US general says allies are ready for battle in Asia
>> American forces and their allies in Asia are ready for battle after years of joint combat exercises, a United States general said Wednesday, adding that Russia’s setbacks in Ukraine should serve as a warning to potential Asian aggressors like China and North Korea.
U.S. treaty allies like the Philippines, Japan and Australia, among others, “have shown that they will band together, that they will not stand for aggression from these nations that have decided they want to change the world order out here,” Maj. Gen. Joseph Ryan said.
Although Asia has no counterpart to NATO, the 30-nation military alliance whose mostly European members vow to defend each other against external attacks, a network of U.S. treaty alliances and defense partnerships upholding the international order provides a regional safeguard, he said.
“I’m personally very buoyed by what I see by our allies and partners in this region and the way we’ve come together in response to aggression by the PRC, by North Korea to say, ‘We will not let that stand,’” Ryan told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday, using the acronym for China’s official name, the People’s Republic of China.
Ryan, Commanding General of the U.S. Army’s 25th Infantry Division based in Hawaii, is in Manila partly for talks with Philippine counterparts ahead of two annual largescale combat exercises that would include live-fire exercises and ground, sea and air assault maneuvers involving thousands of U.S. and Filipino troops in March and April.
The Philippines, America’s oldest treaty ally in Asia that used to host the largest U.S. naval and air force bases outside the American mainland, has allowed larger numbers of visiting U.S. forces to stay in rotating batches and preposition weapons and combat equipment in at least nine Philippine military camps under a 2014 defense pact. The Philppine decision to allow a broader American military presence was announced during a visit last week to Manila by U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
In the broader Asia-Pacific region, Washington has reinforced an arc of alliances to counter what it says are threats posed by an increasingly belligerent China and North Korea.
China has frowned on combat exercises involving the Americans in coastal areas facing the South China Sea, which Beijing claims virtually in its entirety, and has accused Washington of meddling in Asian disputes and dangerously militarizing the region by regularly deploying U.S. Navy warships and jet fighters.
More recent venues of large-scale exercises by American and Filipino forces included coastal Philippine provinces close to the disputed South China Sea, where China has taken increasingly assertive actions to cement its territorial claims, and in the northern Luzon region, which lies across a narrow sea border from Taiwan.
Combat-readiness exercises hopefully would make potential aggressors think twice, Ryan said.
The U.S. and the Philippines have agreed to hold about 500 small and major combat exercises in 2023 and expand annual military drills following disruptions caused by two years of coronavirus lockdowns, according to Philippine military officials.
“That does provide some deterrent effect against an adversary in the region, who would look at that and say, ‘I don’t want to take a step that may cause a government, a politician, to decide to go because I don’t know that I can win if I’ve got to face that trained, ready force,’” Ryan said.
While military commanders say the joint exercises are not directed against any particular country, Ryan said China’s increasingly aggressive actions were an alarming reality the region should brace for.
“Does the backdrop of PRC aggression enter our minds when we train? Absolutely,” he said, and in the case of the Philippines, U.S. forces needed to be ready to fulfill their obligations under the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty.
“We feel duty-bound to ensure that the Philippines can maintain and will maintain their sovereignty,” Ryan said. “So aggression from the People’s Republic of China that makes our treaty ally uncomfortable makes us uncomfortable.”