Beijing's Caribbean Logic

Beijing's Caribbean Logic

Mar 25, 2014 03:00 am | Robert D. Kaplan

Robert D. Kaplan

Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from Robert Kaplan’s latest book Asia's Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific (copyright 2014, Random House). Mr. Kaplan will be appearing at the Center for a New American Security to discuss his work on March 25, 2014.
American policymakers bristle at China’s gunboat aggression against Japan in the East China Sea and against countries like Vietnam and the Philippines in the South China Sea. But to understand what China really wants, they need to understand their own history better: particularly America’s diplomatic and military history in the Caribbean. The Caribbean may now suggest a geopolitically obscure place useful only for winter vacations, but for generations of Washington foreign policy professionals in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, it was the region of choice to advance careers – the equivalent of the Middle East today.
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