Communist China’s ‘Backdoor’ Into America: Cleo Paskal

[FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW] There is a largely unknown U.S. territory that Chinese citizens can enter legally without a visa.

China expert Cleo Paskal argues it’s an “open backdoor into the United States” that the Chinese communist regime can exploit. The area has seen problems with drug trafficking, birth tourism, controversial Chinese casinos, and allegations of corruption.

Ms. Paskal is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and an expert on the Indo-Pacific region.

In this episode, we dive into the Chinese communist regime’s tactics in the Pacific and its strategies to subvert America.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jan Jekielek:
Cleo Paskal, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders.

Cleo Paskal:
Always great to see you. Thank you for having me.

Mr. Jekielek:
Cleo, you have alerted me to yet another U.S. border that’s being penetrated by the Chinese communist regime.

Ms. Paskal:
It is being done completely legally, and this is astounding. There is a part of the United States where Chinese can arrive without a visa. They just get on a plane, get on a direct flight, and get off in the United States. That is in the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana, and that’s where the United States borders the Mariana Islands. This is where the United States borders Japan.

Guam is 3,000 miles to the west of Hawaii. Guam, which is also part of the U.S., is west of Darwin, Australia. It’s about 1,500 miles from Taiwan, about the same from Okinawa, and the Marianas are contiguous to that and they are north. Guam is the southern Mariana Island and is independent. But this Commonwealth of Northern Marianas, which is about 14 islands, is directly north of that. It’s been part of the United States since about 1986 with American citizens. It is American territory.

For a whole bunch of different reasons, Chinese can arrive without a visa. Some come for tourism, but quite a few have been involved in proven, nefarious activity, including using the U.S. Postal Service for distributing drugs, and buying U.S. passports. There has been legal but problematic birth tourism and purchasing marriages with American citizens.

But the biggest strategic threat has been this legal crossing. Once they get to the Marianas, they’re not supposed to go to the rest of the United States. However, hundreds have been taking boats and going to Guam. Some have been found roaming around U.S. military bases in Guam. There’s another angle to this. They have been linked to casinos in the Commonwealth of Northern Marianas [CNMI] that at one point were running more money than the casinos in Macau. It was huge amounts of money in the billions.

This open, back door into the United States is a huge security concern. The governor of the Marianas would like to see it closed. The Department of Homeland has the authority to do so. Members of Congress have written asking for that to happen, but it has yet to happen.

Mr. Jekielek:
They have stopped the same practice for the Russians, but they haven’t stopped it for the Chinese.

Ms. Paskal:
Yes. This was a part of the U.S. where both Russians and Chinese had visa exemptions. They did stop it for the Russians, but for nobody else. None of the allied countries who would require visas for the rest of the U.S. have this dispensation. It was just the Russians and the Chinese. As you mentioned, they have stopped the Russians, but they’ve kept it going for the Chinese.

There has been a lot of push from the Chamber of Commerce. They are saying that it’s essential for their tourism sector, even though now the majority of the tourists come from Korea. There are very likely specific business interests involved. Some very important families are linked quite closely back to mainland China operating in CNMI. The casinos brought a ton of money and political influence into the country.

There have been three major casinos. There was one on the island of Tinian, which got shut down. There was one in Saipan, which is the main island, which has been shut down, but the license hasn’t been fully revoked yet. But now there’s a new one on the harbor in Tinian.
To give an idea of how important historically and strategically and geographically this location is, Tinian was the site of one of the busiest airports in the world in 1945. The Americans captured the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands, which includes Saipan and Tinian, from Japan. That’s where the waves of the B-29 bombers were taking off from to bomb mainland Japan. They were in range at that point.

Now, the U.S. is putting in about $400 million to redo the runways on Tinian. But at the same time, there is a Chinese-linked casino right on the dual-use harbor with the ability to see what is coming and going—through political warfare, through injecting money, and through gaining political influence, perhaps being able to undercut those U.S. kinetic investments.

