20 December 2011 — Stop NATO
- Military Chief: U.S. To Train ‘For All Potential Forms Of Warfare’
- U.S., India, Japan To Hold First Trilateral Meeting: China Targeted
- Japan: Lockheed Wins Order For 42 F-35 Stealth Fighters
- NATO Defiant On Afghan Night Raids
- NATO Duty: 2,500 Polish Troops Spend Christmas In Afghanistan
- Big Shoulders In Chicago And Kabul
- Syria, Iran: Saudi King Calls For Formation Of ‘Gulf Union’
- Iraq: America’s Shameful Victory
- Obama Criticizes, Demeans Venezuela, Cuba, Iran
- Boosting Bilateral Military Ties: U.S. Amphibious Group In Cambodia
Military Chief: U.S. To Train ‘For All Potential Forms Of Warfare’
Stars and Stripes
December 19, 2011
Dempsey: Future to focus on training ‘for all potential forms of warfare’
By Jennifer H. Svan
-As a global power, ‘we cannot afford to pick a point on the spectrum of conflict and say ‘that’s what we’re going to be best at,’ ’ he said. ‘We have to be capable of providing options to our leaders to deal with problems across the entire spectrum.’
-The U.S. military…will look at how to integrate new capabilities into training, such as cyber expertise and special forces, the number of which have quadrupled over the last decade or so, according to Dempsey.
RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany: A day after the last U.S. troops left Iraq, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said the U.S. military must redirect its focus of the last 10 years from preparing for continuous deployments to training, with an eye toward the growing strategic importance of the Pacific region.
‘We have to restore readiness for all potential forms of warfare,’ Army Gen. Martin Dempsey told a crowd of more than 400 U.S. military members and civilians at a town hall meeting Monday in Ramstein’s officers’ club.
‘If you’re a major or a staff sergeant or younger, you have known nothing in your professional lives except deployments,’ Dempsey said. ‘As we now face the evolution of becoming an armed force that is still deploying…but also now has to go back to understanding how to train and prepare for other kinds of conflicts and other environments, we will transition from being an Army that lives to deploy to an Army that is still deploying but that is also living to train…’
‘Train to do what?’ asked Air Force Col. Douglas Hammer, 86th Civil Engineer Group commander. ‘Do you see any major shifts in our country’s military strategy?’
In the last 10 to 15 years, Dempsey said, there’s been ‘a pretty prominent shift of strategic risk towards the Pacific,’ as defined by changing demographics and the region’s rising economic and military power.
That doesn’t mean the U.S. military is ‘going to pick everybody out of Europe and put them in Japan’ or South Korea, he said, but ‘you will see some shifts.’
Dempsey didn’t say what those shifts might be, but stressed that ‘as we shift, we’re going to have to think through, how do we maintain the foundation of our traditional strategic relationships,’ with the country’s current partners and allies.
As a global power, ‘we cannot afford to pick a point on the spectrum of conflict and say ‘that’s what we’re going to be best at,’ ’ he said. ‘We have to be capable of providing options to our leaders to deal with problems across the entire spectrum.’
One area future training may focus on is the ability of the U.S. military to operate in areas without fixed bases, unlike the so-called ‘forward operating bases’ in Iraq and Afghanistan, complete with working fiber optics and satellite dishes, for example.
‘We’ve got to rekindle our skills to be mobile, to maneuver and to have the ability … to establish architectures that don’t always exist,’ Dempsey said.
The U.S. military also will look at how to integrate new capabilities into training, such as cyber expertise and special forces, the number of which have quadrupled over the last decade or so, according to Dempsey.
Dempsey stopped at Ramstein as part of his first United Service Organizations holiday tour since President Barack Obama earlier this year chose the Iraq war veteran to be his top military adviser. Dempsey last week joined Defense Secretary Leon Panetta at a ceremony in Iraq marking the end of the U.S. military mission there.
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U.S., India, Japan To Hold First Trilateral Meeting: China Targeted
Hindustan Times
December 19, 2011
India, Japan, US to meet in Washington on Asia-Pacific
Yashwant Raj
Washington: India, the US and Japan are holding their first trilateral meeting later in the day in Washington in what is being widely seen as a move to coordinate push back against a common competitor — China.
