Angry Planet - America’s Pivot to the Pacific

Episode Date: May 23, 2025

Listen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.comThe Pentagon has been trying to pivot to the Pacific for years now. Under President Donald Trump 2.0, who is focused on China, it just might happen. It’s a complicated body of water with dozens of players and a bloody history. One where Beijing is increasingly asserting itself.Here to walk us through some of it is Angry Planet producer and Honolulu Star-Advertiser reporter Kevin Knodell. He’s just back from the Philippines where he spent two weeks reporting on a joint exercise between the U.S. and its allies in the Pacific.BalikatanTraining exercises as signallingHow 40 years of Balikatan tells the story of U.S.-Philippines relations“There are definitely some places where it is about the fish.”The Chinese Maritime MilitiaDuterte vs Marcos in 2025Why America doesn’t understand ChinaRussia’s imperial history in the Pacific (Kevin misspoke here, it’s Fort Elizabeth not Fort Alexandria)Why people like Pete HegsethThe Nine-Dash lineThe century of humiliationChecking up on Red HillHawaii troops forge alliances in PhilippinesArmy, allies ponder Pacific roleSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. Hey there, Angry Planet listeners. Did you know that Angry Planet is almost entirely listeners supported? If you go to Angry PlanetPod.com and ship in $9 a month, you get early access to all of our episodes, and they are commercial free. There's one up right now that won't be on the ad-supported feed until next week.

that is all about people that are trying to make AI generals, AIs that make command decisions, and why that is such a terrible idea. Without further ado, here is the episode. Hello and welcome to another conversation about conflict on an angry planet. Kevin, how are you doing? Doing all right. So the mysterious producer, Kevin Nodell, is here.

Kevin, will you introduce yourself to the fine audience, who's heard your name at the end of the show for 10 years, but may not know who you are? I mean, I've been on the show a few times. We've got a lot of new listeners, though. We've picked up quite a few in the last lake. Fair. Fair, fair.

Yeah, my name is Kevin Nodell. I am currently a Hawaii-based reporter covering the U.S. military in Hawaii and its actions here and throughout the Pacific region more broadly. Before that, I did some work in Iraq and Syria through. various freelance outlets to include War is Boring, which is how we are connected. Which is where yeah, where it all stems from. Is the Wars Boring kids

getting together and doing something? It was so funny. I was because I was looking through like all of all of your recent stuff for the Star Advisor. Yeah. Is it weird to work for a print publication? Is it weird to like get a physical thing in your

hands? It has like the big splashy pictures on the front and your name on the, because I've never experienced that. Yeah, it's a cool thing. I don't think it's as weird for me as it would be for like you and Joe and some of the other words. Because I also, you know, did the school paper in college and also worked for some small town papers as a freelancer in the Puget Sound area while I was doing war as boring stuff. So I was still seeing my name in print from time to time. and did some magazine work where some of it showed up in print.

But yeah, it's weird that this is on an almost daily basis now. Yeah, I mean, I know you had like, you had that, was it about Lebanon and Playboy? That was in print, right? That made it to print. The Lebanon one was not in print. The two that made it into print were the soldiers our fucking one. Yes. That one made it to print.

And one about Erbil Kurdistan's Nightlife, actually, was the other print. Yeah, I can see the pictures in my head, like, and kind of the layout. Like all those, all those digital archives, that's a place like it's all gone now, right? If we didn't save it? Yeah, the digital only articles, yeah, they are, they're on the internet. archive. Right.

Some of them. Not all of them. I was able to track down most of mine recently because somebody reminded me that the internet archive exists. So a lot of them are still there, but yeah. Yeah. When when the corporate overlords decided that they were just no longer interested in having a magazine and wanted just a brand, they just decided they didn't need that shit anymore.

Yeah, and they flushed down the toilet. All things move towards their end. All of our work will eventually be just PDFs saved on our hard drives if we're lucky. Mm-hmm. All right, so you just got back, you're back now. That room looks familiar. You were in the Philippines. I was in the Philippines, yeah.

What were you doing in the Philippines? I was covering exercise Balakatan, which is an annual military engagement, initially between the U.S. and the Philippines, and still between the U.S. and the Philippines, but now bringing in this most recently had troops from Australia, Japan, and much smaller contribution from the U.K., France, and Canada, and observers from about 20 other countries. We're all interested in kind of what's going on out there with regional tensions.

So I was mostly doing that, and I was focused mostly on the Hawaii-based units that are participating, which was not an insignificant portion of it with the third Marine Latorial Regiment and the 22th Amendmentry Division. This is shoulder to shoulder. Is that what they called it in Tagalog? Yeah. I don't know why. Tagalog, sorry. It's the first major fuck-up of the episode. Jesus.

Okay, welcome to the Pacific. We'll get there. What's, how far away is the Philippines from everything else? When I say that I mean like Hawaii and China. Oh, well, from Hawaii pretty far. Because, you know, Hawaii is centrally located, but that also makes it kind of far from everything. For me to get there, that was like, I think. I did a connecting flight in Japan, so it was about a day.

It took a day to get there. Jesus, okay. But in terms of, well, how close it is to China, I think, is a subject of debate and kind of one of the central problems of setting the Pacific right now. Okay. Well, let's get into it then. Yeah. So I think to answer that question, the first thing we need to explain, is something called the nine dash line, which, you know, is, you know, sometimes people have a

hard time visualing this conflict. And also, you know, with the name of the South China Sea, which was given the area by British imperialists to just kind of give it a name. But like, it's just, it's a body of water. And yes, Chinese merchants moved all around it. But, you know, there are, There's a, you know, they call it the nine dash line. It's on a map. It's nine dashes. And it basically is a map, I think originally drawn by the government of Cheng Kai Shek actually in nationalist China. But basically it says that the entire South China Sea is the sovereign exclusive territory of China to include the reefs and islands in it.

So if you look at that, then the Philippines is very close to China. What might say it's in their sphere of influence? Yes, very, very much you could say that. And certainly people do. Some folks in the Philippines feel very differently about that and about which islands belong to which. But even without that, the Philippines, Philippines still is pretty close to China and pretty close to Taiwan. Like the Luzon Strait, you know, it's not very big, all things considered.

