The Philippines won a huge legal victory against China on a long-running territorial dispute. But Manila’s alliance with Washington may make it all for nothing.
A storm is brewing in the Western Pacific. As the Asia-Pacific region descends into a period of destabilizing conflict, the Philippines is quickly becoming a frontline state in the U.S. strategy to contain China—the central thrust of the Obama administration’s...
Over the last two years, the Obama administration has executed what the president has termed the “Pivot to Asia” strategy, whereby the United States’ global military force posture is being reconfigured to focus on the Asia-Pacific region as Washington’s central front. Containment of China is the aim of the Pivot strategy, which has drawn criticism from liberal critics of the policy.
The United States is a Pacific power, but Asia is a very different place than it was two hundred years ago. You can’t dispatch “Chinese” Gordon and a couple of gunboats and get your way anymore. Nor can you deal with rivals by building Cold War-style alliances and threatening to use force. The world is too small, Asia is too big, and war would be catastrophic. The Pacific is no one’s “lake,” but an ocean vast enough for all.
Peace and tranquillity never really seem to last long in Okinawa. Looking over the dark blue Pacific on a cloudy morning, an Okinawan fisherman will hear a steady drone emanating from a U.S. Air Force C-130 transport aircraft. As it thunders low over the island’s small houses, the deafening roar from four Rolls-Royce engines drowns out school teachers and rattles window panes. The behemoth descends to land at Kadena Airbase and calm is temporarily restored.