US naval fleet to shift towards Pacific by 2020

New strategy: The US plans to shift the bulk of its naval fleet to the Pacific, as Defence Minister Stephen Smith dismissed fears the move would stoke tensions with China. Picture: AP AP

SHIFTING FOCUS:While the US plans a ‘new strategic focus’ in Asia, China warned that now is not the time to ‘make waves’ in the South China Sea, which it claims

AFP, BEIJING and SINGAPORE

US fighter jets take off from the flight deck of the Nimitz-class USS George Washington for joint military exercises between the US and South Korea in the Sea of Japan (also known as the East Sea) on June 26, 2010.

China’s Xinhua news agency warned yesterday it was no time to “make waves” in the disputed South China Sea, after the US said it would shift the bulk of its naval fleet to the Pacific Ocean by 2020.

“It is advisable for some to refrain from muddying the waters and fishing therein,” said Xinhua, referring to the sea, which is part of the Pacific and the subject of overlapping territorial claims.

China claims the sea in full, and it is also claimed in whole or part by Taiwan, Brunei, Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines.

“As regards the South China Sea tensions, it is some other claimants, whether emboldened by the United States’ new posture or not, that sparked the fire and have been stoking the flames,” the agency said.

It was Beijing’s “genuine wish” to turn the South China Sea “into a sea of peace, friendship and cooperation,” Xinhua added.

The commentary was a reaction to US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta telling a summit in Singapore yesterday that the US would shift the bulk of its naval fleet to the Pacific as part of a new strategic focus on Asia,

The decision to deploy more ships to the Pacific Ocean, along with expanding a network of military partnerships, was part of a “steady, deliberate” effort to bolster the US role in an area deemed vital to the US’ future, he said.

He insisted the switch in strategy was not a challenge to China, saying both countries had a common interest in promoting security and trade in the region.

“By 2020, the navy will re-posture its forces from today’s roughly 50/50 percent split between the Pacific and the Atlantic to about a 60/40 split between those oceans,” Panetta said.

“That will include six aircraft carriers in this region, a majority of our cruisers, destroyers, littoral combat ships and submarines,” he added.

The US Navy currently has a fleet of 285 ships, with about half of those vessels deployed or assigned to the Pacific.

Although the total size of the overall fleet might decline in coming years depending on budget pressures, Pentagon officials said the number of US naval ships in the Pacific would rise in absolute terms.

The US also planned to expand military exercises in the Pacific and to conduct more port visits over a wider area extending to the Indian Ocean.

Panetta was speaking to mainly Asian defense officials and officers from 27 countries at the Shangri-la Dialogue, an annual summit organized by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.

VIDEO: US EXPLAINS PACIFIC-FOCUSED MILITARY STRATEGY CCTV News - CNTV English



Unlike previous summits, China chose not to send a high-level delegation to the event, prompting speculation as to what lay behind the move.

Since US President Barack Obama unveiled plans in January to shift toward Asia, the Pentagon has offered up few details about how it intends to achieve that goal.

Yesterday’s announcement on the future of the US fleet provided the clearest evidence yet of a shift to Asia, and the speech appeared designed to reassure allies that Washington would back its much-publicized “pivot” to Asia with tangible action.

In his speech, Panetta said budget woes in Washington would not affect the plan to tilt towards Asia, which he said would take years to fully realize.

The US planned new investments in capabilities needed “to project power and operate in the Asia-Pacific,” including radar-evading fighter jets, a new long-distance bomber, electronic warfare and missile defenses, he said.

“But make no mistake — in a steady, deliberate and sustainable way — the United States military is rebalancing and is bringing an enhanced capability and development to this vital region,” he added.

Military commanders are revising doctrine to take into account new weapons that “could deny our forces access to key sea routes and lines of communication,” Panetta said.

Amid a growing US-China rivalry, US officials privately acknowledge the push for a larger military footprint is meant to reinforce US diplomacy when confronting Beijing’s assertive stance in the South China Sea.

Related posts:
Who owns the South China Sea islets in the eyes of the world?
U.S. designs on South China Sea exposed!
China's warns US of Confrontation over South China Sea

American drone wars and state secrecy!

