US President Barack Obama will use a visit to Australia next week to announce that the US will station Marines at a base in Darwin, Australian ministers indicated yesterday in a sign of heightened concern about China.
The Sydney Morning Herald said the new permanent military presence had been under consideration for some years as Washington looks to boost its Pacific Command, and senior Australian politicians did not deny the plan.
The US currently has only a limited deployment in longstanding ally Australia, including the Pine Gap Joint Defence Facility spy station near Alice Springs, and the move represents a significant geostrategic shift.
“It is important to wait for the president to visit Australia and for him and the prime minister to confirm what further defense cooperation arrangements we may have planned,” Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs Kevin Rudd said.
“From the Australian perspective, here we are with a vast coastline, a population of just 23 million. It has always made national security sense to have a strong security alliance with America,” Rudd added.
Pentagon spokesman George Little declined to comment on the report, saying only: “Australia is an American friend and ally, and we will continue to work together to foster even stronger military ties with one another.”
Obama arrives in the country on Wednesday, visiting the capital, Canberra, before becoming the first US president to travel to the Northern Territory when he lands in Darwin.
The US will not be building a new base in the city, but instead will reportedly use the existing Robertson Barracks nearby.
The facility is home to about 4,500 Australian soldiers and will need to be expanded to cater for the US Marines, the paper said, citing sources who declined to detail how many troops or sailors would be rotating through.
The plan would intensify the 60-year military alliance between the two countries, which has played a crucial part in anchoring US influence in Asia.
In a speech to a national security workshop yesterday, Australian Minister for Defence Stephen Smith said: “This would potentially see more ship visits, more visiting aircraft and more training and exercising through northern Australia.”
It would also see “the prepositioning of United States equipment in Australia,” he added.
US Marines are already based at Okinawa in Japan and on Guam as the US’ chief combat force in the Pacific theater, and analysts said the Australian move was largely a response to the rise of China.
Beijing is boosting its military spending and capabilities and becoming increasingly assertive on the high seas where it claims sovereignty over essentially all of the South China Sea, a key global trading route.
Just weeks ago, China sent its first aircraft carrier on its maiden sea trials, underlining the scale of the country’s naval ambitions and sending jitters through Washington and Tokyo.
“China looms very large for both Australia and the US,” said Geoffrey Garrett, chief executive of the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, adding that the US strategy had two elements.
“The first concerns strengthening America’s alliances and friendships in the region as an insurance policy that China’s until now very peaceful rise changes course,” Garrett said.
“The second is trying to build a regional economic architecture for the Asia-Pacific based on the market principles of America and Australia that China over time will have powerful incentives to join, even if this entails domestic reforms it has been unwilling to undertake up until now,” he added.
Andrew Shearer, a former senior diplomat at the Australian embassy in Washington and now the director of studies at the Lowy Institute for International Policy, said the move was “not all about China.”
“Everyone draws the China connection, but it’s as much to do with the rise of India as well,” Shearer said.
“It’s not all about defense, but to be able to conduct disaster relief, counter piracy and keep shipping lanes free,” he said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver