Episode 695: The PRC in the Pacific Islands, with Cleo Paskal

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What we're going to look at is we're going to look at the People's Republic of China and what they've been doing grow their influence in the Pacific island nations, many of which, when you actually look at their names, will sound very familiar to anybody who has studied or World War two, or even watched a few of the movies. The islands are the same, the geography is the same, and their importance is just the same, and especially in

case of any type of additional conflict, and they may take place west of the International date Line. And we're really looking forward for the next hour because our guest is the perfect person to talk about this, Cleo Pascal. She is a non resident Senior Fellow focusing on Indo Pacific region at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Cleo, welcome to Midwest.

The islands themselves, they vary in the way that they're politically structured, from completely independent countries to essentially colonies, for example in the case of the French ones, to free association with the US, which we can talk about, or part of the realm of New Zealand, like the Cook Islands is where they say they're independent, but they carry New Zealand passports. So there's a whole range of political identities.

But from a national security strategic perspective, the thing to understand, and it's very obvious if you look at a map. We've been we've been having a problem understanding I think how important the region is because we've been we look on our school walls, for example. We grew up with these twentieth century Atlantic centered maps. But if you have a Pacific centered map, you know the Indo Pacific is going to be to the twenty first century what the

Atlantic was to the twentieth century. It's where the trade is, it's where the strategic contest is, all that stuff. You know, you've got this huge buffer zone between Asia and the Americas, and you if you don't control it, or if somebody else who is hostile to you controls it, you have

a problem. So I'd say that when you're thinking about it from a strategic perspective, you might tend to think because we've seen in the news more recently violence like Solomon Islands might be important side of the Battle of Guadalcanal, for example, but they're actually down below the equator. They're

off the coast of Australia. They are obviously important, but from a US strategic perspective, the islands that are critical, the Pacific islands that are critical are the ones that are north of the equator, that are in the corridor between Hawaii and Guam. And of course Guam is an American is the United States of America, and you've got this sort of broad quarrider between them. That's about three thousands about three thousand miles from Hawaii to Guam. And

in that zone you have three independent countries. You have sort of I'm going up a little bit south of Guam as well a little south and west Palau, Federay States and Micronesia and Marshall Islands. As you mentioned Marshall, these are all we're all battle sites. Marshall Islands was Battle of Quadlon and it's where the base is today.

Federary States, Gronesia's Truck Lagoon, Palalis Pelulu, that zone. They are independent countries, but they've given exclusive defense and security rights to the United States of America, and that's what allows the US unrestricted access across the middle of the Pacific, through those Pacific islands to the parts of the US that are right off the coast of Asia. Guam Kamal with the Northern Marianas come with the Northern Ania is part of the United States of America. It has a

maritime border with Japan. So yes, we could talk about all of the Pacific islands. But if you're looking really at the core of US strategic interests, the place which was that whole zone, that middle zone that I just described was controlled by Japan from nineteen fourteen to nineteen forty four. That allowed the Asian defense perimeter to be pushed all the way close to Hawaii. It allowed the

bombing of Pearl Harbor. And then after the war, after the the troops died all the way across liberated it. Then this compact was put in place to make sure that the border was pushed all the way to the west and to be kept off the coast of Asia. So I'd say that that zone, that those three compacts of free association countries plus Guam plus the Comwealthan and the Marianas both American, are really the core of US security interests in the region.

Bernard Morland. And effectively, what the Chinese were doing, I'm not quite sure what they're doing now because it's always been a little bit opaque, but what they were doing for a very long time was ranking countries numerically by their comprehensive national power and the idea is that eventually China will be number one in the world in terms of comprehensive national power. And the calculations that go into the metric seem to vary by CCP or PLA, think tank.

