[A-List] U.S. Marshals Military Might To Challenge Asian Century

[Tony B.]

http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/08/21/u-s-marshals-military-might-to-challenge-asian-century


Stop NATO
August 21, 2010

U.S. Marshals Military Might To Challenge Asian Century
Rick Rozoff

The first decade of what more than a generation ago was predicted to be the 
Asian Century is winding down, marking ten years since the end of the 
American Century.

China overtook Japan as the world's second-largest economy during the second 
financial quarter of this year and three-quarters of the BRIC (Brazil, 
Russia, India, China) nations, the world's largest emerging economies, are 
entirely or primarily in Asia. During its first heads of state summit in 
Russia last year, BRIC "urged the creation of a new global financial 
security system." [1] At the time its members accounted for 15 percent of 
the global economy and 42 percent of international currency res erves [2] 
even after the advent of the U.S.-triggered world financial crisis in 2008.

60 percent of humanity lives in Asia and the continent is home to several of 
the fastest growing economies in the world.

Demographics and economics alike assure a preeminent role for Asia in any 
natural - which is to say peaceful - course of development.

Asia is in fact part of a broader land mass, Eurasia, which in turn is 
inextricably connected to the rest of what over a century ago British 
geographer Halford Mackinder called the World Island: Asia, Europe, the 
Middle East and Africa. The last has recently recorded a population 
exceeding a billion, making it the second most populous continent.

The Asia-Europe-Africa grouping contains the overwhelming majority of the 
human race, perhaps as many as 5.6 billion of the world's 6.8 billion 
inhabitants. The entire Western Hemisphere, by contrast, has a population 
under one billion and Oceania's numbers are negligible.

But for 500 years a small number of nations in the global West and North, a 
limited contingent of countries that collectively calls itself
the North Atlantic community, has dominated most of the world.

With the demise in 1991 of an eastern power that for decades had presented 
them with the greatest challenge in their history, the Soviet Union, the 
major Western states, a coalition of all the main past colonial empires and 
the new American global superpower united in the North Atlantic Treaty 
Organization military alliance, viewed the entire world as being ripe for 
penetration and dominance, starting with the former Eastern European 
socialist bloc and the territories of the former Soviet Union.

Military formations were used to spread American and Western European 
influence throughout Europe, Africa and the Middle East - NATO and its 
numerous partnership programs, U.S. Africa Command, ad hoc "coalitions of 
the willing" - and into the Caucasus, the Caspian Sea basin, Central Asia 
and South Asia, in which last location the Pentagon and NATO are waging a 
nine-year-old war with 150,000 troops.

In the past eleven years the U.S. has obtained military, including missile 
shield, bases and facilities in parts of the world where the Pentagon had 
never ensconced itself before: Kosovo, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Hungary, 
Israel, Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, Afghanistan, 
Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Colombia.

Just since last year the Pentagon has conducted bilateral and multinational 
military exercises in and off the coasts of nations like India, Pakistan, 
Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Mongolia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, East 
Timor, Finland, Sweden, the Baltic states, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, 
Romania, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Angola, Burkino Faso, 
Gabon, Ghana, Mali, Mozambique, Senegal and Uganda in addition to 
traditional Cold War allies and partners, including holding the first 
large-sca le joint war games in Israel.

This month troops from the U.S. and other NATO nations have participated in 
military exercises in Mongolia and Kazakhstan, which both border Russia and 
China.

If Asia is superior with regard to economic growth and potential, resources 
natural and human, and other factors, the U.S. supersedes it in one key 
category: An overwhelming advantage in military firepower. The world's 
largest expeditionary warfighting machine, U.S. Pacific Command, and its 
biggest naval "permanent forward projection force," the U.S. Seventh Fleet, 
both are concentrated on East Asia.

The Pentagon withdrew troops and even closed bases in Asia after the end of 
the Cold War, but now it is returning.

In addition to three joint naval exercises in as many months - in the Sea of 
Japan in late July, the South China Sea this month and the Yellow Sea in 
September - the U.S. is massively expanding military facilities in Guam, has 
deployed 60 percent of its nuclear submarine fleet to the Pacific region and 
is considering increasing its naval fleet from 282 to 346 ships to "beef up 
U.S. maritime power in Asia." [3]

In recent days Robert Scher, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for 
South and Southeast Asia, was in the capital of Vietnam to meet with 
Lieutenant General Nguyen Chi Vinh, Deputy Minister of Defense, for the two 
countries' "first high-level defense dialogue."

On August 17, a week after a U.S. warship docked in Vietnam for the two 
nations' first joint military exercise, the Pentagon official stated the 
event was "the next significant historic step in our increasingly robust 
defense relationship," and confirmed that the discussions included sharing 
"impressions of Chinese military modernization." [4]

The next day the chief of U.S. Pacific Command, Admiral Robert Willard, was 
in the Philippines to meet with defense officials from the host nation 
including the head of the military, Lieutenant-General Ricardo David, and 
insisted that "the United States will maintain a presence in the South China 
Sea for many years," with what he identified as increasingly "assertive" 
Chinese actions as the rationale for doing so. [5]

In respect to conflicting Philippine and Chinese claims on the Spratly 
islands, Willard said that the Pentagon "very much looks forward to working 
continually" with Manila's military to ensure it is "shaped just right to 
meet the needs of this very complex archipelago that's located in a very 
strategic area of the world." [6]

This week the Japanese press announced that the nation's military will 
conduct war games in December "simulating the recapture of an isolated 
island from enemy forces," the first such exercises by the Self-Defense 
Forces which are "seen as a response to China's recent naval expansion."

