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Eyeing China, U.S. Expands Military Ties to Australia
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CANBERRA, Australia —
President Obama and Prime Minister
Julia Gillard of Australia announced plans on Wednesday for a sustained new American military presence in Australia, a deployment of 2,500 troops aimed at signaling that the United States intends to counterbalance a rising
China. The agreement with Australia, though involving a relatively small number of troops, is nonetheless the first long-term expansion of the American military presence in the Pacific since the end of the Vietnam War. It comes despite budget cuts facing the Pentagon and a strong negative reaction from Chinese leaders, who have accused the United States of seeking to raise military tensions in the region.
"With my visit to the region I am making it clear that the United States is stepping up its commitment to the entire Asia-Pacific region," Mr. Obama said at a joint news conference with Ms. Gillard soon after his arrival here in Australia's capital.
Mr. Obama said the basing agreement "allows us to meet the demands of a lot of partners in the region that want to feel that they're getting the training, they're getting the exercises, and that we have the presence that's necessary to maintain the security architecture in the region."
"But the second message I'm trying to send is that we are here to stay," Mr. Obama said. "This is a region of huge strategic importance to us." He added: "Even as we make a whole host of important fiscal decisions back home, this is right up there at the top of my priority list. And we're going to make sure that we are able to fulfill our leadership role in the Asia-Pacific region."
On his two-day visit to Australia, the president will fly north across the continent to Darwin, a frontier port and military outpost across the Timor Sea from Indonesia, which will be the center of operations for the coming deployment. The first 200 to 250 Marines will arrive next year, with forces rotating in and out and eventually building up to 2,500, the two leaders said.
The United States will not build new bases on the continent, but will use Australian facilities instead. Mr. Obama said that Marines will rotate through for joint training and exercises with Australians, and the American Air Force will have increased access to airfields in the nation's Northern Territory.
"We're going to be in a position to more effectively strengthen the security of both of our nations and this region," he said.
The United States has had military bases and large forces in Japan and South Korea, in the north Pacific, since the end of World War II, but its presence in Southeast Asia was greatly diminished in the early 1990's with the closure of major bases in the Philippines, at Clark Field and Subic Bay. The new arrangement with Australia will restore a substantial American footprint near the South China Sea, a major commercial route — including for American exports — that has been roiled by China's disputed claims of control.
Like Australia, China's neighbors in Southeast Asia have looked to the United States to increase its military presence as a counterweight to Beijing. Mr. Obama has sought to provide that assurance, but the Asia-Pacific allies are well aware of the intense pressure for budget-cutting in Washington, and fear that squeezed military spending and other factors may inhibit Mr. Obama's ability to follow through.
The United States and other Pacific Rim nations are also negotiating to create a free-trade bloc that does not include China, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The tentative trade agreement was a topic over the weekend in Honolulu, where Mr. Obama hosted the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, and it will be discussed again later this week when he becomes the first American president to participate in the East Asia Summit, on the Indonesian island of Bali.
For China, the week's developments could suggest both an economic and a military encirclement.
Liu Weimin, a foreign ministry spokesman, issued a measured statement on Wednesday in response to Mr. Obama's announcement that suggested the United States should focus on promoting development rather than building military alliances.
"It may not be quite appropriate to intensify and expand military alliances and may not be in the interest of countries within this region," he told a news briefing.
The Global Times, a state-run news organization known for its nationalist and bellicose commentaries, issued a stronger reaction in an editorial, saying Australia should be cautious about allowing the United States to use bases there to "harm China" and that it risked getting "caught in the crossfire."
Analysts say that Chinese leaders have been caught off guard by what they view as an American campaign to stir up discontent in the region. China may have miscalculated in recent years by restating longstanding territorial claims that would give it broad sway over development rights in the South China Sea, they say. But they argue that Beijing has not sought to project military power far beyond its shores, and has repeatedly proposed to resolve territorial disputes through negotiations.
The United States portrays its newly aggressive stance in Asia as a response, urged on by regional powers, to China's own aggressions. Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote a recent article in Foreign Policy laying out an expansive case for American involvement in Asia, and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta characterized China's military development as lacking transparency and criticized its assertiveness in the regional waters.
The new American focus on Asia, analysts said, threatened to sour relations with Chinese leaders.
"I don't think they're going to be very happy," said Mark Valencia, a Hawaii-based senior researcher at the National Bureau of Asian Affairs, who said the new policy was months in the making. "I'm not optimistic in the long run as to how this is going to wind up."
Mr. Obama took steps on Wednesday to signal that the new deployment, and the recent push to set up a new trading bloc, are not meant to isolate China.
"The notion that we fear China is mistaken; the notion that we are looking to exclude China is mistaken," he said.
The president said that China would be welcomed into the tentative trade pact, the Trans-Pacific Partnership — nine nations, including the United States, agreed in Honolulu to finalize a framework in 2012 — if Beijing is willing to meet the free-trade standards for membership. But such standards would require China to let its currency rise in value, to better protect foreign producers' intellectual property rights and to limit or end subsidies to state-owned companies, all of which would require a major overhaul of China's economic development strategy.
Mr. Obama canceled two previous planned trips to Australia because of domestic demands; he recalled at a state dinner on Wednesday that he had visited the country twice as a boy, when his mother was working in Indonesia on development programs.
This time, as president, Mr. Obama arrived at Parliament House to a 21-gun salute and, once inside, to the enthusiastic greeting of Australians crowding the galleries of the vast marble entrance hall.
The two countries have been allies for decades, and cooperated closely in World War II, when there were several dozen American air and naval bases and army camps in the country and Australian combat troops served under American command. Another purpose of Mr. Obama's visit is to celebrate those ties. "The United States has no stronger ally," Mr. Obama said.
Australians fought alongside the United States in every war of the 20th century, and more recently have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The war in Afghanistan has become increasingly unpopular here, though, and most Australians want their troops to come home immediately.
