American flags fly fore and aft on the US missile cruiser Shiloh as it docks at a pier across a narrow waterway from decrepit, decaying buildings of an abandoned US naval base at Subic Bay. The dock was once a bulwark of American power in the South China Sea after US forces seized the base from the Spanish in 1899.
At the end of a long walkway from the pier to shore, eager shopkeepers again sell souvenirs and taxi drivers lie in wait for sailors primed for a night of carousing in the bars of Olongapo, the base town in the Philippines. Now, nearly a quarter of a century after the US Navy had to give up its Subic Bay base and the Clark Air Base across the Zambales mountains to the east, Americans are once again ready to defend the Philippines, and the region.
The Philippines Senate, which had voted in 1991 against renewing the lease on US bases, has dropped its objection to the American return to waters threatened by China’s new insistence on its right to rule almost all the South China Sea – including the Spratly Islands claimed by the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei.
Although open warfare does not seem imminent, the prospect of the US returning in force to Subic Bay, once America’s largest overseas naval base, has increased tensions. The Shiloh, one of the most advanced US cruisers, armed with guided missiles and cannon, is expected to ply the South China Sea after taking on fuel and supplies. Other vessels, including at least one destroyer, are likely to join it in a mini-flotilla, posing an immediate challenge as China builds airstrips and other facilities on 2,000 acres of land reclaimed in the past 18 months.
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2 comments:
This is stupid.Everyone knows that our rules of engagement will prevent our success.The US is not allowed to win a war or battle.Everyone should know that.We have orders to go in and remedy any given situation with as little force as possible.Whatever gives our citizens the notion that we'll just go in and kick butt? The early phase of an eventual one world government prohibits any country from inflicting catastrophic damage upon another.In lay terms that means that the playing field has been leveled,giving even the most insignificant small countries as much political clout as the largest and most powerful.
Arming up right in their faces by going back into Subic Bay and Clark Air Base would be a very good move (and very uncharacteristic of the wuss-in-chief.. this must have been Ash Carter's idea).
It would be a good strategic move to re-establish a presence in that area. China isn't going to settle down any time soon.
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