During this exercise, U.S. Marines went to the Patanus Islands, which are closer to Taiwan than to the mainland Philippines. but they are a Filipino province populated by Filipino people. So this then is a big flashy. Was it flashy? Would you say it was flashy? I would say this year it was pretty flashy. Yeah, because it's military exercises of this nature are yes, to make, like to get to get shoulder to shoulder with allies and partners.

But also it's signaling, right? It's signaling to the people on the other side of the nine dash line. Right. Right. Well, sometimes inside the nine dash line because they are, that is one of the issues here is that even as this was happening, there were Chinese forces sometimes in not too far away. And sometimes within waters that internationally would be recognized as the Philippines' exclusive economic zone. And I should also add that officially, Balakatan is a bilateral exercise and it is not directed against any country, as you know. And but also it should be noted that it's an like, I think this is the 40th iteration of it.

So it's been going on since before the most recent tensions with China. it used to really focus a lot more on coin, you know, because that's the way it were. A lot of things have changed in the Philippines, and we can maybe get into that a little bit in terms of why, you know, the shift to external defense away from internal defense, though, like, the Philippines is still not the world's most stable country, even though insurgency is far, far, far less of a concern. to leadership of the country these days. Okay, yeah. Balakatan also just has grown significantly because it really did used to be like small units, interactions between just the U.S. and the Philippines. So we were talking mostly like infantry maneuvers. This year we had, you know, jets flying overhead and helicopters and, you know, missiles and just moving all around the archipelago and really focused on coastal defense operations. Let me ask you.

Sure, this is officially like a bilateral, et cetera, et cetera. But let's say two years from now, the thing that has been wargamed out the wazoo happens and China comes across the straight into Taiwan. from where are American troops going to be staged? From probably from Okinawa and from Luzon. No, I mean, I mean, we, I had some candid, like, conversations with people about how, you know, if something were to happen. But, you know, whether it be China or anyone else, because, no, this is true. Like, invasions in Taiwan or sorry, in the Philippines, when they've been invaded in the past, they're invaded from. the north and the west just because of the way that the currents work because of where is a good

place to actually land. That's where the Spanish landed. That's where the Japanese landed. That's where we landed when we took it from Spain. Like, that's generally what happens. MacArthur's really the only one who ever did something separately, and that was to get in there and do what the Japanese thought he wouldn't dare do. And MacArthur, you know, I don't know that we need to get into him that we can have an entire thing on that complicated guy made there were there was sometimes genius sometimes hubris

but he's definitely very connected to America's legacy in the Philippines and the entire Pacific for sure another man with a complicated relationship with his mother um okay so what was it like what was your general

in print like how long were you there I guess I was there almost two weeks um I think maybe more like a week and a half, but yeah. And yeah, like that's how long it was. What would we mean impressions? That can mean a lot of things.

That can mean a lot of things. How did you I mean, I've just got so many questions. It is one of these things where like I'm going to have to ask you to talk in generalities, right? It's okay. Because like you can't tell me how every, everybody in the Philippines feels about X, Y, or Z.

Sure. But like what were of the, you spent most of your time with the Marines, you said. well I mean that that was kind of who I was focused on a lot because the reality is I think I spent more time with the Filipino military I mean okay great what were what were they like what were they like getting ready for what did they have was there anything that they like wanted to stress to you or thought you was important that you know yeah I mean I mean there you know there was a lot of conversations that we had mostly a lot of them were pretty generally express pretty pro-American sentiment and we're excited for the exercise and excited for, you know, the opportunity to have this and, you know, have a lot of trepidation about how China is behaving and in their E.E.Z. But I would also say that as time went on and as I got to hang out with them more and also see some of the interactions between them and the Americans, a lot of them positive, but there were also moments where there was some frustration.

you know, that's because one thing is, you know, that their American troops now have access to bases there again, but they don't have bases of their own. And that's kind of an important part of the arrangement is that, and I heard it more than once, like we don't want it to be like it was. You know, they're sovereign.

We don't want to be, we don't want to be a colonial outpost. No. We want you to be guests. Right. And there was one, I won't get overly specific about it, just because, you know, I watched them really try to smooth it over and I think mostly did. But there was a heated disagreement between a Filipino officer and some Marine officers about a thing. And as we were leaving, you know, Edward, the Filipino journalist that I was working with, he was. He was. He was. kind of the one who pointed out like, you know, they want the Americans here, but, you know, sometimes they come in here and they still feel like they own the place. And that is a frustration when when that happens from time to time. Now, I think at the senior level, that's probably not as much the case. Because one thing is that the chief of the Philippine military, General Brunner, is somebody who is very well respected and very well liked by the American. and, you know, his done training in the U.S. speaks like, like flawless, barely accented English. So, like, when, when he interacts with them, they, they listen, you know. But some of the, some of the other ones, not always. So, like, he commands a lot of respect being this special

forces veteran who, you know, fought against, like, al-Qaeda-linked militants during, like, the coin years, is his, his, his, he's. is trained at high levels with high level American leadership is a guy that they respect. But, you know, the overall relationship with the Philippines when you get in the weeds is still complicated. Tell me about the counterinsurgency years then. Let me, give me that historical base. Okay. And in like the quickest way, I think that we in the quick way.

Because I'm also not like. You see on September 11th. 2001. No, I don't need. Well, no. But I mean, that goes back before that, truly, though. It's so like that was when we started paying attention to that sort of thing again. And I think one thing that's, so they had multiple insurgencies, really. So you had the Moros, which is in Islam, you know, an ethnic group in the South, overwhelmingly Muslim down on the island of Menda now. And that goes all the way back.

when the U.S. took possession of the Philippines as a colony, that was an insurgency that the U.S. military fought and went off and on. But, you know, it's a group of separatists. But over time and also with the involvement of al-Qaeda and later ISIS-linked groups, it kind of soured a lot of people down there on the idea of doing this kind of thing to include even the militant groups. groups who, you know, they, they were Islamic, sometimes even Islamist, but they were not that. And it's different when you become part of a foreign franchise. Right. And that became something that a lot of them were less into. And, you know, that led to, you know, more peace talks. I mean, there was the very, very violent battle of Marawi. I believe in 2017 it was. And that was when Abu Sayyaf and ISIS kind of took over this town. And there was a very brutal battle to take it back. It was it was it was basically leveled during the fighting, not unlike what we saw in Mosul. And, you know, there were various human rights abuses

by combatants on both sides. But anyway, there was that and insurgency and there's also there there's also often on communist insurgents and and they are still around but not really in large amounts you know they're they're up in kind of some of the mountainous regions um you know doing various things from time to time like occasionally there'll be some kind of raid a lot a lot of what they're doing is you know there's a lot of allegations of you know extortion and them basically turning to banditry to survive and keep their movement going. Not unfamiliar, an unfamiliar story for a lot of insurgent groups like that. And they're like, I think there's, you could draw some parallels, I think, to like FARC and Columbia, but I don't think they have anywhere near the level of power and influence. But in terms of them needing to survive, I think even those who are more sympathetic to them would not deny that they're definitely involved in some criminal enterprises to keep the lights on.

