Podcast Summary: The Age-Old Contest Between Land and Sea

Podcast: The Foreign Affairs Interview
Host: Daniel Kurtz-Phelan (A)
Guest: Sally Paine, Professor of Strategy and Policy, U.S. Naval War College (B)
Release Date: November 20, 2025

Overview

This episode explores the centuries-old tension between maritime and continental powers in global politics, as argued by Sally Paine. She frames current great power competition—especially the U.S.-China rivalry and the war in Ukraine—as the latest chapter in a perpetual struggle between states that derive power from commerce and the open seas, and those who seek security and dominance through land, territorial expansion, and control. Paine warns that the U.S., a historical maritime power, is showing troubling signs of drifting towards continental behaviors, with profound risks for international order and prosperity.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Reframing Great Power Competition

• Not a New Phenomenon:

  • Paine sees great power competition as a constant, not a recent development:

    "Great powers have always been out there, and competition has always been out there. So this idea that there's something new about great power competition, it's like yesterday's coffee, which isn't that great." – Paine [03:02]

• The Core Divide:

  • Maritime Powers: (e.g., U.S., U.K.) Prosper through trade, advocate for international laws and rules to lower transaction costs and underpin stability and wealth.

  • Continental Powers: (e.g., Russia, China) Prioritize territory, security through dominance of neighbors, and order imposed by strength.

    "There are fundamentally different security paradigms that go with these powers that are independent of whether you think someone's a good guy or a bad guy, but with a geographical address...you have different security problems." – Paine [03:39]

• Changing U.S. Strategies:

  • Paine observes the U.S. turning away from a strategy that emphasizes maritime power and collaborative rule-setting toward insular, self-defeating policies:

    "What we're doing now of tearing up our alliance system and also tearing up our scientific expertise is doing our enemies' work. It's profoundly frightening." – Paine [06:09]

Continental and Maritime Worldviews

• Continental Logic:

  • The security obsession with land and neighbor threats, leading to forceful, sometimes brutal assertion of power.

    "The security paradigm there is you have a really good army and anyone messes with you, you so brutalize them, they do not come back for more. So yeah, that's the security paradigm. And it's reality, not choice." – Paine [08:21]

• Maritime Logic:

  • The ocean as wealth-generator, connectivity, and a basis for mutual rules and open commerce.

    "It's got to do with all the money you can make on maritime trade because it's the oceans that connect you with the entire world. It is not land transport." – Paine [04:37]

  • The efficiency and stability of a rules-based system:

    "If you follow laws, it provides both the stable business environment that you need for predictability and also it makes your costs so much lower. And this has been this wealth producing era." – Paine [05:37]

• Mackinder vs. Mahan:

  • The episode contrasts Halford Mackinder's focus on Eurasian landpower and railways with Alfred Thayer Mahan's thesis on sea power as the source of influence.

    "Mackinder's...missing that it's these exterior lines of communication by oceans. That's where all the money is to be made." – Paine [09:41]

The Erosion of the Maritime, Rules-Based Order

• The Order’s Foundations:

  • Post-1945 international institutions embodied maritime logic, making trade and rules accessible to all.

    "This development of a rules based order, it used to be done through empires...So this rules based order is not going away. It's an evolution." – Paine [11:29]

• Current Disarray:

  • U.S. imposition of tariffs, distancing from allies, and broader economic nationalism are damaging the system from which it has most benefited.

    "The United States has decided our allies are not so good. We treating them like enemies by doing these ruinous tariffs on them." – Paine [10:51]

  • Europe is reorganizing without the U.S., potentially strengthening itself at America’s expense.

• China and Russia:

  • China, after a period of joining the maritime-led order and reaping gains, is turning toward land-centered, unilateral rule-making:

    "This was the great hope and they're not interested. I suspect they want to build a Chinese based order and China as the central kingdom and run it all through bilateral relations that run through Beijing." – Paine [13:42]

  • Russia and China are primarily motivated by regime security and have limited incentives to shift toward rules-based, cooperative paradigms.

Historical Echoes and Dangers

• Lessons from the Past:

  • U.S. tariffs and protectionism in the 1930s helped set the stage for Japanese expansion and World War II.

