Gates Discusses Bolstering Asian Security

NYtimes
June 1, 2011
By THOM SHANKER

SINGAPORE — Faced with a future of significantly reduced military spending, the United States should pursue a program of “cost effective” cooperation with Asian allies to defend regional security and enhance American interests, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Thursday.

Mr. Gates, who arrived in Singapore on Thursday for an address at an Asian security conference, underscored the vast scope of challenges to regional stability, like natural disasters and an ascendant China.

“We are not trying to hold China down,” he said in an interview with reporters aboard his official Air Force jet. “China is a global power and it will be a global power. The question is how we work through this in a way that assures we have positive relations.”

With its allies in Asia, he said, the United States needs to find ways to serve as the “indispensable nation,” a catalyst for expanding bilateral ties and multilateral cooperation.

The Pentagon is under orders from President Obama to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from its budget over the coming years, forcing the government to decide exactly what it no longer wants the military to do.

Mr. Gates said that many of the Defense Department’s operations in Asia — training exercises and the rotations of naval and air units among them — can be carried out within budget constraints.

“I think these are all cost-effective ways of enhancing our influence,” he said, as well as proving that the United States remains a reliable regional partner.

China’s global economic clout and regional military operations will be on the agenda as defense ministers gather in Singapore, and Mr. Gates noted the balance sought by the United States between its obligations to defend Taiwan from aggression and its desire for cordial ties with China. Beijing considers the island a renegade province, while United States policy supports a peaceful, negotiated reunification.

Mr. Gates, the only defense secretary to be kept on by a successor administration, said that Presidents Obama and George W. Bush both “tried to thread the needle pretty carefully in terms of Taiwan’s defensive capabilities — but at the same time being aware of China’s sensitivities.”

Mr. Gates said military-to-military ties between the United States and China have not kept pace with economic and political developments between the nations, and he noted Beijing’s decisions to increase the size and lethality of its armed forces — and in ways designed to counter American military advantages.

Among them are Chinese programs to develop and deploy antiship missiles, antisatellite weapons and stealth fighter aircraft.

“I think the Chinese have learned a powerful lesson from the Soviet experience, and they do not intend to try and compete with us across the full range of military capabilities,” Mr. Gates said. “But I think they are intending to build capabilities that give them considerable freedom of action in Asia and the opportunity to extend their influence.”