09 August 2010 By Rick Rozoff The U.S. ended the four-day Invincible Spirit joint
military exercise with South Korea on July 28, which
consisted of 20 warships and submarines, 200 aircraft
and 8,000 troops “in the sea, shore and the skies” [1]
of South Korea and in the Sea of Japan near the coasts
of North Korea and Russia. On the same day the Taiwan News ran a feature
entitled “China reports: the US means to set up
another NATO in Asia,” which cited Chinese news media,
scholars and analysts warning that “The US is
establishing another ‘NATO’ in Asia to contain China
as evidenced in the ongoing high-profile naval
exercise with South Korea and a perceived intrusion in
South China Sea affairs. [T]hese moves including
explicit intervention in Asian affairs underline the
US’s schemes to challenge China over its growing
presence in this area….” Chinese scholar Shih Yongming is paraphrased as
asserting that “The US is capitalizing on the
contradictions among East Asian countries to form a
front against China,” in reference to U.S. Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton proposing “to include the
controversy over the issues of South China Sea into
the mechanism of international laws and [speaking]
explicitly about US stakes in the disputed sea’s
areas,” [2] an allusion to her comments at the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
Regional Forum in Hanoi on July 23. Clinton’s signal that Washington would rally
Southeast Asian nations engaged in disputes with China
over claims to the Paracel and Spratly Islands in the
South China Sea occurred at the end of a six-day tour
of Asia – Pakistan, Afghanistan, South Korea and
Vietnam – which followed by two weeks visits to
Ukraine, Poland, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia on
Russia’s western and southern flanks. During her trips last month to nine nations from
the Baltic Sea to the South China Sea, especially
during her stays in Georgia and Vietnam, Clinton
reiterated in no equivocal terms that the U.S.
recognizes no “spheres of influence” by any other
nation anywhere in the world, including ones by Russia
and China on their borders and in their immediate
neighborhoods [3], and that Washington reserves the
exclusive right to intervene in regional conflicts
around the world and to “internationalize” them when
and how it sees fit. Two days after Clinton left Vietnam the nearly
100,000-ton USS George Washington nuclear-powered
supercarrier moved into the Sea of Japan for
large-scale war games which also included the first
deployment of U.S. F-22 Raptor fifth generation
stealth warplanes to Korea. According to a local news
source, “Two F-22s known as the best fighter aircraft
in the world were shown combat-ready at Osan Air Base
in Gyeonggi Province on [July 26]. “Saying the Raptor is the most lethal fighter, the
US Air Force pointed out the jet’s stealth design
which prevents it from being detected by enemy radars.
“U.S. officials were also eager to remind North
Korea of the supersonic jet’s presence as it can
launch precise strikes at strategic targets.” [4] The F-22s were not only within easy striking
distance of Pyongyang but of Vladivostok, Russia’s
largest port city on the Pacific Ocean. And not North
Korea and Russia alone. A research scholar with the Academy of Military
Science of the People’s Liberation Army, Luo Yuan,
wrote of the Invincible Spirit war games that the
Pentagon deployed not only “a nuclear-powered
super-carrier, but also its military aircraft,
warships, [a] nuclear-powered submarine and [an]
Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer for the
joint drill.” The naval, submarine and air exercises were
conducted “only 500 km from Beijing. Considering that
the nuclear-powered super-carrier USS George
Washington’s radius of action is up to 600 km, and the
aircraft it carries can reach a speed of 1,000 km an
hour, the joint drill was dangerously close to China’s
security threshold.” The author asked a question that Russian
authorities should also have posed, mutatis mutandis:
“China has to be alarmed when other powers display
their military might near its territory. Will the US
allow China to conduct military drills with
neighboring countries in the Gulf of Mexico?” He added these concluding remarks: “[T]he military
exercise was aimed at, it was a threat to China. “The US has bandied about the ‘China threat theory’
for some time now. But this joint military exercise
proves once and for all that the US, and not China, is
a threat to the world.” [5] South Korean new media have reported that the U.S.