But anyway, but the point being that in time, most of this is kind of really faded into the background. It's small. Occasionally there will be a firefight between security forces and one of these groups. Like there's some breakaway factions down south in Mendanao. There was a recent skirmish between Filipino troops and some Islamist fighters, but they're not, it's not considered to really be a hot war or that active of an insurgency anymore. It's just a thing where it's a kind of dangerous place to be. Dangerous things happen. But the thing that they are really concerned about is the violence that they're seeing in the South China Sea directed against their fishermen and maritime workers by the Chinese Coast Guard and by their maritime militias and their own fishermen kind of attacking people out there.

That's where their attention is now. So they're really shifting toward territorial. defense in looking to their coasts and disputed islands. So this is that thing that we've talked about on the show before where, like, China in an effort to exert control and what it's uses its sphere of influence. Fuchs with fish and fishermen. Yeah. I mean, but it's, it's, it's that, but it's, it's, it's, it's by extension, it's about

territory. Like, it's, it's very rarely about the, fish itself. The fish is just the thing to fight over. Well, in the South China. It's a source of protein too, right? Yeah. Well, no, I mean, and we can get into some of the coverage I did last year.

Like, there were definitely places where it is about the fish. But in a lot of places in the South China Sea, it's about the territory. And it's also potentially about oil deposits and things beneath the fish. But, but yeah, for, for the. The Philippines for sure, and for Filipino fishermen, it's been a big issue. Being able to access areas that, and to give you also some context, most of the Filipino fishermen we're talking about, like, if you're thinking in your head, like big, big commercial fishing vessels, like you would see out on the open ocean, that's not what we're talking

about here. We're talking about guys going out in canoes. a lot of times actually doing fishing like in the dark hours at like night or in the morning going out there you know on on these much smaller boats and kind of fishing by hand with nets and fishing poles

and bringing it back into ports to various fish ports along the Filipino coast and then they get like the Coast the Chinese Coast Guard kind of just rams the boat or gets close or... Yeah. Rams shoots them with water cannons.

There have been cases of both being rammed and sunk and the fishermen needing to be rescued from the water. Like it's, you know, it's not... Most of these encounters are not deadly, but they are violent. And I mean, if you see video of it, like, you get an idea that, like, this is not just, yeah, like, it's beyond just a tense situation. It's a violent situation. It, and it is various groups employing violence to include these very, very patriotic fishermen of the Chinese fishing fleet. I actually got to see Edward, my, the photographer I worked with. He had, he had been out on the South China Sea and taken pictures of some of these engagements. And he showed me

of him. He has a camera that can shoot very high resolution and can like zoom. So he got he got some close-ups of some of the Chinese maritime militia boats and the crews that are on them. And just some observations. Very sophisticated camera and sensor stuff on these boats. The guys also had very expensive cameras in their hands. And these are the cleanest fishing boats I've ever seen. that really don't look like they've ever had a fish on them ever. And the guys all look very, you know, they're all very clean cut, you know, high and tight haircuts. And they look very, very organized, a very organized fishing organization with not a lot of fish to see. Kevin, are you saying that it appears to be some sort of Chinese military operation? It, you know, it kind of looks that way. When you see it up close, it's, it is pretty stunning. Yeah, they're very new, very clean boats.

I mean, there are still, there are actual fishing boats out there, too, Chinese fishing boats. And, you know, it's been an ongoing question about where the Chinese fishing fleet ends and where the maritime militia begins and where the Chinese, like where the overlap is and to what degree any of this. works together and what level of command and control they have. It's hard to know. But, you know, even other places and beyond the South China Sea, just around the Pacific, there have been evidence in cases of even what we would consider a fishing boat, like doing fishing stuff, potentially being involved in surveillance and taking notes and reporting back to the PLL. but it's just very hard to know to what degree that this is happening and it's all yeah, we just don't know. And I've asked I've asked like

U.S. officials about this including one who used to work in intelligence at a pretty high level. And she just point Blake told me like, you know, I'd love to answer that for you. And it's not even just because it's classified. Like I don't know. Like we don't really know.

We don't understand how this system works. So there is just in, to kind of like get a big picture summary of it in my brain. So in contested waters, there is a fisherman, a Chinese fisherman's militia. They don't even call it that. You know, we, we, you know, from the outside they've been referred to as maritime militias. In China, they, they are referred to as patriotic. I see. Patriotic fishermen. That's pretty... Who are just, you know, who are just doing their part to help defend, defend contested territory because, you know, in keeping the Filipino fishermen who are trying to aggress against...

I see. And it's sovereign territory and its sovereign rights in these reefs. That, that, I believe, is kind of the official line. I mean, they acknowledge that some of them get some level of training from the military to be patriotic and help, but they don't use the term maritime militia, at least not externally. We don't know how they talk about these things internally. So then this is part of, in the Philippines at least, and I would think that some people in the American Defense Department certainly want it to be this way. there is a pivot from coin to China in the Pacific. I would say absolutely yes.

I mean, there's still going to be a level of coin for a lot of countries in that region because, you know, there just is, there are realities there. Internal defense is never not going to be something that these militaries are engaged in. But yeah, much more people are focused on their coastlines. and navies are starting to get more funding and attention because, yeah, the Philippine Navy has not gotten a lot of love over the years. They got only... Many such cases in the world right now.

