Senior US and Japanese diplomats and defence officials on Wednesday pledged to strengthen security ties, extend their cooperation into space and better integrate weapons systems and military personnel as tensions mount in East Asia and Japan becomes more forceful in countering China’s growing economic and military footprint.
In this Aug. 16, 2012 photo, CH-46 helicopters take off from the US Marine Corps base in Futenma , in Okinawa, Japan.
The US-Japan Security Consultative Committee meeting came as Japan embarks on a historic strengthening of its defence stance ahead of a summit on Friday between President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. The Japanese leader was in London on Wednesday, signing a major bilateral defence pact with Britain to enable easier joint military exercises, before flying to Washington.
“We’re working to deepen our cooperation across every realm, land, sea, air and, yes, in space, cyber and outer,” said Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “We agreed, as you’ve heard, that attacks to, from or within space, present a clear challenge.”
Wednesday’s “2+2” consultations involving Blinken, Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi and Defence Minister Yasukazu Hamada followed an eventful few weeks in which Tokyo revised its national security blueprints.
The overhaul entailed rewriting Japan’s defence profile and crafting more aggressive strategies to push back against threats posed by China, as well as by North Korea and Russia. Washington has long supported the more hawkish approach.
Japan’s vital communications satellites are unprotected, and the US agreed to extend into space the scope of Article V of the US-Japan Security Treaty, which calls on each side to come to the other’s defence. China’s anti-satellite abilities have developed rapidly.
A US Defence Intelligence Agency report in April said several Chinese ground-based laser weapons of varying power were being developed to disrupt, degrade or damage satellites. In a 2007 test, China shot down an ageing Chinese weather satellite from a base in Sichuan province.
“China presents an unprecedented and greatest strategic challenge,” Hayashi said on Wednesday. “Japan and the US will continue to be united in raising objections against China’s attempts to change the status quo in the East China Sea” including the disputed Diaoyu Islands, which Japan calls the Senkaku Islands.
While the allies underscored Japan’s plan to pursue a more active “counterstrike capability” and “deterrence” strategy, they did not mention Tokyo’s reported bid to acquire 500 US-made Tomahawk missiles that would put much of China and North Korea within striking distance. If finalised, Japan would become only the second US ally to have the US$2 million missiles after Britain.
To better integrate operations, the allies agreed to a new combined military headquarters akin to the US-South Korea arrangement, with plans for a US Marine Littoral Regiment in Okinawa by 2025.
The regiment – totalling about 2,200 personnel with intelligence, surveillance, logistics units and anti-ship missiles to defend the Japanese archipelago – is seen as both a defensive move and a way to lighten the US military footprint on Okinawa, a major source of social tension.
“I want to reaffirm the United States’ ironclad commitment to defend Japan with the full range of capabilities, including nuclear, and underscore that Article V of the mutual security treaty applies to the Senkaku Islands,” Austin said, adding that he did not see a Chinese invasion of Taiwan as imminent. “There is no challenge that we can’t overcome if we continue to work shoulder to shoulder.”
China on Wednesday criticised the US-Japan defence deal, saying it risked targeting “imaginary enemies” and turning the Asia-Pacific into a geopolitical “wrestling ground”.
“China is a cooperation partner for all countries and poses no challenge to anyone,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin in Beijing.
Japan has pledged to double its defence spending to 2 per cent of GDP from 1 per cent within five years starting with a proposed US$51 billion budget this year, up 25 per cent over last year.
And it has broken with its long-standing vague wording, labelling China an “unprecedented strategic challenge”.
“These documents are very significant, in some ways historic. They are showing Japan’s role in the region, its own role in security and what it needs to do,” said Jeffrey Hornung, a political scientist with the Rand Corporation.
“Tokyo and Washington are in the closest alignment they’ve been … The strategic messaging is that we are allies, we are close. And, China, how many allies do you have?”
Wednesday’s 2+2 meetings at the State Department, leading up to Friday’s summit between Biden and Kishida, were also aimed at discussing global leadership issues.
