WASHINGTON: Old combat pilots warn young ones about “target fixation,” when you get so focused on what you want to bomb that you lose track of everything else and fly into the ground. That’s the danger facing US strategy in Asia as the heavily hyped Pacific pivot gets boiled down to “contain China,” warned a… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Things are going great with India — don’t screw it up. That’s the bottom line in a report from the influential Center for Strategic and International Studies entitled “US-India Military Engagement: Steady As They Go,” which the think tank previewed today as President Obama tours through Asia. “[Go] slow and steady, and the trajectory… Keep reading →

PENTAGON: “It’s perfectly acceptable to say ‘beat Army,’” the Chief of Naval Operations began, and the assembled sailors laughed. Adm. Jonathan Greenert was making a football joke, but there’s a serious strategic point beneath the smiles. At this morning’s celebration of the Navy’s 237th birthday, the service’s normal pride on such occasions was redoubled by… Keep reading →

The Obama administration’s highly touted “rebalancing” of U.S. military forces to the Asia-Pacific region attracted a barrage of flak during a briefing at an influential Washington think tank Monday. A group of former senior defense and State Department officials criticized the Pacific tilt at the Center for Strategic and International Studies saying the U.S. lacked… Keep reading →

PANAMA CITY, FLORIDA: Navy undersecretary Robert Work fired a salvo in the budget wars Wednesday, taking swipes at the Army while extolling the Navy-Marine Corps team as ideally suited for the post-Afghanistan, Pacific-focused strategy. “The United States Army is only going to have three combat brigades based overseas,” Work said in his red-meat speech to… Keep reading →

America counts heavily on a cordon of allies stretching from Japan to the north down to Thailand, and across to India, in the highly unlikely event of war with China. But these same allies could draw the U.S. into strictly local disputes in which America does not always have a clear security interest and which… Keep reading →

PENTAGON: Marine Commandant Gen. James Amos laid out today the Corps’ tricky balancing act, simultaneously cutting personnel, spreading out weapons programs, and shifting from counterinsurgency on land in Afghanistan to seaborne crisis response in the Pacific. The big Marine Corps news of the last 24 hours was the award of development contracts to three firms,… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: Senate Armed Services Committee leaders released a 100-plus-page report on the administration’s Asia strategy today, including — perhaps inadvertently — four pages of comments from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. Congress commissioned the study from the Center for Strategic and International Studies in the authorization bill for fiscal year 2012. SASC chairman Sen. Carl… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Great Britain’s new defense minister delivered a surprising rebuff to his fellow European defense leaders: Stop complaining about being abandoned as the US shifts its focus to the Asia-Pacific region and prepare to “do much more of the heavy lifting” on security in your own backyard. Secretary of State for Defense Phillip Hammond issued… Keep reading →

PENTAGON: With a new military strategy emphasizing Asia and alliance-building, the U.S. Pacific Fleet today kicked off its largest international exercise in years, known as “Rim of the Pacific” (RIMPAC). Some 42 ships are representing 22 countries, including India, which the US has been wooing as a counterweight to China, and Russia, once the presumed… Keep reading →