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09 December 2010 By Rick Rozoff On December 1 the U.S. and its South Korean
military ally completed four days of naval maneuvers
in the Yellow Sea where China claims a 200-mile
exclusive economic zone. The U.S. dispatched the 97,000-ton USS George
Washington nuclear-powered aircraft supercarrier for
the exercise, accompanied by a carrier strike group
consisting of a guided missile cruiser and three
guided missile destroyers. The American deployment
included 6,000 sailors and 75 aircraft. South Korea
supplied destroyers, corvettes, frigates, support
ships, anti-submarine aircraft and an undisclosed
amount of military personnel. The war games, which included live-fire shooting
and bombing drills, were the latest in a series of
U.S.-led military exercises in South Korea and the
seas to its east and west beginning in July of this
year: From July 25-28 the U.S. conducted a joint military
exercise with South Korea codenamed Invincible Spirit
in the Sea of Japan/East Sea with the involvement of
20 warships including the USS George Washington
supercarrier, 200 warplanes including F-22 Raptor
stealth fighters and 8,000 troops. In August the U.S. and South Korea conducted this
year's Ulchi Freedom Guardian military exercise, the
world's largest command and control simulation drill,
in the latter country with 30,000 U.S. and 56,000
South Korean troops participating. In early September Washington and Seoul held an
anti-submarine warfare exercise in the Yellow Sea with
two U.S. guided missile destroyers and a fast attack
submarine and two South Korean destroyers. Only the August exercise was a routine one, the
latest in a series of Ulchi Freedom Guardian maneuvers
held over several decades. On the day the most recent military exercise ended,
December 1, it was announced that the U.S. and South
Korea will hold another military exercise this month.
[1] The following day "South Korea…readied plans for
more live-fire drills as a warning to North Korea and
scheduled talks with the United States and Japan on
dealing with [North Korea]…." [2] The armed forces of
the Republic of Korea will begin five days of
artillery drills on December 6 in 29 locations,
including on border islands in the Yellow Sea. On the same day Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
will meet with the foreign ministers of South Korea
and Japan in Washington, D.C., in a rebuff to China
and Russia, which are partners in the six-party talks
– along with the U.S., Japan, South Korea and North
Korea – that have been held since 2003 after North
Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty. This despite China calling for an emergency
meeting of representatives to the six-nation
negotiations and winning North Korea's agreement to
rejoin the long-stalled process. On December 2 Russia
announced it was ready to participate in emergency
talks with the six-country group. Just as Russia and China were excluded from the
U.S.-led investigation of the Cheonan sinking earlier
this year, so now they are being brushed aside in
favor of a confrontational U.S.-Japan-South Korea
initiative. Two days after the American-led naval exercise in
the Yellow Sea concluded, the U.S. began a week-long
exercise with Japan off the second nation's islands
near the South Korean coast. The war games, Keen Sword
2011, involve 60 warships, 400 aircraft and 44,000
troops and are the largest-ever joint U.S.-Japan
military drills. Kyodo News disclosed that "The
maneuvers will be carried out to practice for guarding
against ballistic missile attacks and for defending
remote Japanese islands," the latter an allusion to a
Chinese-Japanese territorial dispute in the East China
Sea. Standard Missile-3 interceptors on U.S. and
Japanese Aegis class destroyers deployed in the Sea of
Japan and Patriot Advanced Capability-3 anti-ballistic
missiles currently stationed at bases from the north
to the south of Japan, Hokkaido to Okinawa, will be
employed. In the words of an Air Force major assigned to U.S.
