What you're seeing in the Philippines is one more step in China's effort to

tighten its control over all parts of the South China seat. The Philippines has a treaty with the United States,

and some people might argue that this is actually strike three from the Filipino

perspective when it comes to relying on the Americans.

Grant Neusham is a retired U.S. Marine Colonel

and an expert on the Asia-Pacific region.

He's a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy.

They have basically gotten de facto control of the South China Sea.

But what they have done is they have kept the operations mostly with the Coast Guard

maritime militia and the Fishing Fleet.

In that way they say, this is not military.

In this episode, he breaks down the Chinese regime's

decades-long strategy to gain control of the South China Sea.

Subi Reef has been turned into a military base

that is actually bigger than Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Yanya Keller.

Grant Neutham, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders.

I'm glad to be here. Grant, a little over a year ago, I had you on the show.

We were talking about your book, When China Attacks.

And you know, you paint a very interesting scenario in the book of what that might look like, right?

And it in fact might not look exactly like what we think of conventionally as an attack.

And recently when I've been looking at what's been happening in the South China Sea,

...