All three countries are seeking to enlarge their respective roles in the Asia-Pacific region, with the US pushing most aggressively. They are members of the East Asia Summit.
The trilateral meeting is being held at the level of officials only — joint secretaries Jawed Ashraf and Gautam Bambwale from India will be meeting counterparts from the US and Japan.
While the three countries will have a lot of talk about trade, economy and nuclear weapons, experts expect China to be the big issue on the table.
At a Track II discussion on the talks in August – hosted by a think-tank Center for Strategic International Studies – participants agreed China was a shared concern.
‘The United States, Japan and India share concerns at the rapid pace of China’s military modernization and operations, the lack of transparency in this military build-up, its assertive posture and questions about China’s intentions with respect to territorial disputes, cyberspace, and outer space,’ the CSIS said in a statement on the talks, which were off-record.
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Japan: Lockheed Wins Order For 42 F-35 Stealth Fighters
Bloomberg News
December 19, 2011
Lockheed Martin Wins Japan Order for 42 F-35 Fighter Planes
By Chris Cooper and Sachiko Sakamaki
-Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed has about 700 F-35 orders from the program’s eight overseas partner nations, which also include Italy, Holland, Turkey, Norway, Denmark and Canada. Israel and Singapore also have a lower-level involvement in the plane.
-India is also due to make a decision soon on a contract for 126 fighters. It has shortlisted Eurofighter’s Typhoon and Dassault Aviation SA’s Rafale, after eliminating planes including Lockheed’s F-16 and Boeing’s F-18 Super Hornet.
Lockheed Martin Corp. won a contract from Japan to supply F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, the aircraft’s first win in a competitive tender.
The U.S. contractor will build 42 of the planes for Japan, Defense Minister Yasuo Ichikawa told reporters in Tokyo today. He declined to comment on the cost of the contract. The F-35 was shortlisted against Boeing Co.’s F-18 Super Hornet and Eurofighter GmbH’s Typhoon.
…
Japan’s F-35s will replace Boeing F-4s, which were last assembled in the country in 1981. Japan had a total of 362 fighter jets as of March 31, according to the defense ministry’s website.
…The U.S. is the plane’s largest customer with more than 2,440 orders in a $382 billion plan that forms the Pentagon’s biggest weapons program.
‘It is a big boost for the program politically,’ said James Hardy, a London-based analyst at IHS Jane’s DS Forecast. ‘Many partner nations have committed to buying the F-35, but to have it win an external competition will certainly help take the pressure off.’
Stealth Technology
Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed has about 700 F-35 orders from the program’s eight overseas partner nations, which also include Italy, Holland, Turkey, Norway, Denmark and Canada. Israel and Singapore also have a lower-level involvement in the plane.
The aircraft, which can be used for both spying and combat, costs about $133 million each in today’s dollars, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. That’s about double the price of the F-18 Super Hornet and the Eurofighter Typhoon.
The F-35 likely won in the Japan contest because of its stealth technology and the nation’s traditional reliance on U.S. military hardware, said Hardy at Jane’s. Eurofighter is a venture between BAE Systems Plc, Finmeccanica SpA and European Aeronautic, Defence & Space Co.
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India is also due to make a decision soon on a contract for 126 fighters. It has shortlisted Eurofighter’s Typhoon and Dassault Aviation SA’s Rafale, after eliminating planes including Lockheed’s F-16 and Boeing’s F-18 Super Hornet.
…
-With assistance from Terje Langeland in Tokyo. Editors: Vipin Nair, Terje Langeland
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NATO Defiant On Afghan Night Raids
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20111220story_20-12-2011_pg7_27
Daily Times
Agencies
December 20, 2011
NATO defiant on Afghan night raids
* Number of civilians killed in violence rose by 15 percent in the first six months of this year to 1,462
KABUL: NATO said on Monday that US-led forces in Afghanistan will continue night raids, despite renewed objections from Afghan President Hamid Karzai after a pregnant woman was killed during an operation.
Afghan special forces will increasingly take the lead in such operations, spokesman for NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Brigadier General Carsten Jacobson said, without giving a precise timetable.
