The island chain is not a novel concept but a recalibration of a Cold War strategy aimed at containing Soviet expansionism in the past, and undermining China's rise as a superpower today and in the near future.

Compared to the nine-dash line map of China, the United States’ island chain strategy is given less prominence in news reports and commentaries. While China’s arrogant claim over the whole South China Sea is rightly denounced by its neighbors, the imperial agenda of the US is glossed over and even justified as a peacekeeping measure.

The nine-dash line has been repeatedly debunked and invalidated even as China’s maritime actions continue to be guided by it. Meanwhile, the US is relentlessly pursuing its island chain strategy by depicting it as a deterrent against Chinese aggression.

The three island chains cover the entire Pacific and its main objective is to strengthen US security. The first island chain directly impacts the Philippines and several Southeast Asian nations. The island chain is not a novel concept but a recalibration of a Cold War strategy aimed at containing Soviet expansionism in the past, and undermining China’s rise as a superpower today and in the near future.

It is more than a mapping program that reflects not just the influence of the US but also its interventionist and colonial legacy. It is essentially the blueprint that calls for continuous US military buildup across the Pacific.

For the first island chain, the US has established bases and military presence in Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines. During the Cold War, its Subic and Clark bases became staging grounds for launching acts of aggression in the Indochina Peninsula. Despite the non-renewal of its bases treaty with the Philippines, the US maintained its political clout on its former colony. Various military arrangements and agreements were signed which allowed the US to deploy troops through the Visiting Forces Agreement in 1999 and build military facilities through the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement in 2014.

When China emerged as an “existential threat” to the US, it didn’t take a long time for the latter to pivot its forces back to Asia. The US rebalance was framed as a gesture of American benevolence supposedly in response to China’s intrusive actions. This was followed by the US brokering military coalitions and reviving outposts across what it calls Indo-Pacific, a very American (read: ambitious) name for a geopolitical move aimed at encircling a rival superpower. This is a vast economic corridor but it is first and foremost a domain that the US tries to dominate through its superior military might.

The three island chains strategy informs the military actions and aggressiveness of the US. The recent unveiling of the US national security paper confirms the importance given by White House and the Pentagon to the defense of the island chains. Under the Trump regime, US rhetoric guilt-trips its allies to spend on defense, but it ultimately lays down the narrative for granting the US the right to build military enclaves in the countries straddled by the island chains. “We will build a military capable of denying aggression anywhere in the First Island Chain. America’s diplomatic efforts should focus on pressing our First Island Chain allies and partners to allow the U.S. military greater access to their ports and other facilities, to spend more on their own defense, and most importantly to invest in capabilities aimed at deterring aggression.”

This is more than an aspirational text since the US has already been applying this thinking into practice. In the past three years, the Philippines under the Marcos Jr presidency has allowed the US to build bases, expand naval facilities, store missile systems, conduct year-round exercises, and organize multi-country provocative naval patrols in the South China Sea and near Taiwan, which are both maritime hotspots in this part of the world.

This is supposedly what cooperation looks like between treaty partners when in fact it operationalizes the US island chain strategy. The Philippines has been turned into an extension of the US military network, and we were told to be grateful because it purportedly advances our national security.  Articulating the geopolitical interests of the US is equated with the Constitutional provision of promoting an independent foreign policy. Government propaganda normalizes the revival of the colonial mentality that the only way for the Philippines to assert its sovereignty is to perpetually rely on its former occupier. The US props up puppet leaders like Marcos Jr who bargain our sovereignty and dignity as a nation in exchange for political survival.

The island chain strategy was conceptualized to preserve, defend, and expand US influence but insidiously imposed as our only feasible solution to counter external threats. It is presented as a defense posture even if the nonstop militarization of our lands actually escalates tension and intensifies espionage activities and an arms race involving the rivals of the US. Our backyards could be targeted by military powers for hosting US troops and armaments. The island chains bolster the security of the mainland US while endangering our communities. If war breaks out, the ground zero will be on our islands and our people are condemned to be the cannon fodder.

The island chain strategy has to be denounced for being an imperialist project that represents the biggest threat to world peace and the future of humanity. We have to amplify local resistance to the militarization of the islands, the protests against US bases, and the solidarity building as a challenge to the US war machine. Pockets of protests are linked not just within countries but across the island chains from the Philippines to Japan and South Korea. This is a crucial intervention by the islanders who are turning the concept of island chains into a platform to connect local initiatives with regionwide protests. If the US and its puppet governments are colluding, the people living in the island chains can also unite to expose and oppose imperialist aggression.

The island chain strategy viciously aims to polarize the region by pitting Asian nations against one another and a common enemy defined by the US. If the islands are divided, nations tend to focus on their parochial interests instead of seeing the value of making a united stand for real freedom and sovereignty. To defeat US imperialism, it has to be prevented from making the island chains its base for projecting its strength and staging attacks against its rivals. The people’s movements across the Asia-Pacific should reclaim the space appropriated by US bases and declare them as zones of peace and sovereignty. This struggle should be strong enough to depose puppets and tyrants and replace them with governments that can expel foreign troops. Lastly, the reconceptualized island chains must reach the US and link up with the American people who are carrying out a defiant stand against fascism and imperialism.

The progressive Philippine song “Muog na Buo” (Solid Fortress), which refers to the protracted war in the archipelago, can also allow us to reimagine how resistance can be waged in the island chains.

Narito tayo para ang kalat-kalat na pulo

Magiging muog na buo

We are here to turn our scattered isles

Into a solid fortress

Our rallying call is to fiercely drive out US troops and bases so that our islands can be a bastion and solid fortress of resistance against imperialism, and the rebuilding of our nations anchored on the principles of real freedom, justice, and democracy.

*Mong Palatino is the secretary general of Bayan and former representative of Kabataan Partylist.

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