Pacific Pivot: What Can the US Really Afford While Japan and Taiwan Keep Small Budgets

• T. X. Hammes, a research fellow at the US National Defense University, asks in the National Interest:

“[T]he discussion of military strategy [in response to Chinese expansionism] should force the deeper and more important discussion of whether or not the United States can afford/accomplish the strategy of dominance we have used in maritime affairs in Asia since WWII.”

• Japan’s latest modest defense budget increase made headlines, but their military spending still amounts to just about 1% of GDP. In that light:

Given China’s rapid economic and military rise, Japan’s and Taiwan’s stagnant defence spending – as well as the recent sequestration in the United States – would seem to be a major cause for concern. Seen from the perspective of traditional realism, the actions of Japan and Taiwan might be seen as dangerously complacent.

• It took months of negotiation but the US and South Korea finally reached an agreement on the amount the Koreans will contribute to their own defense.

• The Chinese air force (PLAAF) is simplifying its complicated organizational structure [PDF].

• According to Reuters, the US Justice Department and DoD’s Defense Criminal Investigative Service are investigating Honeywell’s move to China in 2009 of the production of thermal sensors used in F-35s. The company since then relocated that production to the US.