While the Silk Road strategy could ensure China’s energy security within a generation and effectively circumvent U. S. command of the global maritime commons, it does not shield China’s eastern seaboard from the threat of a U. S. naval attack. As a land power, the Middle Kingdom does not have to worry about the unlikely possibility of a conventional American assault on the mainland via amphibious landing by sea, parachuting troops by air, or an expeditionary force marching through a land invasion route. What it is vulnerable to is U. S. control of the seas outside China’s 12-nautical mile maritime boundaries. From such an over-the-horizon maritime vantage point, the U. S. Navy has the capability to cripple Chinese infrastructure along the eastern seaboard by long range shelling, missiles, and unmanned aerial bombing.
In the absence of a resolution of the dispute, however, Beijing is likely to occupy the islands following a potential reunification of Taiwan, the U. S.-Japan mutual defense treaty notwithstanding. China would be emboldened to take such drastic action by not being vulnerable to an energy embargo led by the United States. Given China’s expected naval dominance in the East China Sea by 2035, a Japanese military effort to recover the seized islands is unlikely.
