China Signals Recent Patrols Near Alaska Are Only the Beginning – By Paul D. Shinkman (US News) / Aug 8, 2023
‘The Americans should get used to it,’ one military analyst told a Chinese state news service of the joint flotilla with Russia that raised alarms in international waterways near Alaska.
Beijing has signaled that recent naval exercises near the Aleutian Islands that set off a political firestorm in Alaska and triggered a U.S. military response serve as only the beginning of a new era of confrontations to advance China’s global ambitions.
A joint flotilla of 11 Chinese and Russian warships patrolled international waters near the Alaskan island chain last week. Though it never entered U.S. territory, the maneuver was enough to raise widespread alarms within the U.S. and Canada. The Wall Street Journal first reported the patrol – what one analyst described to the paper as a “historical first” – as well as the response from U.S. Northern Command, which included scrambling several American warships and surveillance aircraft to monitor the opposing ships.
Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska, a senior Republican member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, blasted the Chinese and Russian patrol as representing “a new era of authoritarian aggression.” He issued a joint statement with fellow Alaska Republican, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, saying Alaska Command had provided them with several classified briefings about the incident. The senators said the U.S. is not currently prepared militarily to counter the burgeoning threat.
