Block 6
For the past several years, the U.S has been working, militarily, to create a box around China, and a week ago, secured a permit to build 4 new U.S Marine bases in the Philippines. The Philippines until about a year ago, when Philippine elections were held electing a U.S backed leader Bongbong Marcos. This decision is bound to wring anger out of China as for the past years, China has been giving incentive to Philippines to at a minimum keep U.S and NATO bases out of their country. Of course these incentives would be in the form of massive money loans, economic, political, and/or military help. Of course with this decision, trashing China’s efforts to keep the Philippines from buying U.S incentives.
Analyzing this event and document, it can be easily observed that this is very much possibly the largest scale advance against the Chinese in years. Counting up the US Indo-Pacific strategy pieces; Japan holds power in the South China sea and the Sea of Japan, Taiwan is sided with the US, Thailand holds U.S Military bases, Guam serves as a U.S military outpost, and forward operating base. This is also in addition to Diego Garcia which is in British Indian Ocean territory, and South Korea likely to be put on a training wheels campaign to help box in China and improve the South Korean military capabilities and experience.This all proves China a serious threat, as sea trade out of China, if a war or conflict was to come, could be blockaded by a Joint Operation between the allied countries against China, and with several bases serving as possible deployment points, including these 4 new Marine Bases, very possibly within operational flying range coast to coast with the right preparations of a regular V-22 Osprey or similar marine carrier. This again, presents a large threat to China, and will very much likely increase tensions to significantly higher points in the next few months to a year.
Connecting these events to class, there is significant geopolitical reasoning behind US’s strong push to acquire bases in the Philippines, and for China, it is essential to find a way around the blockade for the time being, as to try to use brute force to break through would result in the obliteration of any Chinese presence attempting to infringe on the head lock they are in, and likely to lose a war with such losses, and hopefully would still lose if nuclear weapons are launched as a last ditch attempt to cause damage, though likely to be tracked down by satellites and shot down as soon as launched. It will be interesting to see what happens once more information on the specifics of these 4 bases are found out by the Chinese, especially as not much serious threats have been made even though the Philippines was the last significant piece of the US Indo-Pacific strategy, which is definitely something of increased aggression, and this poses a serious threat to China, growing exponentially the longer the U.S and NATO has to build up and learn more about the sea and air by conducting training operations in China’s front yard.