A welcome but belated US response to the ‘China threat’
‘Strategic competition’ is the name of the game in the Asia-Pacific region, as China throws its considerable weight around.
Who remembers the days of Barack Obama’s presidency, when the watchword was engagement with China? At that time, military leaders could not say anything that diverged from the official – or State Department – line, about mounting concern surrounding the inexorable growth of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
Oh, how things have changed!
At that time, Obama was welcoming the PLA to join biennial RIMPAC exercises in Hawaii, and gullibly accepting Chairman Xi Jinping’s promise that the then under-construction Spratly Island reefs would not be militarised.
How foolish and short-sighted were those days of appeasement.
Even when the PLA
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