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Pacific Ocean
October 16, 2024 Transforming the Pacific into a genuine powder keg? For the past 80 years, an island chain of military bastions running from Japan to Australia in the Pacific has served as a crucial fulcrum for American global power. Aware that the advent of the long-range bomber and the future possibility of atomic warfare had rendered the historic concept of coastal defense remarkably irrelevant, in the post-war years Washington extended its North American “defenses” deep into the Western Pacific. Starting with the expropriation of 100 Japanese military bases, the U.S. built its initial postwar Pacific naval bastions at Okinawa and, thanks to a 1947 agreement, at Subic Bay in the Philippines. As the Cold War engulfed Asia in 1950 with the beginning of the Korean conflict, the U.S. extended those bases for 5,000 miles along the entire Pacific littoral through mutual-defense agreements with five Asia-Pacific allies - Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Australia. For the next 40 years to the very end of the Cold War, the Pacific littoral was allowing for America to defend one continent (North America) and dominate another (Eurasia). Just as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has revitalized the NATO alliance, so China’s increasingly aggressive behavior and a sustained U.S. military build-up in the region have strengthened Washington’s position on the Pacific littoral, bringing several wavering allies back into the Western fold, while encouraging a massive militarization of the Indo-Pacific region. After withdrawing some U.S. forces from Iraq in 2012 and refusing to commit significant numbers of troops for regime change in Syria, the Obama White House deployed a battalion of Marines to Darwin in northern Australia in 2014. Washington gained access to five Philippine bases near the South China Sea and a new South Korean naval base at Jeju Island on the Yellow Sea. But between 1998 and 2014, the U.S. Navy declined from 333 ships to 271. That 20% reduction, combined with a shift to long-term deployments in the Middle East, degraded the Navy’s position in the Pacific. After a decade of fighting misbegotten wars in Afghanistan and Iraq of Washington, a rising China began to turn its economic gains into a serious bid for global power. Beijing started building bases in the South China Sea, where oil and natural gas deposits are rife, and expanding its navy. The Trump administration added the construction of 46 new ships to the Pentagon budget, which was to raise the total fleet to 326 vessels by 2023. By 2024 China had the world’s largest navy with 234 'warships,' while the U.S. deployed 219. The Chinese combat capacity, according to American Naval Intelligence, is 'increasingly of comparable quality to U.S. ships.' Yet such seeming strength contains both a heightened risk of great power conflict and possible political pressures that could fracture America’s Asia-Pacific alliance relatively soon. The State Department reinforced the U.S. position on the Pacific littoral by negotiating three relatively new diplomatic agreements with Asia-Pacific allies Australia, Britain, India, and the Philippines. Though bristling with armaments and seemingly strong, this ad hoc Western coalition may yet prove, like NATO in Europe, vulnerable to sudden setbacks from rising partisan pressures, both in the United States and among its allies. American relations with the Philippines suffered a severe setback in 1991 when that country was forcing the U.S. 7th Fleet out of its massive naval base at Subic Bay. After three years, China occupied some shoals also claimed by the Philippines in the South China Sea. Within a decade, the Chinese had started transforming them into a network of military bases. In April 2014 the Philippines signed a defense cooperation agreement with Washington, allowing the U.S. military quasi-permanent facilities at five Filipino bases, including two on the shores of the South China Sea. The government announced a $35 billion military modernization plan, after signed deals with Tokyo, India and South Korea, purcasing cutters, missiles and new naval vessels, negotiating with Korean suppliers to procure 40 modern jet fighters. By 2018, China’s army was operating anti-aircraft missiles, mobile missile launchers, and military radar on five artificial 'islands' in the Spratly archipelago. In the April 2024 edition of the two nation's big military maneuvers in Philippine waters, the U.S. deployed its mobile Typhon Mid-Range Missile Launcher capable of hitting China’s coast. The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue involving Australia, India, Japan, and the U.S., first launched in 2007, has extended American military power into the waters of the Indian Ocean by 2017. Since 2020, the Quad has made the annual Malabar (India) naval exercise. In the elaborate four-power drill aircraft carrier battle groups maneuver in waters ranging from the Arabian Sea to the East China Sea. The Biden White House's controversial AUKUS defense compact between Australia, Great Britain, and the U.S. led to agreement in September 2021. As part of Anglo-Saxonization of American foreign and military policy, it supports Australia in acquiring nuclear-powered submarines for the Royal Australian Navy. Australia spend $360 billion to build eight nuclear submarines at its Adelaide shipyards over a decade. It will gain access to British submarine designs and top secret U.S. nuclear propulsion, joining the ranks of just six powers with such complex technology. Australia will also host four American Virginia-class nuclear subs at a naval base in Western Australia and buy as many as five of those stealthy submarines from the U.S. in the early 2030s. Canberra will also face additional costs for the joint development of undersea drones, hypersonic missiles, and quantum sensing as a major geopolitical and military ally in any future conflict with China. With more than 200 times the ship-building capacity of the United States, China’s advantage in warships will almost certainly continue to grow. America’s active ally Japan’s navy has more than 50 warships and South Korea 30 more. India announced that the latest exercise this October would feature live-fire maneuvers in the Bay of Bengal. Last month a joint Chinese-Russian “Ocean-24” exercise mobilized 400 ships, 120 aircraft, and 90,000 troops in a vast arc from the Baltic Sea across the Arctic to the northern Pacific Ocean. Beijing is already putting relentless pressure on Taiwan’s sovereignty, breaching that island’s airspace and crossing the median line in the Taiwan Straits hundreds of times monthly. If Beijing turns those breaches into a crippling embargo, the loss of Taiwan would sever America’s island chain in the Pacific littoral, pushing it back to a “second island chain” in the mid-Pacific. (Source: counterpunch *)
* CounterPunch, a 'left-wing' online magazine, based in the United States.
by McCoy
NATO
16.10.2024 'We are working with urgency to deliver a financial pledge of at least €40 billion (nearly $43.5 billion) of military aid within a year to support Ukraine,' NATO’s new chief Rutte today announced. (Source: aa *)
* Anadolu Agency (Turkey)
(Wednesday), 16 October 2024 - 07:51 This Monday, Nato launched its annual tactical nuclear exercise Steadfast Noon, including personell from eight airbases in Europe. A British electronic gathering flight this week, was a first-of-a-kind. With take-off from Souda Bay in Greece, the plane flew over Bulgaria, the Black Sea, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Norway before conducting a 'usual sortie' outside the Murmansk region, home to Russia’s ballistic missile submarines. From there, the plane made it back to its home base Waddington military air base in England. Air-to-air refuelling of the RC-135W took place over Romania and Poland. It is expected that Russia soon will launch its annual nuclear strategic exercise GROM (Thunder). The Barents Sea region will then play a key role with launching of ballistic missiles from at least one submarine. In recent years, the Russian nuclear forces have also included nuke-capable cruise missiles from both warships and aircraft in the exercise. To protect its nuclear weapons, the country's military keeps eye on movements by NATO and neighbouring Norway. (Source: thebarentsobserver *)
* The Barents Observer, a Norwegian online newspaper which publishes about the Barents Region
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