Secretary of Defense Mark Esper today called for expanding base locations in the Pacific while continuing regular freedom of navigation operations in the region, as part of a broader attempt to stymie China’s influence.
I'm all in favor of avoiding having too many eggs in too few baskets:
When China had difficulty even knowing what we were doing over the horizon, it didn't matter that we had concentrated assets near China. Now that China can strike throughout the western Pacific, that matters a lot.
To reduce the impact of being hit by a theater-wide Pearl Harbor (and to reduce the temptations for China to try that) we are dispersing our assets (especially away from Okinawa) in the western Pacific, from Japan to Australia, with the Philippines, and Singapore in between.
More please. We need places to put intermediate range conventional missiles.
