US Navy's Own Report Indicates Washington is Looking for a Pacific Fight

February 27, 2017 (Ulson Gunnar - NEO) - The Pacific Ocean is large. Since World War II, weapon systems operating in this theater have required special provisions regarding extensive range, long duration performance and relative self-sufficiency during operations.

From America's Gato-class submarines and PBY Catalina flying boats used to fight the Japanese and reassert American hegemony across Asia-Pacific during WWII, to America's continued presence in Japan, South Korea and islands throughout the region, it is clear the lengths the US has gone through then and now to remain "engaged" in the Pacific.

More recently, a report by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), commissioned by the US Navy titled, "Restoring American Seapower: A New Fleet Architecture for the United States Navy," obsesses over not how to defend American shores, but how to remain involved in Asia-Pacific despite the immense distances between there, and America.

The report's introduction includes:

Great power competitors such as China and Russia increased their military capabilities over the last two decades and now appear willing to challenge the international order. 

However, the report never addresses Chinese or Russian forces landing on American shores, or even threatening to do so. Rather, the report revolves around maintaining hegemony within spheres of influence much more appropriately (and likely inevitably) Chinese or Russian.

The report coins a term, "deny-and-punish" to describe the use of US power abroad to "stop aggression," not in defense of America itself, but in "adjacent theaters." Ironically, the report cites Iraq as an example, a nation the US, not China nor Russia, invaded, occupied and destroyed with considerable, unchallenged "aggression."

A more specific point in the 162-page report picked out by The National Interest in an article titled, "How to Guarantee America's Aircraft Carriers Can Fight China in a War," involves long-range air sorties of up to 2,000 miles.

The article elaborates:

...a 2000-mile mission would strain human endurance and an unrefueled range of more than 10 hours would require an enormous aircraft that might not fit on a carrier flight deck. Thus, the CSBA proposal calls for a smaller aircraft that would be supported by a tanker.

In other words, in order for the US to project considerable force beyond its own borders, across the Pacific Ocean, and within China's logical, proximal sphere of influence, it needs not only drone aircraft capable of 10 hour sorties, it needs drone tankers to refuel them.

Defense contractors surely welcome the report's findings, since it will require the development of not one new aircraft carrier-based vehicle, but two, including the tanker.

The CSBA report concludes by stating:

To be deterred in the 2030s, aggressors must be presented with the possibility that their goals will be denied or that the immediate costs to pursue them will be prohibitively high.

In reality, the "aggression" the United States fears is not the unjust encroachment on other, innocent nations, but rather the undoing of every aspect of its own global order, put together piece by piece through just such aggression. It is an order constructed not within any rational US sphere of influence, rather, one spanning the globe, so far from American shores combat pilots lack the endurance to fly the sorties required to "deter" other nations from reversing America's grip upon it.

US Declares Hegemony Over Asia

June 10, 2016 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - Never has US intentions in Asia been so obvious. Attempts to portray America's role in the region as constructive or necessary have been ongoing since the end of World War II, however, recently, with Asia able to begin determining its own destiny for itself, the tone from Washington has become increasingly curt and direct.

US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter's remarks during the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore were all but a proclamation of US hegemony over Asia - a region of the planet quite literally an ocean away from Washington.

In Reuters' article, "U.S. flexes muscles as Asia worries about South China Sea row," Secretary Carter is quoted as saying:

The United States will remain the most powerful military and main underwriter of security in the [Asian] region for decades to come – and there should be no doubt about that.

The US, besides implied exceptionalism, never fully explains why it believes underwriting security for an entire region of the planet beyond its own borders is somehow justified.

Reuters would also report (emphasis added):

Any action by China to reclaim land in the Scarborough Shoal, an outcrop in the disputed sea, would have consequences, Carter said.

"I hope that this development doesn't occur, because it will result in actions being taken by the both United States and ... by others in the region which would have the effect of not only increasing tensions but isolating China," Carter told the Shangri-La Dialogue, a regional security forum in Singapore.

The term, "isolation" is key - and has defined US foreign policy toward rising powers in Asia since before even World War II.

US Policymakers Make No Secret of Aspirations of Primacy in Asia 

Robert Blackwill, a former US ambassador, a senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR), a lobbyist, and US National Security Council Deputy for Iraq during the US invasion and occupation in 2003, penned last year a paper for the CFR titled, "Revising U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China" (.pdf), in which no secret was made about US designs toward Asia Pacific.

The paper states explicitly that (emphasis added):

Because the American effort to “integrate” China into the liberal international order has now generated new threats to U.S. primacy in Asia—and could eventually result in a consequential challenge to American power globally—Washington needs a new grand strategy toward China that centers on balancing the rise of Chinese power rather than continuing to assist its ascendancy.

