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Home » Transcript of Dr. Sarah Paine: Geopolitics, Cold War Lessons and the Way Forward

Transcript of Dr. Sarah Paine: Geopolitics, Cold War Lessons and the Way Forward

Read the full transcript of Dr. Sarah Paine’s lecture on “Geopolitics, Cold War Lessons and the Way Forward” at NWC 2025 Issues In National Security Lecture Series, on January 28, 2025.

TRANSCRIPT:

Introduction

DR. SARAH PAINE: Thank you. I got all my goodies on the technology. It’s such a pleasure to be here with you all. Thank you for coming. And here’s my game plan.

We have the current problem now, which is a second Cold War. By my reckoning, it began between 2012 and 2014. Why those dates? 2012 is when Vladimir Putin comes to power. Actually, he disposes of term limits that year. And then you get Xi Jinping coming into power. Then 2014 is when Putin moves into Ukraine. Ever since, Putin and Xi have been emphasizing that they’re not particularly interested in this rules-based order and have other plans for us.

I’ve got a three-part lecture, but really it’s two main parts. The first part is the underlying geopolitics and the second part is how the last Cold War was won, lost and played. Then at the end, based on all this, what is the way forward – and that will be short. If I go at a real rate, I’ll get this done in an hour and five. So here we go.

Continental vs. Maritime Empires

First half, it turns out that Continental and Maritime Empires ran business in fundamentally different ways – how they wanted to organize themselves and how they wanted to organize others. But then the Industrial Revolution came and put both of them out of business and introduced a maritime incoming rules-based order.

For those of you who like animals, and we at the Naval War College, generally speaking, most of us like animals – the maritime powers are the whales, the elephants are the continental powers.

The first distinguishing characteristic of maritime versus continental powers is whether you can or cannot defend primarily at sea. Look at Ukraine. They cannot defend primarily at sea. If you can defend at sea, having a big Navy would be a thing for you. If you can only defend by land, then you need to go to army. These differences have profound not only military, but also economic and political ramifications.

America’s Continental Origins

The United States started out as a typical continental power. Here’s President Monroe, the Monroe Doctrine, typical continental power, spheres of influence telling the Europeans stay out of the Americas, it’s ours. And here’s how the United States expanded again like a typical continental power. It did a series of regional wars with Mexico, the longest counterinsurgency in U.S. history fought against the Native Americans.

But the twist that Americans liked was checkbook diplomacy, paying money to people. That’s what the Louisiana Purchase and buying Alaska were all about. Americans had a name for this and it was Manifest Destiny. It was the obvious manifest fate of America, the United States. We appropriated the name for the entire continent to own at least North America.

This painting, which today goes by the politically correct name of “Westward Ho,” at the time of painting was called “The Course of Empire Takes Its Way.” It hangs in the Capitol. Apparently, there’s some part of the House of Representatives. So Americans in the nineteenth century considered themselves an empire, proud of it.

The Maritime Shift

But the view changes in the late nineteenth century. Alfred Thayer Mahan, who is by far the most famous person ever associated with this college of enduring international influence, looked at the world and thought, actually, it’s not so much continental consolidation that is the origin of power and position in this world, but the wealth accruing from maritime trade.

He said there are six prerequisites for playing this game of maritime security paradigm: 1. You need a moat – insulation from attack

2. You need a dense internal transportation grid to get the goods out in peacetime 3. You need reliable egress by sea to get the Navy out in wartime 4. You need dense coastal population – these are the people running this commerce-driven economy

5. You need the commerce-driven economy that goes with them 6. You need stable government institutions because this means you have stable laws that promote commerce and also promote the Navy

China and Russia’s Geopolitical Limitations

If you look at China and Russia today, neither one of them has the full list of six. Start with moat – they most certainly do not have a moat, either one of them. In fact, they each have more neighbors than any other two countries on the planet. And a lot of those places don’t much like them for excellent reasons.

Moreover, China has an improving internal transportation grid, but Russia’s remains lamentable. Neither one has reliable access by sea because they’re all surrounded by narrow island-cluttered coastal seas that are surrounded by all kinds of neighbors that shut down in wartime. Russia has got the big Arctic thing – well, great if you want to cavort with polar bears, but not for commerce.

In addition, China has a dense coastal population. Russia doesn’t. Russia has never had a commerce-driven economy. Under Deng Xiaoping, China was more so. But in recent years, Xi Jinping has been privileging the crony sector over the private sector.

Neither China nor Russia has stable government institutions. And what would be the defining characteristic of that? Well, regular transparent transfers of executive power – and dictator for life does not remotely qualify. So China and Russia have some maritime ambitions, but they don’t have the geopolitical position actually to play the game. I’m not even clear they understand it.

China’s Continental Reality

If you look at China, it shows you a lot of vertical real estate there. The flat stuff up north, a lot of it, not all of it, is either awfully cold or awfully dry to grow much of anything.