This summer marks the 80th anniversary of America’s victory over Imperial Japan and the end of World War II. Accordingly, it’s a fitting time to examine a region key to the Allied war effort, and remains strategically vital as the United States once again confronts the possibility of another large-scale war in the Pacific.. The Central Pacific is central to countering the Chinese Communist Party.
China seeks to supplant the U.S. as the world’s sole superpower. Chinese President Xi Jinping has told his People’s Liberation Army that they must be ready to seize Taiwan by 2027, and numerous American defense officials have warned that Beijing is on track to do so.
Understandably, much of the focus has been on Taiwan, which General Douglas MacArthur famously called “an unsinkable aircraft carrier.” By contrast, the importance of the Central Pacific has largely been overlooked. The region receives precious little attention from the Western press and policymakers. But when it comes to Sino-American competition, few, if any, areas are more vital.
Indeed, the U.S. and its allies will not be able to defend or deter an attack on the first island chain without covering the vast expanse of the Central Pacific. Cleo Paskal, a non-resident senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, is one of a handful of experts raising the alarm.
“Since at least the end of the Spanish-American War, there’s been an open acknowledgement that if a hostile power controlled the Central Pacific, the U.S. is not safe,” Paskal told me. The Central Pacific, she noted, “was the war in the Pacific.” Yet the United States had failed to pay enough attention to the region before World War II.
Consequently, America’s strategy against Japan was largely predicated on moving through an area that, thanks to benign neglect and complacency, it had effectively ceded to its enemy. The lesson was bitter and bloody.
Japan’s dominance over the region made its attack on Pearl Harbor possible. An estimated 100,000 Americans died fighting in the Central Pacific. The savagery led American defense planners to realize that an attack on the Japanese mainland “would have appalling losses,” Pascal noted. When the Enola Gay, the B-29 carrying the first atomic bomb, took off, it did so from the Mariana Islands.
The post-World War II generation was conscious of the hard-fought gains. Several American leaders — including John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and George H.W. Bush — had served in the Pacific. A succession of agreements was enacted to shore up America’s ability to protect its allies and homeland.
But those gains have been steadily eroding. Washington may have forgotten the region’s importance, but Beijing has not. After all, as Pascal pointed out to me, the Central Pacific “is what’s between the U.S. and China.”
CHINESE ARE FUNDING ILLEGAL MARIJUANA OPERATIONS ACROSS MAINE, COLLINS ALLEGES
Ominously, China is rebuilding air strips that were used eight decades ago in the area. The CCP’s United Front has also been engaged in an active campaign of bribery and propaganda to shore up its capabilities. On June 28, Arnold Palacios, the governor of the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands, died mysteriously after calling for the FBI and others to investigate CCP-linked corruption on the U.S. territory. The CCP has used the CNMI as an entry point for political warfare, money laundering, and intelligence gathering on nearby American bases. Palacios had previously lamented the U.S. government’s inattention to China’s malign activities in his territory.
The governor’s death should be a wake-up call. History tells us that we ignore the Central Pacific at our own peril.
The writer is a Washington D.C.-based foreign affairs analyst. His views are his own.