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The 70th anniversary of the Battle of Midway, one of history's mostimportant battles, has come and gone, with little attention paid.The anniversary, June 4-7, took place while Defense Secretary LeonPanetta was in the midst of a very important trip to the AsiaPacific region which also passed with little notice. The former CIA director and veteran California political figure'snine-day trip was merely to lay the groundwork for a major re-setof America's geopolitical priorities, what's been called "thePacific Pivot" (though lately re-dubbed the "rebalancing" to calmEuropeanists), from over-engagement with the Islamic world toincreased engagement with Asia. And Midway? In my opinion, this Pacific battle was merely the mostimportant American battle since Gettysburg. No, I don't think themost important battle since the hinge of the Civil War, withoutwhich the Union would have been rent asunder, was D-Day, as epic asthat was. By June 6th, 1944, the fascist forces in Europe, Africa,and the Middle East had been driven back, and Hitler was hunkeringdown in his "Festung Europa." The Allies were winning with greaternumbers and materiel. D-Day was a culmination of a process years inthe making. It might have failed, but that was unlikely, for it hadmassive, even inexorable, might behind it. The battle footage in John Ford's The Battle of Midway was shot in large part by the then three-time AcademyAward-winning director himself from the roof of the power plant onMidway using a small handheld camera. The Grapes of Wrath director, a naval reserve commander, was sent there by new PacificFleet commander Chester Nimitz shortly before the battle. Midway, in contrast, was a far more perilous encounter. It foundthe US Navy at a decided disadvantage against the Imperial JapaneseNavy. In the six months between Pearl Harbor and Midway, the US andits allies in the Pacific had suffered an endless string of losses.If the Navy lost its precious handful of aircraft carriers offMidway, to the superior Japanese force, Hawaii's defense would havebeen untenable and an already romping Japanese military would havehad free reign across the Pacific, where it had already madeincredible progress in setting up an empire under the rubric of theGreater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. The sacrifice of the US Asiatic Fleet, virtually forgotten today,except for aficionados of one of John Ford's greatest films, 1945's They Were Expendable , a mostly true life story about the PT boats and others fighting alosing battle in the Philippines to buy time for the US to regroupafter December 7th, 1941, was huge. The larger US Pacific Fleet,devastated by the Pearl Harbor attack, survived with a series ofraids, largely to boost morale, by the handful of aircraft carriersthat fortunately escaped the carnage of Oahu. Franklin Roosevelthad perhaps his greatest test of public leadership in keepingAmerican spirits up during this very dark period. This otherwise valuable AP story , the only major article to mark Midway's 70th anniversary, ismisleading in making intelligence sound far more precise than itwas, extensively a retired officer who'd been a young ensign at thetime. The US was able to read Japanese code, but only parts ofmessages, here and there. In fact, it took a faked American messageabout a non-existent drinking water crisis on Midway, which theNavy knew that Japanese would pick up and report on, to determinethat it was Midway under discussion in the Japanese plans. But even that left vast elements to chance. There were nosatellites in those days. Radar was unreliable. All the aircraftwere propeller-driven. Slow-flying scout planes, were usedextensively to try to find enemy ships. Aircraft navigation andcommunications were spotty. The reality is that the battle was marked by massive uncertaintyand the groping in the dark of broad daylight that one would expectof only the second sea battle fought with ships out of visualcontact. The Battle of the Coral Sea, fought a month earlier to astand-off, though Japanese invasion forces were repelled, was thefirst such battle. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta delivered the commencementaddress on May 29th at the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis,Maryland. The veteran California political figure and former CIAdirector says that building U.S. maritime strength across the AsiaPacific region will be the main project of the new generation ofAmerica's naval officers. Most of the the most dramatic and consequential action took placeon June 4th. When all was said and done, four Japanese aircraftcarriers had been sent to the bottom of the Pacific, with only oneof America's precious carriers lost. In addition, the Japanese lostmany of their best pilots, as well as highly skilled andexperienced air crews. After Midway, the US was able to turn to the offensive, with theMarines invading Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands two monthslater. Which is not to say that there was not hard and heavyfighting through most of 1945, especially with most of the USeffort going to the fight against Fascist Italy and especially NaziGermany. The story of Midway is highly dramatic, making the rather dull andsoapy 1976 movie made about it all the more regrettable. But thatdoesn't explain why it gets such short shrift compared to D-Day, astory endlessly retold in film and literature. Part of the reason, of course, is that this is an ahistorical,moment to moment culture, and getting more so all the time. Butthere's another reason. Midway is a tiny atoll roughly "midway" between North America andAsia -- it's 3200 miles west of San Francisco and 2500 miles eastof Tokyo. It is no tourist destination. Unlike Normandy, a naturalbeacon for tourists in France, Midway, which I have visited, isjust a couple of tiny islands around a lagoon. Nobody lived therebefore it became a stop-over point for maritime and aviationventures. And since the Navy closed its Midway base, hardly anyonelives there now. But despite the lack of a glamorous locale, Midway was absolutelycentral to our past and present. And the big geopolitical pivot,again centered on the Pacific, now underway looks to be central toour future. I discussed the Pacific Pivot last Thanksgiving here on the Huffington Post in "Darwinian: Obama Goes Post-Iraq in Oz, Republicans Race To the Past." The big pivot will make Darwin, Australia, where we are liked, muchmore important to US strategy than Kabul, Afghanistan, where we arenot liked. Panetta laid out the approach, first in his little-notedcommencement address late last month at the U.S. Naval Academy,then in a session at the annual Shangri-la Dialogue on securityissues in Singapore. Last weekend, at the Shangri-la Dialogue