Pacific Ocean

Pacific Ocean
Area
• Total	165,250,000 km²

The Pacific Ocean is the largest continuous body of water on Earth, covering more than a third of the world's surface. As the deepest and most island-rich of all the oceans, its waters reach the shores of Asia, Oceania, North America, South America, and Antarctica. The Pacific Ocean accounts for 49.8% of the world’s total ocean area and contains approximately 10,000 islands, which represent 45% of the global island area.

Imperialism has taken root within this ocean. The United States, Australia, and Japan, alongside other imperial core states, use this body of water to militarily and economically attempt to cripple China, while asserting neocolonial control through policing programs and pressuring their neocolonies into compliance.

Geography

The Pacific Ocean’s maximum north-south length is 15,800 kilometers, while its greatest east-west width reaches 19,500 kilometers. To the southwest lies the Indian Ocean, to the southeast the Atlantic Ocean, and to the north the Arctic Ocean. The Pacific Ocean has an average depth of approximately 4,028 meters.

Islands within the Pacific include the Samoan Islands, the Hawaiian Islands, the Ryukyu Islands, the Kuril Islands, the Aleutian Islands, the North and South Islands of New Zealand, New Guinea, Borneo, and the Sakhalin Islands. If we include all notable territories we have: Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Philippines, Indonesia, Taiwan, Timor-Leste, Cook Islands, Niue, Hawaii, French Polynesia, Easter Island, Galapagos Islands and the Pitcairn Islands.

Economy

The Pacific Ocean is rich in marine life, abundant with herring, cod, anchovies, salmon, tuna, and crab. Half of the world's fish are caught within the Pacific, specifically within the fishing hotspots of Japan, Peru, Korea, and China, alongside the Northwestern United States and Canada. Deep-sea minerals are also plentiful, with an abundance of manganese, nickel, cobalt, and copper, as well as natural gas and oil.

Major international ports bordering the Pacific include Los Angeles, San Francisco, Vancouver, Sydney, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Kaohsiung, Hong Kong, Singapore, Manila, Busan, Yokohama, Kobe, Vladivostok, Dalian, and Kitakyushu, among many others. Alongside these major ports, key shipping routes include those from Japan to Australia, South America to Europe, East Asia to North America via the Panama Canal and China to the Persian Gulf via the Strait of Malacca.

The Pacific Ocean facilitates the movement of 80% of all global products and goods. The Trans-Pacific Route connects East Asia (China, Japan, Korea) to North American markets, and the Strait of Malacca serves as the bridge between the Pacific and the Indian Ocean, with the Panama Canal still remaining influential for trade between the US and Asia. Ninety-eight percent of all international internet traffic passes through the Pacific Ocean via undersea fiber-optic cables. These cables are chosen as they are cheaper per bit compared to satellites and can handle enormous amounts of data relative to them.

According to a ranking by the World Shipping Council using 2024 statistics, nine out of the top ten world's biggest container ports are located in the Pacific, six of them being in China. A 2024 article in China Daily noted that Shanghai has been the world's busiest container port for 15 consecutive years.

Geopolitics

A map depicting the US Indo-Pacific Command area of responsibility and selected US bases.

Among the many geopolitical considerations of the Pacific is its strategic occupation and contestation by colonial and imperialist powers throughout history, currently with a major presence by the imperialist United States via both its own military as well as by a network of alliances, neocolonies, and colonies. The Pacific (along with the Indian Ocean) is designated under the US Department of Defense (DOD) as a "priority theater" and the DOD has identified competition with China as the organizing principle of its Indo-Pacific posture since the early 2010s.

The US organizes its activities in this area under USINDOPACOM, which is headquartered in the occupied nation of Hawaii. USINDOPACOM is the oldest and largest of the US military's unified commands, and its area of responsibility covers more area than any of the other geographic commands, sharing borders with all five of the USA's other geographic commands. Some of the USA's most significant overseas bases and forces are in the Indo-Pacific, with many positioned in south Korea and Japan. This area is also the location of the world's largest maritime exercise, the US-led RIMPAC. In Oceania, the US has several air and naval bases in Guam, and operates a ballistic missile test site in the Marshall Islands, and is building a high-frequency radar system in Palau. The US military also has ties with Fiji, Papua New Guinea, and Tonga.

One of the USA's influential 20th century military leaders who was very active in the Pacific during his life and career, Douglas MacArthur, whose father had been the Governor-General of the US-occupied Philippines, referred to the Pacific as a "vast moat" as long as it was dominated by the US, and characterized the strategic importance to US dominance in the region in his view by saying "it acts as a protective shield for all of the Americas and all free lands of the Pacific Ocean area. We control it to the shores of Asia by a chain of islands extending in an arc from the Aleutians to the Marianas held by us and our free allies. From this island chain we can dominate with sea and air power every Asiatic port from Vladivostok to Singapore—with sea and air power every port, as I said, from Vladivostok to Singapore—and prevent any hostile movement into the Pacific." In this speech, he emphasized that if there were holes in this chain of dominance, particularly the loss of Japan or the Philippines, this "might well force our western frontier back to the coast of California, Oregon and Washington."