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Major Pacific exercise underway with N. Korea in background

Special to World Tribune.com
EAST-ASIA-INTEL.COM
Thursday, June 29, 2006

SEOUL — Eight Pacific naval powers opened a month of exercises around the Hawaiian Islands this week in one of the biggest displays of allied naval strength since World War II.

The number of vessels participating in the show of force — and some of the specific war games they played — were fine-tuned to train for countering long-range missiles even though the exercises were scheduled long before the current threat from North Korea.

Led by the U.S. Navy, the countries participating included Japan, South Korea, Chile, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Great Britain — the last still viewed as a Pacific naval power in view of its colonial legacy and strong ties to other participants.

The exercise, called RIMPAC, the acronym for Rim of the Pacific, held every two years for the past 20 years, this year tests the ability of the eight powers to counter not only attack at sea but also from missiles of the sort that North Korea is developing. U.S. Marines and the Coast Guard are also participating as ships maneuver to fend off “invasion” forces.

Among the ships participating are Aegis-class destroyers equipped with SAM 3 missiles — the type that is theoretically capable of knocking out an enemy missile. The U.S. and Japan are developing upgraded versions of the missile for both American and Japanese vessels, already deployed in waters between the Korean peninsula and Japan.

The exercises were also expected to include tests of interceptor missiles to be launched near the Hawaiian coast.

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency claimed success in seven tests with interceptors capable of hitting missiles tipped with warheads. But skeptics here believe these claims apply only under highly controlled, artificial circumstances and doubt if the U.S. is capable of hitting a long-range Taepodong II missile, the type now poised on the launch pad on the east coast of North Korea.

A critical question was whether missile tests could support the claims of the Missile Defense Agency chief, Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry A. "Trey" Obering III, who said: “We are continuing to see great success with the very challenging technology of hit-to-kill — a technology that is used for all of our missile defense ground- and sea-based interceptor missiles."

The U.S. force in the Pacific is believed to be the largest since the 1994 nuclear crisis from which emerged the 1994 Geneva framework agreement, under which the North promised to give up its nuclear program in exchange for facilities for producing nuclear power to help fulfill its energy needs.

Two major Pentagon figures from that era, William Perry, then secretary of defense, and Ashton Carter, who served as assistant secretary under Perry, in a controversial commentary in the Washington Post called for a preemptive strike to “destroy the North Korean Taepodong missile before it can be launched.”

Analysts noted the irony of Perry and Carter calling for a military attack after Perry had spent years arguing for a policy of reconciliation with the North, as presented in the infamous “Perry Review” of 1998 put out at the behest of then-President Clinton.

The White House promptly discounted any notion of a surgical strike against the North, but U.S. aircraft carriers could deploy in a few days if the United States were to consider a strike in retaliation for launching the Taepodong-2.

Korean senior policy-makers, including Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon and National Security adviser Song Min-Soon, both warned that a North Korean missile launch would necessitate strong “counter-measures,” but South Korea’s President Roh Moo-Hyun has preferred to stress the need for building “trust” between the two Koreas while pursuing his policy of reconciliation.

Ban and Song's comments reflect strong U.S. pressure to maintain the appearance of the Korean-American alliance. Their worst fear is that a missile launch would deepen the rift between Seoul and Washington as well as divisions within South Korean society.


Copyright © 2006 East West Services, Inc.

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