"They can receive information about targets and provide it to the American warships, equipped with both missile defence systems and bases for interceptor missiles in Alaska and California." [38]
The US has also shifted substantial military forces and focus from Okinawa to Hokkaido on the Sea of Japan immediately across from Russia.
It is not only Russia that is alarmed by these developments and not only Australia and Japan that are being integrated into the global American interceptor missile, so-called son of Star Wars, network.
Last December the defense ministers of China and Russia met in Beijing and "Anatoly Serdyukov and Liang Guanglie [discussed] a project by the U.S., Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Taiwan to establish a regional missile defense system. China is against the project...." [39]
Earlier in the year Andrew Chang, a Hong Kong-based military expert, remarked on the US missile shield component in Asia that "it is aimed at targeting not only North Korea but China as well" and that "that China has every reason to voice unease over the matter, adding that US plans stipulate the deployment of elements of the missile defense shield also in Japan and Australia.
"Aside from missile interceptors, an array of high-power radars will be deployed in the areas – a move that will make it possible for the US to track down China’s launchings of its missiles from the main launch pad in the Shangsi province." [40]
The purpose of Asian NATO, then, is to establish US and broader Western military superiority, even invincibility, throughout Asia across the full spectrum of ground, air, naval and space forces and weapons.
Lastly, the following survey of reports over the past few months is not an exhaustive one, but provides an overview on how the web of Western military penetration of the Asia Pacific region is simultaneously widening and tightening.
As an illustrative example, the US has just completed the two-week (April 16-30) Balikatan 2009 joint military exercise in the Philippines, the latest in a series of annual war games. This year 5-6,000 US troops participated and at one point US Marines conducted a drill that can only be training for use against unarmed civilians - "'When you've got a big crowd agitated and moving at you,'" the nonlethal grenade would be a good choice." [41]
The exercise was held on the grounds of the former Clark Air Base which the US Air Force had vacated in 1991, one of only a few bases the US has departed voluntarily. Not only were US Marines back on the site of the base, but F-16 Fighting Falcon aircraft were employed for Balikatan 2009, the first American warplanes operating in the Philippines in sixteen years.
The Pentagon also deployed the PHIBRON-11, the Navy's only forward-deployed amphibious squadron, consisting of four warships, from Japan for the occasion.
The war games, note, were conducted in a nation that is waging several years-long counterinsurgency operations against not only the Abu Sayyaf Group but also the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the secular New People's Army.
That war is backed by and includes the direct participation of US military forces (and those of Australia) who have established camps in Mindanao.
Given that the war games were designed for combat operations in an armed conflict zone, it's revealing that military observers were present from Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, Laos and South Korea. [42]
May 2008:
The defense ministers of Japan and South Korea met to "boost three-way military ties with the U.S." and to "revive a suspended three-way military dialogue with the United States as soon as possible...."
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