But they're much much more broad than what we would include. So we would include things like economic power or military power, things like that, but they would include even things like, you know, if you have a lithium mind, but a Chinese company is mining that lithium, that that counts towards China's comprehensive national power, not towards years. And they would

and in kind of very overt ways. You know, if they've got bribery material, or if they have economic control, or if they're putting a bri projects in your country, that limits your conference and national power and increases theirs. And part of the way that this can manifest is that we think of competition in terms of getting better, but if you have a relative metric, then you can go down, but as long as the other guy goes

down more than you do, you win. So this is what helped me just personally understand how there could be logic behind If you know you have and for example, an epidemic running through your country that's making a lot of your people sick, and you know it's a problem, and so you've stopped internal flights from a place like Wuhan, for example, you will you could logically keep pushing for external flights to say, Okay, if we're going to get hit, then we want everybody else to get hit as well,

and we're going to use the buffer time to try to position ourselves in a little bit of a better place. And that particular pushing, continuing to push for those external flights.

We know because there are Pacific Island leaders. There are many of them that are incredibly honest and courageous, and one of them was President of the Federal States of Micronesia at the time, and he wrote letters which became public to regional leadership describing the sort of pressure he was being put under by by the Chinese to keep flights coming in even though internal flights within China were being blocked. So it's not just a kind of in

the DC things. Might you get an idea that sits in a think tank and it sounds very grand and nobody ever acts on it, but this comprehensive national power mentality seems to have actually translated into action that affects the way that they were willing to interact with the region. It also shows why I think that their approach is not just zero sum game. They will go into negative if the other side loses more So it's a very

it's a different mentality. It takes a I think as a kind of you know, sort of rational person who cares about community and has a different point of view on the world to accept it. But for me, it's explained a lot of things that I otherwise found inexplicable.

of government or the inner agency. We're really internal looking like what are we doing, not really focused on what the effects are externally to the other targets, like what do we have in our little bureaucratics due that we're doing right, irrespective of what it might happen when it

leaves the Beltway. But the comprehensive national power, if the in collectorm line, it says almost like it makes sense from the Chinese Communist Party's perspective because it almost has a flavor of their internal social credit score, where we're going to put metrics on things. I think that there are some things that are hard to quantify, but you can, if you have the right metrics, get close to it. They said, no, we need we need something that we

can rack and stack all the other nations against. And we're going to use this process. And it's external looking. It's not focused on Oh, I'm sure the CCP has at'll bureaucracy that's interly focused, at least this view of international relations. It really is externally focused on what's worth

their effort and not. And I wanted to quote a bit from You have an article that went out at the US Naval War College in twenty twenty three titled Island Hopping with Chinese Characteristics that I kind of stole that title for something else last week, so I'll give you appropriate credit. We dire the second paragraph there is a real interesting quote. I want you to pull the

thread on for me. It's an hour long, so i'll do an extended quote. So quote in his twenty eleven book The Pacific Islands in China's Grand Strategy, Small States, big gains, professor, professor, and I'm gonna mispronounce it. Forgive me yan Yang rights. China's growing involvement in the South Pacific is part of Chinese China's growing involvement worldwide. The discussion of Chinese involvement and policy towards the South Pacific

should be placed within this bigger picture. An isolated study without understanding China's grand strategy and overall foreign policy goals can be misguided and of extended quote. So it's you'll look at in isolation, that's a problem, but it is a cog in this larger plan that they seem to be rolling out.

you know, it's communis system, it's whole of systems. So what they have, for example, if you look at the twenty seventeen National Intelligence Law in China, you are compelled, if you're a Chinese company or Chinese citizen to support Chinese intelligence operations. You'll be rewarded if you do, and you'll be punished if you don't. That's the law, and it is, you know, extremely difficult to be a Chinese citizen.

You are controlled to a very very high degree. And what you're starting to see, and one of the reasons why the Pacific Islands are so interesting is because you can they're so small enough so that you can see the levers that China goes after when it targets a country very quickly. And in the case of the Solomon Islands, for example, there was again another extremely courageous leader, Daniel Sudani, who is the leader, he's the premier of was premier

of one of the provinces there. Alomon Islands is a really good case study because they switch from Taiwan to Trina in twenty nineteen, so you can there's a starting point, so you can start to see what they go after, you know, they and what pieces of equipment they want to get installed, including of course the Huawei towers. And in his case, he tried to stand up to it, so he blocked any Chinese Communist Party linked investment in his province. When he came in, his government put out

