By Richard Weitz
Despite the warnings from China, the Pentagon’s Defense Strategic Guidance offers few surprises. Change has been coming for a while.
Asian countries have reacted strongly to the Pentagon’s new “Defense Strategic Guidance” issued earlier this month. Arguing that the United States finds itself at a “strategic turning point” with the winding down of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the end of the defense buildup that followed the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the report calls for rebalancing U.S. military capabilities by functional and geographic areas, including by “pivoting” U.S. national security efforts eastward toward Asia.
“U.S. economic and security interests are inextricably linked to developments in the arc extending from the Western Pacific and East Asia into the Indian Ocean region and South Asia,” the Guidance affirms, “creating a mix of evolving challenges and opportunities” that will lead the U.S. military to “rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region.”
Read the full story at The Diplomat