The Other Occupation

Imagine you are an ordinary citizen of some Asian country – say, China – and you hear a news report of the American president’s recent remarks to the East Asia Summit, during which he argued:

“While we are not a claimant in the South China Sea dispute, and while we do not take sides, we have a powerful stake in maritime security in general, and in the resolution of the South China Sea issue specifically — as a resident Pacific power, as a maritime nation, as a trading nation and as a guarantor of security in the Asia Pacific region.”

[...]

Yes, we do sport a Pacific coastline, but to say the US claim extends five thousand miles on the other side of the ocean is – literally – stretching it. Obama, however, was merely taking his cues from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who opined in a speech leading up to the summit: “By virtue of our unique geography, the United States is both an Atlantic and a Pacific power.”

  Justin Raimondo

So then are Canada and Mexico. Not so unique, there, Hillary. Check your map. And if you don’t quibble with the Caribbean Sea, so are Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica and Panama.

The US is a “resident Pacific power” in the same sense the old Soviet Union was a “resident Caribbean power” during the Cuban missile crisis – or in the same sense the British, the Dutch, the French, and the Germans were Pacific powers during the heyday of European colonialism. That is, the US is an invading power, with tens of thousands of troops stationed in its Pacific protectorates, such as South Korea, Japan, and the Pacific atolls and micro-nations which are little more than American lily-pads.

So why quibble? It’s pointless. Everything is ours.

In 1992, in response to rising opposition to the US presence, the last American military base in the Philippines was closed.

Such ingratitude didn’t stop Hillary from descending onto a US warship anchored in Manila Bay and referring to the South China Sea as the “West Philippine Sea” – a name you won’t find on any map, except maybe those to be found in the archives of the Sultanate of Sulu. Boasting of renewed military links to regional “partners,” such as Australia and Singapore, she hailed efforts to extend the American military presence into the Indian Ocean.

[...]

Making her way by broomstick across our Pacific empire, Hillary stopped in Hawaii to proclaim that this is going to be America’s “Pacific century.” Referring to the more than 50,000 US troops stationed in Japan and South Korea, she declared that unspecified “new threats to navigation” and other reasons “require that the United States pursue a more geographically distributed, operationally resilient, and politically sustainable force posture.”Yeah, well, there’s that, too....but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

"Force posture."  Is that what we're calling it now? 

Everything is ours, and we intend to keep it that way.

That politically sustainable part may be difficult.

[T]his grandiose vision of a revived Pacific empire is financially unsustainable.

Yeah, well, there's that, too.