HONOLULU -- Soon after Adm. Gary Roughhead took the helm as the new commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, the Chinese and Russian armed forces gave him something to think about.
Those two forces in the western Pacific have just completed eight days of joint maneuvers centered on the Shandong Peninsula, across the Yellow Sea from the Korean Peninsula. The drills were conducted with 10,000 military people on land, at sea, and in the air, about 8,500 of them Chinese.
That's not large as those things go, but it was the first such exercise done together since the breakup of the Soviet Union 15 years ago. It marked another step in a gradual Sino-Russian reconciliation after decades of rivalry during the days of the Soviet Union.