this communicate explaining why. And one of the reasons why was they believe in freedom of religion and they didn't want to have the term they used was systemically atheist entity operating within their province. They thought it was bad for their society, and they went after him. There was a lot of Chinese linked money that went after getting him out of his premier and then he had his

actual elected seat taken away. And the grounds for that from the pro PERC central government that took away his provincial seat, so it would be like the federal government taking away the seat of a state senator for example, was that he refused to accept China's definition of one China policy. So it was the first time I know where there was this exportation in the political world of

essentially a social credit system. If you don't accept China's view of the world, you get canceled in your country through the PRC's proxies. So it's it's it's kind of that that is a pure display of comprehensive national power, and there are there are all of these quite big units that have been set up like United Front that push comprehensive national power and are trying to get themselves

in a position to enforce. This signification or ccpification is actually more accurate of domestic politics in countries when it gets enough influence. So yeah, understanding that it's coming, it's coming into the US. It's coming into the US, and you can see it very clearly in the in a lot of different ways domestically. I mean, fentanyl is a classic example of unrestricted warfare to support comprehensive national power. It's kills at a minimum seventy thousand Americans last year.

And for every American that dies, that destroys a family, and there are a lot that don't die who are addicts that are also destroying families. This is extremely an unrestricted warfare. Of course, is another term that came out of the PLA. It was a book written by two PLA Air Force kernels in nineteen ninety nine which includes drugs warfare as one of the twenty plus warfares that

it talks about. So there we can see this happenings across a broad spectrum of interventions, and it is functioning to decrease the US's comprehensive national power and in a relative sense, increase China's comprehensive national power, and just quickly if you don't mind, because he quoted Jianyang. So Jianyang was who wrote that book, and that was one of the first books I saw in English about China's view of the Pacific Islands, and this reference to comprehensive national

he himself, I met him. I met him in New Zealand when he was running the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. He was a professor I think the University of Auckland. He then went on to become a member of Parliament in New Zealand and was leading or very can I put it, he was conduit for a lot

of the ministerial meetings between China and New Zealand. And it later came out that before coming to New Zealand, he had spent about a decade teaching at a Chinese spy academy, and so he himself had sort of seemed to embody what he described in his book as the responsibilities of overseas Chinese, which which is to basically, if

he can continue to help the homeland. Now, there are a lot of overseas Chinese who have fled China and who just want to get away from that whole system, and we see the biggest victims of the system, obviously of the Chinese people, but we see these setting ups of these illegal police stations and prosecutions of dissidents, and using family left in China, our business interests, lefts in China in order to try to course people who still have a tie back to China into being useful to

this CCP if they can be. So it really is, it's operating in it and of course all of this to advance China's comprehensive national power. So it really it

does operate in a completely different way. And in the Pacific Islands, because they're so small, you can really see it and you can see what it does to a society and how quickly it just erodes and destroys all of the pillars of democracy, transparency, accountability, human rights, the basic kind of freedoms that one hundred thousand Americans died for eighty years ago as they went across the Pacific.

they get things head on, then the way then they they're trying to go around the back door. Talk about about the approach they're taking to like with the the Northern Marianas. What what are they doing there to get to get their talents into into that area.

and other islands up there. So the Commonwealth of Northern Marianna is that string of islands to the north of Guam, and they were kind of ethnically similar at least originally Tomorrow people were there and Carolinian people were there are there, but Guam became part of the United States through the Spanish American War, the US took the Philippines, obviously in Guam few other things, but didn't take a lot of the other Pacific islands that had been Spanish possessions, including

what's now the Commonwealth of Northern Marianna Islands. So the Spanish sold them to the Germans, and including whole other swaths like Yap and stuff was sold to the Germans, who understood how strategic these locations were. One hundred and twenty years ago we talked about undersea cable issues. Now, the telegraph cables were the issues then, and Yap was

a hub for German telegraphy at that time. Then the Germans, of course were on the wrong side of World War One, and the Japanese took those German possessions, and from nineteen fourteen to nineteen forty four, the Japanese controlled what is now the Komwalth in Northern Mariana's Palau, Federal State's Micronesia and the Marshall Islands. That whole zone which covers an area of the surface area the planet about the size

