China's Homefield Advantage.

• Date: 01 March 2020
• Author: Harper, Jon

While the naval modernization race between the United States and China has global implications, the biggest potential flashpoint is the Asia-Pacific region.

Michael Swaine, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a Chinese security studies specialist, anticipates a long-term competition.

"The greatest strategic challenge that Beijing's naval modernization will pose for the U.S. and its allies over at least the next decade will occur in the Indo-Pacific, and especially in the Western Pacific within the first and second island chains," he wrote in a paper last year titled...