Sea control
Sea domination is a power-political term and stands for the control of sea lines of communication. Maritime domination can be exercised globally, across the ocean and / or in marginal seas and inland seas . With existing maritime domination, own maritime traffic is protected and opposing maritime traffic is prevented. The maintenance of naval supremacy depends on the assertiveness of the strongest naval power . An essential criterion is the duration of sea control in a sea area that cannot be permanently occupied like a land mass.
The strategic importance of straits
Straits are of strategic importance. Access to seas lying on both sides of the strait can be prevented relatively easily during war. In this case, the straits contribute to securing the dominance of the seas in the seas bordering on the other side of the straits.
Examples of strategic straits:
- For the North Sea : the English Channel (see Cerberus company )
- For the Baltic Sea, the Belte and the Oresund together with the Kiel Canal
- For the Black Sea : the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus - (see Battle of Gallipoli and Treaty of Montreux )
- For the Mediterranean : the Strait of Gibraltar in conjunction with the Suez Canal and the Strait of Otranto (see Otranto lock )
- For the Persian Gulf : the Strait of Hormuz
- For the Atlantic and Pacific : the Panama Canal
- For the South China Sea : Karimata Strait and Sunda Strait (see Battle of Sunda Strait )
The importance of naval domination in history
In antiquity, the maritime domination exercised by the sea powers of the time was one of the prerequisites for the expansion of states or alliances. So Mycenae takes on the role of Crete. Then Phoenicians , Punians , classical Hellenes , Etruscans and Romans became rulers over parts of or the entire Mediterranean.
While in the Middle Ages states like Venice or pirates ruled certain routes or coastal seas, with the beginning of global shipping in the early modern period, the Portuguese (15th and 16th centuries), Spaniards (16th and early 17th centuries), Dutch ( 17th century), French (18th century), English (18th and undisputed 19th to early 20th centuries), and the United States of America (20th and early 21st centuries) in primacy on the seas.
In the 20th century, new naval powers attempted to usurp maritime domination in parts of the world's oceans: Germany in both World Wars, Italy and Japan in World War II, and the Soviet Union in the Cold War . Ultimately, however, each of these attempts failed.
literature
- Mahan, Alfred Thayer: The Influence of Sea Power on History , Herford 1967
- Potter, Elmar B./Chester W. Nimitz: Seemacht , Munich 1974
- Importance of sea power in politics and history
- the explanation of the terms sea power and sea power at universal_lexikon.deacademic.com (sea power) , universal_lexikon.deacademic.com (sea power) , wortbedeutung.info (sea power) .