of the continental United States. And then the Americans went through beat the Japanese, and then then that whole zone was all part of the Trust Territories. And then after that they became those three independent countries that I mentioned, and CNMI, Komwalth and North Amyanas voted to join the United States of America. So this is the newest part of the United States of America. These Saipan Tinian those

are Americans in an American territory. They sent a represent counative to Congress that they have a governor who goes to the Governor's meetings. Very interesting place. Highly recommend every American go visit their fellow Americans out there. They serve in the US military at very high rates. The patriotic people. They're about forty fifty thousand people who live on Saipan.

The challenge that they've had is they are very far from the mainland, and so when they joined the US, they were given control over certain aspect economic aspects like labor laws for example, and so they set up garment factories and the Chinese ran the garment factories there, and you may remember stories about some of the abuses that were happening those Chinese garment factories, and there were also

issues around birth tourism and things like that. But what that did was that allowed the Chinese influence to come in via these money flows that affected of course politics, so it was very difficult to extricate that until the US allowed trying to join the World Trade Organization. And the value of those garment factories in Saipan was that they could slap they could be Chinese factories and you could slap it made in the USA label on it,

and then it could go into the US market. But when they when China was allowed to join the WTO, that dropped in value. They had already started to set up these economic, entrenched economic interests that permeated other sectors, including aviation, and then it started to build up in tourism as well. And they kept pressure through the proxies that they had in politics and in the business sector to maintain this unusual access for China into the bloodstream

of American politics and economics and the current state. I'm jumping through a lot of different things, like, for example, they had casinos, Chinese linked casinos that were running billions of dollars in Saipan. There was one in Saipan, there's one Atinian. There's Looking at it from the outside, it's very hard to see how that didn't involve some sort of money laundering, but there there were never never any

proper investigations done. The current state is common Wealth and nor the Marianna Islands, part of the United States of America, is the only place in the US that allows Chinese to arrive without a visa. So any Chinese can get on a plane in Hong Kong and fly straight into CNMI, say I'm here for two weeks of tourism, Get off the plane, no visa. What's happening with that is we're

starting to find them. They're not supposed to leave the common wealthannr the Marianas, but there have been court cases where people have been convicted for taking them illegally to Guam, and they have been found on wandering around military basis in Guam. They're using the US Postal Service for distributing drugs. Are the woman who ran the Bureau of Motor Vehicles has been convicted of selling driver's licenses to Chinese illegally, specifically to Chinese. So it's this kind of soft entry

point through this no visa thing. And Congress has written to Secretary of New Yorkis to ask why this is continuing and the answer is that Chinese contributed a substantial amount to the tourism sector of CNMI in two thousand and eight or two thousand and nine, so that's why now at the same time, Russians could arise visa around then, and that privilege was yanked for national security ground. So there's no reason it couldn't be yanked for national security grounds.

So you've got this that situation, and the current governor of CNMI would like to see that loophole closed. But the Chamber of Commerce of CNMI is doubling down now and saying, not only do they want to keep this loose visa access for Chinese, they also want a lifting of caps on direct flights from inland China directly into CNMI.

They want those caps lifted. You know, we've got this situation where you have honest political leaders in the conwealth and Rithmerannas the governor included, who has testified before Congress and said, please clean up our system. Please send a resident district attorney, Please send treasury. I'm opening up all of my books, please investigate us, please help us get

rid of this corruption. And nothing is happening. And the longer you wait, the more you get this pressure coming in for visa free access for direct flights, and at the same time on Tinian the Air Force is trying to put in four hundred million dollars to rehabilitate those runways and a new Chinese casino has opened up on the port.

government there. Yea, they have the Center for Pacific Island Countries. It has a staff of forty And I remember a conversation I had over a decade ago with Dimitri Gornberg, who's over at the over at CNA, and he mentioned that before things got interested with Russia, he was the Russia shop there. So you know who is working these issues on our end, because part of that that you outlined is the PRC. Again, if you want to know

what they're doing. Read their stuff that they have a braided approach to how they want to pursue their means. The three braide, commercial, strategic, and criminal. And when you look at how they're influencing and like you said, the casino going next to our new strategic airfield, call your local mortar team. This stuff is serious and they really look like they're following a from an objective point of view, a logic and a commendable plan to pursue their national goals.

