Winds of war blowing hot

Commentary
By Mariano Patalinjug
Yonkers, New York 

How can anyone who has some idea of how critical and danger-fraught military moves by the US Department of Defense be without the full knowledge and in fact the full agreement of the President of the United States, Barack Obama, who happens to be also the Commander-in-Chief, as well as Democratic and Republican leaders of Congress?

That is just the height of naivete, or even ignorance.

When former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta not long ago publicly announced that soon the United States would “pivot 60 percent of its Naval Forces to Asia,” the American people as well as the whole world had to assume, correctly, that that seismic move had the full knowledge and the full agreement not only of the US Joint Chiefs of Staffs and the Commander-in-Chief, but also of both Democratic and Republican leaders of the Congress.

This was a proposed strategic move on the part of the United States which coincided with China’s aggressive and controversial intrusion into those disputed islands of the Western Philippine Sea [which China self-servingly calls “The South China Sea.”

Some may think that the United States has no business whatsoever, strategic, political, economic, or what have you, to interfere in these simmering dispute over those islands between China on one hand and Japan, Viet Nam, the Philippines, and other Southeast Asian Nations, on the other

Wrong! Quite wrong.

The United States has made it more than abundantly clear, time and time again, that it has a VITAL NATIONAL INTEREST in keeping completely open the Sea Lanes starting from the Middle East, and passing through Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Borneo,Brunei and the Philippines,through which OIL reaches these nations as well as South Korea, Viet Nam, Japan, Hawaii and the US West Coast.

If China is allowed to grab these islands, the world understands that China could easily convert a few as “CHOKE POINTS” to effectively close those Sea Lanes!

Not a very inviting proposition as far as the United States and those nations mentioned above are concerned.

(MarPatalinjug@aol.com)