Global competition with China is reshaping how the United States thinks about trade, security, and military power. Brant Sadler argues maritime dominance sits at the center of that challenge and that U.S. policy must adapt to meet it.
Sadler serves as a senior research fellow for naval warfare and advanced technology at the Heritage Foundation. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and spent a career in the Navy, including work on China policy for the Chief of Naval Operations.
Sadler says control of the seas remains fundamental to power projection and economic stability. “A Navy can do that in peacetime as well as in wartime, because commerce overwhelmingly travels by sea,” he says. “If you are Amazon and you can’t get cargo moved across the sea, your economic empire will evaporate.”
China recognized that reality decades ago, according to Sadler, and built a long-term strategy around it. “They decided that they were going to have a dominant maritime industrial posture—ports, shipping, shipbuilding—and that they would then build a military to take on the United States,” he says. That effort expanded rapidly. “They had moved up to the top of the world’s largest shipbuilding… and they’ve stayed there ever since.”
Chinese investment in global infrastructure reinforces that strategy. “They are in all the right places to control and determine the terms of trade,” Sadler says, noting Beijing’s presence in key ports and shipping lanes. He warns that leverage over trade flows could become a tool of coercion. “We could be the ones sanctioned by ships not showing up on time [and] cargo being held up.”
Debate over U.S. maritime policy often centers on the Jones Act, though Sadler sees the issue differently. “It hasn’t been the solution. It’s not really the problem,” he says. “The problem is leadership and industry have not had the appropriate focus on incentive structures.” He argues that focusing only on domestic shipping limits growth. “The ships that it’s incentivizing are like barges… not the types of ships that are going to sustain a wartime American economy.”
Sadler says reform efforts are gaining traction. “Wildly successful,” he says of a recent policy initiative involving bipartisan lawmakers. “The momentum is starting to build.” He points to legislative proposals and trade actions aimed at countering Chinese shipbuilding practices and rebuilding U.S. capacity.
Broader strategic missteps contributed to China’s rise, according to him. “We really kind of deluded ourselves because we’re so economically powerful… we can dictate what the world does,” he says. Engagement with China failed to produce the expected political change. “Doing business in China is a net good for us… and the reality is, the Chinese perfected the Great Firewall [and] built up their military industrial base.”
That competition now defines global politics. “We are in a new Cold War, and it’s not of America’s choosing,” Sadler says. He emphasizes the importance of understanding adversaries on their own terms. “They’re going to make you feel happy… meanwhile, they’re plotting your demise with a smile on their face.”
Current conflicts, including tensions with Iran, reflect that broader struggle. Sadler connects regional crises back to competition with Beijing. “What’s happening in Iran needs to be considered connected to Beijing,” he says. Military pressure and economic leverage aim to change behavior without large-scale occupation. “We don’t have to physically be owning territory to have a stranglehold,” he says, pointing to control over maritime access.
Sadler says that U.S. strategy must shift away from trying to remake other societies. “We need to have partners in the world that don’t threaten us and who we can deal with,” he says. Long-term stability depends on realism rather than idealism. “We have to take our partners for what they are, rather than fixating on trying to change them into images of us.”
Sadler believes the United States still has time to respond, though it requires focus and coordination. Maritime power, industrial policy, and strategic clarity must align. “We’ve only started to come to terms with how vulnerable we are economically,” he says. “We need to know our own vulnerabilities as well as understand our foe.”