Night-time raids are one of the most contentious issues in Afghanistan. Karzai has led public criticism, saying they endanger lives and harass local communities, and called on international forces to stop entering Afghan homes.
Karzai’s office said in a statement that during a National Security Council (NSC) meeting late Sunday, the president emphasised the need to prevent civilian casualties, saying the casualties and the night raids on homes ‘have created serious problems.’
Last month, Karzai convened a traditional national assembly known as a Loya Jirga that stopped short of demanding a complete end to night raids.
His latest objection came after the pregnant wife of the provincial anti-drugs chief, Hafeezullah, was killed while he was detained during an operation early Saturday in eastern Paktia province.
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‘Night operations remain the safest form of operations conducted to take insurgent leaders off the battlefield,’ Jacobson said.
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‘Around 1:00am the NATO-led ISAF forces killed my wife, who was seven months pregnant,’ Hafeezullah, who goes by only one name, told AFP.
‘They injured two of my sisters, aged 45 and 55, and also injured my two daughters aged 10 and 14. We asked them why they were doing such an operation at my home and they told us they were searching for an insurgent commander.’
…US Special Operations Command’ leader in Afghanistan Admiral William McRaven said last week that about 2,800 raids were carried out against insurgent targets over the past year.
…
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NATO Duty: 2,500 Polish Troops Spend Christmas In Afghanistan
http://www.thenews.pl/1/9/Artykul/80507,President-wishes-armed-forces-Merry-Christmas-
Polish Radio
December 14, 2011
President wishes armed forces Merry Christmas
President Bronislaw Komorowski met with representatives of Poland’s armed forces…ahead of the approaching Christmas holidays.
President Komorowski shared the traditional Christmas ‘host’ or wafer in Warsaw today with soldiers and told them that they were especially appreciated at this time of year in serving the nation at home and abroad.
Komorowski, accompanied by Defence Minister Tomasz Siemoniak stressed that Polish soldeirs, in Afghanistan and elsewhere are ‘ready to solve the toughest problems in the world,’ and that Poland’s armed forces are the nation’s ‘showcase’ abroad.
Poland currently has 2,500 troops stationed in Afghanistan.
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Big Shoulders In Chicago And Kabul
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/12/19/big-shoulders-in-chicago-and-kabul/
CounterPunch
December 19, 2011
The Leaders Who Push the Buttons Won’t See the Costs
Big Shoulders in Chicago and Kabul
by Kathy Kelly
Kabul: NATO/G8 meetings are scheduled to take place from May 19-21 next year in Chicago. Plans are ramping up everywhere. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and NATO Secretary General Anders Rasmussen exulted over bringing NATO and the G8 to Chicago, and Clinton promised to call Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel and convey Rasmussen’s glowing opinion that Chicago, built upon diversity and determination, shares values that underpin NATO.
Activists on the ground, envisioning a different kind of Chicago, and bracing themselves for the crushing, militarized police response that in recent years has consistently met protesters at these events, can only hope that this is not the case.
NATO leaders continue to prepare for conflict further and further from the North Atlantic shores.
Chicagoan Rick Rozoff, who organizes the Stop NATO newslist, notes that in December 2011, Romania’s Senate ratified an agreement with the U.S. to station 24 Standard Missile-3 interceptors in Romania, located immediately across the Black Sea from Russia. A comparable deployment is planned for Poland, supplementing the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missiles already present there. A missile defense radar facility will be placed in Turkey. And there is talk of converting dozens if not scores of warships to Lockheed Martin’s Aegis Combat System, equipping each ship with radar and missiles systems to project American power in what NATO has called the ‘European Phased Adaptive Approach.’. NATO is forging ahead on all fronts, although civilian leaders in Europe, in light of the region’s growing economic crisis, could much better afford a retirement party for NATO than the programs to be ratified at the weapon-fest planned for Chicago.
Hillary Clinton, President Obama, former war-hawk congressman Emanuel and other undisputed militarists in government seem to see Chicago as a city obsessed with power, a city determined above all to be tough and strong.
