[ARCHIVED THREAD] - U.S. Strengthens Asia Military Links Amid Concerns Over China

Posted: 7/22/2010 7:49:36 PM EDT

From Bloomberg.com news:

http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aiQqIrlBRqzE&pos=8

U.S. Strengthens Asia Military Links Amid Concerns Over China

By Daniel Ten Kate

July 23 (Bloomberg) –– Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
joined Asia’s biggest security forum in Hanoi today as the U.S.
strengthened defense ties across a region where China’s
expanding military reach has triggered unease.

Clinton yesterday discussed military cooperation with
Vietnam and Defense Secretary Robert Gates restored ties with
Indonesia’s special forces after a 12-year gap. A day earlier,
the two officials affirmed U.S. support for South Korea in Seoul
ahead of joint naval drills that China criticized.

Clinton is set to meet China’s Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi
in Hanoi, where both are attending the 27-member Asean Regional
Forum. China considers the entire South China Sea as its own,
dismissing rival claims, and is building a blue-water fleet to
project power beyond its own borders.

"China’s assertiveness has caused anxieties in the
region,” Carlyle A. Thayer, professor of politics at the
Australian Defense Force Academy in Canberra, said by phone.
Countries around Asia "are quite happy the U.S. is doing the
heavy lifting,” he said.

China cut off high-level military exchanges with the U.S.
in January over arms sales to Taiwan and has declined to join
the Obama administration in blaming North Korea for the sinking
of a South Korean warship in March that killed 46 sailors.

Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said
two days ago that the inability to speak directly with Chinese
military leaders was a cause for concern.

Curiousity to Concern

"I’ve moved from being curious about what they’re doing to
being concerned about what they’re doing,” Mullen told U.S.
troops in South Korea. "I see a fairly significant investment
in high-end equipment, satellites, ships, anti-ship missiles,
high-end aircraft.”

China’s military poses no threat to any nation, Foreign
Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said June 10.

The U.S. regards Indonesia and Vietnam as increasingly
important allies in the region, the Pentagon said in a February
report. Gates met in Jakarta with his counterpart Purnomo
Yusgiantoro and President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

The U.S. will begin a "measured and gradual” relationship
with the elite unit known as Kopassus, which is already involved
in United Nations peacekeeping operations, Gates said yesterday.
Indonesia’s Defense Ministry has pledged to remove from active
duty any military officials "credibly accused” of rights
abuses, he said.

The move was criticized by New York-based Human Rights
Watch, which said it "weakens U.S. standards for military
cooperation globally.” U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee
member Russ Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, also said he was
"disappointed” by Gates’s announcement.

South China Sea

Indonesia and Vietnam border the South China Sea, which
contains sea corridors vital to world trade, and where U.S.
officials say China has become more assertive.

The Paracel and Spratly islands, groups of rocky outcrops
with unproven oil and gas deposits that are claimed in part or
in full by China, Vietnam, Taiwan, Brunei, the Philippines and
Malaysia, have been at the center of tensions.

Estimates of oil and gas reserves vary, with some Chinese
studies suggesting the waters contain more oil than Iran and
more natural gas than Saudi Arabia, according to the U.S. Energy
Information Administration. China told some international oil
and gas companies to halt exploration in offshore areas that
Vietnam considers part of its territory, a U.S. official told
Congress last year.

The South China Sea, stretching from Singapore to the
Strait of Taiwan, is an "area of growing concern,” Gates said
in Singapore last month. Exxon Mobil Corp. and BP Plc are among
companies that have halted projects in the sea because of
China’s objections, according to U.S. government agencies.

Vietnam

Gates and Clinton stressed that relationships with Vietnam
and Indonesia were improving. The decision to restore links with
Indonesian forces was possible due to Indonesia’s progress in
professionalizing the military since the fall of the dictator
Suharto, Gates said.

Vietnam is on the verge of becoming a "great nation” and
the U.S. wants to take its relationship to a "new level,”
Clinton told reporters in Hanoi. She met Vietnam’s Deputy Prime
Minister Pham Gia Khiem, who said yesterday they discussed
defense links and were "leaving the past behind.”

