With the sinking of the Sergei Kotov in early March, a whopping one-third of Russia’s Black Sea fleet has been disabled. The maritime theater of the war in Ukraine remains the most significant since the Falklands. But it is also part of a larger story about naval power—which has come back as a central feature of struggles from the Black Sea to the Red Sea, South China Sea, and Taiwan Strait.
BY ALESSIO PATALANO
WORLD
This is not just about the strategic value of capital ships to project a nation’s international standing and ambitions in an anarchical international system. Naval power matters today more than ever before because of how modern societies’ relationship with the sea has evolved. Today we live in a maritime century, one in which the very foundations of the prosperity that underwrites open economies rest upon maritime physical and digital connectivity.
Sea lanes feed us, keep us warm, and deliver the furniture of daily life. Some 97% of the internet, and a major portion of international energy use, relies on an undersea spaghetti bowl of cables and pipelines that closely mirror commercial shipping routes. This multilayered network of physical and digital connectivity is safe and reliable only until it is not.
In recent years, places as diverse as Somalia, Tonga, the U.K., and Taiwan have experienced economic losses because of disruptions to critical undersea infrastructure. By the beginning of this year, the relatively sophisticated capabilities of Yemen’s Houthis exposed just how vulnerable the steady supply of basic commodities—from tea bags to the average household in Britain to core components of electric cars across Europe—can be.
This unprecedented reliance on maritime connectivity has made activities at sea a primary target of authoritarian regimes and nonstate groups. Actions such as the sabotage of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, the gas pipeline linking Estonia, Finland, and Sweden, and the disruption to international shipping caused by Houthi missiles and drones share one thing.
These actions highlight a realization that maritime connectivity is a pressure point with significant political value, and that pressure can be applied by state or nonstate actors. Countries like China, in particular, are pursuing the naval means to seize the opportunities emerging from such a realization. Whether in the field of technologies for deep-seabed exploration and exploitation, shipping capacity, or, above all, in the context of sheer naval might, China is setting new records