Mr. Jekielek:
This area of the world is incredibly important for U.S. security. We had Colonel Grant Newsham on the show talking about the fact that the Compact Treaty had not been funded, and this would be a massive blow to the U.S. security posture. We’ve had you on the show before talking about how important these tiny island chains are. They seem almost inconsequential if you’re focused on mainland U.S. politics. Please frame that for us again.

Ms. Paskal:
We often lump all the Pacific Islands together. The Pacific Ocean covers about one fifth of the planet, and it’s the buffer between Asia and the Americas. When we’re talking about the Pacific Islands, it could be the Solomon Islands down by Australia, where you had the Battle of Guadalcanal. It could be French Polynesia, which is French and down by the latitude of Chile.

The part that is the most important to the United States, which is why the U.S. has maintained these relationships, are the ones in the north of the equator, across the center, bridging Hawaii to the Philippines. This is a strategic lesson that the U.S. has learned since the Spanish-American War. Why does the U.S. have Guam, for example?
After the Spanish-American War at the end of the 19th century, the U.S. took the Philippines and Guam. Then the Germans bought the other islands that were between Hawaii and that middle part from the Spanish. These are the compact states that you were talking about; Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and the Commonwealth of Northern Marianas, which is just north of Guam. This zone that goes across and then up this watery bridge between the U.S. and Asia was mostly taken by Germany.

Before Germany lost the First World War, they used it for strategic reasons. We talk a lot about the fiber optic cables across the Pacific. In the Federated States of Micronesia, the Germans had a telegraph station. The telegraphs were the fiber optic cables of 100 years ago, so the Germans knew how strategically important it was.

When the Germans lost WWI, the Japanese took over the German possessions. Then Japan controlled that zone; the Commonwealth of Northern Marianas, Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands, all down the coast and then across, which is what allowed them to hit the U.S. For 30 years, from 1914 to 1944, Japan was sitting in the middle of the Pacific. At great cost, the U.S. had to win back those islands one by one. Those were the battles of Mekin, Tarawa, and Kwajalein, a little bit to the south. Then you start going across Truk Lagoon, Peleliu, and finally, there was the Battle of Saipan.

The 80th anniversary of the Battle of Saipan was on June 15th, 2024. The Japanese lost Saipan and fought pretty much to the last man. Entire Japanese families had been living there for 30 years, running school systems, pharmacies and other businesses. A whole Japanese culture threw itself off the cliff and committed suicide rather than give in to the Americans.

Seeing that Japanese response made some American planners think, “If we go into Japan proper, we’re going to see this kind of fighting.” That led to the nuclear attack on Japan. In fact, the Enola Gay, which carried the Hiroshima bomb, took off from Tinian in CNMI where those airfields are now being rehabilitated.

Empire after empire has known about this strategic area. After WWII, the U.S. took over that whole Japanese territory; the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas, Palau, Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands, and it became the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. It’s the only strategic trust territory the UN has ever designated.

During the decolonization period, the question was, “What do you do?” It was being run by the U.S. Navy. Saipan was closed to outsiders and was being used in the late 40s and early 50s as a CIA training base for the Taiwanese to potentially go into mainland China. These were still military or intelligence installations for some time. The Marshall Islands were the site of nuclear testing where 67 nuclear tests were done.

This trust territory, through the Congress of Micronesia, decided to have these independent countries; Palau, Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands. They would become independent, but then enter into these Compacts with the U.S. that Colonel Newsom talked about, which gave the U.S. exclusive defense and security rights. But the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas decided to join the United States. That’s how the people of the Marianas entered into this covenant and that’s how important this relationship is.

They call it the covenant with the United States. As long as there is the potential for conflict between Asia and the Americas, the way to physically get from one location to the other is through this zone. Any Taiwan contingency, resupplying of Japan, or resupplying of South Korea requires this zone being secure for the U.S. Of course, China has been putting enormous effort to make sure that it becomes less and less secure for the U.S.

Mr. Jekielek:
Through modern technology and modern warfare techniques, the CCP’s unrestricted warfare doctrine has erased that distance to some degree. This comes from Colonel Newsham’s congressional testimony. But are these places really that important in a modern age? Some people don’t see their importance anymore.

