nuclear-news

USA extends corporate and military power with Trans Pacific Partnership

The U.S. has also pledged to put 2,500 marines in northern Australia, as well as regional missile-defense systems 

Obama’s hawkish anti-Chinese rhetoric on the campaign trail coincided closely with U.S.complaints before the World Trade Organization over China’s allegedly illegal subsidization of its auto industry. And only a couple weeks ago, the U.S. International Trade Commission levied sizeable punitive tariffs against Chinese solar companies.

All of which will certainly cast a long shadow over Obama’s Pacific visit.

Asia pivot a go-go, Online opinion, By Marc-William Palen , 28 November 2012  Barack Obama’s speedy post election pivot to Asia has left the world in a tizzy. With the U.S. elections safely behind him, Obama promptly headed off to Asia in advance of this week’s East Asia Summit in Phnom Penh.

100 years ago, American businessmen and diplomats had obsessed over gaining access to the fabled China Market. With intense U.S. involvement in the trade-oriented Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the once mythical Asia Market is fast becoming even more of a reality…. But, American interest in Asian markets brings with it sizeable Sino-American tensions, much as it did 100 years before.

Particularly, like the United States, China is also aggressively seeking to expand its economic influence in the region. For example, it is even now moving forward with its own trilateral trade agreement with South Korea and Japan.

Further American military expansion in the Asia-Pacific will only heighten these tensions, and U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta only just finished up a visit to Cambodia for the purpose of expanding U.S. military ties there. This move closely followed his announcement that the Pentagon will be enlarging the size of its military exercises in the region, ostensibly to put pressure on North Korea.

The U.S. has also pledged to put 2,500 marines in northern Australia, as well as regional missile-defense systems with the stated purpose of further deterring North Korea.

These alleged North Korean maneuvers nevertheless have “spooked” Australia, according to Peter Jennings, the head of the government-funded Australian Strategic Policy Institute. He views China to be at the heart of any U.S. military buildup in the region.

And Jennings is not alone……

If China still had doubts as to American intentions, during a debate last month Obama bluntly stated that increased military actions in the Asia-Pacific were indeed a response to China’s growing influence, strengthening the widely held idea that the American pivot is partly to contain China.

Obama’s hawkish anti-Chinese rhetoric on the campaign trail coincided closely with U.S.complaints before the World Trade Organization over China’s allegedly illegal subsidization of its auto industry. And only a couple weeks ago, the U.S. International Trade Commission levied sizeable punitive tariffs against Chinese solar companies.

All of which will certainly cast a long shadow over Obama’s Pacific visit.

China’s indignant response to Obama’s Asian pivot even led political science professor Robert Ross of Boston College to call it “unnecessary and counterproductive” in the pages of Foreign Affairs. “We’re stoking the fires of nationalism. No great power could be expected to sit there and benignly accept changes in the status quo that undermine its security,” Ross reiterated to theWall Street Journal….. http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=14410

November 28, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, USA