The US National Guard plans to significantly expand its training programs, with the Indo-Pacific nations set to beef up the American presence in the region, the military force’s top general has said.
In an interview with the US news outlet Defense One, General Dan Hokanson, the chief of the National Guard Bureau, said that the force’s units now have over 90 training arrangements with countries across the world. According to him, where the next program is launched is determined by a priority list created by the State Department, combatant commanders, and the National Guard itself.
Hokanson noted that of the top 10 training programs currently under consideration, “probably five of those 10” are in the Indo-Pacific. “As you know, it’s a very important theater right now,” he stressed.
The general added that within United States Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM), “there’s a lot of island nations” and many “emerging areas–so we are working very closely with those.”
The remarks followed Army General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, telling reporters during his trip to Indonesia last week that prioritizing the Indo-Pacific was important due to China’s alleged increasing “aggressiveness” in the region, which Milley said lacks a NATO-style collective security alliance.
He spoke after Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe lashed out last month at the new US Indo-Pacific strategy, which he claimed is aimed at fomenting confrontation in the region to deter “one particular state.”
The minister noted that Beijing considers the strategy, also known as the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) to be an attempt to establish an exclusive small group of countries under the pretext of the free and open Indo-Pacific to control other nations in the region.
Wei was echoed by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who argued in May that the US, under the banner of "freedom and openness," is trying to place the countries of the region at the service of Washington’s hegemony.
“Facts will prove that the so-called Indo-Pacific strategy is essentially a strategy of creating dissension, fomenting confrontation and undermining peace, no matter how this strategy is presented, it will ultimately fail,” Wang insisted.
US President Joe Biden launched the IPEF together with 12 Indo-Pacific countries, namely Australia, Brunei, India, Indonesia, Japan, Republic of Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, in late May in Tokyo.
In April 2021, POTUS said in his address to Congress that he'd told his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping that the US “will maintain a strong military presence in the Indo-Pacific” just as America does with NATO in Europe, “not to start conflict, but to prevent conflict.”
Biden also expressed his belief that the US is in a state of competition with China and several other countries for leadership in the 21st century.