This is the Friends of History Debating Society. I'm John Bachelor visiting with Grant Nusham,

United States Marine Corps retired. My colleague is the author importantly of

when China attacks a warning to America. We've been using the specific example of Manila, but the larger picture

I need to frame as well. Grant, you're moving in and out of the corridors of power in the Western Pacific.

This is the end of Pacific Command.

This is the sizable institution that is a block

to the Chinese ambition to intimidate and take over Taiwan, which was never Chinese, which has always been an

independent state.

However, we come up to date, is there a concern in the air in Manila, these 29 nations,

are they aware that Taiwan is the

the target and that if they step forward to help Taiwan, they'll be involved in the

confrontation too. Is there backing off? And the reason I ask this question is I've been recently reading again the preparation

by the Axis powers for what we now know to be the war in Europe in the middle of the 20th century.

And there was much intimidation going on to states that otherwise would have come forward and

blocked the Hitlerite aggression and the Stalinist aggression towards

Poland.

They did not act when the two states moved on Poland in September of 1939.

There was a lot of hand-holding but not acting.

I'm wondering if you have the similar atmosphere in the Western Pacific or are these

29 states alert to what's ongoing? Well I would say that the states that there's some states that matter who are very well aware of what's going on, and I think everybody understands what the Chinese are up to and the nature of the Chinese threat, and to them individually. But I would note, and this is sort of an optimistic sort of take on things, that the Filipinos are not intimidated.

The Marcos government, the Philippine military are not at all, but they know their

at all, but they know their limitations.

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