Carl Sandburg famously depicted Chicago as the city of big shoulders, and it often seems too easy for political leaders and generals to confuse the strength involved in shouldering shared burdens with the very different kind of ‘toughness’ that drives a fist or a nightstick. Sandberg perhaps made this distinction clear in a very different poem:
BUTTONS
I have been watching the war map slammed up for
advertising in front of the newspaper office.
Buttons – red and yellow buttons – blue and black buttons –
are shoved back and forth across the map. A laughing young man, sunny with freckles,
Climbs a ladder, yells a joke to somebody in the crowd,
And then fixes a yellow button one inch west
And follows the yellow button with a black button one
inch west.
(Ten thousand men and boys twist on their bodies in
a red soak along a river edge,
Gasping of wounds, calling for water, some rattling
death in their throats.)
Who would guess what it cost to move two buttons one
inch on the war map here in front of the newspaper
office where the freckle-faced young man is laughing
to us?
–Carl Sandburg
The NATO leaders who will be pushing the expensive buttons being purchased now, deploying weapons all over the world, won’t see the cost. They won’t see what it cost families in the Zhare district of Afghanistan’s Kandahar province on November 23 when a NATO plane mistook six of their children, who will forever now be aged from four to twelve years old, for insurgents. Abdul Samad, an uncle of four of the children, said his relatives were working in fields near their village when the aircraft attacked without warning.
I’m writing now from Kabul, Afghanistan. Ken Hannaford-Ricardi and Farah Mokhtareizadeh are here with me and we’ve just been joined by our friend Maya Evans from Voices in the Wilderness UK. We feel grateful to continue building relationships with the dedicated young activists of Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, who are moving toward forming delegations themselves by traveling to other provinces in Afghanistan to meet with youth groups bearing up under the heavy burdens of military occupation.
They want to bring peace out of imperial chaos. Recently, they studied film footage about Truth and Reconciliation commissions in South Africa and segments of ‘A Force More Powerful,’ documentary film footage about nonviolent efforts in Gandhi’s India and in U.S. cities where the civil rights movement struggled to end segregation. These youth exemplify real determination and diversity, of the sort Chicago is praised for, with an earnest desire to deepen both qualities in the service of peace. Every day they bear the burdens that will come a little closer to Chicago in May when the weight of an increasingly militarized domestic government comes down on anyone attempting to protest global fiscal austerity and the global military regime it pays for.
Yesterday, they welcomed a new friend who lives in a neighboring province and speaks a different language to join them and help them learn his language. Asked about NATO/ISAF night raids and other attacks that have occurred in his area, he said that families that have been attacked feel intense anger, but even more so people say they want peace. ‘However, international forces have made people feel less secure,’ he added, ‘It’s unfortunate that internationals hear stories about Afghans being wild people and think that more civilized outsiders are trying to build the country. People here are suffering because of destruction caused by outsiders.’
My three companions and I (three of us are from the U.S. and one from the UK), feel deeply moved as we witness these young people building up their big shoulders to bear heavy burdens. We felt similar appreciation and gratitude when witnessing the efforts of the Occupy movement which, in just three months. has reaffirmed international capacity for shouldering shared burdens, living simply and choosing inventive community over rigid systems of dominance.
Hillary Clinton doesn’t seem to understand these things, but she told General Rasmussen that she hopes many people will come to Chicago for the NATO and G8 summits, and so do I. I’m looking forward to people from Occupy Everywhere coming to Chicago.
Many friends in Chicago are getting ready to meet the concerted state apparatus, so determined to run smoothly in its blind mechanical course, with simple human power. It’s going to involve tremendous work, but this is what life means everywhere now. The City of Big Shoulders earned its name before the period of modern U.S. Empire, the decades of artificial prosperity secured from above and fueled from abroad, which this upcoming summit will attempt to manage in its decline. I think that underneath the hype, underneath the intoxicating flow of wealth seized from abroad, the plastic, mechanized, isolated comforts of the boom, Chicago well understands the real meaning of strength and determination. We’ll need to remember a force more powerful than violence in the time that’s coming, a strength that doesn’t turn us against our neighbors and isn’t handed down by the powerful, a courage that I see in the faces of the youth here in Kabul, confidently advertising it as its own reward.
