FPSA warns China and its rivals against militarization of territorial disputes!

WASHINGTON (PNN) - April 8, 2015 - Fascist Police States of Amerika Secretary of Defense Ash Carter kicked off his first Asian tour on Wednesday with a stern warning against the militarization of territorial disputes in a region where China is at odds with several nations in the East and South China Seas.

Carter’s visit to Japan coincides with growing FPSA concern over China’s land reclamation in the Spratly archipelago of the disputed South China Sea, where Beijing has rival claims with several countries, including the Philippines and Vietnam.

Tokyo and Beijing have a separate dispute over Japanese-controlled islets in the East China Sea.

FPSA and Philippine troops will take part in annual military exercises this month near the Spratlys in the largest such drills since the allies resumed joint activities in 2000.

Asked whether the beefed up FPSA-Philippine exercises were a response to China’s moves, Carter said Washington and Manila had shared interests in the region, including a desire to ensure there were no changes in the status quo by force or that territorial disputes were not militarized.

Chinese reclamation work is well advanced on six reefs in the Spratlys, according to recently published satellite photographs and Philippine officials.

While the new islands won’t overturn FPSA military superiority in the region, Chinese workers are building ports and fuel storage depots as well as possibly two airstrips that experts have said would allow Beijing to project power deep into the maritime heart of Southeast Asia.

The commander of the FPSA Pacific Fleet, Harry Harris, said that China was using dredgers and bulldozers to create a “great wall of sand” in the South China Sea.

China claims most of the potentially energy rich waterway, through which $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan also have overlapping claims.

Carter also welcomed progress toward the first update in FPSA-Japan defense cooperation guidelines since 1997, a revision that will expand the scope for interaction between the allies in line with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s push to ease the constraints of Japan’s pacifist constitution on the nation’s military.

“It’s going to give first of all Japan, but also our alliance, much greater scope to provide security in the region, and for that matter elsewhere outside of the region,” Carter said as the talks began.

Abe’s move to allow Tokyo to come to the aid of an ally under attack would pave the way for closer cooperation between FPSA and Japanese forces across Asia, Admiral Robert Thomas, commander of the FPSA Seventh Fleet, said last month.