Yeah, and yeah, they're starting to buy up as many Korean ships as they can, it seems, is kind of... The Korean shipbuilding industry seems to be the go-to guys for a lot of countries in the region right now. But yeah, no, people are really trying to figure out how to secure their maritime borders. Now, there are also like a few countries like India that have some physical borders with China, and that's continued to be an issue too. So it isn't all at sea. There's a lot of stuff happening on land.

Asia and the Pacific continues to be a very complicated place. All right. I have, I almost hate to ask this question, but I have to ask this question. What do, what did the, the people in the Philippines that you talk to make of, uh, current U.S. domestic politics? Yeah. Um, they're not, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, a lot of, lot of that going around right now. Yeah. Um, and yeah, um, um, yeah, I don't know. and yeah, I don't know, I don't know.

And yeah, I don't know. I, you know, in my current job, I try to steer clear of any, like, I don't like partisan commentary. Never have, you know, it's not really my job necessarily to do that. But I think when we look at this one, though, like in the Philippines, and we can get into some of the other relationships, too, because I think I'm now the most well-traveled local journalists working in America. right now through a series of happy accidents. One thing, though, is that it does seem, I know senior officials have said that they're not so concerned that they feel that this alliance is in pretty good shape. you know, Pete Hegzith, he hit one of his, when he did his Pacific tour, he stopped in Hawaii, he stopped in Guam, but he also stopped in Japan, the Philippines. The Philippines was a very important place to go. And he made pretty clear that he considered that to be an alliance that the administration wants to keep strong. You know, he visited the U.S. cemetery in Manila, because there is a U.S. War Cemetery there. A lot of Americans are buried in the Philippines, and that's something that's still important to a lot of people.

So now, I think a bigger question, and I don't want to get into the wheeves on this, because I'm also just not an expert. We're going to kind of see what happens over the next. There was just an election in the Philippines this week, a midterm, and next we're going to see a presidential election in the next turn. And there's bad blood between Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the current president, and Sarah Duterte, the vice president. The Duterte and the Marcos clans kind of formed an alliance when they were running for office. But they've kind of come to view things very differently. And there's a lot of rifts. And one of the rifts is a foreign policy rift.

Duterte was kind of infamously like, you know, known to be very skeptical of the partnership with the U.S. and wanting to see if he could forge closer ties with China and figure out ways to make the Philippines less dependent and see if China could be more receptive to. And also, I think, his governing style, he admires China more than the U.S. Duterte personally. And Marcos, when he was running, basically said, I want to, I want to try to keep doing that. I want to see if we can, we can kind of sort out these issues with China, not, not have the Americans quite as involved. Let's see if we can just kind of work this out between us. But I think when Marcos got to power and started interacting with the Chinese, he very quickly kind of changed tune.

And I think it was because he realized that the Chinese were not interested in negotiating these territorial disputes. When they said that to them, the nine dash line under China's current leadership is not negotiable. It's not a conversation. And they're not willing to have it with a lesser country is I think like this is a country in our sphere of influence. And, you know, there's an infamous quote from years ago. I believe it was in Singapore. It was an ASEAN meeting and Chinese diplomat said, you know, China is a big country and other countries are small countries and that is a reality. And that is a moment that people in Asia have remembered.

And it is a thing that just kind of keeps coming up. You know, and there's some things about China that I think that the West just fundamentally misunderstands. And some of the ways that we try to work things out with China, I think backfire, given their own history. Such as, like, what do you think it is that we misunderstand about China? I think there are deep grievances that China has that we, because I think a lot of people don't even understand our. own history with China. Like, like, an important thing that I think gets lost. I mean, I mean, some people know about the opium wars and, and like, there's grievance with the West there. But also, you know, you have the boxer rebellion in which an international coalition went and,

you know, intervened. The international coalitions of Western powers have intervened in China more than once. And I think it, like, for people who don't know the history of, you know, Shanghai, An important thing to know, and I don't think enough Americans appreciate this, there was a time when Shanghai, you know, the largest city in China was, was policed by foreigners. There were British, French, American police officers who had the Shanghai Municipal Police had some Chinese cops, but they were Chinese cops who worked for all these other guys, like overwhelmingly the detective. were these foreigners and they made the rules and they told people how to live and there were also you know foreign gunboats

patrolling the yanks so when international coalitions come into the South China Sea and say we're going to ensure freedom of navigation and tell China you know like you have to play by the rules you know you need to

they've heard all that before right and even if we have to have free trade in your country take these boxes of drugs. Right. Yeah. So some of this stuff I don't think plays. To an international audience, maybe it plays that like, yeah, we see some of us will see China's behavior as that of a bully.

China sees its behavior as the behavior of a global power whose position has been deprived of it for quite a long time. Now they're powerful. now they've got the strength and the economic stuff that was long denied them. And a bunch of, in their view, declining powers are trying to team up and take what's rightfully theirs. And I don't know exactly how we resolve this, but when I hear rhetoric about this and even when I talk to people who are experts about this, I'm like, I don't know if this is playing the way that you think it is. And I don't think, I think that there needs to be, dare I say it, a bit more empathy with China. Even if you see this stuff as bullying. And when I talk to regular people in the Philippines, too, not just the military, you know, they do feel like they're being bullied by this regional power.

But, yeah, I don't, I think that we just so frequently don't understand China's history and where China is. coming from on this and that's not to justify any of the country's conduct in the way that it treats and regards its neighbors but you know I can't stress enough

that American policemen used to walk around Shanghai like they owned the place they called a they called that 100 year period of their history the century of humiliation right and I and yeah I remember I talked to somebody who was

like a thing tanker out here in Hawaii once about that and mentioned it. And he said, like, well, you know, a lot of that's just like narrative and like some of the stuff they talk about in the Central of Humiliation isn't true. I'm like, well, okay, maybe not all of it. But some of it is. And it's also, it's the story they tell themselves. Yeah. No, they believe this, whether every part of it is true. But also, I got to say, like, I think parts of it are definitely true.

I mean, like, that, that's a, it's a. It's a tough history to come from. I mean, you can also argue that some of the humiliation through like the great leap forward, some of that was self-inflicted by certain Chinese leaders. But, you know, China is a country that has endured so much. And so much of the history of China has been just trying to see if you can unify it and put it together. And you have a government that has finally done it. you know, like China is unified and not just unified, but, you know, one of the engines of the global economy, like a great power.