Kathy Kelly (Kathy@vcnv.org) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org). She is the author of Other Lands Have Dreams and is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, forthcoming from AK Press. She is in Kabul with a delegation of Voices activists till January 5th. They are guests of the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers (journeytosmile.com)
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Syria, Iran: Saudi King Calls For Formation Of ‘Gulf Union’
http://en.apa.az/news.php?id=162083
Azeri Press Agency
December 19, 2011
Saudi king calls for formation of Gulf union
-The GCC – comprised of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and the United Arab Emirates – was formed in 1981 as a security alliance to counter post-revolution Iran.
Baku: Saudi King Abdullah called for the formation of a Gulf union in response to growing threats, as rulers of the wealthy Arab GCC met on Monday against a backdrop of regional turmoil and fears over Iran, APA reports quoting AFP.
‘I ask today that we move from a phase of cooperation to a phase of union within a single entity,’ said the Saudi king, addressing his counterparts at the opening of the annual Gulf Cooperation Council summit in Riyadh.
He did not elaborate on what form such a union might take, or any proposed steps to create it.
‘You must realise that our security and stability are threatened and we need to live up to our responsibilities,’ said King Abdullah.
‘Our summit opens in the shadow of challenges that require vigilance and a united stance,’ he added.
The GCC summit comes as the embattled regime of Syria…agreed to an Arab League proposal to send observers to the country.
In a clear reference to Syria, the Saudi king urged the Gulf bloc to help their ‘Arab brothers so that the blood stops flowing and to guard against the risks of foreign intervention.’
In addition to Syria, the Gulf leaders will discuss the situation in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, where popular uprisings have already unseated entrenched dictators this year.
GCC member Bahrain was also hit by a month of protests that it crushed in March, while demonstrators in neighbouring Yemen forced long-time President Ali Abdullah Saleh to sign a power transfer deal.
In Kuwait, the cabinet resigned last month over allegations of corruption and a new government was sworn in on Wednesday with only minor changes to the previous government.
They are also expected to discuss their fears of the growing influence of arch-foe Iran after the US pullout from Iraq.
Their relations with the Shiite-dominated Islamic republic have soured following the unrest in Bahrain and Syria…
The GCC – comprised of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and the United Arab Emirates – was formed in 1981 as a security alliance to counter post-revolution Iran.
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Iraq: America’s Shameful Victory
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/indepth/2011-12/19/c_131314579.htm
China Daily
December 19, 2011
Shameful Iraq pullout
BEIJING: More than eight years and seven months after then US president George W. Bush posed for photographs aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln with the banner ‘Mission Accomplished’ in the background, America’s war in Iraq is finally, officially, coming to an end. US president Barack Obama has heralded it ‘a moment of success’, which it probably is, for the United States and for him.
It has replaced a disobedient former head of state and his regime with a system of its own design, and President Obama has received a boost to his re-election hopes by fulfilling a core campaign promise at a politically opportune moment. There has already been an immediate rebound in his approval ratings.
While conceding, ‘Iraq is not a perfect place,’ the US president told returning troops last Thursday at Fort Bragg in North Carolina that ‘we’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq’.
A sentiment echoed by the top US commander in Iraq, Lloyd Austin, who said the Iraqi people now have an unprecedented opportunity to live in a relatively peaceful environment.
So the country’s bloodiest, and costliest, military offensive since Vietnam, is being carefully portrayed as a victory.
It is true Saddam Hussein was a dictator and the stability under the heavy-handed strongman smelt of blood; but make no mistake, Iraq was a sovereign, self-reliant, and independent country.
On the other hand, the peaceful environment general Austin talked about remains as illusive and distant as it has since the US invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003.
US military sources said that there were 500 to 750 attacks a month this year, including bombings, rocket attacks and assassinations. That is not a peaceful environment.
To many Iraqis the US invasion has resulted in anything but peace.
‘The Americans did not leave modern schools or big factories behind them,’ Mariam Khazim, a Shiite resident of Sadr City, told the Associated Press. ‘Instead, they left thousands of widows and orphans. The Americans did not leave a free people and country behind them. In fact, they left a ruined country and a divided nation.’
