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23 December 2010 By Rick Rozoff The United States is engaged in the longest war in
its 234-year history in Afghanistan, one that will
begin its eleventh calendar year in two weeks. Like
the war that had been America's longest before now,
that in Indochina, the current one is in the Asian
continent. With repeatedly extended projected withdrawal
dates, the latest is 2014, although even that has been
characterized by Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell as
merely "aspirational," the campaign in Afghanistan and
over the past two years in neighboring Pakistan has
marked Asia as the center of U.S. global military
strategy and operations. Roughly 100,000 U.S. troops and over half as many
more from Washington's North Atlantic Treaty
Organization allies and partners are waging an armed
conflict that this year has resulted in an increasing
number of civilian casualties and the most deaths
among belligerents on both sides since it began on
October 7, 2001. U.S. and NATO war dead this year are
approaching the 700 mark, nearly a third of the total
for the over nine-year-old war. Since the U.S. invasion in 2001 opium production
has grown by 40,000 percent (according to Russian
estimates), with Afghanistan accounting for 92 percent
of the world's cultivation of the narcotic. In
addition to the killing of Afghan civilians by U.S.
and NATO air and night raids, bomb attacks against
civilians, including suicide bombings, are regular
occurrences in Afghanistan and in neighboring Pakistan
and Iran. Last month the U.S. and NATO flew 850 combat
sorties, three times more than in November of last
year. From January through November of this year
foreign occupation forces' aircraft have conducted
30,000 close air support missions for troops on the
ground. In the last six months U.S. and NATO forces
have launched 7,000 special operations missions in
Afghanistan. [1] NATO helicopter gunships have also
increased raids inside Pakistan, including one in
September that killed three Pakistani border troops.
Central Intelligence Agency-directed drone missile
attacks in Pakistan have risen to at least 108 so far
this year, more than double the 53 strikes in 2009.
The amount of deaths caused by the attacks has also
doubled, over 800 compared to 400 the preceding year. The Pentagon and its NATO allies have established a
military presence on bases in several other nations in
Central and South Asia, including – publicly –
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and without
official acknowledgement in Pakistan, Kazakhstan and
Turkmenistan. In doing so the U.S. and the expansionist military
bloc it controls have established a network of troops
and bases in a swathe of territory with China to the
east, Russia to the north and Iran to the west. The expanding circle of military influence and
infrastructure extends to India, with whom the U.S.
leads bilateral and multinational naval, air and
infantry/armor exercises in both countries, as well as
pulling the world's second most populous nation into
the orbit of military interoperability through
large-scale weapons transactions. In Mongolia, U.S. Pacific Command and U.S. Army
Pacific lead annual Khaan Quest military exercises
with the host country's armed forces and those of
assorted American NATO and Asian allies in preparation
for deployments to war zones like Iraq and
Afghanistan. This year's Khaan Quest included troops
from – in addition to the U.S. and Mongolia – Canada,
France, Germany, India, Japan, Singapore and South
Korea. In addition to countries in the Asia-Pacific region
with which the U.S. maintains Cold War-era defense
treaties – Australia, Japan, the Philippines, New
Zealand, South Korea and Thailand – the Pentagon has
recently conducted military exercises and training in
South and Southeast Asia nations like Bangladesh,
Singapore, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, East Timor,
Brunei, Malaysia and Cambodia. Last July the U.S. led the two-week Angkor Sentinel
military exercise in Cambodia with troops from 26
nations including Britain, France, Germany, Italy,
Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mongolia and the
Philippines, described by Prime Minister Hun Sen as "a
symbol of the strong military ties between the US and
Cambodia." [2] U.S. Army Pacific will lead a follow-up exercise,
Angkor Sentinel 2011, in Cambodia next May. The III Marine Expeditionary Force, a Marine
Air-Ground Task Force of the U.S. Marine Corps, is
currently running ground and amphibious reconnaissance
exercises and combat diving training with counterparts
from the armed forces of Singapore on Guam "in order
to sustain tactical proficiency and support the
Pacific Command Commander's Theater Security
Cooperation Program." [3] Singapore has deployed
troops under the command of NATO's International
