President Obama announced Wednesday that the United States planned to deploy 2,500 Marines in Australia to shore up alliances in Asia, but the move prompted a sharp response from Beijing, which accused Mr. Obama of escalating military tensions in the region.
The agreement with Australia amounts to the first long-term expansion of the American military’s presence in the Pacific since the end of the Vietnam War. It comes despite budget cuts facing the Pentagon and an increasingly worried reaction from Chinese leaders, who have argued that the United States is seeking to encircle China militarily and economically.
“It may not be quite appropriate to intensify and expand military alliances and may not be in the interest of countries within this region,” Liu Weimin, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said in response to the announcement by Mr. Obama and Prime Minister Julia Gillard of Australia.
What Mr Liu [b]really[/b] means is that it’s not in [b]China’s[/b] interests. His country means to be dominant in the area, as sttested to by the huge increase in the growth of the PRC Navy in recent years. This is not a force just sufficient enough to ensure China’s security; it’s a force intended to project power far beyond China itself.
Its a very very good move on the part of the Department of the Navy and the Marine Corps.
Marine bases in Japan are too close to China. Marine rear logistic support areas are becoming increasingly vulnerable to attack from the Asian mainland. Modern mobility makes it possible to move Marines who are now much more combat effective ( think highly improved targetting intelligence and pinpoint accurate weaponry), “a little dab will do it.”
It also relieves both the USA and Japan of highly probable Chinese strategic blackmail attempts in the event that China decides to flex its ‘overseas’ military muscle in an attempt to hold Japan hostage to Chinese strategic weapons.
Chinese strategic weapon threats against Japan are best countered locally in the region of Jaspan and Korea by Japanese and U.S. Navy crusisers and destroyers carrying SPY radars and anti-ballistic missiles.
Sooner or later, the U.S. is going to have to confront the PRC Navy, and in order to do that, we have to maintain forces in the area with support facilities, and that’s what the Chinese don’t like.