The Yomiuri Shimbun revealed that "The island-reclaiming drills will be part 
of joint exercises with the U.S. military and the U.S. Navy's 7th Fleet will 
provide support." [7]

The drills will be held under a recently elaborated defense program for the 
Nansei Islands near territory southwest of Okinawa.

On August 19 the Japanese Foreign Ministry said that the Senkaku Islands, 
contested by Japan and China, are "subject to the Japan-US security treaty" 
and that Washington and Tokyo would "respond together" to any attack there. 
The ministry's press secretary said, "It is natural that Japan and the 
United States respond together." [8]

A senior Japanese Defense Ministry official stated "We'll show China that 
Japan has the will and the capability to defend the Nansei Islands." The war 
games will include "Air Self-Defense Force F-2 fighters, which have
advanced air-to-ground and antiship attack capabilities, and Maritime
Self-Defense Force P-3C antisubmarine patrol aircraft" as well as C-130 
Hercules transport planes, airborne brigade units and F-15 Eagle fighters.

"The planned exercises are a groundbreaking move....It will also be a good 
opportunity to reinforce cooperation between U.S. forces and the SDF."

An article in the August 20 edition of a major Japanese daily stated: "It 
must be demonstrated to China, which has been strengthening its military 
capability and plans to expand its sphere of influence, that the SDF and the 
U.S. military form a watertight defense array." [9]

This week Japan's Defense Ministry said it would "keep paying attention to 
China's military trend" and "Taiwan renewed its call...on the U.S. to sell 
it advanced weaponry as it joined Japan in vowing to keep a close eye on 
China's rising military power."

"Taipei and Tokyo were reacting to the release of a U.S. Defense Department
report which warned that China's expanding capabilities are changing the
strategic balance in East Asia." [10]

On the same day that the preceding account appeared, the Indian press 
disclosed that New Delhi will order a "large" amount of U.S. Javelin third 
generation anti-tank guided missiles used in last year's Yudh Abhyas 2009 
bilateral combat exercises with 1,000 U.S. and Indian troops, which featured 
"17 Stryker vehicles - the largest deployment of the vehicles outside of 
Iraq and Afghanistan," and which showcased "the Javelin Anti-Tank Missile 
system, employed to defeat current and futur e threat armored combat 
vehicles." [11]

Regarding the proposed Javelin acquisition, one of India's main newspapers 
wrote: "Much to the dismay of Russians and Europeans, India is increasingly 
taking the FMS [foreign military sales] route to ink big arms deals with the 
US. The biggest on the verge of finalisation...is for 10 C-17 
Globemaster-III giant strategic airlift for upwards of $3 billion." [12] 
President Barack Obama is scheduled to visit India in November to secure 
further arms deals which by some reports will establish the U.S. a s the 
nation's main weapons supplier, replacing Russia in that role.

On August 19 one of Australia's main newspapers carried an opinion piece by 
Greg Sheridan, recently appointed by the Woodrow Wilson International Center 
for Scholars in Washington, D.C. its Australian Scholar, in which he wrote:

"The US has five full military treaty allies in Asia: Japan, South Korea,
Thailand, The Philippines and Australia, and one de facto ally, Singapore, 
and an increasingly critical strategic relationship with India.

"It is also developing a strong strategic relationship with Vietnam....It is 
also working hard on Indonesia and Malaysia...."

He quoted U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates at June's Shangri-La
Dialogue in Singapore affirming that "My government's overriding obligation 
to allies, partners and the region is to reaffirm America's security 
commitments in the region....The strength of US commitment and deterrent 
power will be expressed through the continued forward presence of 
substantial US forces in the region." Sheridan added, "You can't get much 
more explicit than that" concerning the "complex security equation in the 
Asia-Pacific."

The Australian analyst summed up his argument by calling for "a greater US 
naval and air force presence" in Darwin on the Timor Sea. [13]

The rise of a dynamic, integrated and dominant Asia in this century is 
inevitable and inexorable. Any attempt to retard or thwart it by military 
force from outside the continent will produce catastrophic consequences.

1) Voice of Russia, June 17, 2009
2) Russian Information Agency Novosti, June 17, 2009
3) U.S. Expands Asian NATO To Contain And Confront China
Stop NATO, August
4) Agence France-Presse, August 17, 2010
5) Chosun Ilbo, August 20, 2010
6) Bloomberg News, August 18, 2010
7) Yomiuri Shimbun, August 20, 2010
8) Agence France-Presse, August 19, 2010
9) Yomiuri Shimbun, August 20, 2010
10) Agence France-Presse, August 17, 2010
11) Embassy of the United States, India, October 19, 2009
12) Times of India, August 17, 2010
13) The Australian, August 19, 2010
===========================
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