Ms. Paskal:
It depends on whether you’re looking at a kinetic battlefield, or whether you’re looking at a political warfare battlefield, which does have kinetic elements to it. Colonel Newsom talked about this erasure of distance in his congressional testimony. During the founding of this country, George Washington himself spoke about the United States’ detached and distant situation. The idea in a lot of strategic planners’ minds in the U.S. is that isolationism is a viable choice. You can be isolated.

That’s often the debate. Should we get involved in something or not? That debate is predicated on the assumption that you have the option of being isolated. But that distance has now been erased. It’s been erased through cyber warfare. The Chinese can disable our power grid in a way that previously would have required a bomber hitting a transformer.

It has been erased through chemical warfare with fentanyl. It killed more Americans in a year than died in the Vietnam War. Chinese fentanyl has killed by a factor of four or five more Americans than Russians have killed Ukrainians. Americans have been killed through this deliberate chemical warfare and each death destroys a family.

Mr. Jekielek:
On a recent show with Peter Schweizer, we covered how all this actually works. It’s very clear this is the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] strategy.

Ms. Paskal:
The House Select Committee on the CCP just came out with their report which says that the CCP is actually subsidizing the chemical factories that produce the precursors by giving them tax concessions. This is not for some domestic pharmaceutical consumption. Drug warfare is one of the 24 warfares listed in unrestricted warfare and it can work in both ways. It can be drugs that are used to kill you like fentanyl. But it can also be gaining control of pharmaceutical drug supply chains to have that lever over you, as we saw during Covid.

Of course, Covid is another way where distance was erased. Regardless of where it originated, they blocked internal flights from Wuhan to the rest of China, but they let flights go out to the rest of the world. There’s the gain of control over our media in terms of things like Hollywood.

Mr. Jekielek:
The CCP buys ad supplements in The New York Times and The Washington Post that look like news content.

Ms. Paskal:
There are the Confucius Institutes, the distortion of public debate around China, and the very deliberate, intellectual property theft. The Chinese consulate in Houston was a physical example of the erasure of distance. It was operating as a spy and influence base. But you don’t have to be physically in a consulate for this to be the case. There have always been Chinese spies operating in the U.S.

That’s the degree to which China has managed to erase distance and do damage to U.S. society, our economy, and our politics. It is as if you had an enemy country actually within your own country. This is beyond fifth column. It’s pervasive and it has fundamentally changed the nature of U.S. society and U.S. cities.

You can walk through the cities that have been deindustrialized through political and economic manipulation and have allowed for the extraction of manufacturing. There is that outflow. But then in terms of the inflow and the embeddedness, it is acknowledged that China can turn off the lights in Minneapolis.

Mr. Jekielek:
This all happened with the willing participation of Americans. During the time of the Soviet Union, there wasn’t anything close to that level of willing participation.

Ms. Paskal:
This has been their great accomplishment. In the Rocky movie during the first Cold War, Rocky could punch a Soviet fighter in the face and everybody would cheer. You’re not going to have Rocky fighting a Chinese communist fighter in a movie anytime soon. They got control of Hollywood and that just is not going to happen. We’re not even allowed to say who the enemy is. If you can’t say who the enemy is, then you can’t open up the toolkit that lets you defend yourself and fight back properly.

Mr. Jekielek:
We’ve talked about comprehensive national power and how important it is to the Chinese approach to foreign policy, national security and military action, whether it’s through unrestricted warfare or otherwise.

Ms. Paskal:
The first time I read about comprehensive national power was in a book that came out over a decade ago by a Chinese New Zealand academic, Jian Yang. He said that you can’t understand China’s strategy in the Pacific Islands without understanding that China’s grand strategy since the 90s is to be a comprehensive national power. As it turns out, he taught for over a decade at spy school in China, then came to New Zealand as an academic.

