North Korea As Pretext: U.S. Builds Asian Military Alliance Against China And Russia
Rick Rozoff
On December 1 the U.S. and its South Korean military ally completed four days of naval maneuvers in the Yellow Sea where China claims a 200-mile exclusive economic zone.
The U.S. dispatched the 97,000-ton USS George Washington nuclear-powered aircraft supercarrier for the exercise, accompanied by a carrier strike group consisting of a guided missile cruiser and three guided missile destroyers. The American deployment included 6,000 sailors and 75 aircraft. South Korea supplied destroyers, corvettes, frigates, support ships, anti-submarine aircraft and an undisclosed amount of military personnel.
USS George Washington Carrier Strike Group
The war games, which included live-fire shooting and bombing drills, were the latest in a series of U.S.-led military exercises in South Korea and the seas to its east and west beginning in July of this year:
From July 25-28 the U.S. conducted a joint military exercise with South Korea codenamed Invincible Spirit in the Sea of Japan/East Sea with the involvement of 20 warships including the USS George Washington supercarrier, 200 warplanes including F-22 Raptor stealth fighters and 8,000 troops.
F-22s
In August the U.S. and South Korea conducted this year's Ulchi Freedom Guardian military exercise, the world's largest command and control simulation drill, in the latter country with 30,000 U.S. and 56,000 South Korean troops participating.
In early September Washington and Seoul held an anti-submarine warfare exercise in the Yellow Sea with two U.S. guided missile destroyers and a fast attack submarine and two South Korean destroyers.
Only the August exercise was a routine one, the latest in a series of Ulchi Freedom Guardian maneuvers held over several decades.
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