In recent days, news came out that China has fully militarized three islands it built in the disputed South China Sea.

What is the significance of this? Why is the Western Pacific vital to American interests? What is concerning in the relationship between the United States and some Asia Pacific countries? And What is the missing puzzle from the United States Asia-Pacific strategy?

Today we sit down with Grant Newsham, a Senior Fellow with the Center for Security Policy (centerforsecuritypolicy.org) and Director at One Korea Network (onekoreanetwork.com) and the Yorktown Institute (yorktowninstitute.org) to talk about these questions.

In tomorrow’s episode, we’ll release the second part of the interview, where we zoom in on Taiwan and talk about the ways it could improve its defense against potential aggression from China and how it can better work with the United States.