Asia's Cauldron , Kaplan - B

                                             This book is subtitled 'The South China Sea And The End Of A Stable Pacific'.   Kaplan is considered one of America's greatest strategic thinkers, has been an Atlantic Magazine foreign correspondent for decades, a Pentagon advisor and most importantly, a great writer on the topic of the role of the physical world in defining the political one.  The South China Sea is strategically important because of energy, specifically, oil.  Almost all of the oil consumed by Japan, China and S. Korea is shipped through these waters. A total of 60,000 ships and 13 billion barrels of oil pass through the Sea annually. Also, as many as 130 billion barrels may lie beneath its waves.  The Chinese have aggressively taken the position that their maritime rights extend far into the Sea. The British Empire's dominance of the sea lanes passed to the US Navy after WW2 and we have been in complete control since then.  With China's naval ascendancy, or at least equality, on the horizon, the inherent natural rivalries between China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Malaysia will come into play. The concern is that without Pax Americana all hell may break loose and the Chinese won't be the benign maintainer of peace and order that we have generally been.  The Chinese view their role today as reversing the depredations of the west in the 19th and 20th centuries and restoring the Middle Kingdom.  A state by state review of China's maritime neighbors shows that none of them can really stop the Chinese if they wish to take all of the disputed islands.  What the US will or won't do seems to be the million dollar question.  The author concedes that regardless of our "pivot", we will have to share hegemony in the western Pacific with China.  One would hope that that could be done on the basis of both sides mutually guaranteeing free navigation rights and open sea lanes.