The South Pacific Influence Challenge: SAGE DRAGON Game Report
Information
Date
September 2023
Summary
Nearly a century after the last world war brought conflict to the Pacific, Pacific Island countries (PICs) are once again crucial terrain in a strategic competition. This time the competition is between the People’s Republic of China on one side and the United States and Australia on the other, with nations like Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, and Kiribati finding themselves courted by all. Similar to Japan in the 1940s, China may be attempting to establish a forward defense perimeter by drawing a new “island chain” that complicates United States force flow into the area, isolating and threatening Australia. The United States and its allies in turn look to the PICs for their own positioning and unfettered access to the western Pacific.
The South Pacific Influence Challenge: SAGE DRAGON Game Report, Hoover Institution Library & Archives, https://wargaming.hoover.org/view/ark:/54723/h3p55dr02