The legacy of Admiral von Tirpitz: a geopolitical understanding of China’s naval buildup through sea-denial strategies

Italian Political Science Review. 2021.

Pizzolo P.

As manifest challenger of the United States (US)-led international order, the People’s Republic of China
(PRC) has inaugurated a revisionist strategy that encompasses a multifaceted spectrum of initiatives,
including an ambitious naval military build-up. History has shown that revisionist and challenging
powers tend to defy the established order through arm races. US Admiral Mahan and German
Admiral Tirpitz theorized two different approaches to naval strategy, the former focusing on global
maritime hegemony and the latter on regional counterbalance based on risk theory. This article attempts
at explaining the puzzle of China’s naval buildup through the lenses of geopolitics, adding a geopolitical
dimension to the current debate. It suggests that the PRC’s naval military development does not follow a
Mahanian global maritime strategy aimed at challenging the US primacy worldwide, but rather a
Tirpitzian regional approach focused on counterbalancing the US presence within the scope of China’s
sea power projection, that is, the Pacific region. To substantiate this hypothesis, the study compares
diachronically contemporary Chinese naval arm race with Wilhelmine Germany’s High Seas Fleet. The
findings underscore that, in maritime terms, China’s revisionism vis-à-vis the US somewhat resembles
that of Imperial Germany vis-à-vis Imperial Britain, both aiming at regional counterbalance and antiaccess
and area-denial (A2/AD) tactics rather than global maritime counterhegemony. Although
Chinese sea power is still far from posing a serious threat to that of the US and its allies, an unrestrained
continuation of Beijing’s naval buildup could encourage arms races and direct confrontation due to
regional security dilemmas.

Keywords: Germany, China, security studies, International relations, Naval studies