"The second is, if you look at the geography [of INDOPACOM], obviously there's a lot of blue," Lt Gen Wesley furthered. "But, there's also the first island chain, and the second island chain, which immediately become strategic in operational platforms that enable the navy to carry out its mission or to give ourselves the options we need to deter … So the islands are important, which is a land component."
Yeah, the islands are a land component of INDOPACOM. But so is the mainland. The Army could have a role there, too, as I wrote in Military Review.
We have a way to go before we have a full multi-domain pivot to the Asia-Pacific region.
UPDATE: The newly released DOD report on American strategy in INDOPACOM states that the theater is DOD's "priority theater."
Yes. So you can understand why keeping EUCOM a secondary theater without a hostile Russia to divert our resources from the priority theater would be a good idea.
Russia may not cooperate if they are determined to be an enemy of America and NATO. But it would be very good to get Russia to stop seeing America and NATO as enemies, requiring America and NATO to improve our military capabilities there at the expense of the Asian theater.
And yeah, I'd have paid good money for the theater command to be called PAINCOM instead.
