Would China Really Built a Naval Base in the Atlantic Ocean? A few months back General Stephen Townsend, commander of the U.S. Africa Command,
told the Associated Press that
China covets a major naval base in the Atlantic Ocean, presumably along the African west coast. (Portugal’s Azore Islands also
come up from time to time as a potential Atlantic hub for
Chinese vessels.) Chinese leaders are “looking for a place where they can rearm and repair warships,” opined Townsend. “That becomes militarily useful in conflict.” Now that the People’s Liberation Army has ensconced itself at Djibouti, in the western Indian Ocean, Xi Jinping & Co. are “casting their gaze to the Atlantic coast and wanting to get such a base there.”
Why?
Seldom does Xi confide in me, but two candidate explanations stand out. One,
Chinese sea power is going global. Chinese Communist magnates are true believers in the logic of maritime strategy and sea power as explicated, most notably, by
Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan over a century ago. For America’s sea-power evangelist, commercial access to important trading regions is at once the purpose and the engine of maritime strategy.