Security Assistance Force for the war in Afghanistan
along with fellow Asia-Pacific nations Malaysia,
Mongolia, South Korea, Kazakhstan, Australia, New
Zealand and Tonga. The Pentagon is building a $12.5 billion "super
base" in Guam "in an attempt to contain China's
military build-up." The construction "will include a dock for a
nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, a missile defence
system, live-fire training sites and the expansion of
the island's airbase. It will be the largest
investment in a military base in the western Pacific
since the Second World War, and the biggest spend on
naval infrastructure in decades." In addition, "The US is also investing another £126
pound [$197] million on upgrading infrastructure at
the British-owned Indian Ocean atoll of Diego Garcia,
700 miles south of Sri Lanka." [4] A Russian report of last month quoted analyst
Andrei Kortunov of the (pro-Western) New Eurasia
Foundation on American military strategy in relation
to Guam: "Americans do not say officially that this
base is being created to contain China's military
build-up. But if we look at the map and compare the
military potential of the countries surrounding the
Pacific Ocean, it won't be difficult for us to
understand that, most likely, China is exactly the key
factor which is taken into consideration here." He was further cited claiming that "There are many
American military facilities in the northern part of
the Pacific Ocean. "They are scattered over a large territory north of
Alaska across Okinawa and as far as the Hawaiian
Islands, where, traditionally, the U.S. Navy has a
stronghold. Which means that there are many U.S.
military facilities there, which form an arc and which
must guarantee America's hegemony in the Pacific
Ocean." The U.S. maintains that "these facilities have been
set up to guarantee the security of commercial
communications in the region, including the security
of oil supplies from the Persian Gulf area to the
western coast of the USA. But taking into account
current tendencies, this infrastructure is regarded by
many people in Beijing as one that is aimed against
China." [5] Since late last July the U.S. has conducted ongoing
war games with South Korea, Japan and Vietnam in the
Yellow Sea, the Sea of Japan/East Sea, the East China
Sea and the South China Sea. The nearly 100,000-ton
nuclear-powered supercarrier USS George Washington has
been deployed for naval maneuvers in all four
locations. The U.S. and South Korea completed four days of
exercises in the Yellow Sea on December 1 and the U.S.
and Japan concluded their largest-ever joint military
drills, codenamed Keen Sword 2011, which included
naval exercises in the East China Sea. America's top military commander, chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen, and his
South Korean counterpart General Han Min-koo recently
confirmed that their two militaries will continue the
joint exercises that have occurred since July:
Invincible Spirit in that month, the mammoth Ulchi
Freedom Guardian 2010 in August, an anti-submarine
drill in the Yellow Sea and Proliferation Security
Initiative maneuvers in September, and naval drills in
the Yellow Sea in late November and early December. On December 15 General Walter Sharp, commander of
United States Forces Korea, repeated Mullen's
assertion that Washington and Seoul are planning
further joint military exercises and that "The U.S.
and South Korea will meet future North Korean attacks
with the ‘utmost response' available that ‘the laws of
land warfare permit.'" [6] The Pentagon's 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review
report of this February states: "The United States is a global power with global
responsibilities. Including operations in Afghanistan
and Iraq, approximately 400,000 U.S. military
personnel are forward-stationed or rotationally
deployed around the world. "America's leadership in this world requires a
whole-of-government approach that integrates all
elements of national power. Agile and flexible U.S.
military forces with superior capabilities across a
broad spectrum of potential operations are a vital
component of this broad tool set….The United States
remains the only nation able to project and sustain
large-scale combat operations over extended
distances." [7] On the same day the Defense Department released the
new Quadrennial Defense Review it also proposed a $708
billion budget for next year, the largest in constant
dollars since 1946. Washington has been at war in Asia since the first
year of the decade that is now drawing to a close. It
will still be in Afghanistan well into the middle of
the next and in one manner and to some degree to its
end. Asia is the Pentagon's main 21st century war
front. 1) Agence France-Presse, December 15, 2010 http://www.defense.gov/qdr/images/QDR_as_of_12Feb10_1000.pdf |
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