By Harry Kazianis
The commencement at any university or college is usually filled with special events, ceremonies, and proud traditions. Speakers at such affairs often look to recent events and note the world around us as a source of inspiration in their remarks.
But the recent commencement ceremony at the U.S. Naval Academy also offered perhaps as good an example of the sign of the times as anything else: U.S. Secretary Defense Leon Panetta presented a diploma to the first foreign student to achieve top graduate honors, young midshipman Sam Tan Wei Chen. His nation of origin: Singapore.
In recent months, the United States has laid out a carefully scripted strategy of “pivoting” or what has beenrecently re-termed as “rebalancing” to the Asia-Pacific region. Through carefully worded op-eds, speeches, and military maneuvers, U.S. diplomats have laid the foundations for a new strategic focus after a decade of war. Yet, America’s new strategy seems more of a hedge to the broader Indo-Pacific than a simple rebalance to the Pacific.
In an especially timely speech delivered in Singapore on Saturday to the 11th IISS Asia Security Summit, Panetta detailed America’s vision for the Asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacificregion. And make no mistake, the U.S. intends to hedges its bets with only one target in mind: The People’s Republic of China.
Read the full story at The Diplomat