How Barack Obama became a hardliner?

He was once a liberal law professor who campaigned against the Iraq war. Now, according to revelations last week, the US president personally oversees a 'kill list' for drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan. Then there's the CIA renditions, increased surveillance and a crackdown on whistleblowers. No wonder Washington insiders are likening him to 'George W Bush on steroids'

The revelation that Barack Obama keeps a 'kill list' of people to be targeted by drones has led to criticism from former supporters. Photograph: Carolyn Kaster/AP



Amos Guiora knows all about the pitfalls of targeted assassinations, both in terms of legal process and the risk of killing the wrong people or causing civilian casualties. The University of Utah law professor spent many years in the Israel Defence Forces, including time as a legal adviser in the Gaza Strip where such killing strikes are common. He knows what it feels like when people weigh life-and-death decisions.

Yet Guiora – no dove on such matters – confessed he was "deeply concerned" about President Barack Obama's own "kill list" of terrorists and the way they are eliminated by missiles fired from robot drones around the world. He believes US policy has not tightly defined how people get on the list, leaving it open to legal and moral problems when the order to kill leaves Obama's desk. "He is making a decision largely devoid of external review," Guiroa told the Observer, saying the US's apparent methodology for deciding who is a terrorist is "loosey goosey".

Indeed, newspaper revelations last week about the "kill list" showed the Obama administration defines a militant as any military-age male in the strike zone when its drone attacks. That has raised the hackles of many who saw Obama as somehow more sophisticated on terrorism issues than his predecessor, George W Bush. But Guiora does not view it that way. He sees Obama as the same as Bush, just much more enthusiastic when it comes to waging drone war. "If Bush did what Obama has been doing, then journalists would have been all over it," he said.

But the "kill list" and rapidly expanded drone programme are just two of many aspects of Obama's national security policy that seem at odds with the expectations of many supporters in 2008. Having come to office on a powerful message of breaking with Bush, Obama has in fact built on his predecessor's national security tactics.

Obama has presided over a massive expansion of secret surveillance of American citizens by the National Security Agency. He has launched a ferocious and unprecedented crackdown on whistleblowers. He has made more government documents classified than any previous president. He has broken his promise to close down the controversial Guantánamo Bay prison and pressed on with prosecutions via secretive military tribunals, rather than civilian courts. He has preserved CIA renditions. He has tried to grab broad new powers on what defines a terrorist or a terrorist supporter and what can be done with them, often without recourse to legal process.

The sheer scope and breadth of Obama's national security policy has stunned even fervent Bush supporters and members of the Washington DC establishment. In last week's New York Times article that detailed the "kill list", Bush's last CIA director, Michael Hayden, said Obama should open the process to more public scrutiny. "Democracies do not make war on the basis of legal memos locked in a [Department of Justice] safe," he told the newspaper.

Even more pertinently, Aaron David Miller, a long-term Middle East policy adviser to both Republican and Democratic administrations, delivered a damning verdict in a recent issue of Foreign Policy magazine. He wrote bluntly: "Barack Obama has become George W Bush on steroids."

Many disillusioned supporters would agree. Jesselyn Radack was a justice department ethics adviser under Bush who became a whistleblower over violations of the legal rights of "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh. Now Radack works for the Government Accountability Project, defending fellow whistleblowers. She campaigned for Obama, donated money and voted for him. Now she has watched his administration – which promised transparency and whistleblower protection – crack down on national security whistleblowers.

It has used the Espionage Act – an obscure first world war anti-spy law – six times. That is more such uses in three years than all previous presidents combined. Cases include John Kiriakou, a CIA agent who leaked details of waterboarding, and Thomas Drake, who revealed the inflated costs of an NSA data collection project that had been contracted out. "We did not see this coming. Obama has led the most brutal crackdown on whistleblowers ever," Radack said.

Yet the development fits in with a growing level of secrecy in government under Obama. Last week a report by the Information Security Oversight Office revealed 2011 had seen US officials create more than 92m classified documents: the most ever and 16m more than the year before. Officials insist much of the growth is due to simple administrative procedure, but anti-secrecy activists are not convinced. Some estimates put the number of documents wrongly classified as secret at 90%.

