 By Adm. Thomas B. Fargo, USN Commander, U.S. Pacific Command |
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Here, you will read about the U.S. Navy’s premier series of bilateral exercises with five Southeast Asia countries — Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand — known as Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training (CARAT). While CARAT’s bilateral goals determined the specific focus and participating elements for each country, all enhanced interoperability and cooperation in a maritime environment. Like the remaining two articles on our medical missions in Cambodia and Vietnam, CARAT also involved humanitarian activities in each of the five countries. These include medical care, improving facilities for schools and care homes, and educational support.
As you will see from this issue and from past issues of FORUM, we seek a cooperative approach with our Asia-Pacific friends and allies in all our exercises and humanitarian activities. Only together can we meet the changing security environment, a challenge presented by the rapid globalization, facing us today. In his book, “The Lexus and the Olive Tree,” journalist Tom Friedman describes the incredible effects of post-Cold War globalization. He makes it clear that globalization is having a profound impact on political, economic, social, and military change, both domestically and internationally. His observations are wholly consistent with the changed security environment we see in the region. Most of this change is certainly for the good. Communications and commercial transactions circle the globe at unprecedented speed. Airline and merchant fleets have opened almost every corner of the world to business and pleasure travel. Our militaries are significantly more capable than they were just a decade ago, especially in coalition arrangements. But there are downsides to rapid globalization. Broadly speaking, crises affect more people faster, spreading instability without regard to borders, and reducing available time to respond. And of course, speed is an essential characteristic for success in today’s world. Benefits of the Internet are well known, but they can also serve destructive agendas, from identity theft to large-scale computer network attacks. Just as banking systems — with entire economies relying on them — are subject to the vulnerability of their computer networks, so too, do we need to be vigilant about our military systems and their potential vulnerability. Globalization also places us in greater competition for precious natural resources. Consider that China already imports more than half the oil it consumes each year, and we expect that volume to double by 2020. Japan imports essentially all the oil it needs, most of which flows through the narrow straits of Southeast Asia. The straits, like the oil, must be shared and protected. Concerns for energy resources and energy security are necessarily recurring themes. Today physical borders cannot insulate anyone from threats that are both real and perceived. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), for example, while not the result of a malicious act, demonstrated the enormous destructive potential of a biological threat. Singapore, which handled the outbreak very well, suffered a loss of one to two percent of its Gross Domestic Product. And the hotels in Chiang Mai Thailand, a tourist center with no SARS cases, were essentially empty when I visited a year ago toward the end of the SARS crisis. We are also increasingly concerned about our vulnerability to weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons have been around for a long time. But our greatest concern is WMD proliferation, including the possibility of such weapons falling into the hands of terrorists. Armed with these weapons, “undetectable, undeterrable, and inexhaustible enemies” (to quote Tom Friedman) could inflict enormous damage without warning. This fact has led us to new thoughts about self-defense and the use of force. And no nation is immune from terrorists’ acts. In the last two-plus years, some 90 nations have lost citizens to terrorist attacks. A few years ago, we thought the enemy targeted with some discrimination, but that is clearly no longer the case. American or Indonesian; Christian or Muslim; military or civilian; man, woman or child — all are vulnerable. Terrorists don’t care who they kill — they simply want to fill our minds with fear and our hearts with hate. Their tactics are obviously designed to erode our resolve and defeat our cooperative efforts. Combine these new trends with more traditional security concerns — such as North Korea, the potential for miscalculation in strategic locations, and other transnational threats — and you can see that our mutual security interests are linked like never before. The instantaneous nature of the global information network and global economy bring our collective objectives closer together. We can and will prosper and endure if we emphasize cooperation in our efforts. No nation alone can secure itself or improve the world for others. Our current situation demands a more proactive, more cooperative, and a more courageous approach.
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