Gates confronting new realities in Asia

[unhappycamper]

Gates confronting new realities in Asia
By Kevin Baron, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Saturday, October 24, 2009

SEOUL — Defense Secretary Robert Gates faced all too familiar regional threats and issues during his latest three-day swing of Japan and the Korean peninsula: North Korea’s aggression, the U.S. military’s increasingly unpopular presence on Japanese soil, China’s unknown intentions.

But with a new commander in the Pacific, a new government in Japan, new conciliatory overtures from North Korea and a new attempt at reopening military relations with China, Gates and his team arrived in Asia this week to confront a new set of diplomatic realities.

Japan, home to more than 30,000 U.S. forces, is under new leadership after a half-century of one-party rule. And the new leaders are eager to exert an unprecedented amount of independence from their American patrons. North Korea is peppering its usual acts of defiance — such as missile tests — with renewed overtures toward diplomacy. And China, which has grown its military at an unprecedented pace and last year rebuffed a U.S. ship on a previously scheduled Thanksgiving port call, now appears open to increased military cooperation.

Island-hopping from Pacific Command headquarters in Hawaii to U.S. bases and East Asian defense ministries in Japan and South Korea provided a stark reminder that America’s extended influence and presence is the legacy of World War II and the subsequent Cold War strategy designed to contain communism’s feared domino effect.

Gates’ advice to the incoming PACOM commander, Adm. Robert Willard, was to think like an entrepreneur in addition to an admiral when considering approaches to the Pacific. That means addressing 21st century security questions with contemporary solutions.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=65588

[thunder rising]

1. Maybe we could come home? Just think'en...