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Senior US army officer proposes purchasing Commander Islands from Russia to confront China

Lieutenant Colonel Jeffery Fritz believes that such a deal would make it possible to strengthen US security and "reaffirm American leadership" in the region

NEW YORK, July 29. /TASS/. The United States should purchase the Commander Islands from Russia in order to monitor China’s activities in the Arctic Region, US Army Lt. Col. Jeffery Fritz writes in an op-ed for Breaking Defense.

"The proposal is that the United States pursue the <...> purchase of the Commander Islands from the Russian Federation for $15 billion, in order to monitor potential Chinese submarine activity attempting to enter the Arctic Ocean," he states.

Fritz believes that such a deal would make it possible to strengthen US security and "reaffirm American leadership" in the region. According to him, in the past, the purchase of Alaska was criticized as meaningless, but now, Alaska is a cornerstone of the US energy and defense strategy.

Fritz expressed concern about China’s increasing activities in the Arctic and Beijing’s investment in the region as part of the Polar Silk Road project. In particular, he notes that from the Jianggezhuang Naval Base near Qingdao, China’s Jin-and Tang-class submarines could theoretically reach the Arctic through the Bering Strait and operate beneath Arctic ice, where detection is difficult. Armed with submarine-launched ballistic missiles, they would pose a threat to US cities like New York and Washington. If the US purchased the Commander Island, it would be able to deploy underwater monitoring systems there to track Chinese submarines, Fritz says.

The Commander Islands, located at a maritime crossroads between North America and Asia, are gaining growing geopolitical significance as Arctic shipping routes expand and regional powers, including China, increase their interest in the North Pacific and Arctic. A key geophysical advantage of the Commander Islands lies in their comparatively moderate ice accumulation. This characteristic is strategically significant: heavy ice buildup can scatter or absorb sonar signals, degrading acoustic fidelity and reducing detection accuracy. The Commander Islands’ more stable acoustic environment offers a superior location for continuous, high-resolution undersea monitoring, the expert concludes.

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