Compass Points - The Global Map & China
Congressional Leadership is Key
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The map had been the first form of misdirection, for what is a map but a way of emphasizing some things and making other things invisible?
-- Jeff Vandermeer, author
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Perhaps as Jeff Vndermeer warned, the proponents of Force Design 2030 stared at a regional map too long and became fixated on the island chain off China's shore. That is a mistake. China is a growing global power, no longer just a regional one. It will employ all its options globally and will not act only off its own shore.
A new Congressional Select Committee has been formed to hold hearings on China’s growing ambitions, regionally and globally. Compass Points believes these hearings will highlight the need for a U.S. global strategy to deter and confront China.
Committee Chair Rep. Mike Gallagher warned that the new House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party will stand firm against China:
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The CCP laughed at our naïveté while they took advantage of our good faith, But the era of wishful thinking is over. The Select Committee will not allow the CCP to lull us into complacency or maneuver us into submission.
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China is working to increase its global power through every means, including finance, economics, commerce, technology, culture, information, diplomacy, and armed force. When the committee begins to look at the issue of how the United States military should respond to China, the committee should start by reviewing the insightful article at The Hill by former Congressman Paul McHale and General Charles Krulak,
We Cannot Counter China's Ambitions Without a Global Strategy
. . . Despite much impressive rhetoric about China’s global ambitions, most U.S. actions still tend to focus on territorial China, as though it were merely a defensive, regional power. Nowhere is this more evident than in the much-ballyhooed Marine Corps modernization — essentially a divestment of global force-in-readiness capabilities to fund a stationary and relatively insignificant anti-ship missile force positioned in China’s front yard . . .
. . . So, why are some Washington policy analysts generating applause for this particular approach to Marine modernization? Does a small increase in the number of anti-ship missiles along the Pacific littorals — established as a modest complement to more robust Army, Navy, Air Force capabilities — really justify the loss of our nation’s expeditionary Marine Corps? Do we really want to become operationally dependent upon the presumed goodwill of host nations along the Pacific Rim, while surrendering the Marine Corps’ ability to deploy globally from U.S. Navy ships? The strategic question is not whether to modernize, but how to modernize . . .
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To respond effectively to China, both the Marine Corps and the United States broadly must look at the right kind of map, a map, not of one region, but of the whole world.
Compass Points salutes Paul McHale and Charles Krulak for their timely article and also salutes the new House Select Committee on China which is poised to lead important changes in U.S. China policy.
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The Hill (thehill.com) 03/27/2023
We Cannot Counter China’s Ambitions Without a Global Strategy
by Paul McHale and Charles Krulak
Paul McHale is a former U.S. House member, former assistant secretary of Defense, and a retired Marine Corps Reserve colonel.
Retired U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Charles Krulak, a career infantry officer, was last assigned as Commandant of the Marine Corps.
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CNBC (cnbc.com) (02/28/2023)
U.S. House China panel holds first hearing after lawmakers push seven bills targeting Beijing
Chelsey Cox
Key Points
-- The Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, newly formed in January, will hold its first committee hearing Tuesday at 7 p.m. ET.
-- The hearing caps off a full day of hearings and bill considerations focused on national security threats from China.
-- Former U.S. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster is among the witnesses who will testify.
. . . Committee Chair Rep. Mike Gallagher warned that the new Select Committee will stand firm against China:
“The CCP laughed at our naïveté while they took advantage of our good faith, But the era of wishful thinking is over. The Select Committee will not allow the CCP to lull us into complacency or maneuver us into submission.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/28/watch-live-us-house-china-panel-holds-first-hearing-.html
Go (the game), is a contest of encirclement. What you wish to control is simply in the center...to control it, you must act in the surrounding territory. Even if China's sincere aim is regional hegemony, their strategy will require them to encircle their desired region of control militarily, economically, and politically. That means this contest is a hash of Go and the board for the game Risk...global.