怕内塔香格里拉对话会讲话..doc

怕内塔香格里拉对话会讲话 论亚太地区的再平衡 Ladies and gentlemen, it is an honor to have the opportunity to attend my first Shangri-La Conference.??I want to commend the International Institute for Strategic Studies for fostering this very important dialogue, this very important discussion that is taking place here this weekend.? I am, as I understand it, the third United States secretary of defense to appear at this forum, across administrations from both political parties in the United States.??That is, I believe, a testament to the importance that the United States places in this dynamic and critical region of the world.? It is in that spirit that I have come to Singapore, at the beginning of an eight-day journey across Asia that will take me to Vietnam and to India as well.? The purpose of this trip, and of my remarks today, is to explain a new defense strategy that the United States has put in place and why the United States will play a deeper and more enduring partnership role in advancing the security and prosperity of the Asia-Pacific region, and how the United States military supports that goal by rebalancing towards this region.?? Since the United States grew westward in the 19th century, we have been a Pacific nation.??I was born and raised in a coastal town in California called Monterey, and have spent a lifetime looking out across the Pacific Ocean.??As a fishing community, as a port, the ocean was the lifeblood of our economy.??And some of my earliest memories as a child during World War II are of watching American troops pass through my community, trained at the military reservation called Fort Ord, and were on their way to face battle in the Pacific.?? I remember the fear that gripped our community during World War II, and later when war again broke out on the Korean Peninsula.??Despite the geographic distance that separates us, I’ve always understood that America’s fate is inexorably linked with this region.?? This reality has guided more than six decades of U.S. milita