And having gone through all of that to get to where they are, they, yeah, they are not receptive sometimes to, now is there also a lot of hypocrisy? of course because, you know, they'll talk about, like, they reject, they'll say that they want multilateralism and that the U.S. should not be coming in and making decisions. But when a country like the Philippines wants to bring in, you know, wants to make the South China, like, territorial disputes multilateral, like bring in some other people. Let's see what other people say that China then says, no, no, no, there's a bilateral issue. and any territorial disputes in the South China Sea, they'll always say, like, no, this is a dispute between us and the Philippines. Oh, no, this is between us and Vietnam and no one else. And they do not like other, when it's on their terms,

they like things to be bilateral. Like, this is between me and you and no one else. But when it's an issue that they want to be multilateral, it's, you know, let's bring in, you know, Great powers, whether it's the U.S. or China, are always prone to hypocrisy at various times. Yeah, I mean, it comes with the territory. Can we talk about another, I'll switch tracks here just because we're kind of going through all the major players. There's one that you've covered that I think may surprise people.

What's Russia doing out there? Yeah, you know, I think we, we very frequently forget about, you know, and they obviously, they're very tied in, up in Ukraine right now. But, you know, Russia has a massive Pacific coast. And most of Russia is geographically in Asia, not in Europe. And they have an imperial history of their own in the Americas, you know, in California, in Alaska. And, um, and one hilariously um hilarious um a hilarious um attempt in uh in Hawaii that wasn't entirely sanctioned by their government uh I don't know anything about this

I think we actually talked about on here once very briefly um there there was this it's called the Schaefer affair um this German guy who was working for the Russian American company which was you know their their East India trading company for the Americas figured out that there was that there was a after camea mea united most of the islands he did not actually take control of the island of kawai and kawai was ruled by another king who had thought a few times about what if what if i could overthrow kamea man um and shaffer he he he went there like he he went to hawaii initially because um there was a shipwreck and he as as the agent of the Russian American company was there to try to settle the affairs like get back possession of like the ship and the men but he he got there and he realized that there was a political situation that maybe Russia could assert itself into and pitched like you know what if we helped you overthrow Kamehamea and you became a Russian protectorate.

This did not get very far. You know, they, they, they, they, they, they kind of built up, helped build this kind of outpost. But, you know, it's, actually like, like Russian historians like to play this up a lot more than, like, there have been some reappraisals by historians here that have basically said that like Schaefer was acting on his own and he didn't get very far. And, you know, once the plot was revealed, like, they were, they were pretty promptly kicked out. And the czar said, probably truthfully, I don't know anything about this. You know? But actually, that was a thing that attracted actually. A lot of Russian officials came out here for, it was Russian Fort Alexandria was the name of this place.

It's since been kind of, there's been a push to rename it to its old Hawaiian name. And there were a bunch of, I guess, Russian American organizations, which seemed to have ties. of the Kremlin who were very against it and like, you know, we have to celebrate the history of Russian culture in Hawaii. One of these people actually was, there was a warrant, I believe, and she went back to Russia. But, you know, when the Ukraine conflict started and we were, and the U.S. government started kind of going after some of these, like, undeclared agents and stuff, she was one of them. So there's a lot of weird stuff with, um,

with Russia and Hawaii. But yeah, going back to the Cold War, you know, the Russian Pacific Fleet was no joke, especially at submarine force. And, you know, Russian submarines were not infrequently around Hawaii. And my understanding and talking to some people is that they're still not uncommon around here. in 2021, I believe it was, the Russian Pacific Fleet held its largest exercise since the end of the Cold War just west of Hawaii. You know, they had bombers, they had ships, they had all kinds of things out there. Though, you know, it was not in the Hawaii easy, you know, it was, and, you know, the U.S. military watched it. But, you know, when when they were asked about it, they were very clear that, you know, Russia is conducting a legal military exercise in international waters in close proximity to Hawaii.

We're watching it. But, you know, there's there's no reason why they can't do this. And, you know, let's be real. We do exercises in international waters close to, and, and we do military maneuvers inside the nine dash line, which, you know, there's a lot of area there that is, internationally considered international or the territory of countries that are okay with us doing that. But China, yeah, China is never okay with that. And they do not like it when Chinese or sorry, when U.S. military assets move through the South China Sea. But sorry. I know. That was rambling.

But we can bring it. No, no, no. I'm not going to cut it. It was great. Yeah. Sorry, I just pulled up. I've never actually like seen the nine dash line before like a physical like representation of it. Really never?

I don't think I've ever looked at it, no. Okay, yeah. So this is, this is, uh, it's like it is, I didn't realize it was literally just nine dashes. Yes. Kind of around the South China Cs. No, I think I, anytime people talk about this, like, I think it's really important to look at that map and see what we're talking about. It is so, yeah, it is so, um, it is a little more slap dash than I was imagining.

No, no, no, it literally, it's like, all this is art. It's a lot of... It's a lot of... It's ours, not yours. Yeah. It is quite a territorial claim. Well, just it also that, you know, say what you will about the British, but they tended to draw like the whole line. Yeah.

So one thing that I should also add in fairness, because this is a complicated thing, is that there are, they're also like, China is not the only one. Like, you know, that is the most expansive claim by far. But, like, the Vietnam. and the Philippines disagree over ownership of the Spratley Islands. And they're like, if you, if you find an actual like map of like all the disputes, that's a fun map to. Where you see what what countries say belong to them. And that is, that is interesting. But yes, the most audacious one is the nine dash line, which is what is claimed by China.

And though also, I should note also technically what is all. also claimed by Taiwan, which is almost a little bit more hilarious. Wait, so they, they say that, wait, explain this to me. So, because, because remember, I said that this line was drawn during the public of China. Like, I believe it was Chiang Kai Shack's government that drew this line. And, you know, not, not, you know, Taiwan still has a lot of the stuff, like, reads a lot of this stuff, at least clerically,

from the Republic of China, because when when the Republic of China was defeated in the Chinese Civil War, they went into exile on Taiwan. And there's a lot to say about the complicated stuff there, about who that

island has ever belonged to. That's a whole other episode. Definitely another episode to do. And I would love if we could to get an indigenous Taiwanese perspective on it. Because I'll just briefly say there's three main demographics in Taiwan. You have ethnic Chinese people who were there before. You have a smaller group of ethnic Chinese people who fled the mainland to create the government and exile on the island.

And you also have the indigenous people of the island. Yeah, a lot to say there. but yeah, Taiwan is, you know, it is a strange place to be in how you define it. The way I describe it in writing is a self-ruled island democracy that China regards as a rogue province. Do you have to write that like every time that you describe the politics of the island? That's the most condensed version of it that you can. You know, I feel like that's the easiest and most like, you know, not. on like

as a journalist who's trying to just like communicate things to the widest audience possible. I feel like that's the easiest way to describe the situation there. But it is of course super complicated.

And it does look like it was it was 1947. So yes. Yeah. When the, when the first version of the then 11 dash line came out.

Um, God, where were we? Okay, Russia. Yeah. So you're seeing submarines now. Yeah. Like, what else is going on? I know that you've kind of, you've looked into this and kind of reported on what their buildup is like.

Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, it's considerably smaller than obviously the PLA Navy. And the, the Russian Pacific fleet is, is in many ways a shadow of its former self. But, you know, they are still building new submarines for it. And that is one area in which. which Russia is still a pretty major player. They're still making subs that do things that we don't understand how they do. Like, there's this sub, the Ufa, which is, from what they described, basically appears to be a real Red October.

Oh, really? It's got the... I don't know exactly. It's like the silent stealth sub thing going on. Yeah, like, because they, no, like, it's very hard to detect, like, people in, in... Naval communities have referred to this submarine reportedly as a black hole in the Russian fleet because they can't, they don't know where it is at any given time usually. In March, it did a missile test from the Sea of Japan. That they could tell because, you know, they could detect the missile launch.

But my understanding is its movements are much harder to track. And one thing that's interesting is, so we've been seeing these joint patrols by the Chinese and Russian military. They've been cooperating a lot more. They've been doing exercises in each other's territory, which is something that definitely Japan and South Korea are watching much more closely now that new areas appear to be in play. But submarines from what I have been told by some people who work in intelligence is there's an indicator that while there's much more cooperation in terms of tech in terms of cooperating together, that's one thing that the Russians still are not willing to share with the Chinese, we're with the North Koreans. The term that was used by an intelligence guy I talked to was that they have been ungenerous

with their submarine technology. There's some old history between all those countries as well, right? There is. I mean, it's just the thing that, like, you know, this, this alliance does seem to be drawn together by like some common interests and I think by some like you know affection between jizien ping and and uh Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un like as people these are you know um you know autocratic leaders who like each other's style like each other personally and that you know does tie them together but in terms of like other people in these governments there it's not entirely a trustful relationship between um between Russia and in China. Because the truth is for a lot of the history, a lot of their history,

that's been to be a check against China, where they share a large border, a border that they have fought over more than once. You know, in bloody ways. It is not like there is no, like a history of just brotherhood and cooperation. You know, when, yeah, when the communists took over, there was, there was a brief kind of period of that. But it quickly kind of set in, you know, and especially kind of after the Korean War wrapped up and after Stalin died. You know, that, that relationship kind of fell on hard times. They, they didn't trust each other. And also China did not, again, like we talked about with its history. The Soviet Union really wanted to treat it. as, you know, a subordinate. And China was not interested in that arrangement.

And that eventually, you know, eventually that's why they developed their own nuclear weapons to assert themselves. And, you know, came to blows with the Soviet Union. That's what allowed, you know, the Sino-Soviet split. And that's how you get Nixon, you know, doing a toast with the leaders of red China. you know, it's very complicated. You just, you know, you don't, you don't let Mao humiliate your premiere by making him swim with floaties and have a picture taken of it and then everything will be fine. So, did you see Hegseff when he came to town? Were you there for that speech? No. I was able to see it, like I watched it live on a live feed that APs.

The CSS, the organization that hosted it, put up. No, I tried as much as I could to see if I could, you know, get in even with like the press pool. And I tried to, I tried to like, like, you know, tried to appeal to like, you know, the better nature or maybe not better nature. I pointed out that his predecessor never made it any time for Hawaii media and that he could be different. But so far he hasn't been. I'm sure that moved him. Yeah, no. Well, I shared it with the staff of the DOD, like, please relate to the secretary that we would love to turn over a new leaf.

We will welcome him, you know, with the Aloha spirit. And some questions maybe. I don't know. But, you know, I mean, I will say this about Hegsith. Parts of that Pacific tour, I think if you actually watched it, might surprise you compared to, like, the image that he often gives up. And we've talked about him a bit, like, and I'm like, because I'm actually willing to make, not the case, but to explain the appeal of Pete Hegzeth to certain people who actually kind of like him. I kind of get the, I get the, I mean, I detest him, but I get the appeal. But like, what's that like, okay, when you have to explain that to people, what's the pitch?

Well, I, well, a few things. Because one thing that I actually want to point out that I, that, you know, I did surprise me a little was, and, you know, it's, it was, it was, it was. for the cameras, sure. And he's, he's a very, he's very good in front of the camera. Whatever you may say about him, he is, he's quick on his feet and he's good in front of a camera and he can project an image and he can tell, and he can tell a story. He is good at those things, undenial. I think that's a large part of why he's there.

Right. Right. But what, like, there was a moment in Guam and they, you know, there was video released of him, you know, interacting with the governor and her staff and, you know, she's a Democrat. But, you know, like, you know, they gave kind of like their version of a lay there. And he, he was very graciously accepting the local traditions in Guam and, you know, being very cordial and very polite. And I would say actually seemed to be being pretty respectful within the Pacific in that environment. Because I, though partly I think it's because he knows that Guam is important. He also met with, I believe, the president of the federated states of Micronesia. I think that he, flew in to have that meeting because there were no other Pacific Island nations on the itinerary of that trip. But some of the Kofa countries in Micronesia really that relationship is important. And he actually, as much as he seems to really dislike environmental programs, did commit to him that he would help clean up some oil left over from U.S. military presence during World War II.