"We are seeing the reversal of the proper flow of information between the government and the governed. It is probably the fundamental civil liberties issue of our time," said Elizabeth Goitein, a national security expert at the Brennan Centre for Justice. "The national security establishment is getting bigger and bigger."

One astonishing example of this lies high in the mountain deserts of Utah. This is the innocuously named Utah Data Centre being built for the NSA near a tiny town called Bluffdale. When completed next year, the heavily fortified $2bn building, which is self-sufficient with its own power plant, will be five times the size of the US Capitol in Washington DC. It will house gigantic servers that will store vast amounts of data from ordinary Americans that will be sifted and mined for intelligence clues. It will cover everything from phone calls to emails to credit card receipts.

Yet the UDC is just the most obvious sign of how the operations and scope of the NSA has grown since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Under Bush, a key part was a secret "warrantless wiretapping" programme that was scrapped when it was exposed. However, in 2008 Congress passed a bill that effectively allowed the programme to continue by simply legalising key components. Under Obama, that work has intensified and earlier this year a Senate intelligence committee extended the law until 2017, which would make it last until the end of any Obama second term.

"Obama did not reverse what Bush did, he went beyond it. Obama is just able to wrap it up in a better looking package. He is more liberal, more eloquent. He does not look like a cowboy," said James Bamford, journalist and author of numerous books about the NSA including 2008's The Shadow Factory.

That might explain the lack of media coverage of Obama's planned changes to a military funding law called the National Defence Authorisation Act. A clause was added to the NDAA that had such a vague definition of support of terrorism that journalists and political activists went to court claiming it threatened them with indefinite detention for things like interviewing members of Hamas or WikiLeaks. Few expected the group to win, but when lawyers for Obama refused to definitively rebut their claims, a New York judge ruled in their favour. Yet, far from seeking to adjust the NDAA's wording, the White House is now appealing against the decision.

That hard line should perhaps surprise only the naive. "He's expanded the secrecy regime in general," said Radack. Yet it is the drone programme and "kill list" that have emerged as most central to Obama's hardline national security policy. In January 2009, when Obama came to power, the drone programme existed only for Pakistan and had seen 44 strikes in five years. With Obama in office it expanded to Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia with more than 250 strikes. Since April there have been 14 strikes in Yemen alone.

Civilian casualties are common. Obama's first strike in Yemen killed two families who were neighbours of the target. One in Pakistan missed and blew up a respected tribal leader and a peace delegation. He has deliberately killed American citizens, including the radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in September last year, and accidentally killed others, such as Awlaki's 16-year-old son, Abdul-Rahman.

The drone operation now operates out of two main bases in the US, dozens of smaller installations and at least six foreign countries. There are "terror Tuesday" meetings to discuss targets which Obama's campaign manager, David Axelrod, sometimes attends, lending credence to those who see naked political calculation involved.

Yet for some, politics seems moot. Obama has shown himself to be a ruthless projector of national security powers at home and abroad, but the alternative in the coming election is Republican Mitt Romney.

"Whoever gets elected, whether it's Obama or Romney, they are going to continue this very dangerous path," said Radack. "It creates a constitutional crisis for our country. A crisis of who we are as Americans. You can't be a free society when all this happens in secret."

Death from the sky

• Popularly called drones, the flying robots used by Obama are referred to as unmanned aerial vehicles by the defence industry that makes them. The air force, however, calls them RPAs, or remotely piloted aircraft, as they are flown by human pilots, just at a great distance from where they are operating.

• The US air force alone has up to 70,000 people processing the surveillance information collected from drones. This includes examining footage of people and vehicles on the ground in target countries and trying to observe patterns in their movements.

• Drones are not just used by the military and intelligence community. US Customs and Border Protection has drones patrolling land and sea borders. They are used in drug busts and to prevent illegal cross-border traffic.

• It is assumed the Pentagon alone has 7,000 or so drones at work. Ten years ago there were fewer than 50. Their origins go back to the Vietnam war and beyond that to the use of reconnaissance balloons on the battlefield.

