Joseph E. FALLON
The term “Indo-Pacific area” is an example of the politicization of space. Genesis of the term dates back to the 1920’s and the writings of German geographer, Karl Haushofer. In Geopolitics of the Pacific Ocean (1924), Building Blocks of Geopolitics (1928), Geopolitics of Pan-Ideas (1931), and German Cultural Politics in the Indo-Pacific Space (1939), he “politicized oceanography, ethnography, and philology to realign the Indian and Pacific Oceans as an integral space.”1
Map 1
Geoeconomically, it encompasses world shipping lanes, in particular those transporting oil from the Middle East to East Asia – vital for the economies of China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. (Map 1)
Geostrategically, it contains strategic chokepoints of world shipping lanes control of which can determine the distribution of global political and economic power. (Map 2)

Map 2
Map 3 Heartland Theory
Map 4. The Rimland had NATO, CENTO, and SEATO confronting three subregions of conflict
Map 5 The Indo-Pacific area has the same three subregions of conflict
The term returned to political discourse in the early 2000’s when Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe “referred to the integration of the Indian and Pacific Seas in his 2007 ‘Confluence of the Two Seas’ address to the Parliament of India, and his 2016 ‘Toward a Free and Open Indo-Pacific’ speech in Kenya. Two years later, the United States responded by renaming its ‘Pacific Command’ the ‘Indo-Pacific Command.’”5
The Indo-Pacific area denotes both a geoeconomic and geostrategic concept as well as a geopolitical one.
As a geopolitical concept, “Indo-Pacific” is but a new name for the historic “Rimland,” the geopolitical theory upon which the U.S. based its containment policy of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. (Map 3)
And as with the Rimland, the Indo-Pacific area has the same three zones of conflict. (Maps 4 and 5)
But the exact boundary of the Indo-Pacific area varies with the military capabilities of the powers present in the region – Japan, U.S., France, Australia, and India (Map 6).
Map 6Divergent Interpretations of the Indo-Pacific Region
Japan – maroon, U.S. – orange, France – blue, Australia – purple, India – black
Created by NATO HQ SACT Strategic Forecast Branch, May 14, 2022
To compensate for a relative weak strategic position in the region, states, large and small, powerful and less powerful, pursue bilateral and multilateral alliances. In the Indo-Pacific area there is an array of regional organizations, some overlap with others, ASEAN, APEC, AUKUS, Bay of Bengal Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation, Commonwealth of Independent States, Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, Council of Regional Organizations of the Pacific, Indian Ocean Rim Association, OPEC, Pacific Community, Pacific Economic Cooperation Council, QUAD, Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, and Shanghai Cooperation Organization. (Map 7)
Map 7 Some of the overlapping organizations in the Indo-Pacific Area
APEC: Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, RCEP: Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership,
CPTPP: Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership,
QUAD: Australia, India, Japan and the United States
Map 8
NATO, however, is not and will not be involved in the geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific area despite the British and the French having bases in the region. (Map 8)
On June 23, 2025, CSIS reported “Getting Europe more involved in Asian security will be difficult. European states trade extensively with China – China remains the European Union’s second largest trade partner (after the United States), with an average daily trade of $1.5 billion. Geography also matters: The United States is a Pacific as well as Atlantic power, while European states focus more on their Russian neighbor, not far-away China. Even if European states wanted to play a greater role, their military capabilities are limited. There are doubts about how much the continent can contribute to Ukraine’s defense and that of post-war Europe, a far more straightforward task than projecting power halfway across the world to Taiwan, the South China Sea, or other areas. NATO’s policy in Asia is further complicated by the lack of member-state unity in their individual relationships with China…”9
For the last twelve years, the geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific area has been defined by the growing rivalry between China and the United States for domination of the region. Washington has it; Beijing wants it.
Map 9 
China is challenging the United States through its Belt Road Initiative (BRI), which seeks to integrate the economies of Eurasia, Africa and China. According to China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “The Belt and Road Initiative aims to promote the connectivity of Asian, European and African continents and their adjacent seas, establish and strengthen partner-ships among the countries along the Belt and Road, set up all-dimensional, multi-tiered and composite connectivity networks, and realize diversified, independent, balanced and sustainable development in these countries.W”11 (Map 9).