I met him in New Zealand when he was head of the Auckland branch of the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. He was guiding the debates around these topics within that sector of academia in New Zealand. He then became a member of parliament in New Zealand and was one of the key people on foreign affairs, including taking New Zealand politicians on trips to China, where they met some of his old colleagues. He is a living example of China’s comprehensive national power.

What is this comprehensive national power? We are used to thinking about national power in a very reductionist way. You would talk about the military, the economy, the big things. The Chinese comprehensive national power metric, which is an empirical metric where they assign numerical values to each country, is much more comprehensive. It includes things like placing a panda in your zoo. Then you are helping China project a positive, soft, cuddly image of China, and you are part of their soft power expansion.

If you have lithium deposits, you might think they are part of your country’s comprehensive national power. But if those lithium deposits are being extracted by a Chinese company and going back to China, that’s part of their comprehensive national power. If your democracy is being eroded or being questioned, that hurts you and it helps China, because fundamentally it’s a competition of systems.

If China’s goal is to be number one, they can do it in two ways. One, you can get better. Two, you knock the other guy down. Even if you get knocked down, if the other guy gets knocked down more, you have won. If you have an epidemic in your country, and you think you might get hurt by it, in a comprehensive national power logic, you want everybody else to get hurt even more.

You turn your epidemic into a global pandemic and you use those few weeks, especially to slow down the WHO on understanding human-to-human transmission, to position yourself to be in a better comprehensive national power position when the rest of the world gets hit even more.

Mr. Jekielek:
The tools were propaganda and the capture of multilateral institutions. The WHO was just repeating a preposterous position that the Chinese regime had taken, which was that they were successful with their lockdown policy. Comprehensive national power measure is an extremely important thing, and it is not talked about very often when talking about the China threat.

Ms. Paskal:
I think of this in terms of geopolitical articles of faith. If you are a person of faith, then you might have the same goal as somebody else who’s a person of faith. For example, a Buddhist and a Catholic and a Jew walk into a restaurant. The goal for all three will be the same—to live a good life and to have a good afterlife, if that’s part of your faith.

But what you order off the menu will be shaped by your article of faith. A Buddhist will be a vegetarian. If you’re Catholic and it’s Friday, you’ll eat fish. If you’re Jewish, you will look for kosher food. Even though your grand strategy is the same, your tactics are going to be different depending on what your article of faith is.

In the same way, strategists all have their articles of faith. Some will say, “I think the Chinese economy is going to crash.” That’s your article of faith and you don’t really have to worry about China. Some will say, “The Chinese economy is going to crash, and that’s going to make them more dangerous.” Then all the rest of your strategy grows out of that.

This is called a geopolitical article of faith [GAF]. Because we all make
mistakes, it’s very useful to go back to figure out what your original GAF was, out of which you grow everything else. If your GAF on China is that they are a kinetic threat only, then you’re looking at building up the Navy. If you’re dealing with an island like CNMI, then you put in this 400 million dollar airfield.

When you talk about China and Russia in the context of Ukraine, you might think China is going to crash. You say, “China is trying to create as much chaos as possible in the world and try to fragment relationships. I find it a lot easier to think that China is helping Russia and Ukraine and will continue to do so.” If you think China is this force for potential good, then you will think, “We’ll just share some intel with China and show them how badly Russia is behaving. Then maybe they’ll help us solve the Russia problem.”

Mr. Jekielek:
To your point, a senior U.S. official has said that China is helping Russia.

Ms. Paskal:
But if you remember at the beginning, before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. brought intel to China and said, “Russia is going to do this. You better talk to your Russian friends and tell them not to do it.” My GAF is to give them intelligence that lets them know what intelligence I have, which they are going to do anyway. Therefore, all you’re really doing is helping the Russian invasion. It leads you down different paths.

My GAF is being aware of China’s comprehensive national power outlook. If you think you can counter it by building airfields, when at the same time the Chinese have put in a casino on the harbor, you would be better off sending one less plane and sending 10 more lawyers and investigators to the government of CNMI to investigate money laundering, corruption, and organized crime. That would have a better defense and security outcome than sending that extra plane to Tinian.

Mr. Jekielek:
You’re also putting unrestricted warfare into your approach.

