US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta highlights U.S. ties to Vietnam during visit

America’s top defense official traveled to Cam Ranh Bay on Sunday, a symbolic return to what was a vital naval base for the United States during the Vietnam War. Leon E. Panetta’s visit to the bay — the first by a U.S. secretary of defense in more than three decades — was intended to highlight a deepening partnership between the United States and its former foe as both seek to counter the growing influence and military assertiveness of China. “We’ve come a long way, particularly with regards to our defense relationship,” Panetta said, noting that “a great deal of blood was spilled in this war on all sides — by Americans and by Vietnamese.”

Commentaries and Analyses

China's invented history

By Philip Bowring

In the case of the Scarborough Shoal, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs gives the historical justification that the feature is mentioned in a Chinese map from the 13th century—when China itself was under alien Mongol rule—resulting from the visit of a vessel from China. This "we were there first" argument is nonsense. Chinese sailors were latecomers to the South China Sea, to say nothing of onward trade to the Indian Ocean. Another unsteady pillar in China's claim to the Scarborough Shoal is its reliance on the Treaty of Paris of 1898. This yielded Spanish sovereignty over the Philippine archipelago to the U.S. and drew straight lines on the map which left the shoal a few miles outside the longitudinal line defined by the treaty. China now conveniently uses this accord, which these two foreign powers arrived at without any input from the Philippine people, to argue that Manila has no claim. The irony is that the Communist Party otherwise rejects "unequal treaties" imposed by Western imperialists, such as the McMahon line dividing India and Tibet. Does this mean Vietnam can claim all the Spratly Islands, because the French claimed them all and Hanoi has arguably inherited this claim? China is making brazen assertions that rewrite history and take no account of geography. Today's naval arguments won't come to an end until the region's largest disputant stops rewriting the past

Is America pivoting to Asia fast enough?

By James Holmes

The big news in U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s recently delivered keynote address at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore was the numbers the Defense Secretary affixed to his remarks. By 2020, he announced, "the Navy will reposture its forces from today's roughly 50/50 percent split between the Pacific and the Atlantic to about a 60/40 split between those oceans". Will it be enough? Which raises two related questions. First, which tenth of the Navy will move to the Pacific? It seems that 30-40 LCSs will join the Pacific Fleet over time, but how much combat power that represents is debatable. Second, why concentrate just 60 percent of the Navy in the vastness of the "Indo-Pacific" theater, when -- judging from the Maritime Strategy -- the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard service chiefs consider the Atlantic Ocean a safe expanse? Why not more? From a political standpoint, it's far easier to adjust U.S. deployment patterns gradually as circumstances warrant. More abrupt -- or more menacing -- change in the Indo-Pacific would clear minds. And that would clear the obstacles to more dramatic action. China should take note.

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