Asia Shift

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel earlier today visited "an air base in Southwest Asia," where he met with troops and answered a question about how the Air Force will go about transitioning from Southwest Asia to the Pacific. According to the Pentagon transcript, this is what he said:

Well, the larger context of your question was regarding our rebalancing of our focus with our assets around the world.  As you noticed and noted in your comments, we are unwinding our -- our major combat presence in Afghanistan and we have unwound our presence in Iraq.  And we have made the assessment -- and I think correctly -- that -- and, by the way, these assessments are constantly changing based on the world, based on dangers, based on assets, based on interest, based on allies.  And so the world is not static; I don't have to remind any of you.  It changes hour to hour, minute to minute.

So our job in the Department of Defense, a leader's job, President Obama's job, all of your jobs, is to protect our country and to assure our interest in the world, and security is the anchor to that.  So that policy, as we rebalance our focus, has rebalanced more assets to the Asia Pacific, which I think is exactly right.

All our services, including the Air Force, will continue to have a very, very, very significant role in that.  How can it be otherwise?  We will -- we will shift in varying ways presence in operations, depending on what the threat is, depending on how we want to project power, and that is all part of a continual assessment.

So the Air Force in particular, the question you asked about, will continue to play an important role, if for no other reason than projection of power.  And I think where we want to continue to go -- Secretary Gates talked about this, Secretary Panetta talked about it -- is a flexible, agile military.

The threats are shifted.  Ten years ago, I don't think very many people in this room would have talked much about cyber warfare or -- or the cyber threat.  Even five years ago, it was a different world.  Obviously, non-state actors, Islamic fundamentalism, terrorists, the coordination of those terrorists, interests that go below the surface, these are not coming all or mainly from state threats, from nation-state threats.  Most of these threats are coming from non-state actors.

And so that is shifting not only our balance of assets, but our -- our strategic interests and the strategies that protect those strategic interests and the tactics then that employ those -- those strategies.  So our Air Force, our Navy, our Marines, our Army, Coast Guard, all remain -- will continue to remain vital parts of our security interests.

You may be spending more time in the Pacific.  Not a bad assignment.