This is the second article of a two-part series examining America’s past and present Expeditionary Advanced Base Doctrine. Part 1 can be found here.

80 years after the end of the Second World War, American attention has turned once again to the Western Pacific. Today, however, the potential adversary is Communist China rather than Imperial Japan. China is building and training a powerful navy, as did Japan before it. And, like Tokyo, Beijing is expanding its sphere of influence into the resource-rich Indo-Pacific region, which is also home to a primary global trade route through the Strait of Malacca.

In accordance with this mission, China is building artificial islands in the South China Sea, partially to enforce its disputed territorial claims with Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines, and Taiwan. Those islands also serve as a stout protective ring from which land-based troops, aircraft, and missile batteries can protect the homeland and coastal trade and logistical corridors. They would be key assets in China’s anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) strategy. Chinese aircraft and long-range missiles allow them to assume strategic defensive roles, even in operationally-offensive actions such as an attack on Taiwan.

A future war with China would still require American forces to cross the Pacific, but the situation in that regard is far better than the one America faced in 1941. Well-developed bases on Okinawa, Guam, the Philippines, and the support of allies like Australia, and, ironically, Japan, give the US military a distinct advantage denied to its forebears.

But the distances are still vast, requiring a coherent plan for forward land support of naval and air operations. To that end, the US military has begun projecting power into the Pacific, and no service has altered its approach to that........

© The National Interest