The goal is to replace the United States post-Cold War unipolar world order with a new Sinocentric unipolar world order. (Map 10)
Map 10  “China’s Strategic Space – China at the center”
This first entails displacing Washington as the paramount power in the Indo-Pacific area, which would enable Beijing to annex Taiwan – quickly, successfully, and permanently. China would then be in a strategic position to resolve disputes on its terms with Japan in the East China Sea (Map 11) and with any lingering opposition in Southeast Asia to its territorial claims in the South China Sea with its “nine-dash line.” (Map 12).
Map 11
Map 12
Washington responded by using the three island chains, which were established during the Cold War to contain the Soviet Union, to counter China’s maritime expansion into the Western Pacific. (Map 13)
Map 13 The “Island Chain” strategy
But Beijing applied “strategic judo” and is utilizing those very island chains to undermine Washington’s vulnerable military position in the Pacific, which is its gateway to the Indian Ocean. (Map 14)
As reported May 9, 2024, by Stars & Stripes, an independent news service serving the U.S. military community,16 “U.S. military bases in the Indo-Pacific region are sorely lacking hardened aircraft shelters, leaving them vulnerable to devastating air-strikes in a potential conflict with China, lawmakers warned. Recent war games show the U.S. would lose 90% of its aircraft on the ground, rather than in air combat, due to insufficient base protection a group of Republican lawmakers wrote in a letter to the secretaries of the Air Force and Navy. ‘Unclassified analysis suggests China has enough weapons to overwhelm our air and missile defenses protecting those bases,’ they wrote. ‘Strikes on U.S. bases could immobilize vital air assets, disrupt logistical chains, and significantly weaken our ability to respond in a conflict. ’”17
Map 14. U.S. military presence throughout the Pacific Ocean
U.S. military bases in the Pacific are located in the three island chains, which Beijing now identifies as the Near, Middle and Far Seas. Each sea is of increasingly greater strategic importance to China. (Map 15)
Map 15 “Near Seas” vs. “Far Seas”
The Near Seas corresponds to the First Island Chain and encompasses Taiwan and China’s territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas as well as its vital shipping lanes. Because of China’s growing naval power in the First Island Chain, Washington is pivoting to the Second Island Chain. “The US is expanding its military infrastructure on key islands in the second chain, including Guam, Palau, and Tinian [Northern Marianas]. This involves developing runways, deep-water ports, and air defense systems to secure American interests in the Indo-Pacific. Concurrently, the United States has begun relocating almost 9,000 Marine Corps personnel from Okinawa to Guam and Hawaii.”20 (Map 16)
The Central European Institute of Asian Studies analyzed the strength and weakness of this pivot in “US shifts priority to Indo-Pacific’s ‘second island chain’ – what does it mean for Taiwan?”. The author, Jun Kajee, wrote, “While these efforts seek to consolidate US military power and provide a stronger deterrent against Chinese aggres-sion, they also signal a shifting posture that could have wider implications for regional security. Prevailing logic suggests that dispersing forces to the second chain enhances their ability to cope against potential Chinese strikes but reduces the ability of the US military to respond within the first chain. This creates a dilemma: prioritizing distant but resilient positions in the second chain could embolden China to push harder against vulnerable allies in the first chain.”21 (Map 17)
Map 16
Map 17 Scenario on the fall of the First Island Chain
The Middle Seas corresponds to the Second Island Chain. The importance of which Jun Kajee noted is “While the second chain is less densely populated and militarized than the first, it is a crucial geographical base for US power projection and potential deterrence of Chinese maritime expansion.”24
Projection of such power rely on Palau but especially Guam. They are strategic bases and vital hubs in Washington’s military supply chains in the region. The loss of Guam and Palau would deprive the United States of the means to resupply its forces in the Western Pacific in a timely manner. (Map 18).
Guam, which is “about 1,800 miles from China’s coastline serves as a strategic staging area for projecting U.S. military power in the Indo-Pacific and is home to three major military facilities: Andersen Air Force Base, Naval Base Guam and Marine Corps Base Camp Blaz.”25 It is nicknamed “the tip of the spear.” Guam is now “vulnerable to China’s extensive missile arsenal, including DF-26 ‘Guam Killer’ ballistic missiles.”26
Furthermore, Guam is exposed. GAO March 12, 2025 report “found that DOD has neither established when and how the military services will take responsibility for operating and sustaining the Guam missile defense system, nor has it identified the number of personnel that the services will need to deploy to Guam.”27
Palau is closer to China and more vulnerable to attack. But here Beijing is pursuing a different, and more alarming, approach than a direct military assault.
As Cloe Paskal wrote in “Palau is under attack from PRC,” November 4, 2024, “Foreigners can’t buy land in Palau, but they can lease it for up to 99 years. Chinese citizens have leased land in highly strategic locations, including near U.S. military installations, coastal high ground, near the main airport and near spots that could become ports.”28 Palau can now be neutralized by China from within as well as from without.
In addition to a military buildup, China relies on a diplomatic offensive in the South Pacific to undercut the U.S. military presence in the region.
During World War II, General Douglas MacArthur pursued a tactic of “island hopping” in the South Pacific to defeat the Japanese. “[S]kipping over heavily fortified islands in order to seize lightly defended locations that could support the next advance… Japanese strongholds were isolated…This new strategy turned the vast Pacific distances into an American ally, and the United States used it to leapfrog across the Pacific.”29 (Map 19)
Map 18
Map 19 “Island Hopping” – WWII U.S. Military tactic in the South Pacific
China has adapted the military tactic of “island hopping” to its diplomatic initiatives in the South Pacific with the islands in the second and third island chains. (Map 20).
Map 20  “Island Hopping” – 21st Century Chinese diplomatic strategy in the South Pacific
Map 21
Its efforts have succeeded in significantly altering the traditional balance of power in the South Pacific to China’s advantage. (Map 21)
On April 14, 2025, Newsweek reported, “China has quietly extended its military reach far across the Pacific by building dozens of ports, airports, and communications projects at key points in a vast region that could shut out the United States and its allies in the event of war…The projects appeared civilian in nature but were in reality ‘strategic nodes’ stretching about 3,000 miles, from Papua New Guinea immediately north of U.S. ally Australia, to Samoa, which lies about 40 miles away from the U.S. territory of American Samoa in Polynesia…”34
If war erupts between China and the United States over Taiwan, Beijing is now positioned to force the United States into a “two front” war – the Straits of Taiwan and the Second Island Chain. Beijing can place U.S. military bases in the First and Second Island Chains in a pincer movement, able to attack from both east and west, and cut U.S. supply lines to both island chains. (Map 22)
Map 22 China and the United States in the Western Pacific
The Far Seas corresponds to the Third Island Chain, Alaska – Hawaii – New Zealand, which is the last line of defense for the West Coast of the United States.
According to the U.S. Naval Institute in “China Could Attack Pearl Harbor – and the West Coast,” March 2025, “The Chinese have a clear capability to target U.S. bases in Hawaii. They could also threaten bases on the West Coast of the continental United States. The U.S. military must confront the grim fact that, at least at the start of a war, there may be no reliably secure rear areas in the Pacific.”36
For Beijing, its most important foreign policy objective is the re-unification of Taiwan with China. It would mark the symbolic end of the Chinese Civil War; the final victory of the Communists over the Nationalists. Annexation would provide Beijing additional global economic clout as Taiwan “is a major semiconductor producer and home to the world’s largest contract chipmaker TSMC, which supplies Nvidia and other companies powering the charge towards AI.”37 Control of Taiwan would give Beijing de facto control over the First Island Chain and the energy supply lines of Japan and South Korea.
Beijing has used her wealth as the world’s second largest economy38 to expand and modernize the PLA Navy to challenge the United States. According to the Pentagon’s “2024 Annual Report to Congress on the Military and Security Developments involving the People’s Republic of China”, “Numerically, the PRC has the largest navy in the world, with a battle-force of over 370 ships and submarines, including more than 140 major surface combatants. The PLAN is largely composed of modern multi-mission ships and submarines.”39
According to the U.S. Naval Institute, China’s navy “will grow to be at least 50% larger than America’s by 2035.”40 (Chart 1)
Chart 1
PLAN’s firepower is projected to surpass the U.S. Navy by 2027. (Chart 2)

Chart 2
Because of this growing disparity in firepower, projections for 2025 were that China could militarily overpower the United States in a war in the Taiwan Straits. (Map 23).