tourists in the rest of the US. It's just they have to wait a week to get a visa, So you know, why can't they do it for CNMI. But this third element, and so you know, I got that commercial and the strategic, which everybody kind of knows and is embodied in the term dual use, and that's kind of pretty common. But this third element, there's always this criminal component. And China, the Chinese Communist Party in the

PLA work very closely with Chinese organized crime. So in the case of Palau again, which is one of these highly strategic locations for the US, it's one of these in a compact of free association with the US, they're putting in the over the horizon radar installation or trying Broken tooth, who is one of the big triad leaders was based out of Palau for quite a while, effect almost under US jurisdiction because of the Compact of Free Association.

The US could say this is a national security issue for the US and go after it, but they're not. The Attorney General of Palao has been begging for lawyers and laughing just because I never thought that I would be in a position of saying the solution is sending the lawyers. But we are actually in a position where you're way better off sending a special prosecutor or some

really good district attorney resident investigators than you are sending in the mercy or coastguard cut or whatever, because the corruption that's happening on the ground is what's feeding out into the maritime environment, the air environment, in the entire national security bubble and corroding it from the inside. And that's where the US has a natural advantage, if you know, it says that it believes in accountability, transparency, rule of law.

So instead of competing with the Chinese on Chinese grounds. I mean, we've heard it said, you know in Africa, some Chinese guy told that an American We're going to win because we have an limited bribery budget. Okay, that's fine, So we should have an unlimited prosecution and investigation budget. You don't compete on their terms, you compete on our terms because fundamentally, I think our systems better. So do

the things that reinforce our system. And it's gonna, which is I mean from a Chinese perspective, is very threatening to them. That undermines their comprehensive national power. If we truly exhibit what makes us strong. So you know you can we can go after that third element to the braid, get rid of get raise the cost of taking Chinese money. Nobody's going to jail now for taking Chinese money. There's

no downside to taking Chinese money. If you're in the Solomon Islands and you're a rational actor, and you look at the current finance minister, who's the former prime minister who has out of miraculously, out of nowhere, eight properties deep in with China. And you look at the former premier of the Solomon of the Malaita province who I mentioned lost his job and you know, doesn't have money

to pay hospital fees. Who was a better bet? If you have very little money and you're trying to support your family, who's a better role model the guy that's taking money from China or the guy that's trying to stand up to China. So unless we raise the cost of taking the money from China and give breathing space that people who are trying to defend their communities and the things that they believe in, the equation is not

going to tip in our favor. And it's that third strand, that corruption strand, that is the thread to pull on that can unravel all three elements.

the marshals and other systems there. This is the second island chain, and they are leap trying to leapfrog passed it through this by corrupting and corroding the governments of those entities.

If you take a look at where wang Yi Use the Foreign Minister, visited in May June of twenty twenty two, which was at the height of COVID, so the kind of trees borders or most of the Pacific islands just closed their borders during COVID. But in May June of twenty twenty two, Wangi and a delegation just Island hopped throughout the region. All of the restrictions were dropped. They met with government leaders, local press to a large degree

was kept quiet, and they they went. If you take a look at the countries that they visited there the other side of the First and Second island chain, they just completely leapfrogged it and there they've studied very carefully, much more than we have the World War II battle map from the perspective of both the US and the Japanese.

Somebody who's written very well on this as Toshiyoshihara who wrote a freely available monograph on this which is extremely good about what the Chinese, what the PLA has learned from world from World War two Pacific theater. And so that's why it's not an accident when they go into a place like the Solomon Isles after twenty nineteen, after they first recognize trying to Beijing comes in in one of the first places they try to get a hold

of is Tulagi. That was one of the first places the Japanese attacked, and it was a place that was the headquarters for the British. It's very good the geography doesn't change now. They didn't. They tried to do it through political warfare, through leasing it right and seeing if they could get enough political leverage to push through a lease. And in that case it was the women's groups of Tulagi that pushed back and kind of protected their turf.

