The US military commitment to Asia is undergoing a profound change which will have a direct impact on the security of the entire region, analysts and diplomats say.
In the coming years, tens of thousands of US troops will be withdrawn from Europe and Asia as part of the biggest realignment of US military might since the end of the Korean War 51 years ago.
The reduced troop numbers will make US military power in the region smaller but deadlier, relying on rapid deployment and sophisticated air and naval power, analysts say.
"The days of big armies are over," said Renato de Castro, who teaches international studies at Manila's De La Salle University.
"US thinking today is less on massive troop deployment but rather on extending its military clout via the forward basing of air and sea power and logistics facilities for the rapid deployment of small numbers of highly trained troops.
"The new thinking will rely heavily on strong alliances with allies, access to facilities and training," de Castro said.
The US has yet to reveal full details of its realignment of troops in Asia, although it has announced plans to reduce the 37,500-strong force in South Korea by a third. It is thought 47,000 US troops will remain at bases in Japan.
De Castro said the new US strategy calls for what US defense planners call "lily pads" or "warm bases" -- small, lightly-staffed facilities which can be used as jumping-off points in a crisis.
These facilities will be linked to a few large, strategically located, heavy infrastructure bases likely to be in Japan, Australia and Singapore.
"In Asia these heavy infrastructure bases would include the naval base in Yokosuka in Japan and the airbase in Misawa," de Castro said.
"Singapore is already being used as a heavy infrastructure base as it has a major ship-repair facility which can handle aircraft carriers. At the southern end, you have Australia which is
considered as one of America's closest allies in Asia and has, over the years, developed a number of military bases in the north west of the country," de Castro said.
The US has been developing a series of logistic facilities in the Philippines following the closure of its bases, notably the airbase at Clark in central Luzon and the deep water naval facility at Subic Bay northwest of Manila.
In General Santos City in southern Mindanao island, the US, through air programs, has developed a deepwater port and a modern airport which are connected by one of the best roads in the Philippines.
At Fort Magsaysay in central Luzon the airport has been upgraded and the runway strengthened to accommodate
C-130 transport aircraft.
"What military planners want is to be able to deploy small units at short notice to attack terrorist groups or rogue states that pose a threat to US security," de Castro said.
Regional security analysts say technological advances are the biggest factors allowing the US to undertake military reforms while retaining the same effective presence in Asia.
As a result the US Pacific island of Guam will play an increasingly important role in projecting US military power in Asia. Strike bombers, cruise-missile submarines and a new aircraft carrier group based at the island would be capable of striking across the region.
In a recent report in Foreign Affairs magazine, analysts said the new US policy may also include access to naval and air bases in Vietnam and India.
The changes announced by US President George W. Bush this week have been expected for some time. The theme of both the 2002 National Security Strategy and the Quadrennial Defense Review in 2001 was the need for military forces that can strike quickly anywhere in the world.
Chinese agents often target Taiwanese officials who are motivated by financial gain rather than ideology, while people who are found guilty of spying face lenient punishments in Taiwan, a researcher said on Tuesday. While the law says that foreign agents can be sentenced to death, people who are convicted of spying for Beijing often serve less than nine months in prison because Taiwan does not formally recognize China as a foreign nation, Institute for National Defense and Security Research fellow Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲) said. Many officials and military personnel sell information to China believing it to be of little value, unaware that
Before 1945, the most widely spoken language in Taiwan was Tai-gi (also known as Taiwanese, Taiwanese Hokkien or Hoklo). However, due to almost a century of language repression policies, many Taiwanese believe that Tai-gi is at risk of disappearing. To understand this crisis, I interviewed academics and activists about Taiwan’s history of language repression, the major challenges of revitalizing Tai-gi and their policy recommendations. Although Taiwanese were pressured to speak Japanese when Taiwan became a Japanese colony in 1895, most managed to keep their heritage languages alive in their homes. However, starting in 1949, when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) enacted martial law
“Si ambulat loquitur tetrissitatque sicut anas, anas est” is, in customary international law, the three-part test of anatine ambulation, articulation and tetrissitation. And it is essential to Taiwan’s existence. Apocryphally, it can be traced as far back as Suetonius (蘇埃托尼烏斯) in late first-century Rome. Alas, Suetonius was only talking about ducks (anas). But this self-evident principle was codified as a four-part test at the Montevideo Convention in 1934, to which the United States is a party. Article One: “The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: a) a permanent population; b) a defined territory; c) government;
The central bank and the US Department of the Treasury on Friday issued a joint statement that both sides agreed to avoid currency manipulation and the use of exchange rates to gain a competitive advantage, and would only intervene in foreign-exchange markets to combat excess volatility and disorderly movements. The central bank also agreed to disclose its foreign-exchange intervention amounts quarterly rather than every six months, starting from next month. It emphasized that the joint statement is unrelated to tariff negotiations between Taipei and Washington, and that the US never requested the appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar during the
RSS