The naval competition contributed to Britons looking upon Germany as the coming enemy. To counter Germany’s strategic designs, Britain undertook a pivot to Europe, concentrating its naval forces in home waters and preparing its army to intervene on the continent in case of a German attack on Belgium and France.
I've mentioned the Fisher solution to coping with the rise of Chinese naval power in the Indo-Pacific region:
What we will see, I think, barring events that interrupt that Chinese navy rise, is a more pronounced shift of American naval power to be within range of the western Pacific--from the Indian Ocean to the west coast of America.
Once the Cold War ended, America began to shift forces away from Europe, with "the pivot" formalizing the shift and looking to divide our fleet 60-40 weighted to the Pacific up from 50-50 in the Cold War. Our once-massive Mediterranean fleet pretty much evaporated. For a time (until recently) we didn't even have an Atlantic fleet.
And once China's fleet becomes even more powerful, the shift will become more pronounced, in the manner that Britain concentrated their global fleet in home waters as the German fleet rose in power in Europe[.]
And have I mentioned lately my disappointment that INDOPACOM was settled on rather than my hope for PAINCOM?
But I digress.
But focusing on the Kaiser's error of driving Britain to view Germany as Britain's primary foe misses another error that I've long claimed is China's real Kaiser error--having an essentially land power with great needs for armies to protect a long border decide to build a luxury navy that drains resources from the land without achieving superiority at sea.
China's navy probably won't get the resources to be big enough and bad enough to defeat America and our allies in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
Hell, China's reduction in their land power to build up naval power gives America options on land that we didn't have before to resist Chinese domination of east Asia's coastal regions.
I'm similarly amazed that Russia claims to want a blue water fleet.
