military diplomacy

So Philippine and American officials formally inked a basing agreement during President Obama’s visit to the archipelago. Rather than reestablish permanent bases, the deal will allow U.S. military units to rotate through three to five Philippine facilities — the details are still being sorted out — and to stage equipment and munitions there for combat and disaster-relief missions. Huzzah!

Myanmar, so the popular narrative goes, is a land of pro-democracy peasants bitterly shaking their fists at military overlords. But perhaps the narrative is mistaken. There is no shortage of reasons to despise the military of Myanmar, the troubled Southeast Asian state formerly titled Burma.

In November 2011, Barack Obama told the Australian parliament that the United States was embarking on a major shift in its foreign policy—with a pivot to Asia. “After a decade in which we fought two wars that cost us dearly, in blood and treasure,” he said, “the United States is turning our attention to the vast potential of the Asia Pacific region.”

The United States is in the early stages of a substantial national project: reorienting its foreign policy to commit greater attention and resources to the Asia-Pacific region. This reformulation of U.S. priorities has emerged during a period of much-needed strategic reassessment, after more than a decade of intense engagement with South Asia and the Middle East.

The U.S. is providing more arms and training to the moderate rebels in Syria, under a growing secret program run by the CIA in Jordan. Sources tell NPR that secret program could be supplemented by a more public effort in the coming months involving American military trainers.

For nearly six decades, South Korea's (ROK) approach to security has focused on sustaining the status quo: Maintaining deterrence and a robust defence posture in order to prevent another major conflict on the Korean Peninsula.

The United States plans to carry out small ground-force exercises in Poland and Estonia in an attempt to reassure NATO’s Eastern European members worried aboutRussia’s military operations in and nearUkraine, Western officials said Friday.

From territorial disputes in two of Asia's major seas to the nuclear crisis in North Korea, Chinese and US officials have exchanged sharp words - a trend that analysts say has heightened China's frustration over what it perceives as intensifying efforts to contain its rise.

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