And again it's this thing of you know, we have this thing of thinking, oh, you know, you meet the officials sitting in the official offices, and that's who the country is. But if you truly believe in democracy, you are engaging with the wide spectrum of society, and in fact, the power maybe there and the people who share your values are definitely more likely to be there than sitting in the central So if you want to understand what's

truly going on, you need to do that. And at the time in the US didn't even have an embassy in Solomon Islands. They've now opened one, but it's it's very understaffed, it doesn't even have consular services. So you know, we're very very we the Greater West, you know, the Free World, are very far behind, not just on understanding what the Chinese are doing, but on understanding how the people in the region are fighting and what they need to be effective in their ability to fight.

upon GDP and stuff like that. But when a nation or the globe goes to war, a very cheap piece of real estate like Gibraltar is a perfect example if you just looked at the natural resources and everything like that, like it's a it's a semi arid rock, it's not much there. But when you go to war, what is

cheap at peace is so incredibly expensive. At war, nations will kill and be killed and the tens of thousands or more just for a few square miles because you know, these these are very poor nations, These are very resource thin nations. But the map is so incredibly important, and I liked in your Naval War College article, your figure one is that map from forty one to forty five where you had the two big thrust that went either of you know, palal Guam, Saipan. Because they were hard.

They once they're occupied, they're hard to get to. But you can see how if you wanted, if you saw a place in the future where you're going to have a conflict with America, America, if they want to come west of the International Dateline, they can only come a few different directions. Technology has changed, but the ranges are the same, so we know what they did, like there aren't very many other options they could do, and something I did a few years ago and I do again

now and then, and I like this approach better. But I also like to remind people how important even Vunatu Island, if you do a great circle route from California to our ally at the low population, large size, big resource Australia, they go right through all of these islands, which is why the Imperial Japan there was the Battle of Coral Sea right there off of Papua New Guinea in the backyard of australiax months after Pearl Harbor, because they knew

this how important that was if you were going to isolate America and from her allies in any Great Pacific War. Kind of a long overview of how much I love maps. But it's part of the problem we're having explaining this to people is the fact that we there's too many words and there aren't enough pictures to be able to

explain this to people to get serious about it. On our side, the people's are probably China seems to be able to allocate resources and incentives towards that, but for some reason on our side, being the anglospheric and allied nations in the Pacific. We're not getting attraction on the importance level. Where are we failing to communicate to our own decision makers about how important this is?

You can't have enough maps on this because we talk consistently. But the first island chain and maybe the second island chain, right, but how do you think you're going to get it. You don't magically teleport into the first island chain. You

have to get across the center of the Pacific. So if you're going to do that, then you need those three countries, those Compact of Free Association countries, Palow Marshall Islands, Federal States and Micronesia need to be a safe zone for the US because otherwise, like you mentioned, like you you know, for that World War two map, you have to go south and west and then come up, you know,

that middle zone controlling that. So why at the beginning that middle zone is something kind of off the charts in terms of importance. So those contacts are free association,

they're different. The financial and services component to it get renewed every twenty years, and they are so tied to the US that not only do they serve in the US military at very high rates even though they're from these independent countries, they even have US postal codes, so they're considered domestic mail, which makes a which is a means they can order off of Amazon, and considering how far they are down the supply chain, that makes a

very big difference for them. Those that twenty year renewal cycle technically expired last year. I mean, it's quite complicated, but it was very, very difficult to get that renewed, and the amount of money involved was I can't remember the exact amount, but it was about six point two

billion to cover the three countries for twenty years. And this is to cover things like postal service or head start programs or just basic programs to ensure that because those countries have given over so many of their rights to the US, that's limited their economic ability and other sectors. So this is, you know, to be able to keep them, to be able to sustain themselves while they do other activities.

