The South China Sea and the Safety of the U.S.

These days the South China Sea is frequently in the news and in fiction, including Season 1 of Netflix’s new series PINE GAP.

With my husband Mitchell R. Miller (a member of the U.S. Naval Institute) I wrote the thriller film screenplay LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS (a Nicholl Fellowship quarterfinalist). The third act of LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS concerns the disputed islands in the South China Sea.

Having previously watched all of Season 1 of PINE GAP, I particularly noted this paragraph in the December 20, 2018, print edition of The Wall Street Journal:

Americans seem generally complacent about the dominance of their armed forces. There is little understanding of the risk that the U.S. could lose a war against China in the South China Sea or that Russian President Vladimir Putin might deter the U.S. from resisting his aggression against our allies in Europe. American military failure could change the world in ways that, for many Americans, are unimaginable.

This paragraph appeared in the Journal opinion piece “The U.S. Military’s Crisis of Imagination: America’s longstanding position of dominance has tended to make strategists and citizens complacent.” The writers of the opinion piece — Douglas J. Feith and Seth Cropsey — should know of what they speak. As the Journal stated:

Mr. Feith served as undersecretary of defense for policy, 2001-05. Mr. Cropsey served as deputy undersecretary of the Navy, 1984-89. Both are now senior fellows at the Hudson Institute.

Perhaps making Americans aware of these risks is best left to the arena of fiction — visual storytelling may make it easier for Americans to understand exactly what risks we face if we become too complacent.

Read the thriller novel LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS on Amazon (free for Kindle Unlimited subscribers) and consider whether U.S. strategists and citizens are experiencing a crisis of imagination.