Getting your player ready...
BALI, Indonesia — Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Sunday that despite hundreds of billions of dollars in expected cuts to the Pentagon budget, the United States would remain a Pacific power even as China expanded its military presence in the region.
Panetta, on his first trip to Asia as defense secretary, made the comments at a meeting of Southeast Asian nations. He sought to reassure Pacific nations concerned about China’s assertiveness that the United States, as he put it, would be “a force for peace and prosperity.”
