The USS Carney, a Navy destroyer in the Red Sea, on Thursday shot down multiple missiles launched by Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen that the Pentagon said were potentially headed toward targets in Israel.
Hypersonic weapons could be “catastrophic” for the most potent aircraft carrier group in the US fleet, according to war game simulations run by a team of military planners in China.
Guam’s history is marked by the enduring partnership between the U.S. military and the people of Guam. Since the establishment of Marine Barracks Guam in 1899, the Marine Corps has had a nearly continuous presence on Guam. The Marine Barracks was reactivated after World War II and deactivated November 10, 1992.
According to Kyodo News, the new base in Guam will host 4,000 US Marines that will be transferred from Okinawa. The US and Japan agreed to reduce the military burden on Okinawa, which hosts over 70% of US bases in Japan, over local opposition to the US presence. But the plans to deploy the Marine Littoral Regiment further entrenches the military presence in the Okinawa prefecture.
There is also local opposition to the expansion of the US military presence in Guam, as Kyodo reported anti-base demonstrators protested against the opening of the new Marines Corps facility. An activist said that the military buildup will make Guam “a target for a war that we didn’t want to be part of.”
“They are appropriating our history and they are co-opting an identity of a CHamoru hero who, quite frankly, was very critical of the fact that we never saw true liberation here in Guam, although he was a former Marine,” Flores said. “He’s been quoted many times in saying we’re equal in only war and not in peace. They have manipulated his legacy to force a closeness and connection to this new Marine base that represents so much destruction and violence for our people. And worst off, this base makes us a bigger target for war.”
In all of this, some analysts see echoes of an idea that dates back more than a century and is reckoned to be the foundation of geopolitical thinking. It focused on the struggle between an oceangoing world power—the UK then, the US today—and the land giants of Eurasia. [Heartland Theory]
U.S.-trained Ukrainian soldiers sank two Russian ships in June, according to Bill LaPlante, the Pentagon’s top acquisitions official. The incident came just two months after Washington gave Ukraine intelligence that helped it sink the Moskva, then Russia’s most powerful warship in the Black Sea.
The US government funded a RAND Corporation report to determine which nation in the Indo-Pacific region would be suitable for hosting US missiles aimed at China. The answer was “none.”
However, the US is determined to change this conclusion not only in terms of hosting US missiles, but regarding Washington’s attempt to recruit nations across the Indo-Pacific region in its growing hostilities toward China.