Mateship Under Pressure: The USMC, Australia, and the Demands of Strategic Denial
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Mateship Under Pressure
The USMC, Australia, and the Demands of Strategic Denial
Current wars in Europe and the Middle East matter, but the central pacing challenge for the United States and its Pacific partners remains China. Beijing is modernising its military, expanding its maritime reach, and using coercive activity below the threshold of open conflict to shape the battlespace before a shot is fired.
A recent Wall Street Journal report captured the pattern clearly: Chinese fishing vessels pushed within 150 miles of a U.S. naval base in Japan.[1] Rather than an isolated incident, it reflected a decades-long campaign using fishing fleets, coast guard vessels, and artificial outposts to extend Chinese power, test allied reactions, normalize Beijing’s presence, and through asymmetric means, build the conditions for a future Pacific conflict on the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) terms.
