Webinar | Who’s Losing the Pacific? Why We Must Resist Xi’s Unrestricted Warfare There

The Chinese Communists have engaged in unrestricted warfare against the United States for decades. The goal has been to defeat this country and supplant it as the world’s hegemon.

For over two years, the Committee on the Present Danger has conducted weekly webinars aimed at exposing the various means by which the CCP has advanced this agenda using essentially every available means, to date, short of kinetic warfare.

Among the most insidious of such techniques has been the use of political warfare to corrupt and “capture” elites, inducing them to betray their national interests by submitting to those of China. This practice has been much in evidence in the United States – notably, the CCP’s success in corrupting Wall Street to send trillions of dollars in American retail investors’ pension and other funds to underwrite the Party and its military build-up.

China’s political warfare also contributes to the steady cooption by Beijing of Pacific Island nations critical to controlling the region’s vast waters, airspace, trade routes, resources and defense. In many cases, islands Americans fought and died to liberate from Japanese rule in World War II are being turned into clients, hosts and, inevitably, colonies of a new imperial power: Communist China. It is hard to overstate the dire implications of such a “fundamental transformation” for America’s exposed allies and interests and, later if not sooner, for our home front, as well.

Cleo Paskal, a brilliant strategist specializing in the Indo-Pacific, has long warned of such a dramatic turn of events and urged corrective action. She has described the waters and islands of the Central Pacific Ocean as “the Pacific heartland” and compellingly argues that its takeover by the Chinese Communist Party is inexorably advancing to the grave detriment of those most immediately affected in the region and to U.S. security interests there and far beyond.

This CPDC webinar features a detailed presentation by Ms. Paskal of developments in the Pacific’s three island chains, their causes, and predictable repercussions. Comments from two of the Committee’s most admired subject matter experts and members, Capt. James Fanell and Col. Grant Newsham, round out the program.

Moderator:

- Frank Gaffney, President, Institute for the American Future; Vice Chairman, Committee on the Present Danger: China

Panelists:

- Capt. James Fanell, U.S. Navy (Ret.), Former Director of Intelligence and Information Operations, U.S. Pacific Fleet; Co-author, “Embracing Communist China: America’s Greatest Strategic Failure”
• Topic: “The CCP’s Regional and Global Ambitions – and Its Growing Capabilities to Realize Them: Are We Losing the Pacific?”

- Cleo Paskal, Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Indo-Pacific at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies; consultant, Network for Strategic Analysis; board member, International Board of Advisors of the Global Counter-Terrorism Council; taught at Defense Colleges in the United Kingdom, India and Oman
• Topic: “The Pacific Heartland is Up for Grabs: Will Xi Jinping Succeed in Enslaving the Region and Undermining the Free World?”

- Col. Grant Newsham, U.S. Marine Corps (Ret.), Former Military Attaché in Embassy Tokyo; former Foreign Service Officer; longtime business executive in the Western Pacific; Author, “When China Attacks: A Warning to America”
• Topic: “Chinese Corruption in the Pacific Island Chains: Xi’s Not-So-Secret Weapon and How We Can Disarm It”