Our Special Correspondent
NEW DELHI, November 18:
A senior US official has called for the setting up of a new fleet closer to the âcrossroadsâ of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. This is a development with major strategic implications for the US Indo-Pacific policy, its ties with India and with China.
The announcement by the Trump administration official could be seen as the last major foreign and security policy initiatives shaped by it before it gives way to the Biden administration in January.
The statement immediately garnered major attention around the world with analysts seeing it as a reinforcement of the Trump administrationâs Indo-Pacific policy. The Indian and the US navies are currently taking part in the Malabar Exercise off Goa in the Arabian Sea along with the Japanese and Australian naval forces.
The remark comes as tensions have risen in the South China Sea, East China Sea and the Taiwan Straits mainly due to aggressive moves by China in the region. Indian and Chinese troops are engaged in an eye-ball-to-eye-ball standoff along their borders in Ladakh.
âWe canât just rely on the Seventh Fleet in Japan,â Kenneth Braithwaite, Secretary of the US Navy said late Tuesday at the Naval Submarine Leagueâs annual symposium. His comments were reported in USNI News, the journal of the US Naval Institute.
âWe want to stand up a new numbered fleet,â Braithwaite was quoted as saying. âAnd we want to put that numbered fleet in the crossroads between the Indian and the Pacific Oceans, and weâre really going to have an Indo-Pacom footprint.â
âWe have to look to our other allies and partners like Singapore, like India, and actually put a numbered fleet where it would be extremely relevant if, God forbid, we were to ever get in any kind of a dust-up,â he said.
âMore importantly, it can provide a much more formidable deterrence,â he said.
âSo weâre going to create the First Fleet â¦And weâre going to put it, if not Singapore right out of the chocks, weâre going to look to make it more expeditionary-oriented and move it across the Pacific until it is where our allies and partners see that it could best assist them as well as to assist us,â Braithwaite said.
The US official said he would be travelling to India in the coming weeks to discuss security challenges and how the US and Indian navies could help each other.
The US alone could not stand up to China, and nations around the Pacific and around the globe needed to assist in pushing back Beijing militarily and economically if there was a chance for deterrence to work, he said.
Analysts on their part pointed at the âpotentially hugeâ implications of the remarks.
âTrumpâs Navy Secretary wants to set up a US Navy 1st Fleet âin the crossroadsâ between Indian & Pacific Oceans; suggests #Singapore could ultimately be its base. How this plan is developedâor notâunder Biden will be interesting to see. Implications are potentially huge,â said Tim Huxley, who heads the Singapore based Asia chapter of the International Institute of Strategic Studies in a Twitter post.
âIf the US Navy goes ahead with establishing a 1st Fleet in the IOR, it will reaffirm that Washington continues to view Asia strategy through an âIndo-Pacificâ lensâthat is, not just focusing on the Western Pacific,â Derek J Grossman, an analyst looking at national security and Indo-Pacific analysis at the Washington based Rand Corporation think-tank said in a Twitter post.
importing vehicles under three years old will increase auction values in Japan due to their…
In a move aimed at providing relief to the public, Lanka Sathosa has announced a…
To combat the current coconut shortage, Sri Lanka looks at importing coconut products from Indonesia,…
The government has allocated Rs. 80 million for the 77th Independence Day celebrations, Provincial Councils…
The candidates who contested the general elections in 2024 under the New Democratic Front (NDF)…
The Department of Wildlife Conservation has reported that wild elephant deaths in the country decreased…