is to participate in monthly naval drills off the
Korean Peninsula, in the Yellow Sea off China’s coast,
next month. Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell announced
on August 6 that USS George Washington will
participate in a joint U.S.-South Korean military
exercise in the Yellow Sea “in the near future.” Before the military drills began, the influential
China Daily contained an editorial that connected the
expansion of a U.S.-led equivalent of the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization to a hostile policy
toward China, stating, “the US has seemingly become
less restrained in its move to push forward an Asian
version of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization with
its allies in the region. “In so doing, Washington has harbored the obvious
strategic intention of Recent articles by a U.S. geopolitical strategist
and by a retired military official have renewed the
demand for an Asian NATO [7], in the second case
insisting that “The Asian ‘NATO’ must stand-up a
credible, united effort against China’s intimidation
and hegemonic actions much as NATO formed the backbone
of our defense against the former Soviet Union.” [8] Over six years ago Liu Xuecheng, a researcher with
the China Institute of International Studies, sounded
the following alarm: “Almost as early as from the end of the Cold War,
the United States began to promote a military
mechanism in Asia similar to NATO. “During the eight years of former US President Bill
Clinton’s term, the United States confirmed Japan and
Australia as its core allies in the Asia-Pacific
region and respectively regarded the two countries as
the northern and southern anchors of its East Asian
security strategy. “Through various military exercises and
construction of a missile defence system, Washington
subsequently succeeded in networking its bilateral
military relations with Australia, Japan, the Republic
of Korea (ROK), the Philippines, Thailand, and
Singapore. “Following the Kosovo War, the perception that
Europe’s security situation had [come] under [the]
control of NATO while Asia-Pacific security was being
threatened by more uncertain and unpredictable factors
prompted the United States to begin to shift its
military strategy eastward.” [9] After September 11, 2001 that geostrategic
transition was intensified, the author continued, and
“the Bush administration…put its priority on
countering terrorism and preventing the proliferation
of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Under those two
banners, the United States has strengthened its
strategic control of the V-shaped belt stretching from
Northeast to Central Asia, to which China, India,
Japan and Russia are closely adjacent. “The US traditional energy transportation passage
and nations Bush branded as part of the so-called
‘axis of evil’ also overlap this long arc. “While strengthening its strategic control of the
outstretched chain, the United States has also
actively worked to extend the network of Asia-Pacific
security alliances under its domination to the Indian
Ocean and even to the Persian Gulf to join the
southward-extending NATO. “To expedite implementation of this strategy,
Washington has promoted active participation of its
traditional allies in the anti-terror war, and
prompted them to co-ordinate its anti-proliferation
moves and support its ambitious missile defence
system.” The preceding year an unsigned item appeared in
China Daily which stated “The United States is
designing a NATO-like multilateral military mechanism
for Asia to better serve its own strategic
interests….Washington’s basic purpose for closer ties
with India and an Asian version of NATO is to extend
its status as the world’s sole superpower.” [10] When the seventh of what had become annual
U.S.-India Malabar naval war games expanded to include
Australia, Japan and Singapore in 2007, Indian
journalist Praful Bidwai wrote: “The naval
exercises…are the largest and the most complex that
India has ever participated in and feature as many as
25 ships from India, United States, Australia, Japan
and Singapore….China…sees India’s military
collaboration with staunchly pro-U.S. states like
Australia and Japan and Singapore, and above all, with
the U.S. itself, as an attempt to set up what it calls
‘an Asian NATO’, and eventually, to encircle it.” [11] What in fact the U.S. is doing to complete its
status as history’s first sole world military
superpower, as its commander-in-chief Barack Obama
referred to it in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance
speech, is to not only drag almost all Asia-Pacific
nations into a military bloc analogous to NATO, but to
integrate the East into a global military alliance
with NATO as the foundation. [12] As was remarked above, since the end of the Cold
War the U.S. has incorporated almost all of Europe
into the North Atlantic military bloc it controls.
Every European nation (excluding microstates) except
for Cyprus (for the moment, though it is also under
pressure to join the Partnership for Peace) is now a
member of NATO or part of the Partnership for Peace
and even more advanced programs. 38 European nations
have provided the bloc with troop contingents of
varying size for the war in Afghanistan. Having subjugated Europe, Washington moved onto
Asia, Oceania, Africa and the Middle East with the
Caribbean and Latin America slated to follow. In
short, the entire planet. The five former Soviet Central Asian republics –
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and
Uzbekistan – are Partnership for Peace members, all
except Tajikistan joining in the early 1990s and it in
2002. Since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 NATO
troops and warplanes have operated out of bases in
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The Pentagon
has recently announced plans to open training centers
in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan in addition to the
Transit Center at Manas in the second country through
which 50,000 U.S. and NATO troops pass each month to
and from Afghanistan. This week Semyon Bagdasarov, member of the Russian
State Duma’s International Affairs Committee,
commented on NATO’s expanded plans for the region:
“[T]here are plans to send 52 OSCE [Organization for
Security and Co-operation in Europe] policemen to
Kyrgyzstan who are supposed to do something there. But
what can 52 unarmed men do? Kyrgyzstan is not Kosovo.
If anything happens to these OSCE policemen, orders
will be given to bring in armed units to Kyrgyzstan.
