Protecting the Corridor of Freedom to America’s Asian Border

Excerpt

Guam and the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI)—constituent parts of the United States—sit in such proximity to the Asian coast that the CNMI shares a maritime border with Japan. Stretching between them and Hawai’i are three independent countries—Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands—which have voluntarily granted the United States exclusive and extensive defense and security rights. This “corridor of freedom” across the central Pacific, earned through the blood of Americans during the island-hopping campaign of World War II and the goodwill of locals, is what enables the United States to extend its defense perimeter to Taiwan as well as to treaty allies Japan and the Philippines. The corridor of freedom is the bedrock of US defense strategy in the Pacific. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) perceives this relationship as a threat to its own power projection goals and has diligently worked to undermine the United States’ position in the region. If the United States is to maintain this Pacific buffer with Asia and keep Americans on Asia’s coast secure without again resorting to kinetic conflict, it will require a new “block-and-build” approach.

Cleo Paskal is nonresident senior fellow for the Indo-Pacific at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Washington, DC. She has testified before the US Congress, regularly lectures and moderates seminars for the US military, and has taught at defense colleges in the United States, United Kingdom, India, Oman, and elsewhere. She is currently working on a research project about national security coordination in the US Freely Associated States of Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands.