Strategic Islands

[davidbfpo]

An IISS Strategic Comment 'Singapore and the US: security partners, not allies':http://www.iiss.org/en/publications/...ot-allies-fe48

Although Singapore continues to balance it's national interests, as Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong stated:

Singapore is friends with America, also with India, Japan and China and the other major powers. And we would like to maintain our good relations with all of them.

Aside: I'd missed that in June 2013 Singapore exited from Afghanistan.

[Bob's World]

The first US Pivot to the Pacific was all about strategic islands.

During the Spanish-American War the US secured it's hold on Hawaii; and then scooped up additional critical deep water ports/coaling stations in Guam and the Philippines and Samoa.

When China looks a few hundred miles to the East we have a cow, but a little over a century ago we leaped several thousand miles to the West, and remain there to this day. For good reason. Like Great Britain we are a maritime nation and "strategic islands" remain an effective way to extend one's influence well beyond their borders.

[condottiere]

Britain long had a string of pearls to tie together it's Empire, though not all necessarily defined by geography as islands.

Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus, Suez, Aden, Ceylon, Penang, Singapore.

The Americans have or had Hawaii, Midway, Wake, Guam, the Philippines, Okinawa.

Sicily used to be the key to dominate the Western Med.

[jcustis]

Don't forget the Azores. I stopped by there on a C-141 hop to Cairo West, then onwards to Mogadishu

[davidbfpo]

An article 'Diego Garcia: Anchoring America's Future Presence in the Indo-Pacific' from the Harvard Asia Quarterly; hat tip to Australia's Lowy Institute:http://www.andrewerickson.com/wp-con...013-Summer.pdf

The abstract is:

Systemic shifts are reorienting the world’s economic center of gravity to the Indo-Pacific. The Indian Ocean Region (IOR) is emerging as a strategic zone of particular importance, one with tremendous economic potential but significant security challenges. Still the sole superpower, the US has a unique role to play in securing and maintaining the international system—including in the IOR—but requires a reliable network of overseas bases to do so, in a region that is not part of its traditional sphere of influence. The British island of Diego Garcia in the center of the Indian Ocean offers unique capabilities in this regard, and is therefore being further developed by the US military as a regional hub. Meanwhile, India and China are strengthening their presence in the IOR, without challenging US influence. India, which logically views the Indian Ocean as its geo-strategic backyard, increasingly views American presence as a positive hedge against China. On the other hand, China’s interests and presence in the IOR are increasing, but enduring challenges closer to home are likely to limit the rate and extent of its transition to IOR power. While facing a changing world in which power diffusion increases the relative influence of such developing nations as China and India, the US is poised to retain a significant role as the foremost underwriter of security and systemic functions in the increasingly vital IOR. Central to such efforts is access to military facilities, with Diego Garcia set to play a disproportionately important role.

[Bill Moore]

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/...9?ocid=UE07DHP

A number of islands are of strategic value to the major powers competing for influence in Asia, and Okinawa is one of those islands. The locals have understandably never been fond of the U.S. military presence there, and use every crime committed by a service member (tragically in this case a murder by a former service member who remained in Okinawa after he left the service) as another factor to generate momentum to oust the Americans.

Okinawa Murder Case Heightens Outcry Over U.S. Military’s Presence

“We’ve heard apologies and promises of prevention hundreds of times, for decades, but it hasn’t had any effect,” Okinawa’s governor, Takeshi Onaga, said in an interview. Okinawans still bitterly remember a 1995 rape of a 12-year-old girl involving two Marines and a Navy sailor, which led to protests, as well as more recent episodes.

The bases never made Okinawans rich: The prefecture has the lowest per-capita income in Japan, one-third below the national average. Now, dependence on them is in decline, Mr. Meguro said, and with it Okinawans’ tolerance for the problems they bring.

Some in Okinawa would like to follow the example of the Philippines, which pushed out the American military in the early 1990s and redeveloped a major Navy base, at Subic Bay, into a lucrative resort destination.

“When it comes to the economy and tourism, it’s ‘Welcome, China,’” Mr. Meguro said. “Of course, it glosses over the fact that the Philippines has started to invite American forces back because it’s being menaced by China.”

[davidbfpo]

A reminder via Strife blog (Kings War Studies) that "location, location" is not always a factor and yes the island is Perim in the Gulf of Aden (Yemeni territory):

Despite lying in the middle of one of the world’s most critical choke points, the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait between Djibouti and Yemen, the island of Perim is a remote and often forgotten outpost. Perim is located in the midst of the waterway which separates the Red Sea from the Gulf of Aden....

Link:https://strifeblog.org/2016/06/29/pe...hat-never-was/

I have wondered why the far larger, but further away from land, Socotra has not had a strategic role. IIRC again a lack of a water supply in such a climate features.