US Getting Military Part Right - And Still Losing The Pacific

A Chinese casino (now defunct) hamstrung US Marine Corps' efforts to build a training center a decade ago on an island up the chain. How?
Money was lavishly spread around government circles and“environmental groups.”

The US Air Force is building a $400 million airfield in Yap state in FSM. The Chinese are building one of their own on another island in Yap state. Just for tourism, of course.

There are widely known Chinese investments in land in coincidentally highly strategic locations, such as on the tiny island of Angaur where the US is putting in over-the-horizon radar as part of a regional missile defense system.

Additionally, the PRC is again spreading money and influence around to maneuver
a more“Chinese-friendly” administration into place – if not the presidency, then at least the legislature.

The goal is not just to get Palau to derecognize Taiwan but to use the narrative that the US is“militarizing” the islands to get the US footprint reduced, if not expelled.

The PRC is angling to refurbish a defunct US airfield on Kanton, one of Kiribati's islands, 1,900 miles from Hawaii.
Once again – just for tourism.

The US has a treaty that ought to prevent this. Nobody cares. What will D.C. do?
Send in the Marines? No, it, along with Australia, has said it will
fund
a new wharf for Kanton. Beijing should send a thank you note.

The Americans are expanding airfields and fuel depots for use by US and allied forces. All good, though the Australian government has been working hard to rebuild trade with China and still thinks it can be friends with Beijing and sell them lobsters and wine.

The more Canberra wants that trade, the more leverage Beijing has. And the donor-dependent political class really seems to want that trade to continue and grow – maybe more than just about anything else.

The Chinese have their claws in East Timor to the north. The US just finished a 10,000-foot runway – that could have been done in 2010 when the government practically begged for it. There's no guarantee this airstrip won't eventually be a gift for China.

In the country where so many Americans died at Guadalcanal and Iron Bottom Sound, the Chinese have an agreement with the pro-China regime that can allow for the deployment of Chinese forces to defend Chinese citizens and major projects, and to put down civil dissent. They are also putting in Huawei towers to blanket the country, and are redeveloping a major port.

And plans are afoot for China to extend the nation's main airfield, Henderson Field, which was crucial to Marine defense in 1942. And it as important now as it was then.

Over the past 15 years, the US has squandered or ignored opportunities to build bases or have greatly expanded access throughout the Asia-Pacific region, and the Chinese haven't wasted that opening.

Current US military efforts are good but one might get the military part of the equation right – and still lose if proper attention isn't paid to China's decades-long political warfare campaign in the Pacific region that is undercutting the US presence and local support for it.

What is political warfare? It is '“the employment of all the means at a nation's command, short of war, to achieve its national objectives.”

This includes financial, economic, diplomatic, alliance building,“propaganda”, intelligence and even the
employment of military forces (without shooting), as explained in a 1948 policy planning memorandum that prepared the US to fight and ultimately win the Cold War.

In China's case, it includes bribery that greases the whole thing, along with drug trafficking, cyber attacks, use of organized crime and the like. So, for example, as for taking Chinese money in the Pacific islands, there is no downside risk. And practically none in Washington, DC, either.

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The result in the Pacific is that the Chinese have turned a region that was once overwhelmingly leaning towards US and the West into a place where pro-China constituencies exist nearly everywhere – and in some cases have political control.

The Chinese understand political warfare. The head of the local Chinese business association, fishing or timber company probably has more real influence than the commander of USINDOPACOM. He's there all the time – influencing.

The PRC's political warfare campaign not only needs to be blocked and countered, but the US government ought to have and employ its own political warfare campaign, which can include nation-to-nation policies like preferential trade policies and also focused strategies to free countries from corruption.

We used to be good at it during the Cold War – but it seem to have largely forgotten what political warfare is in the years since. And the State Department does not appear to consider it part of the job description.

So ACE is well and good. As is the US miliary interest. But the military part is only part of what's required. Congress needs to summon whoever is Secretary of State in a few months from now, and ask two questions:

What is political warfare? What is your political warfare plan?
Show it to us. If he or she can't answer or has no plan....show them the curb.

And call in the Commander of USINDOPACOM and ask him about political warfare.
If he says it's somebody else's responsibility...show him the curb as well.

Too many Americans died in the Pacific war 80 years ago for someone to say this is someone else's problem.

This article first appeared in And Magazine and is republished here with kind permission. Read the original here .

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