Map 23 China’s Expanding A2/AD (anti-access/area denial) Envelope
1999 2021 2025
On September 2, 2025, CSIS corroborated the massive disparity in military forces in the Taiwan Strait. (Table 1).
Table 1 The Cross-Strait Power Imbalance

Table 2 China versus Taiwan
By 2020, China possessed an incredible military advantage over Taiwan (Table 2).
In its “2024 Annual Report on Chinese Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China,” the Pentagon noted “in 2023, the PLAN continued to grow its ability to perform missions beyond the First Island Chain (FIC).”46 PLAN now has the ability to envelope Taiwan. (Map 24)
Map 24 Areas of Chinese military drills
China’s strategic advantage in the Taiwan Straits further improved when the United States imposed secondary tariffs on India to force New Delhi to cease importing oil from Russia. In response, India moved closer to both Russia and China with talk of reestablishing the Russia, India, China trilateral dialogue (RIC). “Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said, ‘China-Russia-India cooperation not only serves the respective interests of the three countries but also helps uphold peace, security, stability and progress in the region and the world.’ He added, ‘China stands ready to maintain communication with Russia and India on advancing the trilateral cooperation.’”48
If New Delhi and Beijing agreed to temporarily demilitarize their border, it would secure China’s rear, thereby, allowing Beijing to redeploy forces in its Western Theater Command which “is oriented toward India”49 (Map 25) to the east of the country in support of an invasion of Taiwan.
Map 25
This was confirmed by the South China Morning Post, August 11, 2025, when it reported “As Beijing sharpens its focus on maritime priorities, it is keen to stabilise its con-tinental flank with India, with which relations have remained tense since the 2020 Galwan Valley clash.”51
Should China invade Taiwan, the United States would reply with “Operation Hellscape.” This “envisions a battlefield filled with tens of thousands of unmanned ships, aircraft, and submarines all working in tandem to engage thousands of targets across the vast span of the West Pacific… to impede any attempted invasion force while causing the highest level of damage possible, allowing U.S. and allied forces adequate time to set up necessary logistics and forward-based forces in the West Pacific.”52
Admiral Samuel Paparo, Commander, Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) said in an interview with The Washington Post, June 10, 2024, “I want to turn the Taiwan Strait into an unmanned hellscape using a number of classified capabilities so I can make their lives utterly miserable for a month, which buys me the time for the rest of everything.”53
Map 26  US Navy Fleets’ areas of responsibility
Map 27
The admiral stated tens of thousands of “Hellscape” drones would give him the one month he needs to assemble an Armada, likely from the 3rd, 5th, and 7th U.S. Fleets, for a counter attack against China’s invasion of Taiwan. (Maps 26 and 27)
But the Admiral does not have a month. He has seven days. In “Empty Bins in a Wartime Environment: The Challenge to the U.S. Defense Industrial Base,” January 23, 2023, CSIS noted that “The U.S. defense industrial base is not adequately prepared for the international security environment that now exists. In a major regional conflict – such as a war with China in the Taiwan Strait – the U.S. use of munitions would likely exceed the current stockpiles of the U.S. Department of Defense. According to the results of a series of CSIS war games, the United States would likely run out of some munitions – such as long-range, precision-guided munitions – in less than one week in a Taiwan Strait conflict.”56
The problem for the United States in the Indo-Pacific Theater is the war in Ukraine. On November 18, 2022, National Defense, corroborating the August 29, 2022 report by The Wall Street Journal,57 stated “The United States has provided a staggering volume of military aid to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion began Feb. 24. The Stingers, Javelins, HIMARS, and 155 mm howitzer have upended Russia’s invasion, and Ukraine has successfully regained territory in the east. Behind this operational success lies an uncomfortable reality: the war in Ukraine has left U.S. defense stockpiles significantly depleted. Current inventories do not undergird a national security strategy that continues to support Ukraine while retaining the ability to assist Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion.”58
Two years later, November 11, 2024, Responsible Statecraft reported “Regardless of the merits or demerits of the Biden administration’s policies on the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and the wider Middle East, it has become clear that the United States has been using and giving away its missiles faster than it can produce them. It is also clear that from the perspective of missile inventories and production, the United States is far from prepared to engage confidently in a sustained direct conflict with a peer competitor like China.”59
The next week, November 18, 2024, speaking at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, five months after his “Hellscape” interview with The Washington Post, Admiral Paparo admitted “that the U.S. providing or selling billions of dollars worth of air defenses to both Ukraine and Israel is now impeding his ability to respond in the Indo-Pacific, such as if China invades Taiwan.”60
The problem confronting the U.S. Navy in a war in the Strait of Taiwan goes beyond lack of ammunition. It centers on the very state of readiness of the U.S. Navy. “Substan-dard repairs and a slow bureaucracy have caused U.S. Navy ships to sit in repair yards for years without being used, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday [August 4, 2025]. Between one- and two-thirds of U.S. surface ship maintenance has lagged behind schedule in recent years, U.S. officials have said, according to The Wall Street Journal. The delays exacerbate America’s problem of failing to build ships as swiftly as China, a top adversary working to expand its presence in the Indo-Pacific region and threaten U.S. interests.”61
Naval Command has not been taking these issues seriously. A case in point is the USS Boxer. The National Interest reported, September 12, 2024, the 843-foot-long Wasp-class amphibious assault ship “has spent more time undergoing repairs than on deployment. Yet, despite the maintenance issues, in March [2024], the United States Navy announced that USS Boxer earned seven Navy-wide awards for sustained superior performance.”62
Table 3.
