Member

China, Russia, Iran and North Korea all have a massive interest in and around the Indo-Pacific. We talk about Russia looking at Ukraine, but only 25% of Russia is in that space; 75% of Russia is in the Indo-Pacific. Russia is now providing training services to the Chinese military in airborne operations. North Korea is on the battlefield in Ukraine at the moment. We are seeing all the CRINK nations, as they are known, coming together, not adhering to the international rules-based order and not working as we would expect them to do. The Indo-Pacific area—I was recently there with Pacific Command —at 100 million square miles, is vast. There are 76,000 US Marines in the Indo-Pacific alone. That is phenomenal; it is bigger than our Army. Half the world’s population sits in this space. At Pacific Command, we can see the clock showing Diego Garcia’s time zone and all the multiple other time zones between there and the US.