And it came down to a two point three billion dollar offset required by Congress, and it almost didn't go through. Two point three billion dollars to cover this corridor freedom across the center of the Pacific for twenty years, which was a promise made to the people of the region. Remember, the US did sixty seven nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands,

which still has lingering effects. You know, however, many Americans died in order to maintain or to gain this relationship, all of that sort of stuff talking you talking about errors, right, two point three billion, and it almost didn't go through. And part of the reason I would argue is because for a long time DoD didn't get involved. So that the people who who should understand this the best are in d D and specifically sitting in Hawaii because they're

the logistics people. Know they have to get all the way across this quarter of freedom, so to speak, in order to be able to get to the base in Japan, and the and the and in Korea, and to reach the treaty allies. But they were conspicuously absent on the hill when the discussions around the compacts are going on, possibly because they didn't want to be on the hook for the money. The money theoretically goes through Department of Interior for historic reasons and state, but they weren't briefing.

And part of the reason for that, I think is there are actually very few people in DD even in Hawaii, who understand the importance of it. They've just been taking it for granted. They've just been taking for granted that they would have this unrestricted access from Hawaii to Guam, this three thousand miles across the center of the Pacific, unimpeded. But of course, just like what you were saying in terms of the US, that center was hardened by Japan during World War Two, so the US had to go

down and come back up. China has been from a Chinese perspective, that center has hardened for the US. So they've been going down through political warfare and getting Guadalcanal in all those places through political warfare, and they are now coming up into the compact of free associate association eras area through political warfare and gaining influence in incredibly

effective ways. So this assumption I think that DoD has been riding on in the wargames and elsewhere, that they'll just always be able to run across the center of the Pacific has meant that they haven't been educating people on the hill as much as they possibly should. They haven't been studying the situation. There's of course very little interest in the thinks in DC on this topic, and the result is that the Chinese have been romping through

the area, including the United States. In the area, including places like Comwalthn or the Marianna, is largely unimpeded.

get in here. And I think you said block and block and build to help our interests and our friends.

scholarships or anything like that. But going right back to the beginning to the discussion of comprehensive national power, of course that's a negative for China in terms of comprehensive national power. So anything you try to do that's good is going to be seen as a threat by the PERC and will be attacked. So, you know, you kind of assume that everybody just wants the economies of these countries to do well. Actually, China does not want the

economies of these countries to do well. They want people who do business with China to do well, so that there is a vested interest in continuing to do business with China. But if a country's economy is in poor shape, that means it's more likely to want a loan from China or to turn to China for help. So actually weakening countries through this sort of in tropic warfare which we mentioned before, weakening them socially in terms of institutions

and economically benefits China. So that's you know that that block and build component. What that means is while we're building, we also have to block. We have to and this is just kind of basic military stuff. I mean, if you're if you're trying to land on a beach, you might be trying to crawl ahead inch by inch on the beach, but at the same time you're trying to block people from killing you. So you know you want to build your beachhead and attack, but also block the attack.

So if you accept that we are in a period of at least political warfare, even though political warfare means people still can die I mean, seventy thousand Americans at minimum or dying a fentanyl over doses, and that can be that the Chinese could stop that if they wanted, I mean, at least reduce it by a large amount, and they're not going to. So if you accept that we are in a form of war, then it's just normal to defend. So you block and you build it

the the same time. So I just sorry, just wanted to explain that kind of block and build concept, but I've rambled on so long i forgot the rest of the question.

People from other Pacific islands can't. And there's also there's a lot of fallacies about the Pacific Islands, like they're small. Papua New Guinea has a larger land mass and a larger population than New Zealand, and it's more strategically located. Another fallacy is that these countries are isolated in the middle of nowhere. You know, cnm I, the major tourism group going there now is from Korea. It's a three four hour flight from Korea. It's a two to three

hour flight from Manila to Palau. So it's you know, the countries are really really different. So it's nice to have a caucus on the Pacific Islands. They weren't particularly helpful during the compact negotiations, you know, it's sort of like having a I don't know, a caucus on Asia,

right that. It's just the region is so different, and it has so many different priorities and interests and is important to the US in so many different ways that it really takes, i think, break breaking it down so that you're looking at the different regions in terms of different priorities, so that you can actually start to put together packages that are effective. A solution for the Solomon situation isn't going to necessarily be a solutions for the

