HONOLULU -- They call it the "tyranny of distance," and it ranks up there in U.S. strategic thinking with conventional threats like that from North Korea and unconventional dangers posed by terrorists in Southeast Asia.
In this day when American forces are spread thin around the world, projecting power across the Pacific and onto the shores of Asia takes extensive planning, complicated transport and logistics, and not a few buckets of sweat.
To train for this mission, an exercise called Balikatan has just been completed in the Philippines. There the Third Marine Expeditionary Brigade from Okinawa provided the nucleus of a task force formed with the Philippine Western Command to maneuver on the islands of Luzon and Palawan.