MANILA, Philippines — American forces and their allies in Asia are ready for battle after years of joint combat exercises, a United States general said Wednesday, adding that Russia's setbacks in Ukraine should serve as a warning to potential Asian aggressors like China and North Korea.
U.S. treaty allies like the Philippines, Japan and Australia, among others, “have shown that they will band together, that they will not stand for aggression from these nations that have decided they want to change the world order out here,” Maj. Gen. Joseph Ryan said.
Although Asia has no counterpart to NATO, the 30-nation military alliance whose mostly European members vow to defend each other against external attacks, a network of U.S. treaty alliances and defense partnerships upholding the international order provides a regional safeguard, he said.
“I'm personally very buoyed by what I see by our allies and partners in this region and the way we've come together in response to aggression by the PRC, by North Korea to say, ‘We will not let that stand,'” Ryan told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday, using the acronym for China's official name, the People's Republic of China.
Ryan, Commanding General of the U.S. Army's 25th Infantry Division based in Hawaii, is in Manila partly for talks with Philippine counterparts ahead of two annual largescale combat exercises that would include live-fire exercises and…
