DISTORTED IMAGES OF EACH OTHER

OKB: The western edge and the eastern edge of the Eurasian landmass historically viewed each other across a threatening cultural and geographical expanse, and would therefore have conjured in each of their minds a messy mix of diverse phenomena about the other. “The Other” would have been perceived by each through a highly distorting filter of in-between cultures.

WGW: It is very significant that both these edges — Western Europe and China — saw each other from afar, across a continental mass. “The Other”, for both of them, was everything on the other side. Being fringes, they had not been in direct contact with each other. Now, in the global age, both sides still exhibit residual thinking from earlier times. We still talk about the East and the West, and the West still entertains notions of “The West versus the Rest”.

But all this should also remind us about how important the core was to them. The core both filtered and coloured at the same time everything that was on the other side. Today, all that has changed; the world is now effectively round. The Americas have made all the difference. The Americas include Europe, but also East Asia. We have the North Atlantic world, and we have the APEC world, for example. The continental fringes have met each other, and perspectives have changed. The edges now hold the global initiative.

What I wanted to point out when I wrote my article about the Two-Ocean Mediterranean was that the Mediterranean expanded into the Atlantic, and made that the second Mediterranean. Europe and America controlled this Mediterranean, and this Mediterranean came to control the world, spreading into the Indian Ocean and then the Pacific Ocean. This expansion now lines all these up, until the other end of the continent is reached. A maritime linkage is made, bordering China, Russia … and maybe India. India is not quite sure whether it is part of the maritime world or part of the continental world.

China is quite clearly continental in nature. To survive a maritime global world, it has to have a navy.