In contrast, Clinton said her presence with Gates in Seoul
and the new sanctions they announced sought to send a clear
deterrent to North Korea after the warship sinking that an
international panel blamed on a torpedo from one of the North’s
mini-submarines.

The USS George Washington and three destroyers called into
South Korean ports the same day in a show of U.S. commitment to
the region. The ships arrived ahead of planned military
maneuvers off South Korea’s east that start July 25.

China’s Military

China has beefed up its military over the past decade,
enhancing the capability to deter U.S. ships and enforce
territorial claims off its shores. Last year, Chinese fishing
boats harassed two U.S. naval vessels in the South China Sea,
where American forces have patrolled since World War II.

China doesn’t see U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, which it
considers a renegade province, as "normal,” General Ma
Xiaotian, deputy chief of general staff of the People’s
Liberation Army, said in Singapore last month.

"It is the transparency with respect to China that is
probably most vexing because it’s difficult to figure out where
they are headed,” Mullen said July 21.

Asean ministers invited the U.S. and Russia to join the
East Asia Summit, which includes the 10-member bloc, China,
South Korea, Japan, India, Australia and New Zealand. That would
provide another forum where Chinese and American leaders meet
face to face.

"The U.S. is very important to the whole Asia-Pacific,”
Thai Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya told reporters in Hanoi.
"Their presence here with the Seventh fleet guarantees peace
and security and the safety of sea lanes.”

Posted: 7/22/2010 7:51:26 PM EDT

[#1]

Good to see Clinton is finally doing something important.

Posted: 7/22/2010 7:52:40 PM EDT

[#2]

Our Military is charged with protecting the United States of America, its citizens, and our interests abroad so they're taking necessary and prudent steps to insure that they can continue to do so well into the future.

If we can maintain balance of power in the region and stability through strengthening alliances and aiding free nations than that's a good thing.

Posted: 7/22/2010 7:54:26 PM EDT

[#3]

Quoted:

Good to see Clinton is finally doing something important.

She still can't convince Pakistan to allow ISAF ground forces acces into FATA to kill the folks there that need killin.

Posted: 7/22/2010 7:57:50 PM EDT

[#4]

I thought Obama was going to usher in a new area of peace and harmony among all the nations of men.

Oh, well, maybe not.

Cold war II, coming right up.

Posted: 7/22/2010 7:59:38 PM EDT

[#5]

Quoted:

Quoted:
Good to see Clinton is finally doing something important.

She still can't convince Pakistan to allow ISAF ground forces acces into FATA to kill the folks there that need killin.

I don't see anyone managing to pull that off.

Posted: 7/22/2010 8:31:26 PM EDT

[#6]

So let me get this straight. One day we might be fighting the Chinese horde with the aid of the men in black pajamas?

Posted: 7/22/2010 8:43:26 PM EDT

[#7]

Quoted:
So let me get this straight. One day we might be fighting the Chinese horde with the aid of the men in black pajamas?

I was thinking that myself.

40 years about Americans fought Vietnam which was receiving huge backing from the Chinese. Now the US and Vietnam are siding up against China.

My how things change.

Posted: 7/22/2010 8:54:12 PM EDT

[#8]

Quoted:

Quoted:

So let me get this straight. One day we might be fighting the Chinese horde with the aid of the men in black pajamas?

I was thinking that myself.

40 years about Americans fought Vietnam which was receiving huge backing from the Chinese. Now the US and Vietnam are siding up against China.

My how things change.

A billion people parked on your border may have a way of focusing thoughts.

Posted: 7/22/2010 9:02:59 PM EDT

[#9]

Quoted:

Quoted:

So let me get this straight. One day we might be fighting the Chinese horde with the aid of the men in black pajamas?

I was thinking that myself.

40 years about Americans fought Vietnam which was receiving huge backing from the Chinese. Now the US and Vietnam are siding up against China.

My how things change.

China and Vietnam had a war in 1979. China and the Russians also didn't like each other. Just because they all claim to be Communists doesn't make them friends.

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - U.S. Strengthens Asia Military Links Amid Concerns Over China

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U.S. Strengthens Asia Military Links Amid Concerns Over China

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