The new U.S. administration signalled a confrontational approach early on. In May of 2009 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, barely three months in her post, stated, "The Obama administration is working to improve deteriorating U.S. relations with a number of Latin American nations to counter growing Iranian, Chinese and Russian influence in the Western Hemisphere...." [12]
Later in the year then Director of National Intelligence (and retired admiral and former commander-in-chief of the Pacific Command) Dennis Blair released the latest quadrennial National Intelligence Strategy report which said "Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea pose the greatest challenges to the United States' national interests. [13]
While Blair headed up the Pacific Command (PACOM) from 1999-2002, his role included overseeing a vast area of the planet that includes China (since the Ronald Reagan administration assigned it to that military command in 1983).
Arrogating the right to divide the entire world into military zones, areas of operation, has never been attempted by any other nation, any group of nations, not even all the nations of the world collectively (in the United Nations or otherwise). But the U.S. has and does do just that. It has even added two new Unified Combatant Commands - Northern Command and Africa Command - in recent years, in 2002 and 2007 respectively.
The Pacific Command is the oldest and largest of the six current regional commands (the others being the Africa, Northern, European, Central and Southern Commands), and was formed during the dawning of the Cold War in 1947. Its area of responsibility takes in over 50 per cent of the world - 105 million square miles - 36 nations and almost 60 per cent of the world's population.
300,000 troops from all major branches of the U.S. armed forces - the Air Force, Army, Marine Corps and Navy - are assigned to it, 20 per cent of all active duty American service members.
Pacific Command is in charge of military defense treaties with Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the Philippines and South Korea.
The U.S. is also alone in assigning the world's oceans and seas to naval commands. Washington has six naval fleets - the Fourth Fleet (the Caribbean, Central and South America) was reactivated in 2008 after being disbanded in 1950) - and just as Pacific Command is the largest unified, multi-service command, so the Seventh is the largest forward-deployed fleet, with 50-60 warships, 350 aircraft and as many as 60,000 Sailors and Marines at any given time. It is based in Japan and its area of responsibility includes over 50 million square miles of the (largely western) Pacific and Indian Oceans.
The U.S. also has eleven aircraft carriers, ten of them nuclear-powered and all eleven part of strike groups. [14] (China has no and Russia one carrier.)
The Time magazine article quoted from earlier mentioned that the deployment of four U.S. guided missile submarines to East Asia and the Indian Ocean is not the only development that China needs to be concerned about. The U.S. is simultaneously presiding over six-week biennial Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) military exercises in Hawaii with over 20,000 troops, 36 warships and submarines (25 American) and 180 planes and helicopters.
This year's RIMPAC, which began on June 23 and is to be completed by the end of July, includes for the first time the participation of France, Colombia - with which the U.S. has recently concluded an agreement for the use of seven of its military bases [15] - and the Southeast Asia nations of Malaysia and Singapore. The other countries involved are Australia, Canada, Chile, Indonesia, Japan, the Netherlands, Peru, South Korea and Thailand. The five-week war games involve "missile exercises and the sinking of three abandoned vessels playing the role of enemy ships." [16]
The combined task force commander for RIMPAC 2010 is commander of the U.S. Third Fleet, whose area of responsibility is approximately 50 million square miles of the eastern Pacific, Vice Admiral Richard Hunt, who stated, "This is the largest RIMPAC that we've had," and one which "clearly focuses on maritime domain awareness dealing with expanded military operations across the complete spectrum of warfare." [17]
Time's Mark Thompson also wrote: "Closer to China, CARAT 2010 - for Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training - just got underway [July 5] off Singapore. The operation involves 17,000 personnel and 73 ships from the U.S., Singapore, Bangladesh, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand.
"China is absent from both exercises, and that's no oversight." [18]
This February Cobra Gold 2010, "the largest multinational military exercise in the world," [19}, was launched in Thailand (separated from China by only one nation, either Laos or Myanmar) and as with all previous Cobra Gold war games was run by U.S. Pacific Command and the Royal Thai Supreme Command. Joining the U.S. and Thailand in this year's exercises, designed "to build interoperability between the United States and its Asia-Pacific regional partners," [20] were the armed forces of Japan, Indonesia, Singapore and, for the first time, South Korea.
From June 8-25 the latest U.S. Air Force-led Red Flag Alaska air maneuvers were held near the eastern Pacific. "The Red Flag exercises, conducted in four-to-six cycles a year by the 414th Combat Training Squadron of the 57th Wing, are very realistic aerial war games. The purpose is to train pilots from the U.S., NATO and other allied countries for real combat situations." [21]
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
