by PETER LEE
Initial plans for the exercises targeted the Yellow Sea between China and the Korean Peninsula and promised the intimidating presence of the aircraft carrier USS George Washington. The reports aroused a barrage of official criticism and popular anger inside China. In response, the expected location began to drift eastward, first toward the south of the peninsula
and now into the oceans between the east coast of Korea and Japan.
The most recent report is that the US will, with Solomonic wisdom, split the difference in a dual-sea exercise, with the George Washington and three destroyers in the east and a face-saving smaller exercise in the west.
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