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Nimitz battle group leader questions US umbrella

A former US admiral who lead the Nimitz battle group as it patrolled the Taiwan Strait during the 1996 missile crisis raised concerns yesterday that the defense umbrella the US has provided for its allies may have led to a reduction in their defense capabilities.

"One of the great hazards of the US providing this big umbrella is that it becomes a disincentive for countries to do it for themselves," Vice Admiral Lyle Bien told the Taipei Times yesterday afternoon during a break from an international seminar.

A lot of countries, including the European countries, have become, over time, increasingly dependent on the US defense umbrella and have allowed their own military forces to diminish, Bien added.

Bien's remarks followed his speech at a three-day seminar on regional security that began in downtown Taipei yesterday.

Bien, who led a 12-ship fleet and around 13,000 sailors and Marines through the battle group's response to the 1996 missile crisis, recalled during his talk his meeting with an Asian defense minister seven years ago to illustrate further concerns about regional stability.

The minister told Bien if it were not for the reduced US military presence in the west Pacific region, the 1996 missile crisis would not have had occurred in the first place, Bien said.

Although the US and its closest allies are "the world's symbols of democracies," there's no denying that "much of the world" has become dependent on the US to provide a pivotal security umbrella, Bien said.

One of the repercussions of this tendency is the "military imbalance" between the US and its allies, with US allies finding themselves unable to make any significant contribution to an American-led alliance, should such a need arise, Bien said.

The retired vice admiral, who served in the Vietnam War and the Desert Storm campaigns, stressed in his talk that any national leader's top concerns is to provide security and defense for its own people.

In the afternoon, Bien argued that the George W. Bush doctrine that came into shape after the Sept. 11 attacks -- the doctrine of using pre-emptive strikes against potential threats -- ?should not be viewed as an omnipresent doctrine.

"It is true that the current President Bush is inclined to be pre-emptive, but only in a specific instance," he said.

"That's why I made such a big issue in my speech about the fact that the first order of a nation's leadership is to provide defense for its people," Bien said.

"It's an overstatement to say that the current President Bush is suddenly fascinated with pre-emption," he said.

"That doesn't mean that he's pre-emptive in general. It just means that he's pre-emptive in those very selective cases," Bien added.
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