Marshal Lease situation or the CNMI situation. And of course we haven't even mentioned American Samoa, which is another bit of the US that's right in the heart of the Pacific.

of the Pacific. Is they are building an absolutely massive port in Peru and their companies pretty much run the Panama Canal in large regards, what is the connection that people can if they're starting to all of a sudden getting worried about the what's happening outside of the Pacific. You're talking about two to three hour plane flights fly out Miami all the time. It's a short flight to

Panama relatively speaking. Is there a connection between the processes they're using in the Pacific and what we're also seeing on are into the Pacific from just in Panama down to Peru by in other locations.

for example French Polynesia. So French Polynesia has different visa restrictions for Chinese coming into French Polynesia than it does for mainland France. And there's the newly arrived Chinese and French Polynesia have been gaining. If you get a map and take a look at the exclusive economics and a French Polynesia, it's huge, and the Chinese are on the record is saying that they want to use it as a trendshipment point to Latin America for a long time.

But of course there are other locations all the way along that route. But in the same way that you've done these great maps where you talk about the route from California to Australia, start drawing maps from Shanghai to some of the ports on the west coast of Latin America and you'll see how important those islands along those routes will be So we've kind of we've forgotten I don't know how, but just how important maritime domain is. And it's not These distances are vast, So there's this.

You can be quite dismissive and say, oh, these are just little small specs. Well, yeah, how important is a small spec when you're crossing a very large chunk of ocean. It's exponentially important. So in that same way, you know, these little specs, these hoppings, these little islands that you can hop across and resupply or go into port, or pick up supplies or pick up legal, whatever you're doing, depending on what you're doing if you're Chinese, become extremely important.

So the China's Latin America's story for me has quite a large Pacific island chapter to it to underpin its its viability.

identifying illegal activity and then going after them in an asymmetric way. Colonel Brat Newsham has written books, wrote a book about this is actually testified before Congress also, where you know, why not just yank the license of the banks that bank roll these fishing fleets that are illegally going through the region, you know, inflict some real pain, go after them in ways that mattered. You don't have to do ship to ship, right like you don't have

to go after bribery with more bribery. You go after bribery asymmetrically by increasing the cost of taking the bribes in other ways, by publicizing it, but by going after and that little thing about switching from maritime domain awareness to maritime domain enforcement is the Pacific Islanders. Their relationship with the ocean is in many cases is near spiritual

or at least tootemic. So there was I was talking to the attorney general from one of these countries about, you know what he thought about this, these Chinese illegal trawlers going through and they have from his country. Their clans are affiliated to fish, so there might be the stingray clan or the shark clan or whatever, and so it hurts it a kind of and you're not supposed to eat that fish. Those are your ancestors. You can know all the other fish, but you can eat that one.

So for them, the kind of vacuuming of the sea, the way that it's the Chinese approach to the environment is an assault on his ancestors. And when I asked him just we're just chatting, you know, kind of if he could have anything from the US, what would he want. He said he'd want a submarine so he could go around shooting the Chinese ships below the water line and sinking them and then taking off and going shooting another matter,

like there's a real anger. Okay, So they don't need more lessons, They don't need more workshops that show them satellite imagery of Chinese fishing fleet in their waters. They want it stopped. They want the tools to stop it, and in a lot of cases, the tools to stop it include the intelligence files to go after the corrupt Chinese corporations within their own countries that are buying off their own politicians to turn a blind eye to it.

So you know, we need again the sharing of intelligence, the investigations, the lawyers, the cleaning up of the court system to clean up what's going up on the ground so that what's going on in the broader environment becomes much more, much more difficult operating environment for the Chinese.

But we've already kept you for an hour and I was just starting to go abuse your time for another hour. But for the listeners who enjoyed the last hour and would like to keep an eye on what you're working on, where's a good place they can keep track of you. And there are some projects you're working on right now that we should keep it in eye open forward coming up down the road.

but hopefully within about this next six months. So I'm mostly focusing on that on this topic, figuring out how good, brave people in the region can get the tools that they need to be in a better position to defend themselves and as it happens, by doing that, they'll be defending all of us.