The U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said Alaska is geographically important to meet growing threats in the Pacific theater.
The secretary stopped in Fairbanks on Friday on his way to Korea for security meetings. In Fairbanks, he met with personnel from Eielson Air Force Base and Fort Wainwright. Carter said funding cuts would likely reduce the level of armed forces stationed in Alaska.
In his brief address and meeting with select service members, Carter thanked them for their service, told them their work was important to the country and emphasized the strategic importance Alaska plays in global peacekeeping.
He took questions from the audience. One service member wanted to know if Alaska was strategically critical, why Army units were being cut. Carter partly blamed funding gridlock in Washington but also acknowledged priorities were shifting away from counterinsurgency wars, called COIN.
“Those of you in the Army know that the Army is reducing its size. A lot of that reduction has to do with the end of the COIN wars. The Army has decided it’s better, strategically, to use its funding elsewhere,” Carter said.
What Carter didn’t seem as prepared to address were questions from service members about sexual assault and suicide. He said sexual assault was fundamentally against the military’s code of honor and would not be tolerated. While acknowledging the rising number of suicides in the armed forces was disturbing, Carter broadened the context.
“I would be proud if we figured out suicide in a way that was not only helpful to our own members who are having that problem, but to society as a whole,” he said.
Carter said he admired the military’s ability to take on problems once they were identified.
The secretary was on to meetings in South Korea where he would take up China’s growing military presence in the South China Sea, among other topics.
