By Land or by Sea

Continental Power, Maritime Power, and the Fight for a New World Order

by S. C. M. Paine

This is an essay on Foreign Affairs. Link. If you want to view a full copy, I do have a limitied number of shareable links. So, contact me.

About the author

S. C. M. PAINE is William S. Sims University Professor of History and Grand Strategy Emerita at the U.S. Naval War College.

My Summary

This article looks at today’s international conflicts through a very old lens: a clash between two ways of building power. One comes from controlling land. The other comes from growing wealth through trade.

Continental powers — think Russia or China — see land as the core unit of strength. They fight to take territory, build walls around themselves, and try to force neighbors into submission. This strategy often destroys wealth rather than creating it, because the energy goes into conquest and control rather than innovation and exchange.

Maritime powers — think the United States or Great Britain — see the oceans as highways rather than barriers. Their advantage is not the land they hold, but the networks they build. They treat money, trade, and industry as the engine of power. The playbook here is simple: grow wealth, keep trade routes open, form alliances, and use collective strength to box in land-hungry rivals without fighting every battle head-on.

History shows this pattern clearly. Athens versus Sparta. Britain versus Napoleon. And in the modern era, the U.S. leading after World War II. By securing oceans and creating institutions for trade, the U.S. and its allies built a system that lowered costs, raised living standards, and even allowed continental states like China to become rich by plugging into it.

Now we’re watching another round of this cycle. China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are acting from the continental playbook — reaching too far, burning wealth, and risking isolation. The article calls this a “second cold war.” The strategy for maritime states is not to meet them head-on in costly wars, but to keep playing their own game: use the wealth engine. That means sanctions to deny aggressors the benefits of open trade, tighter alliances, and steady support for countries like Ukraine that resist territorial grabs.

The warning is clear: if the U.S. drifts into a continental mindset — closing itself off, raising trade walls, alienating allies — it will break its own advantage. That could set the stage for decline, or even a world war in an age of nuclear weapons. The smarter path is to keep the maritime cycle turning: help democracies and partners prosper, while letting the continental powers weaken themselves.