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Crucial Meeting With Shinzo Abe
Both have an enormous stake in averting open conflict between China and the United States. China has claimed most of the international waters of the South China Sea and built island fortresses around them, in defiance of international law. On Thursday, presumptive US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the US could blockade those islands, just hours after Australian security expert Ross Babbage had written in these pages that the Trump administration might turn to much tougher measures on the matter. Reinforcing the rules-based order in the region which the US itself created 70 years ago has to be a top priority for Tokyo and Canberra.
In the News
Does China Now Regret Snubbing Obama?
A recent joint publication by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and Australia’s Strategic Forum. The report written by Ross Babbage, former senior Australian Defense Department official, concluded that the Obama government failed to “counter China’s territorial expansion in the South China Sea” and that during his second term, “Beijing militarized and established effective control over” this important strategic waterway.
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Trump Administration Signals Focus on Defense Industrial Base’s Potential for Job Creation
There are early signs Navy shipyards may be a focus for job growth. Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments who has been in talks with the Trump transition team, told Inside Defensehe anticipates increased production at existing shipyards and new construction at shipyards not presently working on U.S. military ships.
Analysis
South China Sea an Early Trump Priority
Key members of the Trump administration are shaping to confront China in the South China Sea. Last month Donald Trump tweeted: “Did China ask us if it was OK … to build a massive military complex in the middle of the South China Sea? I don’t think so!” Trump is clearly irritated by Beijing’s behaviour and senior members of Trump’s team are also expressing deep concerns.
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Trump Transition Team Weighs Keeping on Obama’s Deputy Defense Secretary
Work would add to the list of Marines in Trump’s administration. A retired colonel, he served 27 years as a field artillery officer before leaving active duty in 2001. He became an influential Washington defense analyst, serving as a senior official with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
Analysis
Trump’s Nuclear Tweets
Of President-elect Trump’s tweets since winning the election, the one drawing the greatest criticism may well be his comment last week that the United States "must strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes." The next day, his critics went downright ballistic when the president-elect reportedly made the off-camera statement: "Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all." The partisans at the Ploughshares Fund and their paid-for "echo-chamber" colleagues across the disarmament community