• Last year a diplomatic crisis with Iran broke out after a sophisticated US drone, the RQ-170 Sentinel, crash-landed on Iranian soil. Iranian forces claimed it had been downed by sophisticated jamming technology.

 By Paul Harris guardian.co.uk,  Newscribe : get free news in real time

Japan's Politics Favoring a Regional FTA over TPP?

It is easy to misapprehend Japanese politics.  It is hard—to put it mildly—to correctly apprehend them.   I say misapprehend, rather than misunderstand, Japan’s politics because the problem is not so much interpretation of information as of one of limited and biased sources of information.

Sad to say, if you don’t have Japanese and aren’t listening to and reading the Japanese media, you can simply give up thinking that any judgment you make is based on meaningfully representative information.  But even if you do follow matters in Japanese, it is hard to avoid finding one’s judgment biased by the fact that only Japan’s big business community—whose organ is the Nihon Keizai Shimbun—seems to speak on any issue clearly and with one voice.  The trap is allowing oneself to think that the Nikkei’s advocacy—because clear and forceful—holds more sway in the political process than that of a host of other interest groups, or that Japan’s political process is particularly responsive to big business.

I say this by way of apology and no doubt excuse for what I have suggested in the past is the “slam dunk” logic of Japan’s entering the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations, or of meeting any ostensible deadlines for doing so, or of TTP being one of the highest priorities of the Noda government, and that accession to an agreement is critical to Japan’s future.

During the past month, and for at least the next few weeks, the Noda government—and Prime Minister Noda personally—have been engaged in a raucous and exhausting debate with dissident members of its own ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) as well as the opposition parties, led by the Liberal Democrats (LDP), over legislation to raise Japan’s consumption tax from 5% to 10%.  Noda has said many times that he is staking his political life on passage of the consumption tax rise, so vital does he believe it is to putting Japan back on a path to fiscal soundness and avoiding a Greece-like crisis.

Noda’s policy stance on the consumption tax is exactly that of Japan’s big business establishment, and the editorial pages of the Nihon Keizai Shimbun.   What about TPP—along with the consumption tax hike, a cause celebre of the Nikkei?  In fact, the trade agreement seems to have slipped completely off the agenda, at least for the time being.  Why—if it is so critical—might this be the case?

In answering this question I am indebted to an exceptionally insightful analysis by Professor Aurelia George Mulgan of the University of New South Wales in Australia recently posted in the East Asian Forum (website: eastasiaforum.org).  Apart from the obvious point that presently Noda has no spare political capital to invest in TPP, Professor Mulgan notes that “Japan’s record on signing Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) is not promising.  As a general rule, Japan prefers signing FTAs with non-agricultural exporting powers, rather than with powerhouses like Australia, New Zealand, and the U.S….  Japan has not signed trade agreements with its major trading partners or with developed countries (except for Switzerland in 2009); and it has preferred developing countries instead because it asks them to accept a lower trade liberalization rate with exceptions for some agricultural product.”

Professor Mulgan elaborates on why TPP is stalled, and may be doomed, in Japan.  I want to relate his many insights in a future post.  Now I will focus on one more; he writes:

“PM Noda has argued that by joining the TPP Japan ‘can absorb the Asia Pacific’s growth power’, but this argument is flawed because…China, South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines, are not in it.”

While TPP may be going nowhere, Professor Mulgan believes that Japan will “continue to push the Japan-China-South Korea FTA proposal, which was boosted by Noda’s recent trip to Beijing.”  In fact, at the tripartite meeting in Beijing Noda suffered another humiliating snub as Hu Jintao refused to meet one-on-one with him.  Speculation was briefly rife in the Japanese press as to why this happened.  But the buzz quickly passed, as snubs from Beijing seem recently to be the rule rather than the exception.

As readers of this blog know, I believe that the China-centric Asian regional economic and trade integration is an overriding mega-trend shaping and redefining Japan’s future.

Despite the Nikkei’s advocacy, movement toward TPP has stalled.    Very likely, where Japan’s varied political interests are aligning is toward a Japan-China-Korea FTA.

Stephen Harner, Forbes Contributor

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