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It was against that backdrop that China welcomed U.S. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger last month for military cooperation talks that paved the way for last week's port call to Qingdao. En route to Peking, Weinberger made a brief stop in Anchorage, where he delivered a White House-approved response to Gorbachev's Vladivostok speech. The Defense Secretary praised the economic and political achievements of several pro-Western Pacific countries and attacked the Soviet record in East Asia. He charged that Moscow and its two regional allies, North Korea and Viet Nam, "see American military power simply as an obstacle to their expansion, not as a threat to their homelands."
Despite the recent Soviet buildup, most Western analysts believe U.S. strategic interests are so far not seriously threatened in the Pacific. They contend that the Pacific Fleet, headquartered in Hawaii, is more than a match for the Soviets. American forces boast six aircraft carriers, 18 nuclear-armed cruisers, 368 combat aircraft and F-16 jet-fighter squadrons. The Soviet buildup, says a high-ranking U.S. official, is "not something to be alarmist about."
Nonetheless, American diplomats recognize they can no longer take alliances for granted. The Pacific microstates in particular feel bruised by neglect and the boorish behavior of U.S. tuna fishermen, who for years paid little attention to local interests. Kiribati shocked Americans out of their complacency in August 1985 by granting fishing licenses to 16 Soviet trawlers in exchange for about $2 million. The lesson did not go unheeded. Last month the U.S. offered a five-year, $60 million fishing-rights package to 16 Pacific island states, of which a portion, as yet undesignated, will be assigned to Kiribati.
It is the Soviet approaches to China and Japan that have most seriously unsettled U.S. officials. In Vladivostok, Gorbachev tackled several of the obstacles blocking Sino-Soviet detente. He indicated a willingness to consider a reduction of the 45,000 troops stationed in Mongolia, dropped a long- standing demand concerning the disputed border along the Amur River, and announced plans to withdraw some 6,000 troops from Afghanistan. Since then, . the Soviets have reportedly withdrawn the troops, then reinforced the area with as many as 15,000 new ones.