'Great Power Competition and Overseas Bases: Chinese, Russian, and American Force Posture in the Twenty-First Century' - by CWP alum Isaac Kardon

What challenges and risks do Chinese and Russian bases pose to the United States’ military strategy? How do the military postures of great powers interact and with what consequences for regional and global security? This book examines the emerging dynamics of geostrategic competition for overseas military bases and base access. The comparative framework adopted in this volume examines how the geopolitical interests of the United States, China, and Russia and their respective underlying force posture interact in different regions including the Indo-Pacific, Europe, sub-Sahara Africa, the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, and the Arctic Circle.

By exploring the security, political economic, and domestic political dynamics of specific regions, the contributors to this volume reveal varied motivations for overseas military bases and base access among great powers. With analysis on the particular dynamics of overseas bases in major regional theaters, the book offers a valuable window into the nature and scope of the broader “great power competition” underway in the twenty-first century.

by Andrew Yeo and Isaac B. Kardon - Published on August 27, 2024 - 

Isaac B. Kardon, Ph.D., (孔适海博士) is a senior fellow for China studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is concurrently adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins SAIS, and was formerly assistant professor at the U.S. Naval War College (NWC), where he served as a research faculty member in the China Maritime Studies Institute.

Isaac’s research centers on the People’s Republic of China’s maritime power, with specialization in maritime disputes and the international law of the sea, Chinese global port development, China-Pakistan relations, and the People’s Liberation Army’s overseas basing. His writing appears in International Security, Security Studies, Foreign Affairs, the New York Times, the Naval War College Review, as well as other scholarly and policy publications. Isaac’s book, China’s Law of the Sea: The New Rules of Maritime Order (Yale, 2023) analyzes whether and how China is “making the rules” of regional and global order.

At Carnegie, Isaac is building on his foundation of research on China in the maritime domain to explore China’s role in the wider global commons. High seas, deep seabed, polar regions, and orbital space are among the “strategic frontier issues” prioritized by China’s leadership—and thus key sites to observe China’s interests in and influence on vital global rules, norms, and standards. China’s interest in leading the nascent regime for deep sea mining is a particular area of research focus. He is also continuing “past the pier” on his existing stream of research on PRC ports to further study China’s development of transport and communications infrastructure networks with dual civilian and military functions.

Isaac earned a Ph.D. in government from Cornell University, an M.Phil in modern Chinese studies from Oxford University, and a B.A. in history from Dartmouth College. He was a China & the World post-doctoral fellow at Princeton University, and has held visiting appointments at NYU School of Law, Academia Sinica, and the PRC National Institute for South China Sea Studies. He studied Chinese (Mandarin) at Peking University, Tsinghua University, Hainan University, and National Taiwan Normal University.

Photo Credit: CWP