On a sticky tropical afternoon in August, U.S. Marines unfurled an American flag at Guadalcanal, a southwest Pacific outpost that was the site of some of the fiercest fighting of the Pacific campaign in World War II. This stretch of ocean, dotted by thousands of islands and home to important shipping lanes and fisheries, is again in strategic calculations as China modernizes its military to project power far from its shores—threatening the dominance of the U.S. and its allies.

Source: Wall Street Journal September 08, 2018 12:56 UTC