ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the history of modern Taiwan's grand and military strategies to provide an interpretive analysis of the military's construction of the ocean. The main argument of this chapter suggests that the construction shifted between two types: the Indian Ocean Model and the original Mediterranean Sea Model. Two structural factors affecting the shift are singled out through two historical comparisons. It is suggested that when a state's grand strategies were aggressive and the balance of military power might have favoured the state, its military tended to construct the ocean according to the original Mediterranean Sea Model. When the state's grand strategy became defensive and the balance of military power favoured its opponent, the state's armed forces constructed the ocean in accordance with the Indian Ocean Model. Furthermore, the analysis of the military's construction of the ocean illustrates the second important thesis of the theory of territorial political economy: that nature could influence the material organisation of society and, in turn, the social construction of nature.