The report continued “Another worrisome trend impacting the United States Navy is the time it now takes to refuel its nuclear-powered supercarriers. The process, known as the Refueling and Complex Overhaul (RCOH) – which is required after a nuclear-powered carrier has been in service for around 25 years – was designed to take approximately three years… USS George Washington (CVN-73), the RCOH lasted nearly six years. The current RCOH for USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74), even with the lessons learned, will still stretch out to nearly five years – and that’s only if additional problems don’t crop up.”64
In addition, the U.S. Navy is small, “smallest since before World War I”65 and is shrinking compared to China’s PLAN (Table 3).
“In 2020, then Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said that even if the US stopped building ships, it would take years for China to match the US Navy’s power due to its technological capabilities and expertise.”66 It took China just five years to exceed the size and firepower of the U.S. Navy in the Strait of Taiwan and threaten U.S. bases in the First Island Chain.
In the meantime, the ships of the U.S. Navy rust. “Unaddressed rust and corrosion on Navy ships has downstream effects on maintenance and readiness…”67 (Photo 1)
Photo 1.68 USS Dewey (DDG 105) Arleigh Burke-class Flight IIA guided missile destroyer – coming into Singapore February 18, 2025
Then there are the issues of the number of naval personnel and their training. On March 12, 2025, the GAO released a report. Entitled “Military Readiness: Implementing GAO’s Recommendations Can Help DOD Address Persistent Challenges across Air, Sea, Ground, and Space Domains,” it found “The Navy faces several interrelated personnel and training challenges that inhibit sailors’ ability to complete required ship maintenance. In September 2024, we found that the Navy does not fill all required ship positions, and that sailors assigned to a ship are sometimes unavailable for duty (for example, temporarily assigned to another ship) or may have inadequate training or preparation for their positions, as shown in figure 1.”
Figure 1. Sailors Required and Assigned for Selected Ship Classes
“Sailor shortages hinder sailors’ ability to complete required maintenance, according to ship executive officers we surveyed, sailors from our visits to 25 ships, and our review of Navy data. For example, 63 percent of executive officers completing our survey said it was moderately to extremely difficult to complete repairs while underway with the number of sailors assigned to their ships. Our work found that the total sailor-led maintenance backlog declined for aircraft carriers and surface ships but increased for submarines. For a subset of maintenance actions classified as “mission-limiting” based on their priority and impact, the backlog worsened in fiscal year 2023, increasing by about 8 percent, according to our analysis.
Sailors who are assigned to a specific ship are sometimes unavailable to perform sailor-led maintenance, due to illness or temporary duty on another ship, among other reasons. However, we found the Navy did not track and report data on the number of sailors assigned to a ship, but not available for duty, according to officials. We previously raised questions about the reliability of data the Navy uses to monitor the personnel readiness of the fleet. Specifically, the Navy applies some business rules to this data that result in counting some junior enlisted sailors as filling positions that require more senior-level sailors. These practices did not provide the Navy with an accurate understanding of the true extent of personnel skill and experience gaps.”69
Furthermore, in a war with China in the Taiwan Straits, the U.S. Navy would have to fight alone. NATO, including its Indo-Pacific powers, France and the U.K., do not have means or interest to confront China. And the war would be over before Australia, NATO partner,70 could provide any significant military assistance to the United States.
