Vol. 76/No. 46      December 17, 2012

The meeting discussed steps first announced when President Barack Obama visited Australia a year ago. Some 250 U.S. Marines have been training at a military base in Darwin in the Northern Territory since April 4. This rotating force is yet to be expanded to the projected 2,500 over the next few years.

The boosted ties between Washington and Canberra are part of the U.S. government’s military and foreign policy “pivot” back to the Pacific and Asia, designed to counter the challenge to U.S. hegemony from the economic and military rise of China.

Smith affirmed future “enhanced access” by U.S. Air Force planes to airfields and bombing ranges in northern Australia and by U.S. warships to Australian naval facilities, especially the Stirling base near Perth, on the Indian Ocean.

But under pressure from the government of China, Australia’s largest trading partner, Canberra is proceeding more cautiously than Washington had hoped.

According to the Nov. 6 NT News, a U.S. proposal to triple eventual Marine numbers in Darwin to 7,500 in an “air ground task force” has been shelved. Another option raised by a Pentagon report to the U.S. Congress in August to base a U.S. aircraft carrier battle group, including nuclear submarines, at the base south of Perth has been sidestepped by Canberra.

“Australia’s geography, political stability, and existing defense capabilities and infrastructure offer strategic depth and other significant military advantages to the United States in light of the growing range of Chinese weapons systems, US efforts to achieve a more distributed defense posture, and the increasing strategic importance of Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean,” noted the August report.  
 
 
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