CIMSEC – The international order has come under immense strain in recent years. Major wars have erupted between the great powers in Ukraine and the Middle East. The U.S.’s top geopolitical rivals have increasingly coalesced, with China and Russia both rapidly modernizing and expanding their arsenals of strategic weapons. Meanwhile, a Chinese invasion of Taiwan looms, possibly backed by Moscow. The current challenges make China’s years-old claims to the entirety of the South China Sea seem quaint and insignificant in comparison.

Hunter Stires, who served as the Maritime Strategist to the Secretary of the Navy during the tenure of Secretary Carlos Del Toro, views each of these challenges as interconnected parts of a global struggle for the Freedom of the Sea and the international order, with the central front in the South China Sea. Stires believes the future of global order rests on the extent to which China succeeds in claiming ownership to one of the world’s most important waterways and disrupting the centuries-old concept of the freedom of the seas upon which the modern global order was founded. Stires helped found the U.S. Navy’s Maritime Counterinsurgency (COIN) Project to better conceptualize and combat China’s battle to overturn the international order at sea. This interview captures Stires’ thoughts on the history of the Maritime COIN project and its ongoing relevance for intensifying strategic competition between the US and China.