“Australian Defense Minister Stephen Smith joined Panetta and Watanabe in another trilateral meeting. The U.S., Japanese and Australian leaders agreed ‘to work through 2020 to refine and consolidate their trilateral defense relationship and support the network of existing alliances, forums and dialogues to meet a variety of common security challenges,'”-U.S. Department of Defense press release
2 June 2012, Australia, Japan and the U.S. have agreed to pursue a military pact that is in line with what an unnamed U.S. Defense official said was “…our rebalancing to the region.”
There are a lot of coded words and phrases in the Defense Department press release, all indicating that the U.S., along with dozens of countries in the Asia Pacific region, are falling in line against China!
But don’t blame Barack Obama, these Shangri-La Dialogue anti-China re-balancing meetings began under the George W. Bush administration.
According to Japanese news media reports, the new military pact between Australia, Japan and United States will include joint military industry developments.