on security policy in thePacific Basin, Defense Secretary Panetta discussed the scenario. Panetta said that the US Navy will shift most of its ships to theAsia Pacific region in coming years, and that six of the fleet's 10aircraft carriers and their supporting strike groups will be basedand on patrol in the Pacific. He stressed that the US seeks cooperation with China and notconfrontation. But having more USN firepower in the region willbackstop Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and the Philippines,all of which share the South China Sea but which are having seriousproblems with China, which attempts to claim nearly all of it. Panetta went on to the Philippines, and to Vietnam -- an historicvisit for a US defense secretary -- where he visited the massiveUS-built base at Cam Ranh Bay and requested its use by the Navy. Then he went to India for two days of talks. The Obama Administration is trying to make India a much closerally, which would help tremendously in providing a counter-weightto China, an effort that began early in Obama's first term. Thefirst state dinner of the Obama White House was in honor of India,but naturally the substance was overshadowed by a pair of realityTV yo-yos who snuck in. Speaking in India's capital city New Delhi, where the veteranCalifornia political figure continued a big tour of the AsiaPacific region as part of the US geopolitical pivot, DefenseSecretary Leon Panetta defended US drone strikes inside Pakistan.In the wake of the killing of Al Qaeda's second in command, AbuYahya al-Libi, Panetta made it clear that the drone strikes willcontinue. While India has long history of serious trouble with neighboringChina, it also has a very long history of non-alignment. Panetta is also trying to get more Indian help in Afghanistan,where its efforts to date have focused on economic development andhumanitarian aid. But Panetta's push for help from India may make the bad situationwith Pakistan, India's bitter rival, even worse. Speaking in New Delhi, Panetta defended US drone strikes insidePakistan. In the wake of the killing of Al Qaeda's second incommand, Abu Yahya al-Libi, Panetta made it clear that the dronestrikes will continue. Skipping over Pakistan, which he hasn't visited as defensesecretary, Panetta wrapped things up in Afghanistan. Speaking at apress conference in Kabul, he indicated that US patience withPakistan on the disrupted supply route and on safe havens forjihadists is at a breaking point. We can probably count thecourting of India as a further tear in the US/Pakistanrelationship. We won't know for some time how India is really responding to theUS move. But there are signs of more joint exercises, and a desireon India's part for more advanced American weaponry. Another major question surrounds Vietnam's response. We justnormalized trade relations with the victor of the Vietnam War fiveyears ago. Hanoi lets the US Navy use its former base at Cam RanhBay already, but only for non-combatant ships. What about combatships using the finest deep water shelter in Southeast Asia?Vietnam's desire for advanced US weapons and technology may holdthe key. As Panetta made clear in his talks in Annapolis and Singapore, theNavy takes the lead in the big pivot. That is because of vastnessof the Pacific Ocean. The Pacific occupies one-third of the Earth's surface. It's morethan twice the size of the Atlantic, containing nearly half theworld's water. In fact, the Pacific, which can be anything butpeaceful when its truly terrifying storms hit, covers more spacethan all the land area of the Earth combined. Much of the rationale for the big strategic pivot is provided bythe rise of China. But here we are moving back into more normalgeopolitical territory than we've had since the rise of Al Qaedaand the disastrous adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. For anation-state, defined by territory and predictable interests, canbe influenced and negotiated with much more readily thantransnational, essentially stateless, jihadists. The fact is that the US and China have a symbiotic relationship.China needs our markets for its export-oriented economy. And weneed their finance. War between the two countries makes no sense. But China could bully its neighbors, absent assistance to them. And in the South China Sea, there are major disputes over China'sextraordinary claims to sovereignty there. Will the US still be involved with NATO? Sure. Europeanists, in theUS and Europe, needn't worry about that. But NATO, which has noobvious rationale for its existence with the collapse of the SovietUnion two decades ago, is in deep trouble. The mission in Libya,driven by the UK and France, succeeded, but only with the USbackstopping it every step of the way with a technologicalinfrastructure that no other NATO member could match even beforethe crisis of the Eurozone. Will the big pivot happen or will we be dragged back to ourquagmire in the Middle East and Central Asia? Panetta became the first US defense secretary to visit the massiveformer US Navy base at Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam. Some, like Obama's conservative Republican challenger Mitt Romney,really seem to want war with Iran. And we're not out ofAfghanistan, which has become a big embarrassment, yet. As the great sociologist Max Weber put it: "Politics is the slowboring of hard boards. And anyone who seeks to do it must risk hisown soul." Though there is much truth in that saying, it can also be a massiveexcuse. But let's assume that no real world administration is goingto simply pull up stakes and lose face. Changing a big country's geostrategic posture, which is what theObama Administration is fixing to do, is like turning around not aspeedboat but an aircraft carrier. Especially when the country isstill heavily engaged in the old direction. Of course, Obama himself made it harder to do by ramping updramatically in Afghanistan, which has turned into the predictablecluster, ah, scene. And, as long as America is stuck on oil, it's going to be involvedin the Islamic world. All the more reason to focus at last on theneed to shift away from the old energy economy of fossil fuels tothe new energy economy of renewables and efficiency. But there is involvement and there is disastrous entanglement. Andthat's the distinction that must be drawn as the big pivot beginsand carries on. It's all going to be quite fascinating, with many questions toraise and answer as we go. You can check things during the day on my site, New West Notes .. . William Bradley Huffington Post Archive. We are high quality suppliers, our products such as Vehicle GPS Tracking Systems , Fleet GPS Tracking Systems for oversee buyer. To know more, please visits SD Card GPS Receiver.
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