December 2-4, 2011 -- U.S. projecting power into the Pacific region in a manner unprecedented in recent history

WMR has learned from a top-level New Zealand official that the Obama administration is projecting its diplomatic, economic, political, military, and intelligence power into the Pacific region in a manner "not seen before" in recent times. On the heels of Obama's hosting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in Honolulu and his attending the East Asia Forum in Bali, Obama has directed the U.S. government to project both "soft" and hard power into the Pacific region to send a message to China, and, to a lesser extent, Russia, that the United States considers the Pacific to be in its sphere of influence. The United States intends to build its prospective membership in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TTP), which is now mainly an economic bloc comprising Chile, New Zealand, Brunei, and Singapore, into something more akin to an economic, political, and military bloc, with the United States in charge. Other nations negotiating to join the bloc are Australia, Malaysia, Peru, Japan, and Vietnam. Once membership is expanded, to possibly also include Canada, Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan, the U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM) will be tasked with expanding the TTP into a military bloc, one primarily aimed at China. Other countries viewed as potential TTP members are Panama, Indonesia, Thailand, and Myanmar. The U.S. Navy can be expected to increase the number of port visits in the region and there is the possibility that new U.S. naval bases may be established in some of the South Pacific islands. In the past, the United States has used its ANZUS (Australia-New Zealand-United States) military alliance surrogates in Australia and New Zealand to ensure the security of the vast South Pacific. Although the United States is beefing up its intelligence and military alliances with Canberra and Wellington, by establishing five new U.S. military bases and Australia, and improving signals intelligence (SIGINT) cooperation between the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and Australia's Defense Signals Directorate (DSD) and New Zealand's Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), it is also going it alone by re-introducing US Agency for International Development (USAID) teams in the Pacific and sending more Peace Corps volunteers into the region. USAID withdrew from the Pacific in the mid-1990s. New USAID regional offices have been opened in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea and Suva, Fiji. The CIA will be using ethnic Pacific islander U.S. nationals from the U.S. territories of American Samoa, Guam, and the Commonwealth of the Marianas to establish themselves as official and non-official cover agents in various Pacific locations. In addition, the CIA will also utilize the services of nationals of three quasi-independent "Compact of Free Assocation" nations -- Federated States of Micronesia, Republic of Marshall Islands, and Palau -- to conduct espionage and political influence operations in the Pacific region. To achieve increased intelligence-gathering in the small Pacific island states, the State Department this past summer agreed to allow the three U.S. territories in the Pacific -- American Samoa, Guam, and the Marianas -- to join the Pacific Islands Forum as observers. Over the past two decades, the CIA has managed to neutralize and co-opt the only threats to U.S. dominance over the Pacific: the Labor Parties of Australia and New Zealand. The United States will no longer have to be concerned about the likes of Australia's Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam threat to have oversight over the joint CIA-NSA espionage base at Pine Gap, near Alice Springs, Australia, nor New Zealand Labor Prime Minister David Lange refusing to allow U.S. nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed naval ships to enter New Zealand waters. Whitlam was deposed in a 1975 CIA-engineered constitutional coup d'etat while Lange was forced out of office in the late 1980s in a New Zealand Labor Party revolt, covertly backed, in part, by the CIA. The New Zealand Labor Party recently suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the incumbent conservative National Party, led by Prime Minister John Key, a close ally of the United States and Israel. Australia's Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard strongly backs the new U.S. military bases in Australia. As part of America's new power projection in the Pacific, CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, FBI, Homeland Security, and other official cover espionage assets will be beefed up at U.S. diplomatic posts in the region, including Canberra, Wellington, Sydney, Melbourne, Darwin, Brisbane, Majuro, Palikir, Melekeok, Apia, Port Moresby, and Suva, with new intelligence outposts established in Nukualofa, Noumea, Honiara, Port-Vila, South Tarawa, Yaren, Buka, Manokwari, Saipan, Hagatna, Pago Pago, Avarua, Papeete, Alofi, Nukunonu, Funafuti, and Mata-Utu. The Obama administration's policies, if successful, will transform the idyllic South Pacific into a region that is anything but pacific. The South Pacific will not have seen such a U.S. military and political presence since America battled Japan in the region during World War II.