The paper elaborates by enumerating precisely how this will be done (emphasis added):

...preserving U.S. primacy in the global system ought to remain the central objective of U.S. grand strategy in the twenty-first century. Sustaining this status in the face of rising Chinese power requires, among other things, revitalizing the U.S. economy to nurture those disruptive innovations that bestow on the United States asymmetric economic advantages over others; creating new preferential trading arrangements among U.S. friends and allies to increase their mutual gains through instruments that consciously exclude China; recreating a technology-control regime involving U.S. allies that prevents China from acquiring military and strategic capabilities enabling it to inflict “high-leverage strategic harm” on the United States and its partners; concertedly building up the power-political capacities of U.S. friends and allies on China’s periphery; and improving the capability of U.S. military forces to effectively project power along the Asian rimlands despite any Chinese opposition—all while continuing to work with China in the diverse ways that befit its importance to U.S. national interests.

It should be noted that in particular, the point regarding "concertedly building up the power-political capacities of U.S. friends and allies on China's periphery" is not as innocuous as it sounds. Blackwill himself in his capacity as a lobbyist represented one of those "friends and allies on China's periphery," the client regime of Thaksin Shinawatra in Southeast Asia's nation of Thailand.

US Claims its Anti-China US-ASEAN Summit "Not Anti-China"

February 9, 2016 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - For decades the US has sought to stitch together a united front stretching from Central Asia, across Southeast Asia, and even into East Asia itself to encircle and contain China.

From the 70 year occupation of Japan, to the Korean and Vietnam wars, to the 15 year occupation of Afghanistan, to political meddling and attempted regime change in Southeast Asia up to and including today, the United States has invested untold of sums in its bid to maintain what US policymakers openly call American "primacy" in Asia.

The most recent manifestation of this policy of encirclement and containment has focused prominently on Southeast Asia, both through the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade agreement, and the US' sponsorship of an ongoing South China Sea dispute.

America's Anti-China US-ASEAN Summit  

AFP's article, "US says Asean summit Obama plans to host this month is 'not anti-China', " would claim of the upcoming US-ASEAN summit that:

A summit with Southeast Asian leaders that US President Barack Obama is hosting later this month is “not anti-China”, a State Department official said. 

The meeting will bring leaders from the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) at the Californian resort of Sunnylands on February 15-16. 

It is the same venue where Obama and President Xi Jinping held an unusually informal summit in 2013. This time, however, China is not invited.

However, several lines down, AFP admits:

The US administration has focused on bolstering Asean as a counterpoint to Chinese regional power. 

AFP then mentions the ongoing conflict in the South China Sea:

Several Asean states are embroiled in an increasingly bitter spat with China over disputed territory in the South China Sea. 

AFP admits that US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia Daniel Russel has this "bitter spat" in mind as the summit nears:

“This is a direct challenge to the question of whether the countries in the region and the claimants in the South China Sea, and particularly China... would be guided by the universal principles and the rule of law.”

And of course, it is the United States who has declared itself arbiter in all maters regarding "universal principles and the rule of law." In fact, the chief justification the United States cites regarding its continued presence in Asia Pacific is the perceived need of its military and political might to preserve international "rule of law," even as it tramples such principles both in Asia, and worldwide.

Asia: Choosing Between East and West

September 3, 2015 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - Political and business circles across Asia face a shifting geopolitical environment driven by the inevitable rise of China. Several fundamental factors are driving this shift  that if fully understood should help established political orders, business interests, and ruling elite across Asia position themselves for a peaceful, stable, prosperous future. Failure to position oneself carefully as this shift takes place, can see a political dynasty or business empire swallowed whole in the fissures of geopolitical tectonic change.

What Asia Looked Like and Why It's Changing 

For centuries Asia was dominated by first European colonial hegemony, then for nearly a century, American hegemony. The United States itself admits that it possesses "primacy" over Asia and that its primary geopolitical objective in Asia is to maintain that "primacy."

For the better part of a century, maintaining that primacy was enabled by vast economic and military disparity between Washington and the collective resources of Asia. Victory in World War 2 and America's subsequent involvement in both the Korean War and the Vietnam War allowed the United States to maintain an immense military, political, and economic footprint in the region.

In the wake of the Vietnam War, however, an exhausted American Empire began its slow and inevitable retreat. In the void left by this expanding retreat, nations across the region, not the least of which is China, have built themselves up socioeconomically, militarily, and geopolitically.

US Admits It is a Losing Proposition  

American efforts to contain China have proven futile - points made in the US' own policy papers who have attempted on multiple occasions to reformulate their antiquated concept of "primacy" and impose it upon Asia. The most recent of which was published by the influential Council on Foreign Relations - a corporate-funded think tank that represents the collective interests of some of the most powerful Western corporate-financier interests on Earth.