Forces Japan headquarters: "There's going to be naval
operations, air operations, land – pretty much the
full spectrum of military activities. There is going
to be a lot of flying, some movement involving the
aircraft carrier George Washington." [3] South Korea's military has been invited to attend
the exercise as an observer, as Australian, British
and French officers were on board USS George
Washington for the exercise in the Yellow Sea that
ended two days ago. In the words of Australian
Minister Stephen Smith, "We had an official on board
the USS George Washington as essentially a show of
support." [4] Japanese military personnel observed the
Invincible Spirit naval exercise in the Sea of Japan
in July. As a recent Russian commentary characterized the
now constant American military activity in East Asia –
exemplified by the deployment of the George Washington
supercarrier in waters off China's and Russia's coasts
and island possessions in the Sea of Japan in July, in
the South China Sea in August, in the Yellow Sea in
November and at the confluence of the Sea of Japan and
East China Sea this month – "the Pentagon [is] flexing
its muscles against both North Korea and China." [5] And not only in respect to conventional forces. On
November 22 South Korean Defense Minister Kim
Tae-young responded to a question by one of his
nation's members of parliament on "whether the
government intends to consider the redeployment of US
tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea…in the
affirmative." [6] Although the sinking of a South Korean corvette,
Cheonan, in March has been used in the intervening
nine months as the rationale for U.S.-led war games in
the seas of East Asia, that incident in no manner
accounts for joint American-Vietnamese naval drills in
the South China Sea in August, visits to Australia and
nine other Asia-Pacific nations by President Barack
Obama, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton and chairman of the U.S. Joint
Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen early last
month [7], and the overall diplomatic offensive and
military maneuvers Washington is intensifying in the
region with each passing day. Three months after the sinking of the Cheonan,
President Obama accused his counterpart, Chinese
President Hu Jintao, of "willful blindness" in
relation to North Korea in what was reported as a
"blunt" conversation during the Group of 20 summit in
Toronto on June 27. [8] Since North Korea's shelling of the South Korean
island of Yeonpyeong on November 23, the U.S. has
intensified pressure on China to rein in North Korea.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mullen recently
told a Washington, D.C. think tank audience that
"Beijing's call for consultations will not be a
substitute for action," and, in reference to China's
military modernization program: "I am concerned about
some of the high-end capabilities that they clearly
are developing. I don't underestimate them in terms of
capability. Some of the specific capabilities are very
clearly focused on and pointed at the United States of
America, and they are anti-access capabilities." [9]
That is, China has the temerity to develop defensive
capabilities in the face of U.S. military presence off
its coasts. The U.S. is exploiting North Korea as a decoy to
target China and is supporting Japan in territorial
conflicts with both China and Russia [10] as
components of a broader strategy to renew, enlarge and
integrate military alliances throughout the
Asia-Pacific area. [11] Washington recognizes the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands,
administered by Japan, as Japanese, but also refers to
the Southern Kuril Islands, which since 1945 have
belonged to Russia (and its predecessor state, the
Soviet Union) as Japanese territories. Hillary Clinton's visit to New Zealand last month
resulted in the signing of the Wellington Declaration
committing the two countries to a new strategic
partnership, annual military consultations and a
resumption of joint military exercises. In fact what
Clinton secured was the revival of the Cold War-era
Australia, New Zealand, United States (ANZUS) Security
Treaty which was signed during the Korean War and
invoked to recruit Australian and New Zealand troops
for the Vietnam War. An Indian commentator said of the top U.S.
diplomat's achievement: "Clinton was not only given a
traditional New Zealand Maori's welcome called Powhiri,
the greatest gift that she could bring back to
Washington was the release of the New Zealand Defense
White Paper 2010 two days before her arrival. The
White Paper envisaged Wellington's greater presence in
the South Pacific and strengthening the alliance with
Washington and Canberra." [12] Kevin Rudd, until recently Australia's prime
minister and now its foreign minister, affirmed on
November 28 that "Australia could be drawn in to any
military conflict on the Korean peninsula under its
alliance with the US." In his own words, "I…simply
state the obvious: that under our alliance with the
United States, Article 4 of the ANZUS Treaty is clear
about our requirements to act to meet the common
danger…." [13] Similarly, a briefing note prepared for Defence
Minister Peter MacKay of Canada revealed that "If war
breaks out on the Korean peninsula, Canada could
become embroiled due to a half-century-old United
Nations military alliance," the United Nations Command
formed by the U.S. and its allies in the Korean War
after the armistice was signed in 1953. The memo
states that although the main "fighting formation"
that would lead military operations against North
Korea is the joint U.S.-South Korea Combined Forces
Command, that joint command "includes under its
strategic organizational umbrella the legacy United
Nations Command." [14] Other members of the United Nations Command are
Canada's fellow NATO member states the U.S., Britain,
France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Turkey and
Luxembourg; ANZUS members Australia and New Zealand;
the Philippines and Thailand, with which the U.S. has
defense alliances – and military assistance
obligations – comparable to those it has with
Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea. As with the reactivation of trilateral ANZUS
military obligations, so with the U.S.-Japanese mutual
military assistance agreement. On October 27 Clinton
held a press conference in Hawaii with Japanese
Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara and when asked about an
island chain contested by Japan and China – the
Senkakus to Tokyo, the Diaoyus to Beijing – said, "the
Senkakus fall within the scope of Article 5 of the
1960 U.S.-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and
Security. This is part of the larger commitment that
the United States has made to Japan's security. We
consider the Japanese-U.S. alliance one of the most
important alliance partnerships we have anywhere in
the world and we are committed to our obligations to
protect the Japanese." She also said the Washington-Tokyo alliance "is the
cornerstone of American strategic engagement in the
Asia Pacific." [15] Two weeks later President Obama was in Yokohama,
Japan for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit
and told Prime Minister Naoto Kan that the U.S.-Japan
alliance is "the cornerstone of American strategic
engagement in the Asia Pacific" and "the commitment of
the United States to the defense of Japan is
unshakable." [16] Clinton's and Obama's phraseology was identical. In late October Clinton, flanked by her Japanese
counterpart, said: "This year, we celebrate the 50th
anniversary of our alliance, which was forged at the
height of the Cold War," in reference to the
aforementioned Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and
Security between the United States and Japan of 1960.
