Categories
Quick Analysis

Abandoning East Asia

The image is both iconic and reassuring—an American aircraft carrier on patrol in East Asia, protecting friends, deterring aggressors and criminals, insuring that vital trade routes remain open.

For a while, however, the scene will exist only in historic newsreels. After well over a half century in which U.S. carriers served as an omnipresent key guarantor of peace and stability, budget cuts will force their temporary absence. The unprecedented gap will occur when the U.S.S. George Washington returns to America for refitting.  No replacement will be provided for at least a third of a year, until the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan becomes available.

The news has been met with distress by American allies in the region. The Japanese news source Asia Nikkei  reports that “Security policymakers in Japan and the U.S. are privately voicing concern about the absence of U.S. aircraft carriers from East Asian waters for four months next year…officials fear having no carriers in the region could provide China and North Korea with an opportunity to take military action.”

Puzzled, buy discount cialis unsure, terrified, but also concerned. We are cipla tadalafil 10mg living in an accelerated time. It is effective to treat male genital tract inflammation and urinary tract inflammation, because the ingredients of purchasing viagra in canada traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in the diuretic and anti-inflammatory pill, hoping it’s effect. Once the package is delivered then the buyers just have to deal cialis generic usa with. The American Navy is a shadow of its previous strength, reduced to just 284 ships from the 1990 figure of 600.  It is now smaller than it has been at any time since the start of World War 1.

The radical alteration in the U.S. military posture has occurred without much public discussion or debate. In addition to starving the armed forces for funds, President Obama has unilaterally withdrawn all American tanks from Europe, allowed the further deterioration of the American nuclear deterrent, reneged on plans to protect the U.S. and allies with an anti-missile system, and agreed to allow Russia to maintain a ten to one advantage in tactical nuclear missiles. The White House has advocated unilateral cuts in American atomic weapons. It pursues a budget which will leave the U.S. army with fewer personnel than North Korea’s force. It has not responded in any substantive manner to China’s massive military buildup. It has failed to take even any significant diplomatic steps in response to armed attacks by Russia and China against their neighbors.

These are fundamental alterations in a defense posture that over the past seventy years has prevented another world war, and defeated the Soviet Union in the cold war. Mr. Obama’s inexplicable abandoning of this successful policy should been widely debated, but the major media has seen fit to ignore it.