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A senior American commander has warned that China, Russia and North Korea have formed a “triangle of trouble” that threatens to transform the Pacific region.
According to Bloomberg, Admiral Samuel Paparo, commander of the Indo-Pacific Command, said the three countries have conducted joint naval exercises of increasing complexity, as well as technology transfers and closer diplomatic cooperation.
According to him, this threatens to transform the Pacific Ocean from free and open to controlled and contested.
“We are witnessing the emergence of an axis of autocracy,” Parro noted.
He said the US sees coordination between the three countries in everything from joint bomber patrols to shared anti-satellite capabilities and advanced submarine technology.
The US maintains what Paparo called a “generational advantage” in submarine technology, but he said Russia has continued to transfer submarine technology to the Pacific over the past two years.
“They are becoming more effective in the Pacific,” he said, adding that while Russia has not yet shared its submarine noise suppression technology with China, it is building seabed sensors in the South China Sea and beyond to wage more robust anti-submarine warfare.
It is noted that Paparo painted a harsh picture of what he called the shortage of American military supplies, arguing that US adversaries see such gaps and “act aggressively to take advantage of them.”
“Our stores are running out, our maintenance backlog is increasing every month,” he said, adding that stocks of precision ammunition are well below required levels.
In addition, China has also increased the pace of exercises around Taiwan to the point that it may also be difficult for the US to determine when they launched an attack.
Trump's initiatives towards China
Paparo's warnings came as a counterpoint to Trump, who seeks closer ties with China and Russia and on Thursday floated the idea of a three-way meeting, after which the adversaries could agree to cut defense spending in half.