Ms. Paskal:
I call it unrestricted defense. If they have comprehensive national power, then we need comprehensive national defense. Defense can’t just mean kinetic defense. It’s like the discovery of the marijuana farms in Maine. What’s that about? That should be a very high-priority defense and security issue.

Mr. Jekielek:
Please explain that for us.

Ms. Paskal:
There are all these Chinese-linked marijuana growing operations in Maine that were discovered by a very good local investigative journalist, and they’re finding more and more of them. There seems to be a long trekking route and they’re obviously illegal. They were doing it through the financing of mortgages that seem to be through one Chinese-linked clearinghouse, so it’s relatively easy to identify.

If they’re doing it in Maine, it is likely happening elsewhere. Once you have that kind of organized crime infrastructure, it’s not just going to be focused on marijuana growing. There will be other elements involved, including human trafficking, extortion, blackmail, and bribery. A lot of it can come down to the local sheriff and whether they want to prosecute or not.

The bad guys know that, so they’re going to put a lot of effort into getting friendly sheriffs put in place. Once they have the friendly local law enforcement put in place that won’t look at the marijuana grow-op, that law enforcement also won’t look at all the other stuff ancillary to that.

Mr. Jekielek:
There is an unholy trinity of wealthy business tycoons, organized crime, and Chinese state security working together.

Ms. Paskal:
Getting back to the basics, what is their foundational goal? I would argue in the context of this being a battle of systems, the goal is to destroy American democracy. American democracy is a defense against the Chinese Communist Party-ification of a society. It is an existential threat to the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party. It all goes back to their ultimate ultimate goal, which is the preservation of the Chinese Communist Party.

The success of any other system other than the Chinese system is a direct existential threat for the Chinese Communist Party. The shining city on the hill is the United States of America, so they need to discredit, tarnish, disintegrate America through entropic warfare and unrestricted warfare.

Mr. Jekielek:
Demoralization is another tactic they use. In many ways it is still the shining city on the hill, but it can be difficult to see amidst the darkness.

Ms. Paskal:
The shining city on the hill doesn’t come from street lights. It comes from the individuals, which is the incredible strength of the American system, the inner light of all Americans.

Going back to the Commonwealth of Northern Marianas, I was very touched and privileged to talk to a local Chamorro woman who had been hiding in the caves during the WWII invasion. When the Americans came in, the locals hid in caves for weeks while the bombardment was going on. It wasn’t the starvation, it was really the thirst that was getting to them, not having anything to drink.

Two Marines came up quietly to her cave and told them they were going to be safe and led her family out of the cave. One of the Marines gave her some water to drink from his canteen. She is in her 90s now, and when she talks about it, you can see how incredibly touched she was by that communication between the two of them.

It was this young Marine who had just lived through hell trying to liberate Saipan, and this little 10-year-old girl that created such a bond. That was why many Chamorro locals voted to become American. She actually became a nun, and then she became a schoolteacher. She taught in inner city America during desegregation to repay the Marines who had liberated them. She was not black or white, and she thought she could play a role in helping America move forward.

These are uniquely American stories. It is the inner light of Americans fighting for freedom that has illuminated a lot of the globe. It’s not this city of Washington that is the city on the hill. It’s the individual Americans. That light needs to be extinguished for the Chinese Communist Party to be able to flourish in the darkness that it so craves. That’s why fighting back against them involves shining light.

I came here in a cab, and the driver was a Uyghur who has relatives back in China. He’s living in a city where people are going to restaurants and living a normal life, but part of his heart is still in China. His relative had been thrown into a labor camp for a year, and he lost touch with them. The fight is still going on.

Mr. Jekielek:
The Uyghur genocide is still going on.

Ms. Paskal:
Yes. We’re the ones who are supposed to be fighting that. Our light is supposed to be bringing relief to that darkness. That makes it a direct threat to the Chinese Communist Party and to their comprehensive national power. We don’t even realize we have those tools to deploy, but we really need to.

