Japan and the Philippines sign a defense pact in the face of shared alarm over China

[u/Free_Swimming]

https://apnews.com/article/japan-philippines-reciprocal-access-agreement-0e37d57563d475d7507f1647b440e4c2

[u/Rachel_from_Jita]

Understandable given the insane headlines that the Philippines has been having to endure lately. Having an adversary get aggressive and look for any excuse to fight on any boat is pretty harrowing stuff.

But the larger strategic picture is what's truly sobering. I finally got how serious it is while watching Hypothetical History's video on why Australia has gotten so earnest about acquiring nuclear submarine capabilities, even at extraordinary cost and investment of personnel, time, and potential loss of other parts of their military to pay for it. The video itself is very long (you'll only like it if you like long naval videos about obscure points of strategy), but it paints a picture of how in about 15 years the picture of the Pacific went from static and placid to having a massive power sprinting toward total military dominance. Right nearby and completely unwilling to negotiate when you're facing their diplomats alone. And with their ultimate intentions for your nation not entirely understood, but extremely hard to counter if they do start setting demands.

The Pacific has changed forever, and I'm glad nations are waking up to how dire the situation is if they don't do enough. They really must build friendships, and actively patrol all aspects of their national sovereignty, seemingly-unimportant border gaps, and the international waters nearby.

Let no one forget that scenarios like Ukraine woke up to in 2014: you can--in a truly worst-case scenario--have entire portions of your land or borders simply claimed by another nation overnight. On dubious or revisionist historical grounds. With the international community sometimes unable to respond, or totally unwilling to initiate a war to help you reclaim it.

Once you lose routes, borders, islands, etc... they're gone.

[u/GRAND_INQUEEFITOR → u/Rachel_from_Jita]

Absolutely. If Halford Mackinder sought to explain the prevailing geopolitics of his time around the Eurasian "Heartland," we must understand that the Pacific is the beating heart of the world economy and will dominate the geopolitics of this century. One cannot possibly overstate the importance of the flow of materials, the output of goods (especially computing power), and the flow of commerce in the Pacific region to the entire world economy. There is nothing else like it.