The U.S. maneuvers in the western Pacific are part of an exercise, named “Summer Pulse 2004,” which involve naval forces not only in the Pacific but in the North Atlantic, Mediterranean, Arab-Persian Gulf, eastern Atlantic, and South America. The war games, which began June 3 and conclude in August, include 150,000 troops, seven aircraft carrier groups, 50 warships, and 600 aircraft. Four of the carrier groups have returned or are on their way back to their home ports.

One aircraft carrier, the USS Kitty Hawk, which is based in Japan, is conducting exercises in the western Pacific. “I can’t tell you how close that ship will get to the coast of Taiwan,” Capt. Thomas Van Leunen, a spokesman for the U.S. Fleet Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia, told the press. There are two other carrier groups in other parts of the Pacific, three in the Atlantic, and one in the Arab-Persian Gulf.

In addition, on July 12 the U.S. government held a “crisis-simulation drill” exercise aimed at China, under the not-too-subtle name “Dragon’s Thunder.” It was held at the Pentagon’s National Defense University in Washington, D.C. U.S. officials said it was in response “to an increasing possibility of military action by China against Taiwan.”

The Pentagon has downplayed the timing of the two military exercises, which have received limited coverage in the U.S. media.

“The largest naval exercise the United States has ever held is meant to send a direct signal to the Chinese. It’s gunboat diplomacy and its point is to warn China not to step over the mark when it comes to Taiwan,” Andrew Tan of the Singapore-based Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies told the Los Angeles Times.  
 
War exercises in Taiwan
At the same time, the government of Taiwan has been carrying out anti-amphibious maneuvers along that island’s southern coast. The exercises, which are named “Han Kuang No. 20” and run from July to August, have involved 5,000 troops backed by armored vehicles, cannon, and 300 paratroopers. “Taiwan air force jets staged rare landings on closed-off freeways Wednesday [July 21] as part of a major exercise,” the Agence France-Presse news agency reported that day.

Since Chen Shui-bian was reelected president of Taiwan in March, his administration has increased tensions with China by stepping up its pro-independence rhetoric and campaigning for international recognition of Taiwan as a separate country.

The Chinese government regards Taiwan as a breakaway province. The U.S.-backed capitalist regime in Taipei was set up by the fleeing forces of the defeated Nationalist Party of Chiang Kai-shek after the successful popular revolution in 1949 by China’s workers and peasants, which overthrew capitalist rule on the mainland.

In 1972, when Washington recognized the People’s Republic of China, the U.S. government acknowledged in the agreement that “all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is part of China.”

Editorials in Chinese newspapers have condemned Washington’s Summer Pulse war games as an act of intimidation. Beijing has angrily protested a recent U.S. Congressional resolution reaffirming its promise to supply arms to the Taiwanese government.

On July 9, U.S. national security advisor Condoleezza Rice met with government officials in Beijing as part of a trip that also took her to Japan and south Korea. China’s president, Hu Jintao, expressed “serious concern” to Rice about U.S. arms sales to Taiwan. In response, Rice repeated Washington’s stated opposition to any unilateral change in Taiwan’s status, known as the “one-China policy.”

An editorial in the July 20 People’s Daily, published in Beijing, stated, “China has solemnly declared that the Taiwan issue concerns China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The Chinese government and people will never equivocate, never compromise, and never give in on the issue. We Chinese will never tolerate, indulge, and sit watching any move aimed at splitting Taiwan from China, whether it comes from inside or outside the island.”

In mid-July, in response to the moves by Washington and Taipei, the Chinese government carried out land, sea, and air operations by 18,000 troops, reportedly simulating a military landing on Taiwan. According to the Straits Times, it conducted the one-week exercises off the coast of Fujian province to test its ability to capture the Penghu archipelago, a chain of 64 islands controlled by Taipei that are located barely 24 miles from Taiwan. During these military operations, Chinese military chief Jiang Zemin “vowed to recover Taiwan by 2020, marking the first time China has set a deadline for reunification,” a Los Angeles Times article reported July 20.

The last major U.S.-Chinese confrontation over Taiwan was in the spring of 1996. In response to the re-election in Taiwan of President Lee Teng-hui, Beijing carried out 18 days of large-scale military exercises, including missile tests, to warn that any declaration of independence by the new regime would lead to military action. Washington assembled a large naval armada in the region and provocatively sent the aircraft carrier groups Nimitz and Independence into the Taiwan Strait.  
 
U.S. war games: restructuring Navy
In the current Summer Pulse 2004 exercises, the U.S. Navy is seeking to increase its ability to respond rapidly around the world as part of the broader restructuring of the U.S. armed forces. It is the first exercise of the Navy’s Fleet Response Plan (FRP), which is aimed at shifting from a “carrier-centric” Navy to a more agile fleet that relies on a broader network of naval firepower.

Under the FRP, the Navy is supposed to provide six carrier strike groups, including their associated ships, submarines, and aircraft, in less than 30 days to any part of the world.

“The FRP is the way we operate now,” said Lt. Cmdr. Charles Brown, a spokesman for the Fleet Forces Command.  
 
 
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