Senior U.S. defense officials are shifting their focus to the Indo-Pacific region and the growing threats from China and North Korea and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will make his sixth official visit to the region. A senior U.S. defense official said “The security environment in the Indo-Pacific is growing more complex, which we see day to day,” pointing to increasingly aggressive behavior by Communist China and North Korea. A pentagon official pointed out that they are seeing some “sharp rise in destabilizing military behaviors by China,” including “dangerous air-to-air intercepts” and the use of “swarms of maritime militia vessels” in South China Sea waters. U.S. defense officials also stressed their concerns about North Korea’s growing nuclear arsenal and its ongoing ballistic missile tests, saying that the number of test launches is unprecedented. North Korea’s belligerent behavior has sparked growing fears in South Korea, where President Yoon Suk-yeol said earlier this month that Washington may need to redeploy nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula or that Seoul could begin developing its own nuclear arsenal. A senior U.S. defense official said Secretary Austin will emphasize Washington’s “firm commitment to extended deterrence” in a meeting Tuesday (January 31st) with Yun Seok-yue and South Korean Defense Minister Lee Jong-sub. Deterrence, of course, includes the increase in U.S. cooperation with countries in the region and more training.