A place like the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands has had these Chinese arriving without a visa and money laundering. It’s so easy to fix that just by doing the things we’re supposed to do anyway, which is go after the corruption and throw the bad guys in jail. That is part of that light that has inspired and attracted so many, and I say that as a Canadian.

If I were to join the Canadian military, I would need to swear an oath to King Charles III. The American military that has you swear an oath to a Constitution is a pretty remarkable thing. It’s not exceptional anymore because others have picked up the idea, but it certainly was exceptional at the beginning. That’s why it is worth going back to those founding documents, including this George Washington quote about the U.S. being detached and distant, to see how that is being compromised.

Mr. Jekielek:
Let’s talk about the importance of Taiwan and these other islands in the Pacific to U.S. security.

Ms. Paskal:
Taiwan is often reduced to a conversation about microchips.

Mr. Jekielek:
Wait, the microchips are important.

Ms. Paskal:
Yes, the microchips are important. But based on my understanding of comprehensive national power, China is willing to damage everybody if everybody else is damaged a bit more. If the chip factories are destroyed, that means nobody is getting the chips. China won’t get the chips, but neither will anybody else. Undoubtedly, there are second-level chips that they have cornered the market on. But you can’t think of it in terms of logic. They have a completely different logic.

China does have demographic issues, but they’re not stupid. They knew that 30 years of one-child policy was going to create demographic issues. At some level, the planners thought, “We’ll go through this bump. We’ll have all these old people and be unbalanced, and they will die off. Then we’ll have a reduced general population.” They calculate the death of tens of millions of people in a way that is unthinkable. That’s why I try to understand Chinese terminology and logic as much as I can.

Taiwan creates two other big problems for China. One is this existential issue of the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party. If people say that the Chinese can’t handle democracy, you can just look across the strait. and you’ve got Han Chinese that are doing way better and have created a much more vibrant society and economy than the ones that have been living under communist rule. That undermines the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party.

Mr. Jekielek:
They’ve already gotten rid of one partial democracy, which was thriving for a long time.

Ms. Paskal:
Yes. People said, “They will never kill the golden goose that is Hong Kong. But they did, so their logic is different. The legitimacy of the CCP rests on their system being better, so the success of the U.S. is a threat to that. Taiwan destroys the notion that Chinese can’t handle democracy. India also takes care of that, which is another reason why India is another big target for them. That’s one reason why Taiwan is a problem.

The other is geography. Yes, there has been this erasure of distance for hitting the U.S., but you still have trade routes. They are building up the Navy, and they clearly want to dominate the maritime domain. Standing on the Chinese coast and looking out, you see the first island chain; Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines. It’s very difficult to get your submarines out unobserved, or to fly your jets out to project power.

That is one of the reasons they have been militarizing the islands in the South China Sea, because that pushes them further towards the first island chain. If you can take Taiwan, you’ve broken the first island chain and you’re out into the Pacific. That takes you to the Arctic and takes you down into the Indian Ocean. From a strategic perspective, breaking that chain through political warfare is very important. Taiwan would be more of a kinetic battlefield.

Mr. Jekielek:
But the CCP has invested into political warfare against Taiwan as well. They have taken over some of the media. There have been these constant overflights, and persistent threats. There has been demoralization.

Ms. Paskal:
That’s right. I should specify that political warfare doesn’t mean that nobody dies. Fentanyl is part of political warfare and you’ve got tens of thousands dead. Unrestricted warfare is a continuum. It is both political warfare and kinetic. It flows back and forth. If the goal is to be number one in terms of comprehensive national power, a component of that is military.

They want to be in a position to break the first island chain and project power from Taiwan. Ideally, from their perspective, the way to do that might be political warfare. It’s not because it’s more moral or legal, but because it’s below the response threshold, the trigger threshold, so it has a lower cost. But if kinetic is the only way, then that will happen.

Mr. Jekielek:
Taiwan has proven quite resistant to that non-kinetic encroachment.

Ms. Paskal:
Yes. The CCP is probably on a timeline and I agree with Captain Fennell on this. In fact, I learned from him that they’re heading towards the 100th anniversary of the founding of Communist China in 2049, which dictates their timeline for accomplishing certain things.