Who is going to send military units there? Of course,
it’s NATO. There’s a US military base in Manas, a
French air base in Dushanbe, a 154,000 NATO military
contingent in Afghanistan. What’s the problem? If that
happens, we will witness a very interesting situation
that will resemble the one in Kosovo.” [13] In recent years NATO developed a new category of
military cooperation, what are termed Contact
Countries, all of which are in the Asia-Pacific
region: Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea. Last week NATO announced that Malaysia had become
the 47th nation to officially contribute troops for
the bloc’s war in Afghanistan, joining other new Asian
contributors Singapore, Mongolia and South Korea.
Australia has 1,550 troops in Afghanistan and New
Zealand over 200, with more to be deployed in
September. Australia wants yet more New Zealand forces
to serve under an Australia and New Zealand Army Corps
(ANZAC) command in the South Asian war zone. [14] The
first soldier from the nation was killed in
Afghanistan on August 3. Last week it was announced that Britain will
underwrite expenses for 275 marines from the South
Pacific kingdom of Tonga to be deployed to
Afghanistan. From July 19-23 the U.S. Air Force and the government of Singapore sponsored the 2010 Pacific Rim Airpower Symposium in the Southeast Asian country to which delegations from Australia, Bangladesh, Brunei, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, India, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, Nepal, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tonga and Vietnam were also invited to participate. The U.S. Air Force’s Lieutenant General Hawk Carlisle said of the gathering, “The U.S. Air Force looks forward to these events every year, and our 2010 editions are no exception.” [15] On August 1 the U.S. completed month-long biennial Rim of the Pacific Exercise (RIMPAC) war games in Hawaii, the world’s largest naval maneuvers, which included 36 warships, five submarines, 170 aircraft and 20,000 troops from 14 nations: Australia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, France, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Peru, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand and the U.S. India and New Zealand were observer countries. Vice Admiral Richard Hunt, commander of the U.S. Third Fleet and combined task force commander for the exercises, said, “This is the largest RIMPAC that we’ve had.” [16] “Diesel electric submarines from Japan and South Korea stalked the U.S. aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan in the final phase – simulating a growing undersea worry as nonallied nations build up their stock of quiet subs in the Pacific.” [17] Participants for the first time were one of NATO’s three nuclear powers, France; Colombia, which is the first Latin American nation to provide NATO troops for the war in Afghanistan; and Singapore and Thailand, prominent members of the U.S. Asian NATO project. On July 26 and 27 senior Indian air force leaders visited the Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico “to learn how the U.S. Air Force operators use simulators for different aircraft and how to do distributed mission operations….The visiting [Indian Air Force] leaders are interested in taking part in future Virtual Flag exercises….Virtual Flag exercises link geographically separated live, virtual and constructive weapons assets in a shared joint synthetic theater environment.” [18] Japan sent several officers from the Maritime Self-Defense Force to the recently concluded U.S.-South Korean war games in the Sea of Japan. A government panel recently issued a recommendation stating “existing defense guidelines, made in the Cold War era, are now seen as ‘unsuitable,’ and that it is necessary to respond proactively to limited, small-scale invasions and contingencies on the Korean Peninsula and in the Taiwan Strait,” and proposed “lifting outright bans on development and possession of nuclear weapons and their transportation to Japan….” [19] Regarding U.S. plans to recruit Asia-Pacific nations into its global interceptor missile system, United Press International announced on August 5 that “Japan may export the ship-launched Standard Missile-3 system, a change from the country’s current ban on selling arms and weapons.” “The apparent move comes after a request last October by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates to Japan’s Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa….The United States is expecting an answer by the end of the year…. “The 21-foot SM-3 missile, designated RIM-161A in the United States, is a major part of the U.S. Navy’s Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System and is a compliment to the Patriot missile.” [20] On July 31 the two-week U.S.-led Angkor Sentinel 2010 military exercises in Cambodia ended. The drills which formally are for training peacekeepers for worldwide deployments included military forces from the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Australia, Japan, India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Mongolia as well as the host nation. Like the latest RIMPAC war games, a combination of major NATO and Asian NATO participants. The U.S. has just launched Khaan Quest 2010, reputed to be the largest of the annual military exercises it leads in Mongolia, and South Korean troops are to participate for the first time. [22] On August 5 a Nepalese news sources disclosed that eight U.S. Army troops had arrived in the nation for a joint two-week military exercise. Australia, which last year announced the largest military buildup since World War Two [21], has begun Exercise Pitch Black, a “three-week air combat exercise in Darwin, in northern Australia. The Royal Australian Air Force is being joined by military personnel from New Zealand, Singapore and Thailand.” “Security analysts say the annual war games over Darwin and the Northern Territory are designed to boost Australia’s military ties with its strategic partners. In the past, Indonesian forces also have taken part.” [23] A major Philippine newspaper recently reported that “The United States has pledged to provide