遣外交官和法学家，在国际论坛中协商解决这些问题；因为如果我们大家都去派兵，我们将会迎来一场伴随着核后续影响的第三次世界大战，到时且看人类能否挺过去。这极其具有决定性影响，尤其是在历史的这个关头。无论如何，感谢大家的聆听，非常感谢各位的到来。
Original English
that join in gets large enough that even though they they themselves are not maritime alone but together they can be and this choice about which way to go is very financially consequential in our own day uh because typically continentalists tend to be dictators not always but they typically and they're all about uh hemorrhaging ash to dominate their own citizens and their neighbors. Whereas the maritime powers go, that's nuts. Why would you ever do that? And they they're keeping the growth compounding. And if you think about China, it has benefited more than any other country from rejoining the family of nations and this maritime world under Deng Xiaoping. But this car the legacy of history and the b the burden of history uh these continentalist outlooks like I we need to take Taiwan really um uh weigh heavily and uh the choice is consequential and there is only one win-win solution. It's however flawed this international order is, it's a work in progress. And uh it the only win-win solution is to deploy the diplomats and lawyers to hash out these things in international forums because if we're all going to send uh soldiers, we're going to get a third world war with nuclear followon effects and uh we'll see whether humanity makes it. If uh this is it's tremendously consequential, particularly at this juncture in history. Anyway, thank you for your attention and uh I appreciate you all coming.