[17] In advance of the Keen Sword 2011 U.S.-Japan war
games currently underway, Air Force Lieutenant General
Hawk Carlisle, who is directing the exercise on the
American side, stated in the middle of last month: "In
1960, Japan and the U.S. signed the Treaty of Mutual
Cooperation and Security. Participation in Keen Sword
further enhances the Japan-U.S. alliance, which
remains a key strategic relationship in the
Asia-Pacific region." [18] Clinton's spokesman, the State Department's Philip
Crowley, backed Japan's territorial claims on Russia's
Kuril Islands on November 2, even referring to them as
the Northern Territories, the Japanese government's
designation. He didn't go as far as Clinton had five
days earlier in pledging adherence to Article 5 of the
U.S.-Japan treaty – "Each Party recognizes that an
armed attack against either Party in the territories
under the administration of Japan would be dangerous
to its own peace and safety and declares that it would
act to meet the common danger" – but the prospect of
Washington and Tokyo invoking the provision against
Russia is not an unimaginable contingency. On December 4 Japanese Foreign Minister Maehara
will arrive at the northern island of Hokkaido "to
view four Russian-held islands claimed by Japan, known
as the Northern Territories in Japan and the Southern
Kurils in Russia." [19] While in Hokkaido, Maehara
will meet with former residents of the Kurils. Decades-old and until of late seemingly dormant or
discarded military blocs, treaties and military
assistance clauses are being resuscitated and expanded
in the Asia-Pacific region. Military alliances modeled
after the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in the
area in the 1950s and their 21st century equivalents
are being integrated into an eastern version of and in
many ways extension of NATO. At least eight
Asia-Pacific nations – Australia, Kazakhstan,
Malaysia, Mongolia, New Zealand, Singapore, South
Korea and Tonga – have troops assigned to NATO's
International Security Assistance Force in
Afghanistan. As part of the Afghan war effort, NATO maintains a
military presence in five nations bordering western
China: Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan
and Tajikistan. Last month Japan announced that it was deploying an
initial contingent of troops "to its westernmost
island in response to Chinese naval manoeuvres in the
East China Sea." The first 100 troops will be sent to
Yonaguni, the southernmost of the Ryukyu/Nansei
islands less than 100 miles from the Senkaku/Diaoyu
island grouping. The Japanese Defense Ministry is
"also considering sending troops to the islands of
Miyako and Ishigaki west of Okinawa to beef up border
security." [20] Ishigaki is also about 100 miles from
the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. Regarding last month's flurry of visits to the
Asia-Pacific region by major U.S. foreign policy and
military officials, The Hindu reported: "US
visitors…declared Washington's resolve to expand its
footprint in South-East Asia. Clinton called for
beefing up US military presence in Singapore, which
implies a firmer grip on the strategic Strait of
Malacca, strengthening defence cooperation with
Thailand and the Philippines…and stepping up
interaction with Vietnam." [21] The most ambitious element of American plans to
forge an Asian equivalent of NATO is the recruitment
of India as the largest and most strategically
essential partner in the development of an eastern
military bloc. The U.S. is moving to supplant Russia
as India's main weapons supplier and historical
military ally and employing the South Asian nation to
counter China's emergence as a regional and world
power. Washington is proceeding at a breakneck – an
alarming – pace with plans to politically and
militarily polarize East Asia, using the crisis on the
Korean Peninsula to do so. Attempts by China and
Russia to defuse the conflict and resume negotiations
aimed at its peaceful resolution are being spurned by
headstrong and reckless U.S. government and military
officials. Russia and China share borders with North Korea.
The U.S. is a continent away. A new conflagration on
the peninsula would directly affect the first two
nations. America can exploit a renewal of hostilities
to reinstall itself in the Asia-Pacific region and use
proxies – Japan as much as South Korea – to accomplish
that objective. 1) Vladimir Fedoruk, US and South Korea plan
more war games http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/../
obama-gates-and-clinton-in-asia-u-s-expands-military-build-up-in-the-east 8) U.S. Risks Military Clash With China In
Yellow Sea http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/../
u-s-risks-military-clash-with-china-in-yellow-sea] 9) CNN, December 1, 2010 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/../
u-s-supports-japan-confronts-china-and-russia-over-island-disputes 11) Asia: Pentagon Revives And Expands Cold War
Military Blocs http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/../
asia-pentagon-revives-and-expands-cold-war-military-blocs …. http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/../
u-s-marshals-military-might-to-challenge-asian-century 12) Balaji Chandramohan, U.S. Strengthening Old
Alliances in Asia Pacific to http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/../
after-nato-summit-u-s-to-intensify-military-drive-into-asia 17) U.S. Department of State, October 27, 2010
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/article916376.ece |
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