the Philippines with $18.4-million worth of precision-guided missiles this year to use in its fight against Islamist militants in the south….” [24] On August 5 Agence France-Press revealed that the Pentagon will supply Taiwan with two more Oliver Hazard Perry class frigates. “Taiwan’s navy already operates a fleet of eight such frigates, but it has launched a five-year buildup beginning from 2008,” said a Taiwanese naval spokesman. “Taiwanese media have said the planned buildup includes eight conventional submarines, as well as an undisclosed number of frigates and guided-missile patrol boats.” [25] An article that appeared in the International Herald Tribune this week, “Washington Shores Up Its Strategic Assets in Asia,” included these observations: “The United States has been gravely weakened by its Iraq and Afghan wars and consequent neglect of the strategic importance of East Asia. But two recent moves by Washington — the joint naval exercises with South Korea and a spirited diplomatic defense of the freedom of the South China Sea — have shown a renewed concern with America’s security interests in Northeast and Southeast Asia.” “America’s military maneuvers with South Korea last week reminded China of the overwhelming naval superiority that the U.S. and its allies still enjoy in the region. Meanwhile, at the meeting last month in Hanoi of the Asean regional forum, which brought foreign ministers from the 10 Southeast Asian nations together with U.S., Chinese and other officials, Vietnam successfully conspired with the United States to get the South China Sea issue back on the table for discussion at international meetings.” “The United States, by declaring in Hanoi that it has an interest in freedom of navigation in the South China Sea and the settlement of disputed claims by international law, has put itself firmly in the camp of Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and other nations with stakes in the outcome….” [26] Last week a bipartisan, congressionally mandated defense panel headed by former White House National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and former Defense Secretary William Perry “challenged the Pentagon to broaden its focus beyond counterinsurgency in Afghanistan and Iraq and expand the Navy to deal with threats from rising powers in Asia.” The panel’s report called for the U.S. Navy to expand its current 282 ships to 346 ships to “beef up U.S. maritime power in Asia.” The report stipulated confronting “an accelerating global competition for resources” and “the rise of new global great powers in Asia.” [27] The allusion, those phrased in the plural, was to China. The perspective of a looming conflict is shared on the Chinese side, albeit in regards to developments in China’s own region and not thousands of miles away. Wang Jisi, director of Peking University’s Center for International and Strategic Studies, wrote on August 5 that “In early 2010, conflicts between China and the US came thick and fast, leading to the most serious political disturbance between the two countries since the plane collision in 2001….The gap between the two sides’ perceptions on major international issues is getting bigger. US strategists are still trying to take advantage of China’s weak spots in domestic and foreign affairs. [I]n the future the strategic cooperation space between the two will be squeezed, and major competition is inevitable.” [28] The tone of commentary in the Chinese press is increasingly grave and even ominous, as is indicated by these samples from Global Times: “The Chinese government has not sent a clear signal, though there is heated debate among the public as how to respond to the aggressive US policy. Ideas range from military action to leveraging China’s financial holdings of US assets, to more diplomatic communication. Admittedly, China has fewer means to counter the US than the US can use against China. “China won’t follow a path to war like Japan did in World War II, but that does not mean that China will surrender to US strategic containment….Taking on China as a competitor may serve as an incentive to the US. If the US takes China as an enemy, the result would be disastrous. “Plenty of water has passed under the bridge for China and the US since President Obama took office. What started out warmly soon turned chilly, and many feel the Sino-US relationship is heading toward a dangerously uncertain era.” [29] China’s first direct experience with NATO occurred on May 7, 1999 when five of the Alliance’s bombs hit its embassy in Yugoslavia in a strike approved by President Bill Clinton. Three Chinese citizens were killed and over 20 wounded in what the Chinese government branded a “crime of war” and a “barbarian act.” In the intervening years NATO has moved to China’s borders – in Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan – and China’s neighbors are being recruited into an Eastern extension of the world first global military bloc. 1) Navy NewsStand, July 28, 2010 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/07/07/clinton-renews-u-s-claims-on-former-soviet-space 4) Arirang News, July 28, 2010 http://www.acus.org/natosource/building-east-asian-nato Robert Maginnis, Winning the New Cold War http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=38425 8) Human Events, August 6, 2010 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/global-military-bloc-natos-drive-into-asia U.S. Expands Asian NATO Against China, Russia http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/10/16/u-s-expands-asian-nato-against-china-russia U.S. Consolidates Military Network In
Asia-Pacific Region http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/04/28/s-consolidates-military-network-in-asia-pacific-region 13) Russia Today, August 3, 2010 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/28/australian-military-buildup-and-the-rise-of-asian-nato 22) Mongolia: Pentagon Trojan Horse Wedged
Between China And Russia http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/03/31/mongolia-pentagon-trojan-horse-wedged-between-china-and-russia 23) Voice of America News, August 4, 2010
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