So it'll be kind of it's still going to be interesting to see what the relationship is going to be with Pacific Island countries. And this. But if we're going to talk about kind of like why people in the military, no, I'll say this. I had a conversation with somebody yesterday who's, you know, Ranger guy, not not, not, not, not a liberal. And he, I don't know. I think in some cases the the image is starting to fray and wear a little thin with some people. But the appeal that I can explain for him and why some people have been at least cautiously optimistic is he is, you know, one of the first SEC deaths in a while to have not served on the board of a defense contractor. So he does not come in necessarily with any bias toward any of the primes.

And there's potentially opportunities for some of the smaller companies to come in and participate. And, you know, they just don't have that sway. And also, like, this is very divisive. Some people really like this about them. Some people really hate it. But I understand why, you know, this thing about, like, going and working out with the troops. Some people give them trash for that. I don't think that, I think he gets over, I think he oversells it maybe a little.

but, you know, being among, you know, the people that you lead and in demonstrating that you're willing to do the sorts of things that they do is not a bad thing necessarily. Though at the same time, like his job is not to be a well-liked company commander. His job is to be the Secretary of Defense and to run a massive bureaucracy. And there are clearly, you know, ongoing questions about how that's going. I'm not going to weigh in on that because lots of other people are writing about it and you can just read what's out there. But, like, I don't know, like he made a good impression on a lot of people that he met when he was here from what I understand. And, yeah, like his Pacific tour seemed to not go that badly. And a lot of allies felt okay about their interactions.

I'm going to make you talk about politics a little bit. Okay. Thanks. You're welcome. I know you love it. So it's just something that occurred to me as you were talking about that. I think some of the appeal of Hegsef and Trumpism is that in Lloyd Austin, I think, factors into this. Oh, yeah.

There was a disingenuous quality to, you know, the Biden administration. I think that people maybe don't, uh, don't fully like want to own up to. And part of that is like he was, uh, a doddering old man that had AIDS to kind of bubble wrap him.

Uh, but then like you also saw that in other parts of his administration. Like Lloyd Austin was a big one. Right? When your secretary of defense kind of vanishes. Oh, yeah. No, that, I mean, that, that was, I mean, I, I, I, I, I think it's undeniable.

That was a bad. look and the reason why was not good. No. You know, that was, that was, I mean, the other thing I think is, you know, like, and yeah, also out here with, man, I don't know how much I want to get into the Red Hill debacle. I mean, I was going to, that's, that's on my little map here, actually, because I did wanted, I wanted to know what was going on with Red Hill and like how that factors into everything that's going on.

And I think it's also one of those things that, like, if you're not in the Pacific, you probably don't even know what we're talking about. Yeah. So, yeah, Red Hill is a great example of something that, though, I mean, like, this was not a Biden administration thing. This is, the kind of blew up on the while he, while he was there, but it was not. Yeah. So I would, I would say that I don't know that, you know. The pipes were laid well before he got there, one might say.

They were, though, though I think it is notable that, that Joe Biden never said the words, Red Hill. he let lower parts of the government address it, which probably was a smart move for him politically, because if he talked about it, then it would have gotten a lot more attention, and people would have been, you know, oh, what's this? By keeping it as kind of a niche military issue

and a niche regional issue, it never became, it never really blew up as a national story. I know 60 minutes eventually got there. But, like, yeah, it's a thing that never quite blew up. Well, tell the audience what it is in case they don't know. Yeah. So the quickest way, again, like quickest way to explain this because we're trying to cover a lot of ground here.

The Pacific is a big place and a lot of things happen. The Red Hill was a, well, first of all, it's Capukaki is the indigenous name of the area. It's a mountain here on Oahu. The Red Hill bulk fuel storage facility was a massive fuel. farm that was built inside the mountain underground during World War II to protect fuel supplies from from a Japanese attack. Ironically, it wasn't done yet by the time of Pearl Harbor and basically the Japanese fleet ignored the fuel tanks that they could have hit.

And like just as a historical appraisal, people have noted that that was probably a real missed opportunity that they had during the attack on Pearl Harbor was to leave all of our fuel to us. But anyway, the fuel was gradually moved into Red Hill. This underground facility, I believe it could hold up to 250 million gallons at full capacity. It's huge. It's like these tanks are just massive.

There's a massive marvel of engineering. But the problem with it, and my understanding now is that this was even known at the time, is that under Capukaki, like, where this was built. It's about 100 feet over the aquifer that that I rely on for clean water and that most of this island does, which is a little bit of a problem. And also, even the Navy's main water well that serves its water system was co-located in the facility with the strategic fuel reserve

for the Pacific. And for you know, and this has been known for a long time. There was an old newspaper clipping I saw from the 1970. of the late Senator Daniel Inouye bringing this up and asking, you know, is this an issue? There have been various times where fuel is kind of leaked.

But for years, the U.S. military insisted, you know, this is, it is safe and it is also critical for our strategic position in the Pacific. This is something that we need very badly. But in November 2021, Well, I mean, I'll just keep it at that. There's a lot of complicated engineering for how this happened because it actually starts in May 2021.

But in November 2021, fuel gets released into the facility and it gets into the Red Hill water well because that's what happens when you keep all this stuff so close together. And the initial reaction was, you know, they got in there and they thought that they had contained it. And the immediate reaction The people there was like, cool, we contained it. Let's not tell anybody about this. But it did get into the well. It did get in the water well. It got in the water.

People on the Navy water line, which is, you know, military families and service members, but also the Navy water line serves a few areas that used to be military housing. So there are civilians on this water line, too. But definitely in the area is closest to the Red Hill facility. For about a week, people started reporting their water smelling funny. You know, like it smells like gasoline here. And eventually the, I mean, secretly they had shut down some operations quietly to see if they were, could contain this. And eventually the State Department of Health, the Hawaii Department of Health put out a health advisory for the water and told people, hey, don't, don't.

drink it until we know what's going on. The military actually reached out to the health department and said, please rescind that notice. Like, you know, it's fine. And they put out a notice saying, like, you know, we're currently drinking the water. There's no indication that there's anything wrong. A few days after that, they acknowledged it actually, okay, fuel did get in here. And that, that leaves to an entire drama of having to, you know, get the fuel out of Redhill. which we learned was going to be much more difficult because the pipes had fallen into disrepair.