However, it is likely China’s allies, North Korea and Russia, would take independent action but in coordination with Beijing to assist China. Should North Korea stage massive military maneuvers along Korea’s DMZ, the resulting security needs of South Korea and Japan would preclude deployment of their forces to assist Washington in the Taiwan Strait. Japan’s 2022 National Security Strategy “identified North Korea’s rapidly expanding and diversifying nuclear and missile programs as posing ‘an even more grave and imminent threat to Japan’s national security than ever before.’”71
If Moscow does not sit out the war, Tokyo is checkmated. Japan is placed in a pincer with China to its south and Russia to its north. In October 2024, U.S. Naval Institute reported, “Recent wargames show the United States would be hard-pressed to win a conflict over Taiwan without Japan’s support.”72
In “Russia Won’t Sit Out a US – China Asia – Pacific War,” Foreign Policy Research Institute, June 24, 2025, Garrett I. Campbell wrote, “Over the last six years, trends and data show that there has been a significant increase in Sino-Russian bilateral and multilateral military exercises on a global scale, and the vast majority of Sino-Russian exercises and strategic maritime and air patrols have occurred within and near Russia’s portion of the First Island Chain in the vicinity of northern Japan and the US Aleutian Islands. A March 2023 study by the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) entitled “Russian-Chinese Military Cooperation” presented forty-five global Sino-Russian bilateral and multilateral military events from 2005 to 2022. As of March 2025, a tally of additional exercises based on CNA criteria raises the number to well over sixty.”73 (Map 28).
Russia and China have “…expanded the geographic reach of their exercise program, with naval exercises taking place in more distant regions, while all kinds of military exercises took place in more sensitive locations. The content of the exercises also suggested an effort to increase complexity in order to achieve a higher degree of coordination. The launch of joint air and naval patrols in 2019 and 2021, respectively, highlights an effort to move beyond exercises and into real world operations, though to date the patrols differ little in practice from military exercises. Joint exercises have included efforts to integrate the use of each other’s military equipment and facilities, as well as the establishment of temporary joint command centers for the purpose of conducting specific exercises and operations.”74
Map 28 Russia – China Military Exercise Locations
In the Pacific, Russia is a major power. In June 2021, Russia’s Pacific Fleet conducted “the largest and farthest-flung exercise in its history in the Central Pacific Ocean,”76 2,200 nautical miles east of its homebase. One never attempted by the Soviet Navy. During this naval exercise, TWZ reported “Russian naval vessels passed between 23 and 34 miles of the Hawaiian Islands.”77 Catching the U.S. Navy off guard. (Map 29)
Map 29. Russia’s Pacific Fleet near Hawaii
In her June 13, 2021 analysis, “Russian Pacific Fleet breaks out: First exercise in Central Pacific,” former U.S. Naval Intelligence officer J.E. Dyer wrote “Back in 2013, Russia sent the interesting, but largely missed, signal that she could approach Guam by air, via a path along which the U.S. had no rapid-reaction interdiction capabilities until after the Russian bombers were in air-launched cruise missile range. In the geography Russia demonstrated, Guam was at essentially undefended risk. Nothing has really changed the dynamics of that conundrum in the years since.”79
Washington underestimates the military capabilities of the Russian Pacific Fleet assuming it to be as weak as Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. In “The Russian Navy: Sinking In The Black Sea But Surging In The Pacific,” December 30, 2023, Alexey D Muraviev, Associate Professor of National Security and Strategic Studies, Curtin University, Perth, Australia, dispels that notion. “Russia’s war in Ukraine has not had a considerable impact on the Pacific Fleet’s ongoing modernization or its various exercises and other activities.”80
The navies of Russia and China are equally capable of striking U.S. military bases in the First and Second Island Chains and potentially Hawaii in the Third Island Chain.
If China can control the First and Second Island Chains, can neutralize U.S. military bases at those locations, Beijing can successfully invade Taiwan.
If China can control the First and Second Island Chains, can neutralize U.S. military bases at those locations, the United States will no longer be an Indo-Pacific power.