Paine wrote:By contrast, states with an oceanic moat have relative security from invasion. They can thus focus on compounding wealth rather than on fighting neighbors. These maritime states see money, not territory, as the source of power. They advance domestic prosperity through international commerce and through industry, minimizing the tradeoff between military and civilian needs. While continental hegemons gravitate toward finite-game, winner-take-all strategies that are ruinous to the defeated, those vested in the maritime order prefer the infinite game of wealth-compounding, mutually beneficial transactions. They view neighbors as trade partners, not enemies.
Paine presents the above as a summary of her argument. I think it's both simplistic and historically inaccurate. I simply can't think of any country - and certainly not any historically powerful and wealthy country - that was "relatively secure" from invasion because of an oceanic moat. To the extent that the US kinda-sorta had this advantage, it was only after consolidating a tremendous amount of territory by armed force, and dividing an entire continent up into essentially "spheres of influence" with Canada, US, and Mexico each taking a piece.
Even if one is willing to accept the US as a maritime state, the fact is that the US spends an above average percentage of its GDP on military spending, exporting death and destruction around the world. In a macabre sort of a way this does correlate with her actual words here in that the US doesn't have much of a trade-off between military and civilian needs - there are huge profits to be made by selling war equipment to the US Government which the US Government then sends to other countries to allow them to kill each other. However, by no means is it a "mutually beneficial transaction."
The maritime worldview goes back to the ancient Athenians, whose rimland empire depended on accruing wealth from coastal trade. Such states wish to treat the oceans as commons, so all can share them and safely trade. It is not a coincidence that Hugo Grotius, the founding father of international law, came from the Dutch Republic, a trading empire. And since World War II, commercially minded countries have developed regional and global institutions to facilitate trade, minimize transaction costs, and compound wealth. They have coordinated their coast guards and navies to eliminate piracy so that trade gets through. This has produced an evolving maritime, rules-based order with dozens of members that together enforce the regulations that protect them all.
How is this particularly different from land-bounded countries? Both ocean-bounded countries and land-bounded countries have varying interest in cooperating to facilitate trade. The Silk Road trade between Europe and China wasn't ocean based. It is true that ocean trade brought tremendous wealth to certain Dutch, English, Portuguese and Spanish traders, but it's wild to say this was because they engaged in "mutually beneficial transactions" with the colonies they exploited. The Africans would like a word about the slave trade. The Jamaicans would like a word about the plantations there that generated tremendous wealth for the French. The Chinese would like a word about the Opium traders.
I don't have time to write out all of my objections to the claims made in this article, but I think overall it would be much simpler to say that in general maintaining friendly relationships rather than unnecessarily antagonizing other countries, in connection with not bombing other countries and killing people, is probably going to result in less death and property damage. She chooses to label certain behavior as "maritime" vs. "continental" and then proceeds to describe the behavior of certain ocean bounded countries as "continental" and the behavior of certain land-bounded countries as "maritime".
Maybe she can explain why the Spanish and French economies continue to struggle, despite their participation in the EU and their lack of "wasting" money on military rather than civilian needs.