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Pacific Challenges Reach Far and Wide

The Asia-Pacific region has been strategically important to the United States since the country realized it was as much a Pacific nation as it was an Atlantic one. The United States demonstrated that it was a global power when it sent its Great White Fleet to visit faraway countries that many Americans had never visited. Conflicts and colonies followed, and now the nation has many standing defense treaties and a military presence that spans half the globe.

Ironically, the success of the United States in ensuring regional security belies many of the challenges facing that vast area. Geography presents the most obvious challenge; the Pacific is the world’s largest ocean, and its shores include dozens of countries covering nearly as many time zones. Maintaining an effective military reach across these vast distances requires an extraordinary logistics effort, but even a discipline as simple as communications can be vexing.

Which leads to the second challenge: technology. The network-centric force requires more than just over-the-horizon radio links. Various elements scattered among diverse locations must have the connectivity necessary to take part in network-centric operations fully. This mandates satellite links, of course, but it also raises the problem of bandwidth limitations on mobile platforms such as smaller ships. As point-to-point messages encompass more information, the long arm of communications must carry a larger load.

And that is just the concern of U.S. forces. No military action, whether combat or humanitarian, is likely to involve the forces of just one nation. Joint and coalition operations are virtually mandated in this era, and interoperating with several nations requires solving both technological and cultural challenges. The Pacific theater lacks an overarching security organization such as the Atlantic’s NATO, which has established standards for interoperability that are adopted as a matter of course. Many Pacific coalitions are ad hoc constructs assembled to deal with a specific situation, and some of these coalitions may involve nations that have never before worked together.

Getting the diverse Asia-Pacific nations to work together often raises significant cultural issues. Trust has been a long time in coming for the dozens of countries that compose the Pacific Rim, and even shared security goals do not always go far enough to break down barriers that have been centuries in the making. Plus, some national differences simply are cultural, not political, in nature. These can be the most difficult differences to overcome.

As if these challenges were not enough, the Asia-Pacific region faces the same security threats common in other parts of the world. The Global War on Terrorism is being fought in several Pacific countries, including the Philippines and Indonesia. Weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear proliferation, threaten to turn border conflicts into potential all-encompassing conflagrations. Ethnic conflicts simmer in many nations. And heavily militarized North Korea continues to surprise experts with its unpredictable policy twists and turns.

Through all of these challenges, almost all of the nations that make up the Asia-Pacific region view the United States as the linchpin to their regional security. They may not always agree with U.S. foreign policy, but they recognize that a Pacific region without the United States playing a major political and military role would be an inherently unstable realm that ultimately would undermine their own efforts at development and prosperity. Maintaining that security is a never-ending juggling act that cannot tolerate the dropping of even one ball.

—The Editor

More information on the Asia-Pacific region is available in the October 2008 issue of SIGNAL Magazine, in the mail to AFCEA members and subscribers October 1, 2008. For information about purchasing this issue, joining AFCEA or subscribing to SIGNAL, contact AFCEA Member Services.