Compass Points - Beyond the Pacific
Limits of regional solutions.
January 9, 2024
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China may be located in the Pacific, but China is pursuing a campaign of dangerous influence around the globe. No regional solution can contain China. The US and the Marine Corps must be prepared globally to deter and defeat China.
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For more than a decade, China has expanded its Belt and Road program.
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Launched in 2013 by President Xi Jinping, the vast collection of development and investment initiatives was originally devised to link East Asia and Europe through physical infrastructure. In the decade since, the project has expanded to Africa, Oceania, and Latin America, significantly broadening China’s economic and political influence.
--CFR
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Through the Belt and Road and a host of other initiatives, China has agents and influence in every major nation on earth -- including the US. In just one example, Reuters reports, "U.S. charges Chinese national with providing weapons materials to Iran."
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It is not just China itself. China is using its long-standing relationship with North Korea to take steps around the world that China does not want to take directly. For example, North Korea is supplying weapons and equipment to Hamas in their fight with Israel and to Russia in their fight with Ukraine. North Korea is a desperately poor country. It does not have the means to ship anything to anyone -- unless their wealthy friend to the north, China, pays the bills.
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Declassified US intelligence reports mention that Russia used North Korean short-range ballistic missiles (SRBM) on December 30 and January 2, and is planning to use those missiles in the coming weeks to hit Ukrainian targets as far as 885 kilometers away.
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The North Korean missiles, most likely the KN-23 and KN-24 SRBMs, are analogous to the Russian Iskander-M and US MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS). The KN-23 is estimated to carry a 500-kilogram warhead 450 kilometers or 690 kilometers with a reduced payload and can perform evasive maneuvers to avoid interception.
--Asia Times
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Four years ago, the Marine Corps, trying to help with the threat of China, began to experiment with a narrow, regional approach to China. The idea was to put small units of Marines on isolated Pacific islands and arm them with missiles to shoot at Chinese military ships. But China is not merely a regional threat, it is a global threat. The Marine Corps did not have to strand Marines on defense in the Pacific. The Marine Corps already had a way to deter China's global ambitions, the world's premier combined arms, expeditionary force, always on patrol around the world. Several crisis response forces of Marines on amphibious ships are far more of a global deterrent to China, than a few, small, Marine units on Pacific islands.
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Compass Points salutes all those working to upgrade and restore the world's premier crisis response force: Marines!
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Council on Foreign Relations (cfr.org) 02/03/3023
China’s Massive Belt and Road Initiative
By James McBride, Noah Berman, and Andrew Chatzky
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-massive-belt-and-road-initiative
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Reuters (reuters.com) 05/16/2023
U.S. charges Chinese national with providing weapons materials to Iran
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Asia Times (asiatimes.com) 01/08/2024
N Korea keeping Russia rich in missiles and shells
Russia now using North Korean missiles to bombard Ukraine while reportedly also reaching to Iran to help fill a weapons gap
By Gabriel Honrada
https://asiatimes.com/2024/01/n-korea-keeping-russia-rich-in-missiles-and-shells/
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Ynetnews (ynetnews.com) 01/08/2024
China indeed expands beyond its own region on many levels and is in, around, even behind us. Any defensive Pacfic Island chain Maginot Line that CMC and SecNav invision will find the Chinese already in its rear and perhaps able to isolated any island chain defense all together. For example: China controls global network of strategically vital ports — report | Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide
https://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/china-controls-global-network-of-strategically-vital-ports-report/
The danger from Belt & Road is not the power that China will accrue from the program so much as it is the instability that it will engender throughout the world, similar to the race for empire in the late 1890's and early 1900's. Think of German gunboats threatening South American or North African nations unless they pay back loans. (See the Agadir Crisis for a rough parallel example.)
If history is a guide, here is the Belt & Road forecast: less developed nations adopt poorly thought out infrastructure projects paid for by loans from the PRC project engineers. When the projects don't pay out, the PRC will still call their loans. Economic instability and conflict ensues.