Chess moves continue: US to boost troop deployment in north Australia

 

November 12, 2011 – AUSTRALIA – PRIME Minister Julia Gillard is refusing to confirm whether she and US President Barack Obama will announce a boost in America’s military presence in Australia when he visits next week.  President Obama will travel to Canberra and Darwin during his first presidential visit on November 16 and 17. The leaders are reportedly set to announce an increased US military presence in northern Australia. Responding to the reports for the first time, Ms Gillard would not say whether they were true. “We will have a wide set of discussions when President Obama comes to Australia,” she said in Hawaii, which she is visiting for the upcoming APEC leaders’ summit. “On any specifics of what I may announce with President Obama when he’s in Australia, we’ll leave that to when we’re in Australia.” Asked how the Chinese might react to such an announcement, Ms Gillard said, “We’ve been an ally of the US for 60 years. We’ve been friends for a lot longer. “It’s not going to surprise anybody in China that Australia is an ally of the United States.” –News.com 

The Great Wall around China: President Barack Obama is expected to reveal plans to station about 500 to 1000 Marines at a barracks in Darwin and to expand the US navy’s use of bases at the Northern Territory capital and in Perth in Western Australia. “The US could build their forces up quickly in places like Australia out of missile range from China,” a professor of international security at Sydney University, Alan Dupont, told the Telegraph. “A lot of Japanese facilities in Okinawa are quite vulnerable to the new generation of Chinese missile capabilities. It is arguably one of the most important shifts in both US and Australian strategic policy in the past 20 years.” Australia’s defense minister, Stephen Smith, said Australia would seek to expand “practical cooperation” with the US but would not agree to a Marine base in the country. At present, the main US military presence in Australia is limited to a joint satellite tracking station at Pine Gap, in the Northern Territory, and a naval communication station in Western Australia. President Obama, who was born in Hawaii and calls himself “America’s first Pacific president,” has overseen a shift in focus away from the Middle East to the Asia Pacific. The US has signaled an expansion of defense ties across the region, including with Vietnam and Singapore. However, the plan to expand the US presence in Australia has raised concerns among some analysts that it could escalate regional tensions and damage relations with China. –Telegraph

contribution Gen