US Reconstructs Former Military Bases Across Asia-Pacific

The Obama administration is continuing its strategic pivot to Asia-Pacific and now trying to cultivate renewed relationships with countries in a bid to further expand the amount of US military bases throughout the region.

The Obama administration has been ramping up the pressure on China with an increasingly antagonistic foreign policy. The so-called ‘Asia pivot’ is an aggressive policy that involves surging American military presence throughout the region – in the Philippines, Japan, Australia, Guam, South Korea, Singapore, etc. – in an unprovoked scheme to contain rising Chinese economic and military influence.Much of this means rebuilding andrefurbishing former US bases that were abandoned since WWII or since the Vietnam War. Administration officials have been in intense talks with the Thai government over using airfields and naval ports and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta recently visited Vietnam to visit the naval and air base at Cam Ranh Bay.

The US has also been refurbishing long-abandoned World War II bases scattered across the Pacific for potential use in the event of a major conflict with China. Last month, US Marines rebuilt and restored the 8,000-foot runway at the abandoned North Field air base on the island of Tinian and engaged in a military exercise with nearby US forces based in Guam. The Tinian airbase is where the B-29s that dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki took off from in 1945.

The idea is to have enough U.S. bases peppered throughout the region so that China would be too surrounded to safely attack. “Doing so would make it more difficult for China to wipe out entire squadrons sitting on the ground with surprise attacks from its long range ballistic missiles,” according to reports from Military.com.   Read more here:  http://news.antiwar.com/2012/06/23/us-reconstructs-former-military-bases-across-asia-pacific/