‘This December will be a time to reflect on all that we have been through in this war,’ said Obama. And there is indeed plenty to reflect on. But, besides the human and financial cost to the US, it is also time to reflect on what the Iraqis have been through all these years.
Besides the 100,000, mostly civilian, Iraqi deaths, the occupation has taken a severe toll on the country. Americans are not the sole victims of the ‘unseen wounds of war’.
And does anyone remember this was a war ostensibly waged to eliminate Saddam Hussein’s ‘weapons of mass destruction’, that proved to be non-existent.
It is not only shameful, it is dangerous if the discourse about the war continues skirting around the legitimacy issue.
The tide of war will not recede if a country can impose a war on another and shatter it without having to worry about the consequences.
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Obama Criticizes, Demeans Venezuela, Cuba, Iran
http://en.trend.az/regions/iran/1971152.html
Deutsche Presse-Agentur
December 20, 2011
Obama slams Venezuela, Iran, Cuba
US President Barack Obama slammed the government of Venezuela and its allies Iran and Cuba in a written interview that the Venezuelan daily El Universal published Monday, dpa reported.
‘It’s unfortunate that the Venezuelan government is often more interested in revisiting the ideological battles of the past than looking forward to the future that we could build for our citizens,’ Obama said.
He criticized the government of left-wing populist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez – an outspoken critic of the United States, whom he often refers to as ‘the empire’ – for its foreign policies. In particular, Chavez has cultivated a close relationship with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
‘The United States does not pretend to dictate (Venezuela’s) foreign affairs. I would argue, however, that the Venezuelan government’s ties to Iran and Cuba have not served the interests of Venezuela or the Venezuelan people,’ he said.
…
Obama replied in writing to a questionnaire that was sent to him by El Universal. In it, he also stressed that ‘the United States is going to continue supporting the basic rights of the Cuban people.’
‘Cuba’s future must be freely determined by the Cuban people. Sadly, that has not been the case for decades, and it is not the case today,’ Obama wrote.
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‘And, as I said, we’re concerned about the government’s actions which have restricted the universal rights of the Venezuelan people, threatened basic democratic values, and failed to contribute to the security in the region,’ he added.
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Boosting Bilateral Military Ties: U.S. Amphibious Group In Cambodia
http://www.navy.mil/search/display.asp?story_id=64468
U.S. Navy
December 18, 2011
USS Pearl Harbor Hosts Reception to Close Theater Security Cooperation Exercises
By Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Dominique Pineiro, Amphibious Squadron 5 Public Affairs
SIHANOUKVILLE, Cambodia: Makin Island Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) Sailors and Marines attended a reception with senior military and civilian officials from the U.S., Cambodia and other nations aboard amphibious dock landing ship USS Pearl Harbor (LSD 52), Dec. 17.
The event celebrated the cooperation between the two countries through community service events and various theater security cooperation exercises, which started Dec. 12.
‘No mission is more worthwhile or more satisfying then the one that works to build defense relationships,’ said Cmdr. Homer Denius, USS Pearl Harbor commanding officer. ‘Over the past five days we have enjoyed a professional military two-way exchange…’
During the reception, Denius welcomed the commander of the Royal Cambodian Navy, Vice Adm. Tea Vinh, as an honored guest.
Vinh addressed Sailors and Marines, and spoke about the importance of strengthening military ties.
‘I strongly believe that the visit from USS New Orleans and USS Pearl Harbor has brought magnificent advantages for both the Cambodian military and the U.S.,’ said Vinh.
…
Pearl Harbor, New Orleans and amphibious assault ship USS Makin Island (LHD 8), along with the embarked 11th MEU, make up the Makin Island ARG.
The ARG deployed from San Diego Nov. 14, and is currently supporting the nation’s maritime strategy in the U.S. 7th Fleet area of responsibility (AOR).
…
The 7th Fleet AOR includes more than 52 million square miles of the Pacific and Indian oceans, stretching from the international date line to the east coast of Africa, and from the Kuril Islands in the north to the Antarctic in the south.
More than half of the world’s population lives within the 7th Fleet AOR. In addition, more than 80 percent of that population lives within 500 miles of the oceans, which means this is an inherently maritime region.
The New Dark Age 
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