If America can't block China from traversing the Bering Strait during war, we're just not trying. Does China want to operate in the north just to rub Russia's face in the slush because they can?
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China's coast guard is operating in the Bering Sea now:
China’s Coast Guard is for the first time operating in the Bering Sea as Beijing increasingly uses the Northern Sea Route for shipping, the U.S. commander of the 17th Coast Guard District said this week.
Two Chinese Coast Guard vessels, accompanied by two Russian Border Guard patrol vessels, were identified by a HC-130J Super Hercules crew from Coast Guard Air Station Kodiak, district commander Rear Adm. Megan Dean said in a news release. The crew observed the four ships about 440 miles southwest of St. Lawrence Island.
“This marked the northernmost location where Chinese Coast Guard vessels have been observed by the U.S. Coast Guard,” the release noted.
The Chinese Coast Guard said in a statement that the joint patrols “significantly expanded” its operational range in the Arctic, allowing its vessels to operate in unfamiliar maritime environments.
For more than a decade, China has claimed status as a “Near Arctic” power with substantial commercial and scientific interests in the region and demanded a voice in future Arctic governance. Taking a step in that direction, in 2018 China announced that it intended to develop a Polar Silk Road to cut sailing times between Europe and Asia, as it’s doing now to avoid the ongoing attacks on international shipping in the Middle East.
Mind you, that's south of the Bering Strait. Yet even trade routes that use the Arctic north of the Bering Strait won't make Chinese lines of supply to Europe secure. Even if their ships made it past NATO military power from Portugal to Norway, and then entered safe Russian waters after avoiding NATO air power in Finland, China would still need to make it through the Bering Strait.
Then traverse the Bering Sea. And we did react recently to show we can do something about intruders.
And that's before China hits the final leg through Japanese and South Korean territorial waters--American allies--and avoid the American fleet and land-based air power.
And it doesn't even address Chinese energy supplies from the Middle East if the Middle East region itself is too dangerous for shipping. For all the talk of Chinese influence in the Middle East, the Chinese sure haven't calmed down the region to make their trade routes to and through the region safer.
I mean, if we can't prevent China from using the Polar Silk Road during a war, we really aren't trying.
Why Russia would let China operate in the Arctic is interesting. Basically China told Russia that it must help China. And Russia is in no position to do anything but bow down and agree. Is that the entire point?
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