Mr. Jekielek:
What about the political warfare across the other islands?

Ms. Paskal:
Concerning the political warfare issue for the Pacific Islands, the term island hopping was a strategy that was developed by the U.S. military during World War II. The Japanese were all over these islands. The question was, “Do we take every single island?” The response was, “No, we’re going to hop over some of them so we don’t have to flood the zone. We’re just going to take critical ones.” That might leave isolated Japanese outposts that would have their logistics cut off and become weaker before they finally surrendered. The U.S. had to figure out how to hop through the region in order to be able to get closer to Japan and be within striking range.

This was based on work done in the early 20s by a Marine, Pete Ellis, who saw the way Japan was placing itself throughout the Pacific Islands. He died in Palau in the early 20s and wrote this very important treatise about these Micronesian bases. Toshio Yoshihara has written about how the PLA studied U.S. and Japanese emplacement in the Pacific Islands leading up to the war. You can see that China, through political warfare, is island hopping.

It is grabbing strategic locations like Kanton Island in Kiribati, where there is an old U.S. airfield from World War II. You can see it in the Solomon Islands and Guadalcanal. They’re using political warfare to embed in a way that has kinetic potential in the Pacific Islands. they’re using political warfare to the Pacific Islands.

It is reminiscent of what the U.S. had to do kinetically during World War II, which means they’ve hopped the first island chain. They’re already embedding all over the zone, including in ports and port infrastructure, but also corrupting political systems. If the U.S. does try to get across the Pacific, it’s going to find it much more difficult.

Mr. Jekielek:
I had a former premier of Malaita, the province in the Solomon Islands, on the show. Against all odds, he stood up to the CCP, and suffered for it greatly. He was in the news again recently as the Solomon Islands just had an election, and there was a shift. How did that all work out?

Ms. Paskal:
Sadly, the Solomon Islands is a very useful case study to understand how the CCP operates. The Solomon Islands recognized Taiwan until 2019, when Prime Minister Sogavare unilaterally switched to China. Then a whole range of things happened, including the signing of a security deal with the Chinese that allows for the deployment of PLA [People’s Liberation Army] troops in the Solomons to defend Chinese citizens, Chinese infrastructure, and to put down civil dissent. There were a whole bunch of ups and downs.

As you mentioned, Premier Suidani from Malaita province stood up to this. A lot of money was pumped in by Chinese proxies to individually flip members of his parliament to get him out of power, which is what happened. There was just an election. The population of the Solomon Islands overwhelmingly voted him back in and voted out the pro-CCP premier that had replaced him and nearly decimated Sogavare’s party at the federal level. The population clearly didn’t like the direction the country was moving in for development reasons.

China really was an issue because China is very present when it comes into a country. It starts to take over businesses and does illegal practices. Its companies are linked to illegal practices like logging that affect society and populations. It’s a parliamentary system, so that means that they are not very strong political parties. There were a lot of independents that were voted in.

Sogavare, the prime minister, switched to China. His party lost a lot of seats, but a lot of independents came in. It’s not inconceivable that a lot of money changed hands and maneuvered to a position where Sogavare’s group claimed the prime ministership. Sogavare didn’t become prime minister, he became finance minister, which is where you want to be anyway if you’ve got dodgy financial dealings going on.

The guy who is now prime minister was Sogavare’s foreign minister. He’s the guy that actually signed the deals with China. The international press reported Sogavare’s government is out, but then they didn’t stick around for the weeks that followed to see all the manipulation that happened.

Meanwhile, in Malaita province, a very similar thing happened, and this is the heartbreaking part. The pro-Chinese leaders in Malaita province
could say to those members who were voted in, “Join the Chinese side, and you’ll get money from China, you’ll get money from the federal government, and you’ll get money from Australia, New Zealand, and the US because they all want to work with the government who’s in power.”

