South Korea and the United States have canceled the planned combined naval exercise in the West Sea (Yellow Sea) scheduled for late October, South Korean state-run broadcaster KBS reported on 24 October, citing a senior South Korean official.
The decision was made in order to avoid irritating neighboring countries (really one neighboring country – China) and to improve conditions for the G20 Summit in Seoul on 11 and 12 November, Yonhap reported, citing another unnamed government source. The US aircraft carrier USS George Washington is unlikely to participate in any other combined exercises with South Korea in 2010, and the two allies will also delay the large-scale amphibious landing exercises planned for late October.
Comment (This comment is based exclusively on open source information which always is incomplete.): The cancellation appears to be a gratuitous conciliatory gesture to China to ensure its participation in the economic summit, where it is expected to be generally uncooperative, by some analysts.
The concern is that this is the second major security issue in Asia in which the US appears to have deferred to China's sensibilities, rather than assert the prerogatives of a great power.
This cancellation would appear to negate all the brave language US spokesman have used to assert allied solidarity in confronting North Korea' aggression in sinking the South Korean corvette, Cheonan, in March. In the perception of the international community, the US backed down every time China protested the scheduling of joint exercises aimed at North Korea.
After seven months, North Korea still has gotten away with sinking an Allied patrol ship.
The second issue was the Chinese reaction to Japan's arrest of a Chinese fishing boat and crew in the Senkakus after the Chinese boat rammed a Japanese patrol boat. Only the Secretary of State stood with the Japanese against China. The rest of the US administration did not and has not.
Pro-US leaders in Asia are well advised to remember 2010 as a pivotal year for reassessing the dominant power in Asia.
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