ABSTRACT
Sea power cannot be improvised. In every age and every circumstance, the successful navies have been those which rested on long years of steady investment in the infrastructure essential to keep running the complex. In Europe, too, relations between Russia and its Western neighbours have decidedly cooled. Both these regions are profoundly maritime and it is natural that these tensions should play out at sea. The great masters of maritime thinking, Mahan, Corbett and the rest of them, did of course touch on such pragmatic and often mundane matters, but only tangentially. Developing maritime power, however, requires an enhanced willingness and capacity to respond actively to one's circumstances. Taking Malaysia as a random illustrative example of all this, a country's context will do much to establish its maritime interests and their relative importance, and so will be a substantial policy driver. Malaysia's strategic geography makes it profoundly maritime.
