Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered a strategy speech while on a stop over in Honolulu. One military website reported:
The U.S. goals in the Pacific are to sustain and strengthen America’s leadership in the Asia Pacific Region; to improve security; to heighten prosperity and promote our values, said the Secretary.
The United States has been practicing forward deployed diplomacy, which means they have adopted a proactive footing.
“We’ve sent the full range of our diplomatic assets including our highest ranking officials, our development experts, our teams from a wide range of pressing issues into every corner and every capital of the Asia Pacific Region,” said Clinton.
“We know that much of the history of the 21st century will be written in Asia,” said Clinton. “This region will see the most transformative economic growth on the planet,” she added.
Clinton also remarked on how important America has been as Asia has moved forward in the future.
“The progress that we see today in Asia has not only been the hard work of leaders and citizens of across the region, but the American soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines that protect borders and patrol the region’s waters; the American diplomats that have settled conflicts and brought nations together in common causes; the American business leaders and entrepreneurs who invested in new markets and formed trans-pacific partnerships; the American aid workers that have helped countries rebuild in the wake of disasters and the American educators and students that have shared ideas and experiences with their counterparts across the ocean,” said the Secretary.
Clinton underscores the critical importance of the region as the geopolitical center of gravity. But she also seems to overcompensate for America’s dwindling power with strident pronouncements of U.S. dominance and indispensability. Although the Obama administration has stepped up diplomatic efforts in the region, the U.S. increasingly resorts to its vast network of military bases as its primary source of power. In fact, even diplomacy is becoming more militarized, with the Pacific Command assuming many roles typically handled by the State Department and the State Department taking on more militarized language. e.g. “forward deployed diplomacy”.
Wall Street Journal reports that the U.S. is sending mixed messages to China:
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton encouraged greater U.S.-China cooperation in Asia, even as she stressed that the U.S. will increase its effort to remain a military and economic power in the region.
Similar to the speech she gave when she visited Hawai’i in January 2010, Clinton reaffirmed Washington’s intention to remain top dog in the Asia Pacific region:
“Now, there are some who say that this long legacy of American leadership in the Asia-Pacific region is coming to a close. That we are not here to stay. I say, look at our record. It tells a different story,” Mrs. Clinton said Thursday in Hawaii.
The U.S. rivalry with China is bad news for the small islands of the Pacific, including Hawai’i, Guam, Okinawa. As the Telegraph reports:
Local residents’ concerns, however, have been sidelined by the US-China strategic competition. China has significantly expanded its fleet during the past decade, seeking to deter the US from intervening militarily in any future conflict over Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own, and to project power across disputed territories in the gas and oil-rich South China Sea.
Beijing’s naval build-up is also intended secure the sea lanes from the Middle East, from where China will import an estimated 70-80 per cent of its oil needs by 2035 supplies it fears US could choke in the event of a conflict.
Despite claims that China does not have imperial desires to establish foreign military bases, it has undertaken a military base race of its own:
China has therefore invested in what are called its “string of pearls” a network of bases strung along the Indian Ocean rim, like Hambantota in Sri Lanka and Gwadar in Pakistan and in developing a navy which can operate far from home.
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