Obama’s Pacific Tilt Comes Under Fire
09.26.2012 at 01:44pm
Obama's Pacific Tilt Comes Under Fire by Otto Kreisher at AOL Defense.
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 a coherent, understandable strategy and failed to adjust the plan in light of shrinking funding and trying to hide the strategy's aim to counter an increasingly aggressive China…
Very interesting point. I along with several of my peers tend to think that the decidedly Pacific focused tilt of our proposed future operational environment is flawed.
The future of China’s military depends heavily upon her ability to continue to be an economic superpower. I would argue that the historic and increasing power distance in the country is having a severe negative effect on both China’s economy and her military. A significant socio-economic gap exists between the upper and lower class in China. Additionally, people in rural China are becoming dissatisfied with the existence of an almost insurmountable wage gap.
Focusing our military on conducting future operations in the Pacific seems to me to be a dangerous misallocation of increasingly scarce diplomatic, strategic informational, military, and economic resources. The emergence of the Arab Spring and the desire of multiple Arab nations to adopt western democracies seems to me a clear indication of where we should focus our future military efforts.
I am not suggesting that we revert to the myopia associated with our Cold War doctrine that focused on the deterrence of nuclear war and nothing else. What I am suggesting is a focused effort at building lasting relationships in a region already rife with conflict and focusing our efforts on security cooperation in the region.
With sequestration on the horizon and an increasingly publicly unpopular war ongoing in Afghanistan, the current administration must focus our efforts intelligently. After a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, our military forces clearly possess the capability to execute operations in a decidedly Arab operational environment. I would argue that our ability to execute security cooperation on a grand scale in the Arab world will never exceed the level at which it exists today. I believe leveraging lessons learned in two theaters of war across the middle east and Africa would serve us better than focusing on the Pacific threat that I believe is becoming more and more hollow.
MAJ Calvin K. Hutto
Student
Command and General Staff College
Fort Gordon, GA (Satellite Campus)
The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Departement of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
I don’t have an issue with a greater focus on the Asia-Pacific region, it is clearly in the national interest to do so (but not at the expense of the rest of the world). It is disappointing that the military can’t articulate a narrative on what the rebalancing to Asia means and why it is important. If they need help in this regard they should leverage Secretary Clinton’s article in Foreign Policy.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/10/11/americas_pacific_century
More frustrating in my view were the narrowly focused comments on China throughout the article. The U.S. Pacific Command’s region includes 35 countries, over half the surface of the earth, over half the world’s population, five treaty allies, several nuclear powers, the world’s largest militaries, and perhaps most importantly the world’s largest economies. Yet our discussion on the rebalance strategy only looks at China? In my humble opinion we’re missing the ball if we’re only looking at strategy through a China lens. I am not downplaying China’s strategic importance, but lets not forget the rest of Asia and the great opportunities its presents for U.S.’s strategic interests.
Unfortunately some of the criticism in the article was well deserved. The military needs to relearn how to develop and communicate strategy again. It has become a lost art since the end of the Cold War.
(I have revised this somewhat from my original entry.)
If military, police and intelligence forces — ours and theirs — in the near and middle term are most likely to be needed, and used, to deter and/or deal with those individuals and groups who do not wish to see their states and societies transformed and incorporated as the global economy requires, then have we — by our pivot to the east — acknowledged that the Asia-Pacific region is the area in the world where we believe these such difficulties will (1) most likely to take place and/or (2) most likely harm the global economy? (Herein, I believe the answer is “no.”)
Or, by our pivot to the east, is what we actually saying is that we believe an inadequately addressed Chinese rise/challenge — in East Asia and elsewhere — more so than any of the state and societal transformation problems noted above (wherever they might occur); this, we believe, poses a far graver risk to the global economy? (Herein, due to the move to Air-Sea Battle, I believe the answer is “yes.”)
Thus, what would seem to have changed is who we believe poses the gravest threat to the global economy:
a. In the recent past, we saw this as being individuals and groups who did not wish to see their states and societies transformed and incorporated as the global economy requires.
b. Today, we believe that the disruptive effects of a rising China poses a far graver risk to the overall potential for global economy health and growth.
Have I got this right?