'US military attempts to surround China'

Richard Becker believes that the recent US moves to shift their forces to Asia-Pacific is aimed at China.

Press TV has conducted an interview with Richard Becker from the A.N.S.W.E.R coalition to further discuss the issue of the US increased military presence in the Asia-Pacific region.

What follows is an approximate transcript of the interview.

Press TV: First of all what perceived threat is there in the Pacific that the US is aiming to increase its military presence there, especially near China and North Korea?

Becker: Well, the reality is that there is no threat. I mean these are really weasel words from Secretary of Defense. Quote unquote Defense Panetta, when he talks about having a presence in the Pacific; he is not talking about right off the shore of California in some kind of defense of a pasture.

No, we are talking about going several thousand miles across the biggest ocean in the world and having a huge deployment of military force bases all over Japan, Okinawa.

The relationship you mentioned with the both Australia and the Philippines using them as foreword deployment, using Taiwan as part of it. And of course it is not the China threatening the United States, it is that the US military presence that surrounds China and North Korea and of course I should mention the bases in South Korea; US bases there as well, that have been there for many, many decades.

This is all aimed at a strategy of containment.

US strategic doctrine, the overall strategic doctrine which has been in place since the fall of the Soviet Union more than 20 years ago is that there should be one dominant power, one super power in the world and one only.

And clearly Washington sees that China as it develops is, or they perceive it to be a potential threat to the Uni-polarity to the one super power doctrine in the world and that is with this deployment, this forward projection of deadly force including nuclear weapons aboard aircraft carriers perhaps bases and certainly trident submarines in that region and other nuclear-powered submarines. That is what this is really about.

Press TV: Indeed. Well some say the US is aiming to counter China’s economic rise with the military option and so question such an attitude in international affairs as being somehow destructive and counterproductive, leaving the US more isolated.

Becker: Well, it is a very interesting what the US leaders say.
They demand that China must be transparent in its military strategy for instance.

They say things like that ‘this deployment of force is not against China, has nothing to do with China, the previous Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates said that in November of 2010 and in numerous other occasions and of course this is all just dissembling on their part.

The reality is, that they are doing, they are carrying out this increased military deployment, the shift of forces even more forces than there are already very, very substantial and deadly forces in the Asia-Pacific region.

But this is all about a strategy that is aimed at China, at the People’s Republic of China.

And at the same time of course the US is maintaining its military buildup in forces in the Middle East; in the [Persian] Gulf region, has setup an AFRICOM command, has revived the Fourth Fleet in the Americas, in fact if you put this all together without any doubt, this is a military strategy of empire.

Press TV: And also just to add to that some analysts believe that the US and Britain, I mean they are close allies when it comes to military participation. We have the Malvinas Island in the Atlantic; which the UK is trying to militarize and now the US is in the Pacific.

Is there any connection between these two and supposedly an agenda for Latin America?

Becker: I would say that there definitely is a connection between them.

The British are trying to maintain their much reduced empire but still significant, very significant military and economic power and the Malvinas Islands with the reported great amounts of oil that are in the territorial waters of the Malvinas are subject of the British attention and the British fought a war 30 years ago with Argentina which has a rightful claim to the Malvinas and though they deployed Prince William there as another symbolic and provocative gesture.

And the US and the British are working together with the US as the senior partner and the British as the junior partner in a relationship that aims at US global domination, but cuts in the junior partners and some of the loot.