US Senator John McCain on Tuesday urged more US-Australian military cooperation to deter Chinese aggression in the Asia-Pacific.
The senior Republican senator made the comments at a news conference with Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who on Monday made her first visit to the White House since taking office last year.
Earlier, Gillard called for increased economic engagement in the Asia-Pacific, saying it was key to both nations’ future prosperity.
“I think the United States and Australia will be working more actively to make sure that there’s not any tensions in the region,” said McCain, the lead Republican on the Senate Committee on Armed Services.
McCain voiced concern over China’s 12.7 percent hike in defense spending for this year. He said the communist nation was conducting a military buildup and acting assertively in disputed regions such as the Spratly Islands — also claimed by several Southeast Asian nations.
Noting Beijing’s declaration that the South China Sea is its own “special zone,” McCain said the US and Australia should ensure that China observe the freedom of the seas.
“I do not predict any conflict, but I do say the best way to prevent that is for the United States and Australia to assert the basic principles of the conduct that all nations should adhere to,” the senator said.
He was speaking after touring with Gillard a photo exhibition on the 60-year-old Australia-US military alliance. Their forces fought together in the Vietnam War, and more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. When US President Barack Obama received Gillard at the White House, he declared that the US has “no stronger ally than Australia.”
The US retains a strong military presence in the Asia-Pacific, including major bases in Japan and South Korea, and says it will do so for decades ahead, when China’s investment in missiles, navy and air force will pose an increasing challenge to its predominance.
Australia could prove an important partner in sustaining the US military footprint.
On Monday, Gillard alluded to that when she said alongside Obama: “There is so much more to do together in the future, including cooperating as America looks at its force posture.”
While both nations eye China’s rising stature with a degree of caution, they also want a stable relationship with the emerging Asian power.
Australia’s exports to China of natural resources such as coal, metal and minerals helped Australia weather the global crisis. China is also a major trading partner and creditor of the US, holding about US$1.2 trillion in Treasury securities.
Gillard told the US Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday that Australia had emerged from the downturn as the world’s strongest advanced economy. She said the Asia-Pacific region was increasingly the center of global growth and would be “critical” for the future prosperity both of her nation and the US.
Yesterday, Gillard was to address a joint meeting of Congress.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema