American forces and their Asian allies are ready for battle

This is among the points that Major General Joseph Ryan made. The US has secured additional base access in the Philippines and has multiple exercises planned with that country’s military. The US is also training with other allies in the area. Ryan pointed to Russia’s performance in Ukraine as a cautionary tale for aggressor countries that might have any bright Russia like ideas.

From the Military Times:

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.

The Military Times has additional information here.

Category: China, International Affairs, Military issues