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TOKYO – Maybe it’s sympathy from last year’s triple disasters or maybe it’s just China being China. But for what it’s worth, Americans increasingly view Japan as its most important ally in Asia. A poll released Tuesday finds that 50% of the U.S. public thinks Japan is America’s most important partner in this part of [...]
Nice Washington Post story about how the U.S. is training Ugandan soldiers (along with some from Burundi, Sierra Leone and Djibouti) in Uganda on how to do battle with Islamic extremists in Somalia – namely the al-Shabaab group affiliated with Al-Qaida. Both the fear and the hope are encapsulated in a nifty little paragraph: Ever since [...]
The sanctions the rest of the world is imposing against Iran apparently are beginning to bite. The latest evidence: Tehran’s complaint that Google Maps recently stopped labeling the Persian Gulf the Persian Gulf. But the search-engine giant isn’t changing its name to the Arabian Gulf, like Arab states – and the U.S. Navy – do. [...]
spend for each of the 42 F-35s jet fighters it is planning on buying. That’s a quarter-billion dollars for a single fighter plane. The U.S. Air Force, Marines and Navy are planning on buying 2,457 of the planes at $161 million each, for a total of $396 billion, according to the Pentagon’s latest Selected Acquisition [...]
The U.S. has abandoned its just-finished consulate in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif after spending $80 million outfitting the former hotel as a symbol of U.S. resoluteness. This is the kind of fiasco that tends to occur below the radar screen, but in hindsight clearly stands as an omen. The Washington Post reports [...]
You may recall the infamous “Highway of Death,” that stretch of six-lane Highway 80 from Kuwait City into Iraq and on toward Basra. The U.S. military rained firepower down on retreating Iraqi troops there in the late stages of 1991’s Gulf War, leading President George H.W. Bush to announce a halt in hostilities the next [...]
The Army, it would appear, and, perhaps the nation, has learned nothing from its unhappy experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. This morning’s New York Times reports that Army Chief of Staff General Ray Odierno is setting off to restructure large pieces of his ground force to do in other regions, especially Africa, what they have [...]
The prospect of U.S. and Japanese troops fighting side by side in the next land war in Asia — and heaven forbid the need for either — comes a step closer with a little-noted provision in U.S. realignment plans announced last week. The agreement to shift 9,000 Marines from Okinawa to other locations in the Pacific [...]
Seoul has lost its bid to have the world’s mapmakers allow the Sea of Japan, the body of water between Japan and the Korean peninsula, also to be known as the East Sea. Japan is pleased, according to Stars and Stripes. The International Hydrographic Organization met this week in Monaco and elected to keep Sea [...]
TOKYO – Whether it’s a genuine attempt to steer Japan’s foreign policy or a clever ploy to annoy political leaders in both Japan and China, Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara’s plan to buy three disputed islands in the East China Sea is a dangerous game that has the potential to drag both Japan and the U.S. [...]
