By Akshat Patel The South China Sea is to China as the Caribbean Sea is to the United States. Just as the United States repeatedly thwarted European powers from the Caribbean throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, China intends to thwart an American presence in the South China Sea in this century. 1 In 1962, the ambitions of two superpowers reached a crescendo in the form of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Along the same lines, the ambitions of two of today’s great powers are resulting in skirmishes across the South China Sea. In the same way that the clash in the Caribbean was a deciding factor in who the victor of the Cold War would be, American maritime superiority will be decided in large part by who the reigning power in the South China Sea will be.