The government who is in power is the Sogavare faction in the center. They said, “You can stick with Suidani, who’s a moral man, and you’ll get nothing for your constituencies. Nobody’s going to invest in you. The Chinese won’t touch you, and the Americans won’t touch you because they’ll think that if they invest with you, we’ll get mad at them at the national level.”

This also happened at the provincial level. Now, you also have a pro-Chinese leadership and power at the provincial level as well. I’ve heard Secretary Blinken say this. They’ll go to the region and say, “We don’t want you to have to choose, we just want to give you a better choice.” First of all, some people have chosen. Suidani chose democracy. He chose to stand with a free and open Indo-Pacific, and he wasn’t supported by the U.S..

Second, there is no choice. The U.S. isn’t giving them a choice. It isn’t saying, “We’ll help you with the clinics. We’ll help you with consular services.” There’s no choice there. If you’ve been elected as a representative from a constituency in rural Malaita, you have no clinic, and your mothers are dying in childbirth.

The Chinese side is saying, “We’ll build you a clinic.” Suidani is saying to his people, “We want to build you a clinic and we want to give you freedom of religion and protect your rights. But we don’t know if we’ll be able to.” What are you going to do, especially if they also slip you $30,000 on the side? That is apparently what was going on.

At least you know that’s money that you’ll have right up front. Even if the clinic never appears, you have assuaged your conscience. That is what happened in the Solomon Islands. It’s a complete failure by the West to respect the vote of the Solomon Islander people.

Mr. Jekielek:
This is a fascinating case study of how isolationism doesn’t work if your adversary is involved in massive influence operations and encroachment.

Ms. Paskal:
To that point, I can’t think of any bilateral relationships anymore. If you’re negotiating with a country, China is always in the room. There’s always going to be some Chinese element in the room, or standing just outside the door waiting for the other side to come out if there’s economic interests involved. You cannot operate in a China-free environment. You have to factor them in when proposing your strategy. That is very clear in Ukraine. You can’t disaggregate China.

Now, in the Middle East, you are seeing what a big role China has been playing on the ground in the Gaza situation. They’re not going to just let things happen. Whatever happens, if they’re not instigating, they’re going to try to nudge it in a direction that helps China. They often have much better intelligence and much better resources.

What do we do? I’m going right back to my original geopolitical article of faith, my GAF. I think our system is better and we need to fight for our system and help it spread. You do that through fighting on our turf, not their turf. One of the Chinese operatives in Africa was saying we’re going to win because we have an unlimited bribery budget.

Then we should have an unlimited investigation and prosecution budget. You don’t counter bribery with bribery. You counter bribery with cleaning up the system. You give breathing space to the heroes like Suidani who are willing to fight for their own people in their own places, and there are a lot of them. We have created a structure where we’re fighting on somebody else’s corrupt turf.

Mr. Jekielek:
They’re just really good at that. You mentioned you interviewed Colonel Newsham about what happened with the Compact.

Ms. Paskal:
The Compacts were finally funded. They were funded because there was incredible commitment by congressional staffers primarily, but also individual members of Congress to make this happen. There were no votes for it in them. There wasn’t a big Pacific Islander constituency in Iowa or Wisconsin or Florida that was pushing for it, but they thought it was the right thing to do. In this town, there are people who really do want to do the right thing. The proportion is even higher in the rest of the United States and in the rest of the world.

We talk about Western values, but India has led the way on a lot of this. They banned TikTok and WeChat. They’re fighting for democracy and affordability of basic care and things like pharmaceuticals that are transforming lives in places like Africa. This is a universal human value that became codified in this exceptional American experience.

The U.S. doesn’t own it, but the U.S. can certainly fight to create the space where people can let it grow in their own soil. They are waiting for that.
There are honest, courageous people all over the world that just need the breathing room to be able to be in a position where they can stand up and fight for themselves.

Mr. Jekielek:
Cleo Paskal, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show.

Ms. Paskal:
Thank you again for having me. I really appreciate it.

Mr. Jekielek:
Thank you all for joining Cleo Paskal and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I’m your host, Jan Jekielek.

This interview was edited for clarity and brevity.