Japan's Maritime Highway and East Asia's Island Chain
The great maritime highway essential to Japan's resource security, especially oil imports from the Gulf, must pass through an extended island chain which runs down the East Asian littoral. This island chain separates the marginal seas from the vast reaches of the Pacific Ocean.
The chain begins in the Aleutian islands which face the Arctic Ocean, skirts the Kamchatka peninsula, and runs through the Japanese archipelago. The Korean peninsula is separated from Japan only by the narrow Tsushima strait. The island chain then goes through the island of Taiwan, and through the Philippine archipelago to Indonesia. Through the far-flung Indonesian archipelago run three vital straits - Malacca, Sunda and Lombok - which connect the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
The chain then moves to the large island of New Guinea, divided between the Indonesian territory of Irian Jaya to the west and Papua New Guinea, a former Australian colony, to the east. Passing through the island continent of Australia and the scattered archipelagoes to its northeast, the first island chain ends at the South Island of New Zealand, which gazes upon the icy waters that surround the Antarctic continent. Far to the east, beyond the first island chain, lies the mid Pacific second island chain, running from Midway through Hawaii to the Marianas and the Marshalls.
For continental powers with blue-Water ambition, the first island chain represents a two-edged sword. The chain can provide a defensive screen behind which rising land powers can develop their maritime capability. But the island chain also contains bases from which the maritime powers can operate, in order to utilize the leverage of sea power and so to contain the ambitions of the land powers..
China's growing maritime capabilities are a measure of its ambition and sense of opportunity. These reflect the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the new strategic latitude that China now enjoys. China is no longer pinned down by Soviet forces threatening its capital, as well as by a Vietnam allied with Moscow.
The PLA navy, seeking to develop its maritime power behind the defensive barrier of the first island chain, has been practising its surge capacity through the chain, concentrating on interdiction maneuvers.
