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January 11, 2012 - 05:35 PM War, war, war. The end is very near now.......... New US Military Policy Turns Focus To China The new military strategy President Obama announced Thursday marked a shift of priorities toward America’s biggest 21st Century rival: China. In an unprecedented presidential announcement from the Pentagon briefing room, Obama affirmed that the U.S. would emphasize the Asia-Pacific region as well as the Middle East as “the tide of war is receding” in Iraq and Afghanistan. The move will push the U.S. into further competition with China, which has advanced its military strength in the past decade and emerged as the region’s biggest player. Even as the U.S. prepares for Pentagon budget cuts of more than $450 billion over the next decade, Obama said that the military will grow in the Pacific. “As I made clear in Australia, we will be strengthening our presence in the Asia Pacific, and budget reductions will not come at the expense of that critical region,” Obama said Thursday, referencing a speech he gave while visiting the country two months ago. In Australia, Obama announced 2,500 U.S. Marines would be stationed in Darwin, Australia, in one of the first signals of the new U.S. position toward the Pacific. “All of the trends, demographic trends, geopolitical trends, economic trends and military trends are shifting toward the Pacific,” Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday. “So our strategic challenges in the future will largely emanate out of the Pacific region.” Reacting to Thursday’s announcement, an editorial in Global Times, the newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, said China should “remain sober” in response to the U.S. shift. “China should try to avoid a new cold war with the U.S., but by no means should it give up its peripheral security in exchange for U.S.' ease in Asia,” the newspaper wrote. “The U.S. must realize that it cannot stop the rise of China and that being friendly to China is in its utmost interests................ |