    "We passed the Holly Smoot tariff...the solution was tariff walls...The Japanese go, well, we need an empire. No choice. So they invade Manchuria." – Paine [26:37]

• Risks of Continental Strategies:

  • When the path to trade is blocked, even historically “maritime” powers may turn to territorial aggression.

• World War I Parallels:

  • Disjointed alliance objectives and operationally focused leaders prevented war termination and led to catastrophe.

    "There's just no way to get out of this thing. And it goes on and on...very operationally minded leaders...killing a whole generation of young men across Europe." – Paine [32:02]

The Consequences of the Order’s Decay

• Breakdown in Trust and Prosperity:

  • As the rules decay, contracts, trade, and international dispute mechanisms become unreliable.

    "As the rules break down, that means that when you sign contracts in certain parts of the world, who knows if they're going to be honored?...Instead of having one stop shopping...all of a sudden you're doing all these bilateral deals against each other. It's much more expensive." – Paine [29:22]

• Return of Force:

  • As institutional solutions unravel, use of force to solve disputes becomes more likely, increasing risks of war.

    "And then the real breakdown is when people really want something and they decide someone doesn't want to give it and they decide they're going to come in and take it. And that's when you get wars." – Paine [30:00]

  • Regional “mini-orders” may arise, but the global, open system is jeopardized.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On International Order:

  "The whole point of the maritime order is one country doesn't own it. If one country owned it, no one would join it...That's the international order." – Paine [00:06] & [30:44]

• On U.S. Policy Drift:

  "It's like the Americans are having a tantrum and doing a self timeout of the global order. It makes no sense. It's unprecedented in US History to make this little sense." – Paine [30:55]

• On Determinants of Security Strategy:

  "It's reality, not choice...If you're in a really rough security environment...It's really hard to transition from continental to maritime." – Paine [20:16]

• On Decision-Making and the Danger of Ignoring Adversaries:

  "A term I think is useful for thinking about this is half court tennis of my invention...We do some pronouncement out of Washington and we don't think about what any of the follow on effects are going to be and they're going to kill us." – Paine [06:55]

• On Political Will and Engagement:

  "I urge Americans to engage with each other, be honest and forthright. That's what I've tried to do...Let's together take our best ideas and forge a way forward." – Paine [34:04]

Timestamps for Key Segments

• [00:06] – What is maritime order? (Paine)
• [02:19] – Introducing Sally Paine and her framing of great power competition
• [03:02] – "Great powers have always been out there..." (Paine, historical perspective)
• [04:19] – U.S. historical swing from continental to maritime power
• [06:55] – "Half court tennis" and the dangers of ignoring others' reactions
• [08:21] – The continental security paradigm ("You brutalize them...")
• [10:44] – Rules-based international order, its rise and present threats
• [13:42] – China’s selective engagement with the maritime order
• [26:34] – How 1930s U.S. tariffs led to Japan's continental shift
• [30:44] – The aggregation, not ownership, of the maritime order
• [32:02] – World War I warnings for the present era

Tone and Language

Paine speaks candidly, often bluntly, with expressive analogies ("yesterday's coffee", "half court tennis", "self time-out of the global order"), and offers sharp critiques of policy myopia. The conversation is thoughtful, historically grounded, and colored by urgency about the stakes of current trends.

Takeaways for Listeners

• The current U.S.–China–Russia dynamic is not just about regimes or ideologies but about deep-seated, enduring geopolitical logics between land and sea powers.
• The U.S. risks undermining the order it helped create, to its own detriment, by moving away from maritime-based alliances and rule-setting.
• When the maritime, rules-based order crumbles, prosperity shrinks, force returns, and the risk of catastrophic conflict grows.
• Rather than succumbing to division and shortsighted policies, Americans (and their leaders) must reengage with the broader world—and with each other—to preserve the system that benefits all.

Recommended for those interested in:
Geopolitics, U.S. foreign policy, the rise and fall of international orders, historical analogies for modern conflict, the logic of land vs. sea powers, and the policy choices shaping our era.