Tag: Ports

A Narrow Pacific Waterway is at the Heart of U.S. Plans to Choke China’s Vast Navy +

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Reuters reprint: A Narrow Pacific Waterway is at the Heart of U.S. Plans to Choke China’s Vast Navy

Until recently, locals say, this smallest and least populous province of the Philippines was a peaceful backwater. But geography dictates that it is now on the frontline of the great power competition between the United States and China for dominance in the Asia-Pacific region. The islands sit on the southern edge of the Bashi Channel, a major shipping lane between the Philippines and Taiwan that connects the South China Sea with the Western Pacific.

This year’s exercises revealed how the U.S. and its Philippine ally intend to use ground-based anti-ship missiles as part of efforts to deny the Chinese navy access to the Western Pacific by making this waterway impassable in a conflict, Reuters reporting shows. These missiles could also be used to attack a Chinese fleet attempting to invade Taiwan or mount a blockade against the democratically governed island.

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Recent Chinese maneuvers show how access to the Bashi Channel is critical for Beijing’s plans in the Pacific. In June, a powerful Chinese navy aircraft carrier battle group used this passage to enter the Western Pacific before launching an extended series of exercises south of Japan, according to Japanese military tracking data.

Related:

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Nigeria as a Battleground for U.S.–China Influence?

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

CSIS

The following quotes are from an article I’m currently working on for Venezuela.

Sir Walter Raleigh, a leading figure in early English colonization, once declared, “For whosoever commands the sea commands the trade; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world, and consequently the world itself.“

CSIS’ Ryan Berg’s 2025 statement before the House Homeland Security Committee Subcommittee on Transportation and Maritime Security warned that Chinese port projects in adversarial states could offer a “permissive environment” for future PLA Navy operations.

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Messages at Shangri-La

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

by Brian Berletic

During this year’s Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth laid out an alarming vision for the future of the Asia-Pacific region, a vision that includes the same type of U.S. military encroachment and confrontation that has turned Europe, North Africa and the Middle East into devastated battlegrounds over the past two decades.

Messages at Shangri-La (archived)

China Has Quietly Won the Trade War—and Now Leads the World

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

China has quietly won the trade war and is now reshaping global leadership—not through force, but through strategy, stability, and vision. It’s time for the West to learn, adapt, and embrace a shared future led by a preponderant China.

“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”
—Vladimir Lenin

China Has Quietly Won the Trade War—and Now Leads the World (archived)

H/T: The Most Revolutionary Act

Related:

Quote Origin: Days Into Which 20 Years Are Compressed

[2012] Syria, Yemen, and America’s Quest for Imperial Dominance

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Syria, Yemen, and America’s Quest for Imperial Dominance

US interest in Yemen is certainly not rooted in altruism or a desire to promote democratic ideals. On the contrary, it is the application of a long-standing geopolitical strategy to control international trade through the Mandab Strait and Suez Canal, access to African raw materials, and most specifically, block the expansion of Chinese economic influence in both the Middle East and Africa. For these reasons, the United States has a keen interest in both Yemen and Somalia, desperate to maintain chaos in those countries so as to prevent stable, nationalist leaders from emerging. In so doing, Washington once again shows itself to be an imperialist aggressor, interested only in maintaining and expanding the empire.

Previously:

Trump extortion to choke off China’s maritime commerce

[2010] The Yemen Hidden Agenda: Behind the Al-Qaeda Scenarios, A Strategic Oil Transit Chokepoint

Chokepoints Are The Focus Of A New Cold War

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

By Captain John Konrad (gCaptain) In 1883, Alfred Thayer Mahan laid out the brutal truth of global power: Whoever rules the waves rules the world. He wasn’t just talking about fleets of warships. He was talking about chokepoints—the narrow passages through which the vast majority of the world’s trade must pass. Control them, and you don’t need to launch an invasion. You can starve an economy and restrict military sealift without ever firing a shot.

Chokepoints Are The Focus Of A New Cold War

Related:

Trump orders military to plan invasion of Panama to seize canal: report

US Seizing Panama & Greenland Aimed at China (archived)

Stranglehold: The Context, Conduct and Consequences of an American Naval Blockade of China

Offshore Control: A Proposed Strategy for an Unlikely Conflict

Polish strategic port changes hands from China to U.S.

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Timestamp: 7:02 – NATO’s Access to the Northern Sea Route from BlackRock’s Gdynia Port.

Tomasz Łukaszuk, who is also a research scientist at Warsaw University, was speaking as a U.S. consortium led by BlackRock is set to acquire a major stake in ports along the Panama Canal owned by a Hong Kong-based company, CK Hutchison Holdings, the same company that owns a cargo terminal in Poland’s Port of Gdynia.

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“It serves as the main transit hub for the transfer of American soldiers and equipment to Ukraine,” he continued. [Timestamp: 3:52]

Poland must ‘limit Chinese access’ to key ports, says Polish diplomat and scientist

Previously:

US Seizing Panama & Greenland Aimed at China (archived)

US Greenland-Panama Ambitions Aimed at War with Russia-China