It seems to me that we might be reaching here to demonstrate actions that show commitment to Asia – a hour VTC every other week with the SECDEF?
¶More attention to Asia: One measure of the region’s growing importance is that Mr. Panetta and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, now hold a secure one-hour video conference every other week with the top commander for Asia and the Pacific, Adm. Samuel J. Locklear III. Pentagon officials say the frequency is similar to that of video conferences with American commanders in war zones.
And I am sure the Chinese say "he doth protest too much" here (though I know Mr. Little is right, it is just that the Chinese will not believe him and I do think it is the right policy and strategy to strengthen our relationships – diplomatic and economic as well as military- with our friends, partners, and allies in the region):
“Our policy is not to contain China,” said George E. Little, the Pentagon press secretary. “It’s to continue to strengthen our defense relationships with our allies and partners in the Asia-Pacific.”
But I think David Bertaeu gives us the quotable quote on the Marines in Australia:
“The Marine issue is really a blip in the larger pivot to Asia,” said David J. Berteau of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a co-author of a report last summer that criticized the Pentagon for not sufficiently explaining how it would carry out and pay for the pivot. “If you have a fly on your glasses it looks really big and you can’t see past the fly. But it’s still just a fly.”
V/R
Dave
November 10, 2012
Words and Deeds Show Focus of the American Military on Asia
WASHINGTON — In November 2011, President Obama stood before the Australian Parliament and issued a veiled challenge to China’s ambitions in Asia: “As a Pacific nation, the United States will play a larger and long-term role in shaping this region and its future.” A year later, the details of his pledge — along with a nascent American military buildup in the Pacific — are emerging.
This summer, about 250 United States Marines, the first of 2,500 to be deployed to Australia, trained with the Australian Army near the port city of Darwin and with other militaries in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. Next spring, the first of four American littoral combat ships, fast new vessels meant to keep a watch on the Chinese Navy, is to begin a 10-month deployment in Singapore.
The United States is strengthening its alliances and expanding its military exercises in the region. In an amphibious warfare drill on Guam in September, which did not go unnoticed in Beijing, Japan’s Self-Defense Forces and American Marines “retook” a remote island from an unnamed enemy.
But as Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta heads off this weekend for his fourth trip to Asia in 17 months, criticism is intensifying among defense policy experts in Washington that the administration’s “pivot” to the Pacific remains mostly verbal — a modest expansion and repackaging of policies begun in previous administrations, although still enough to unnecessarily antagonize the Chinese.
(Continued at the link above)
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