AMID rising tensions in the Indo-Pacific region, Rear Adm. Benjamin Nicholson said Joint Region Marianas is “always prepared.”
Nicholson is the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Representative, the U.S. Naval Forces Commander for Guam, the CNMI, the FSM, and Palau, and the Joint Region Marianas Commander.
He told local reporters on Friday that the U.S. Department of Defense prepares “for any and all eventualities.”
“What we do here at Joint Region Marianas is we support all of the forces that come into the region and make sure that they’re ready to go for operations,” he said. “But mostly, we make sure that they’re prepared through the different training events that they do, so although we may see tensions rise and fall, we’re always prepared.”
A U.S. military report on Jan. 5 stated that the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Chung-Hoon conducted a routine Taiwan Strait transit “through waters where high-seas freedom of navigation and overflight apply in accordance with international law.”
The ship is said to have transited through a corridor in the strait “that is beyond the territorial sea of any coastal state.”
The report added that USS Chung-Hoon’s transit through the Taiwan Strait “demonstrates the United States’ commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” and that the U.S. military “flies, sails, and operates anywhere international law allows.
On Jan. 9, Reuters reported that Taiwan condemned China for holding its second military combat drills around the island in less than a month, with the Taiwan defense ministry saying it had detected 57 Chinese aircraft.
It was likewise reported that Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida began a tour of key Western partners, after unveiling Japan’s biggest military buildup since World War II as the island-nation steps in to counter China’s growing power.
In a social media post on Tuesday, Jan. 17, Liu Pengyu, minister-counselor and spokesperson of China’s Embassy in Washington, D.C., said that China is calling on the U.S. and Japan to “step out of the Cold-War mentality, quit the obsession with containing and suppressing China, stop dangerously ramping up military build-up and propagating chaos in the world, and return to the right path of peace, friendship, and cooperation.”
USS Chung-Hoon
