Alaska Public Media:
U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis says the U.S. military increasingly relies on Alaska, both to provide a base of operations to maintaining dominance of the Indian and Pacific oceans to the south and to enable the Coast Guard and Navy to maintain control of U.S. Arctic waters, to the north. Mattis spoke at a news conference this morning at Eielson Air Force Base, after a tour of the missile-defense facility at Fort Greely.
Mattis stopped over at Eielson on the first of a five-day trip to Asia, where he’ll meet separately with Chinese, South Korean and Japanese officials. He told reporters at Eielson this morning before resuming his trip that the military sees Alaska as the key to the U.S. military’s policy of maintaining dominance of what he calls the Indo-Pacific region.
“It is probably the gateway to the Pacific in many, many ways,” Mattis said.
