Rick Rozoff wrote in Global Research, August 7, 2010 to stop Asian NATO. Below is his view in summary:
The U.S. ended the four-day Invincible Spirit joint military exercise with South Korea on July 28. On the same day the Taiwan News ran a feature entitled "China reports: the US means to set up another NATO in Asia," which cited Chinese news media, scholars and analysts warning that "The US is establishing another 'NATO' in Asia to contain China.
Chinese scholar Shih Yongming is paraphrased as asserting that "The US is capitalizing on the contradictions among East Asian countries to form a front against China," in reference to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proposing "to include the controversy over the issues of South China Sea into the mechanism of international laws and [speaking] explicitly about US stakes in the disputed sea's areas," an allusion to her comments at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum in Hanoi on July 23.
A research scholar with the Academy of Military Science of the People's Liberation Army, Luo Yuan, wrote of the Invincible Spirit war games: that the naval, submarine and air exercises were conducted "only 500 km from Beijing. Considering that the nuclear-powered super-carrier USS George Washington's radius of action is up to 600 km, and the aircraft it carries can reach a speed of 1,000 km an hour, the joint drill was dangerously close to China's security threshold. . . the mmilitary exercise was a threat to China."
Before the military drills began, the influential China Daily contained an editorial that connected the expansion of a U.S.-led equivalent of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to a hostile policy toward China, stating, "the US has seemingly become less restrained in its move to push forward an Asian version of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization with its allies in the region.
What in fact the U.S. is doing to complete its status as history's first sole world military superpower, as its commander-in-chief Barack Obama referred to it in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, is to not only drag almost all Asia-Pacific nations into a military bloc analogous to NATO, but to integrate the East into a global military alliance with NATO as the foundation.
Asian NATO is not a metaphor.
On August 1 the U.S. completed month-long biennial Rim of the Pacific Exercise (RIMPAC) war games in Hawaii, the world's largest naval maneuvers which included 20,000 troops from 14 nations: Australia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, France, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Peru, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, the U.S., India and New Zealand were observer countries.
Regarding U.S. plans to recruit Asia-Pacific nations into its global interceptor missile system, United Press International announced on August 5 that "Japan may export the ship-launched Standard Missile-3 system, a change from the country's current ban on selling arms and weapons."
On July 31 the two-week U.S.-led Angkor Sentinel 2010 military exercises in Cambodia ended. The drills which formally are for training peacekeepers for worldwide deployments included military forces from the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Australia, Japan, India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Mongolia as well as the host nation. Like the latest RIMPAC war games, a combination of major NATO and Asian NATO participants.
The U.S. has just launched Khaan Quest 2010, reputed to be the largest of the annual military exercises it leads in Mongolia, and South Korean troops are to participate for the first time.
On August 5 a Nepalese news sources disclosed that eight U.S. Army troops had arrived in the nation for a joint two-week military exercise.
Australia has begun Exercise Pitch Black, a "three-week air combat exercise in Darwin, in northern Australia. The Royal Australian Air Force is being joined by military personnel from New Zealand, Singapore and Thailand."
A major Philippine newspaper recently reported that "The United States has pledged to provide the Philippines with $18.4-million worth of precision-guided missiles this year to use in its fight against Islamist militants in the south...."
On August 5 Agence France-Press revealed that the Pentagon will supply Taiwan with two more Oliver Hazard Perry class frigates.
Last week a bipartisan, congressionally mandated defense panel headed by former White House National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and former Defense Secretary William Perry "challenged the Pentagon to broaden its focus beyond counterinsurgency in Afghanistan and Iraq and expand the Navy to deal with threats from rising powers in Asia." The panel's report called for the U.S. Navy to expand its current 282 ships to 346 ships to "beef up U.S. maritime power in Asia."
The perspective of a looming conflict is shared on the Chinese side, albeit in regards to developments in China's own region and not thousands of miles away. Wang Jisi, director of Peking University's Center for International and Strategic Studies, wrote on August 5 that "In early 2010, conflicts between China and the US came thick and fast, leading to the most serious political disturbance between the two countries since the plane collision in 2001....The gap between the two sides' perceptions on major international issues is getting bigger. US strategists are still trying to take advantage of China's weak spots in domestic and foreign affairs. [I]n the future the strategic cooperation space between the two will be squeezed, and major competition is inevitable."
NATO has moved to China's borders - in Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan - and China's neighbors are being recruited into an Eastern extension of the world first global military bloc.