It had not been maintained as well as they had said. And in order to get the fuel out, they had to make repairs and upgrades to the facility to safely extract it, which leads to a question that I asked a few times and never got a SaaS factory answer is, if we had to use this in a conflict as a fuel reserve, how were we going to do that? What was going to happen? How did you let that happen to the strategic fuel reserve of the Pacific? Let it keep it in a crumbling World War II era facility in the center of a mountain, like in Dr. Evil's lair. Like how did we let that happen?

And, you know, nobody ever, by that time it was just like, well, you know, that was then and let's just figure out what to do next. Because the military loves to honor its history, but it doesn't like to talk about the past. and certainly not the recent past stuff like that. So what ultimately did happen, though, is, you know, these upgrades were made and the fuel has been redistributed to fuel points around the Pacific. And they now say that this is actually a better way to do it because it's not all in one place. It's distributed and it's closer to the sorts of places that ships would be operating and where they might need it. now there are still some controversies among like people who still think that that was a mistake who have noted that Red Hill was underground. These are above ground.

So they're and they are now not only above ground, but in missile range of China's increasingly sophisticated missile arsenal. And there's also been questions in some of the countries where the fuel has been moved to given, you know, the U.S. military's, They were not great stewards of it the last time. No, and there was also a report that said that, and not necessarily massive spills, but that there were problems with oversight and management across all of our field distribution points. Some of them may have, some of them might be working okay, but they haven't had inspections in a long time. And, you know, some of that was chalked up to COVID, but that doesn't explain all of these oversights. I will tell you that like a Japanese diplomat told me that

that all my articles that I write about Red Hill gets sent back to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Japan because they have bases and that's something that they're interested in so they do and again as much as as strong as that relationship is it is a strong alliance they watch these things

like they really do And it's not like Well, there's a lot of, there's a lot of recent past that's not all that super great. You know, American, American soldiers and airmen and sailors in Japan don't always act their best. No, nor in America, nor anywhere. Fair not.

But, I mean, and let's just be real. Service members of any country are rarely. I mean, I will say, like, in fairness, like, most of them, most of them are pretty well-behaved. Just to say that there are, like, Japan is watching those bases. And they're not, they're not all the communities where they are located or super happy that they are there. No. Like, especially, like, like, Okinawa is one of the big ones. Though, one thing that is interesting about that, and they're definitely, you know, like, anti-military.

activists out there and people who personally dislike the military. Like there are some that are like that. But actually, I've had this conversation with some Okinawans and actually like Japanese, like, defense people who like defense intellectuals, not the officials. Officials don't want to talk about this. But like researchers who one of the things that I've heard more than once, and this is actually kind of an interesting thing. And even Denny Tamaka, who is a harsh predict of the U.S. military presence, he's the governor of Okinawa. He still supports an alliance with the U.S. One of the big issues in Okinawa is not so much that they hate Americans is that there's so fucking many of them there.

And but actually their anger is less about is less directed at the Americans specifically, but more at the government in Tokyo that continues to, to, to, to, you know, shove all of that down there. Like, you know, they look at it like, well, why aren't. there are any Americans in Hokkaido, you know, like, why aren't there Americans and something? Like, you could spread this stuff out. Why does it all have to be in our backyard specifically? Because, yeah, I mean, there are, like, you know, like, there have been, you know, you, you know, we've talked about, you know, like, you know, you have airmen and Marines who go out, like, they'll, they'll get in a fight or they'll, you know, be involved in some violence against local women and it's horrible. But on the other side that, you also have, you know, consensual relationships and, like, marriages of, like, service members and people from these countries. So you have in-laws. Like, so the relationship between the U.S. military in these countries and these communities is often a lot more complicated than it being just one thing. But even if they have an in-law that they really like, does that mean that they still want Ospreys flying over them all the time? Probably not. Yeah, and it's like 80,000 people, I think. It's all the 80,000 Americans on that base.

Obviously, not all, whether that is support staff and civilians and other things. But no, but like the presence. And again, like, you know, you were looking at the map of the South China Sea, which I recommend everybody you look at the 9-dash line map. I also urge you to look at a map of bases in Okinawa. Yeah. And like how much of Okinawa is just occupied by military organization. and bear in mind that Okinawa is not a very big island.

So, like, if you look at that, I think it's just, it's a very useful exercise to look at that and think about that. Yeah. How would you, yeah, how would you feel if there was a foreign power occupying a bunch of your island? And they were kind of everywhere. Yeah. And also, just to just to throw another complication in there, there's also the issue of Okinawa and sovereignty and, like, whether Okinawa is part of Japan at all. yeah that's a whole other again that's a whole other yeah we yeah these things go on forever um it it never stops no it never does but we probably should i know we're we're we're we're we're

we're we're we're we're we're we're going over time a little bit um no that's like it was a great conversation any any any last any last things you want to know about no i think red hill really saw me out actually as we got under like okinawa and now i'm thinking about like i want to go to Japan and I don't know. I don't know what I'm going to do. Playing a trip, I guess. I hope my passport's still good. Maybe I'll wait a couple years because I don't want to come back in. See what happened? No, I don't think you have to worry about that. I don't. Yeah, I know. I probably don't. No, yeah, no. You should. I'm not doing, yeah, I'm not doing live streams where I talk about Hamas or anything, so I'll probably be right.

Oh, yeah, no, you're going to be fine. You should go to Japan. You should absolutely go to Japan. You should do it while the dollar is still strong to the yen. That's a solid point. Time to go is now. All right. Where can people find the work of Kevin O'Dell? At the Honolulu Star Advertiser, Hawaii's largest media organization. I called it the wrong thing at the beginning. I called it the Star Advisor, which I think I've done before.

It's okay. It's a newspaper. It's an old one. We print news on paper still. Well, thank you for coming on, and we will talk to you again soon. That's all for this episode of Angry Planet. As always, Angry Planet is me, Matthew Galt, Jason Fields, and Kevin Odell. You finally got to hear from.

It was created by myself and Jason Fields. If you like the show, go to Angry PlanetPod.com. Sign up, $9 a month. get commercial free early access, get bonus episodes. We will be back again soon with another conversation about conflict on an angry planet. Stay safe until then.