The US-organized biennial Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) is the largest international exercise held in and around the Hawaiian Islands and Southern California. The RIMPAC- 2018, the 26th exercise in the series, is running from June 27 to Aug.2 under the motto "Capable, Adaptive, Partners." It involves 46 surface ships, five submarines, 18 national land forces, more …
Continue reading RIMPAC-2018: What Makes it So Special This Year?
The US and its allies continue to implement a dangerous strategy to counter China’s growing influence in the Pacific. These days, it’s all but too easy to get distracted by the stories the mainstream media overhypes on a regular basis and overlook some of those more pressing stories which fall beneath the radar. When you …
Continue reading Media Silent as Pacific Powers Prepare for Showdown with China
On May 30th, Secretary of Defense James Mattis announced a momentous shift in American global strategic policy. From now on, he decreed, the U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM), which oversees all U.S. military forces in Asia, will be called the Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM). The name change, Mattis explained, reflects “the increasing connectivity between the Indian and …
On May 30, US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattisannounced that the Pacific Command was being renamed as the Indo-Pacific Command. Thus the Pentagon’s largest (in a geographical sense) command has grown even more gigantic. The new designation is being introduced gradually, seeing as not many announcements have been made about the command’s reorganization, but in …
Continue reading The Indo-Pacific: The Expansion of a Geopolitical Presence
US Defense Secretary James Mattis, who earned the nickname “Mad Dog” while serving in the Marine Corps, jetted off to the 2018 International Institute of Strategic Studies’ (IISS) annual Shangri-La Dialogue conference in Singapore armed with threats against China and North Korea. Ironically, Mattis’s military machismo occurred prior to the June 12 summit in Singapore …
The US media network CNBC reported on May 1 that China has installed anti-ship cruise missiles and surface-to-air missiles on three of its islands in the South China Sea. It was fed the information by US intelligence agencies, or, as, CNBC coyly put it “sources with direct knowledge of US intelligence reports.” In other words it was a deliberate …
Diplomatic work continues in some of the areas with the highest geopolitical tensions in the world. In recent days there have been high-level meetings and contacts between Turkey, Iran and Russia over the situation in Syria; meetings between Modi and Xi Jinping to ease tensions between India and China; and finally, the historic meeting between Moon Jae-in …
There has been a recent buzz promoted around the so-called Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) – a coalition of sorts counting the United States, India, Australia, and Japan as members. Promoted by familiar corporate-financier funded policy think thanks, the Quad is being portrayed as a step past Washington’s ill-fated “pivot to Asia” to address its waning …
Continue reading The Quad: US Searches Edge of Asia for Allies to Contain Beijing
“I’ve just heard that my family home near Carpenteria is literally in flames at this moment,” a friend told me recently. She was particularly worried, she said, because “my mom has MS. She and my dad got the call to evacuate after midnight last night. They were able to grab a few photos, my sister’s …
