US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter today announced the US will be escalating its “regular rotations” of troops and warplanes into the Philippines, though despite a growing number of troops in the country at any given time, he insisted this was not an increased “permanent footprint.”
300 Air Force commandos, along with a number of additional US combat aircraft are heading to the Philippines this go around, with an eye on escalating tensions with China over maritime claims in the South China Sea.
Despite officials making no secret that the deployments directly target China, Carter insists they aren’t meant to provoke any sort of conflict with China, and that his policy is to “tamp down” tensions with them.
That’s difficult to claim credibly, with the US repeatedly making incursions into the airspace and waters around manmade Chinese islands in the South China Sea. Though such overflights are perfectly legal under international law, Pentagon officials seem to regularly make it a point to present such moves as being done to spite the Chinese government.
After the recent air show in the Baltic, any US ship sailing in contested SCS waters should expect a similar display. Perhaps the John S. Stennis shouldn’t plan on launching any aircraft while Ash Carter is on board for his sail-by.
USA continues to bait the Bear and the Dragon in frustrated bully fashion. Look for a manufactured “Gulf of Tonkin incident” in the South China Sea.
Yes, having 1.7 billion pissed-off Muslims isn’t enough, so while continuing to annihilate and antagonise them, the Obama-Clinton-Kerry consensus is to add 1.5 billion nuclear armed Chinese and 144 million nuclear armed Russians to the enemies list. What could possibly go wrong?
Nov 1, 2015 Global Conflict and the Geopolitics of US-China Relations
With reports emerging that China has signed on to Russia’s military coalition in Syria at the same time that the Chinese are signing new cooperation agreements with the US, the question is once again being raised: What is the nature of China-US rivalry?
https://youtu.be/lG9xrayRyA4