Vice President Mike Pence made a stop in Alaska on Monday.
Pence visited Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage before continuing on to Japan and South Korea. He’s part of a U.S. delegation that will attend the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in South Korea this Friday.
But at JBER, part of the vice president’s focus was on sending a message to North Korea.
The vice president’s staff said in a written statement last month that Pence’s visit to Alaska and the Korean Peninsula would send a message of American resolve to North Korea’s leaders, as well as one of support for U.S. Olympic athletes and military service members stationed in the region.
Captain Bryant Davis, a spokesperson for the U.S. Alaskan Command, said Pence planned to hear from several different military commanders at JBER.
“During his visit, they’ll talk about the strategic importance of Alaska,” Davis said. “And because of our position at the top of the Northern Hemisphere, you really reach pretty much any major location in the Northern Hemisphere within hours by aircraft. So it’s a very strategic and important location for homeland defense and homeland security.”
Pence was also set to discuss the ballistic missile defense system. That includes dozens of interceptor missiles at Fort Greely in the Interior designed to guard against the type of nuclear attack that the North Korean regime has threatened in the past.
The vice president was scheduled to land at the base around 5 p.m. He planned to be on the ground in Alaska for a little less than two hours.
Casey Grove is host of Alaska News Nightly, a general assignment reporter and an editor at Alaska Public Media. Reach him at cgrove@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Casey here.
