US is infiltrating China's backyard?
China's military expansion worries its neighbours?
China’s military expansion and assertive trade policies have set off jitters across Asia, prompting many of its neighbors to rekindle old alliances and cultivate new ones to better defend their interests against the rising superpower.
A whirl of deal-making and diplomacy, from Tokyo to New Delhi, is giving the United States an opportunity to reassert itself in a region where its eclipse by China has been viewed as inevitable.
President Obama’s trip to the region this week, his most extensive as president, will take him to India, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan. Those countries and other neighbors have taken steps, though with varying degrees of candor, to blunt China’s assertiveness in the region.
Mr. Obama and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India are expected to sign a landmark deal for American military transport aircraft and are discussing the possible sale of jet fighters, which would escalate the Pentagon’s defense partnership with India to new heights.Vietnam has a rapidly warming rapport with its old foe, the United States, in large part because its old friend, China, makes broad territorial claims in the South China Sea. (From New York Times)
China's backyard, America's military playground?
The U.S. military holds about 300 annual exercises in the Pacific region, including war games with Southeast Asian countries.
As Hillary Clinton tours the region to shore up American support, here’s a look at U.S. courtship — and Chinese counter-courtship — in four strategically crucial Southeast Asian countries.
THAILAND: Perhaps America’s truest Asian military ally, Thailand plays host to the world’s largest multinational war games: “Cobra Gold.” Each year, more than 11,500 troops from the U.S., Thailand, South Korea, Indonesia and Singapore stage beach assaults, rescue missions and more. The Chinese are invited too — but only to watch.
In recent years, China has pursued its own war games with Thailand. Thailand has accepted only small-scale games. Full-on war games risk angering the U.S., fearful the Chinese will learn American invasion tactics from U.S.-trained Thai troops.
VIETNAM: Vietnam’s defense policy is distilled into three ultimatums: No military alliances, no foreign bases and no relying on a third-party country to attack its enemies. But Vietnamese anxiety over China’s rise — shared by the U.S. — is encouraging an intimacy that would have been unthinkable decades ago. U.S. warships have also docked to welcome aboard senior Vietnamese generals. A lifted ban on all but “lethal-end” arms has even helped Vietnam repair old weapons seized after the U.S. retreat in 1975.
INDONESIA: According to the U.S. Defense Department, up to 80 percent of China’s fuel imports pass through the so-called naval “choke points” around Indonesia. But despite China’s huge need for stability along this island chain, they have largely failed to influence the Indonesian forces tasked with securing it.
Previously, Indonesia was heavily courted by China’s defense industry. Since 2006, the U.S. has poured $47 million into Indonesia’s anti-piracy and other military programs. Amidst criticism this year, the U.S. lifted a ban on aiding Kopassus, Indonesia’s elite commando unit.
MYANMAR: U.S. defense companies are strictly forbidden from exporting arms to Myanmar. What the U.S. fears most, however, is Myanmar’s nuclear ambitions. A Myanmar army defector, Maj. Sai Thein Win, has supplied ample evidence to prove the isolated backwater has a nuclear weapons program, said Robert Kelley, former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Still, the program is rudimentary, he said. “The workmanship is extremely poor,” he said this week in Bangkok. (From Global Post)
Is US infiltrating China's backyard?
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