Bill Gertz, Commentary

For the past five and a half years, the United States military has suffered the devastating effects of hundreds of billions of dollars in budget cuts. At the same time, China’s armed forces—both conventional and nuclear—have made dramatic gains. …

The new Chinese military is armed with highly sophisticated weaponry. They include cyber-warfare forces capable of crippling American electrical and financial infrastructures from computer keyboards in Shanghai as well as precision-guided anti-satellite missiles that can quickly enfeeble the U.S. military’s unparalleled ability to combine long-distance war-fighting with precision attack.

The … sharp decline in funds for U.S. military operations and modernization, coupled with China’s rapid buildup of forces, has rendered President Obama’s premier foreign-policy initiative, to strategically shift toward the Asia Pacific and away from conflicts in the Middle East and Southwest Asia, all but impossible to achieve. The American retreat from this plan to “pivot to Asia” became clear in several startling statements earlier this year by the senior military commander in charge of the U.S. Pacific Command. His name is Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III.

Locklear first came to national attention in 2009 because of a surprising interview with the Boston Globe, in which he said North Korea’s belligerence and China’s mounting aggression and military build-up were not his main concerns. Rather, this four-star admiral, in charge of the 300,000 Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corp personnel based in Asia and the Pacific, said the most serious security problem facing the United States was climate change. …

Beijing’s rulers are beginning to follow through on their main strategic goal: driving the United States military out of Asia and forcing all the states in the region to bow to Beijing’s wishes. China is among several important foreign powers that have come to recognize that the Obama administration’s behavior has opened new possibilities for them—possibilities that are creating new and unprecedented threats to the United States and the world.

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  Backgournd-Brief.com, China rushing to exploit openings offered by the U.S. under Obama