ABSTRACT
The basic proposition in this chapter is that globalisation, and everything that goes with it, is creating a new paradigm of collaborative naval endeavour that needs to be set alongside the more competitive naval behaviours of the past. Because of its effect on the state and state practices, globalisation, for better or worse, is the central fact of the strategic environment of the early twenty-first century. Believers in the traditions of the nineteenth-century British Manchester School set by Richard Cobden and John Bright welcome the onset of free trade and globalisation, believing that it will usher in an era of peace and plenty by replacing earlier, competitive, aggressive balance-of-power politics with a much greater sense of international community. A globalised sea-based trading system will deliver peace and prosperity for all. Navies, accordingly, will be heavily engaged in the defence of the system.
