The Air Force Is Building Bases in the Pacific
To Prepare for a Future War with China
Dave DeCamp / Antiwar.com

(September 13, 2023) — The head of US Pacific Air Forces said Monday that the Air Force was clearing out jungles in the Pacific to build new airfields and restore old ones as part of the branch’s preparation for war with China in the region.

Anderson Air Force Base in the South Pacific.

The Air Force is working to expand its bases as part of a plan to become more mobile in the Pacific, a concept known as Agile Combat Employment (ACE). Pacific Air Forces Commander Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach said the Air Force is looking for more money to facilitate the military buildup.

“We’re going to be clearing out the jungle [and] we’re going to be resurfacing some of the surfaces there so that we will have a fairly large and very functional Agile Combat Employment base, an additional base to be able to operate from and we have several other projects like that around the region that we’ll be getting after,” he said at the Air & Space Forces Association’s Air, Space & Cyber conference, according to Defense One.

“That takes resources to be able to accomplish and so those are some of the resources that I argue for when I go back to the headquarters,” Wilsbach added. He said the Air Force requested funds for additional construction in the Pacific for its 2024 military budget.

Wilsbach said that every new base in the region is a new area China would have to target. “Every single additional airfield that I can operate from is another in a contingency or crisis, or a conflict is another airfield that China has to put into their targeting folders and, and then allocate resources toward them, which dilutes their ability to shut us completely down,” he said.

The Biden administration has been working to expand the US military footprint in the Asia Pacific. This year, the US signed a deal with the Philippines to gain access to four new bases in the country and inked an agreement with Papua New Guinea to gain access to airports and sea ports in the Pacific island nation. The US is also expanding its presence in Australia under the AUKUS pact.

Wilsbach also has his eye on newer weapons and said the Air Force needs to modernize to face China. “There’s some modernization for some of our current platforms that are very critical for maintaining dominance in some of our mission areas because while we have been doing a lot of things in the Middle East in the last 20 years, China’s been resourcing for near-peer competition,” he said.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall made similar comments at the conference. “The threat of attack from violent extremist organizations still exists, and we will address those threats as they occur. But China is by far our pacing challenge,” he said.

Clearing Out Pacific Jungles
To Prepare for War with China
Caitlin Johnstone / Peace and Planet News

(Fall 2023 Issue) — The US Air Force is clearing out jungles in the Pacific and replacing them with airfields for its coming war with China, because there exist people on this earth who look at a jungle and think, “This should be replaced with an airfield to prepare for a war with China.”

There are people on this earth who say, “You know the world would be a much better place if all these trees and exotic insects and birds were replaced with long stretches of concrete lined with nuclear bombers on high alert.”

There are people on this earth who see bulldozing rainforests to make way for war planes as much simpler and easier than just making peace.

There are people on this earth who would spend their entire lives making up new excuses to fight new enemies, and then tear up every inch of the biosphere looking for ways to defeat those enemies.

There are people on this earth who would rather wipe out all biodiversity than allow for any diversity in world leadership.

There are people on this earth who would rather rule supreme over a wasteland of irradiated dust and ashes than see the rise of a multipolar world.

There are people on this earth who would rather annihilate everything than take a brief moment to pause and look inward.

There are people on this earth who would rather stare down the barrel of nuclear armageddon than turn and stare at themselves.

There are people on this earth who would light the skies on fire before they’d take even a minute to just be here now.

There are people on this earth who would rather destroy everything than make peace with anything.

There are people on this earth who look at the staggering beauty of the natural world and think how wonderful it would be if they could tear it all down and funnel it into a factory to make Tomahawk missiles.

The biosphere is dying,
and we are hurtling toward nuclear war,
and it is so very, very heartbreaking,
and yet even in the midst of that heartbreak
nature shines as majestically as ever,
and some moments all you can do is take in the beauty
and take it as your solemn, sacred duty to appreciate it while it lasts,
and look at the trees and the bugs and the birds and the critters
who never had anything to do with this madness,
and bow as deeply as your body can bow,
and say I’m sorry.
I’m so sorry.

Caitlin Johnstone is a 100 percent crowdfunded rogue journalist, bogan socialist, anarcho-psychonaut, guerilla poet and utopia prepper living in Australia with her American husband and two kids. She writes about politics, economics, media, feminism and the nature of consciousness. She is the author of the illustrated poetry book Woke: A Field Guide For Utopia Preppers. Her website is  caityjohnstone.medium.com/.