Japan will host the Group of 7 summit in Hiroshima in May, and the US hosts the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in San Francisco in November, which Chinese President Xi Jinping might attend.
“It’s a pretty amazing moment,” said Sheila Smith, a Council on Foreign Relations fellow and author of Japan Rearmed: The Politics of Military Power. “A lot of people think Japan is pacifist and doesn’t have a military, or they think Japan is a latent militaristic society. The problem with that is, they don’t actually understand the policy.”
“This is not something that the US asked Japan to do.”
Japanese public opinion, long bound to its pacifist constitution, has become more wary of China – and to a lesser extent North Korea – as it has felt more threatened.
Beijing has swiftly modernised its military, bolstered its nuclear arsenal and intensified pressure near neighbouring Taiwan and Japan’s southern flank through a series of chest-thumping exercises.
On Sunday, the People’s Liberation Army sent 57 military aircraft around Taiwan, including 23 that crossed the median line dividing the Taiwan Strait, with planes blocking three sides of the self-ruled island, according to Taiwan’s defence ministry.
This followed similar exercises in December involving 71 warplanes after the US passed annual defence legislation marked by increased military aid to Taiwan.
And in early August, after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei, Beijing sent more than 100 aircraft near Taiwan in exercises that included the launch of missiles, several of which landed in waters near Japan.
“China and North Korea are their own worst marketers,” said Hornung, a former Defence Department instructor. “They don’t want a strong Japan. But every time they do something, the Taiwan exercises after the Pelosi visit, sailing with Russia in nearby waters, it reminds Japan that China is not getting any friendlier.”
A poll in October by Japanese public broadcaster NHK found that 55 per cent of respondents supported a stronger defence policy – a near doubling over the past decade – compared with 29 per cent opposed.
But analysts stressed that it was one thing for Japan to lay out a blueprint and quite another to roll it out over time.
“It’s a very ambitious agenda,” said Nick Szechenyi, deputy Asia director at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. But Japan also faces likely political battles when the bill comes due and how to reboot its economy to back its rising security ambition.
“One debate in Japan is resourcing, not only how you’re going to pay for it, but what is Japan’s strategy for sustained economic growth,” he added.
Deploying new missiles, for example, would call on Japan to gain expertise in targeting, damage assessment and rapid coordination with US forces to ensure decisions among allies were coordinated. “All of these things need to be developed,” Szechenyi said.
Itsunori Onodera, a former Japanese defence minister involved in revising the new security blueprints, added that his country could easily get dragged into a war over Taiwan. “Japan has to be aware of this, and do everything we can diplomatically to check China so that conflict does not break out.”
Beijing views Taiwan as a breakaway province to be reunited by force if necessary. Few countries, including the US, recognise the self-governing island as an independent state. But Washington is obliged by law to support Taiwan militarily.
Additional reporting by Orange Wang
Attacks from space:
In addition to the restructuring of Marines in the country, the US and Japan announced on Wednesday that they are expanding their defense treaty to include attacks to or from space amid growing concern about the rapid advancement of China’s space program and hypersonic weapons development.
In November, China launched three astronauts to its nearly completed space station as Beijing looked to establish a long-term presence in space. China has also explored the far side of the moon and Mars.
The two allies announced that Article V of the US-Japan Security Treaty, first signed in 1951, applies to attacks from or within space, officials said. In 2019, the US and Japan made it clear that the defense treaty applies to cyberspace and that a cyber attack could constitute an armed attack under certain circumstances. china wok
“We’re working to deepen our cooperation across every realm: Land, sea, air, and yes, space – cyber and outer,” Blinken said Wednesday. “The outer space component of this is important security and prosperity of our alliance. We agree, as you’ve heard, that attacks to, from, or within space present a clear challenge, and we affirm that depending on the nature of those attacks this could lead to the invocation of Article V of our Japan-US security treaty.”
Blinken added that he and Yoshimasa would sign a space agreement later this week during a visit to NASA headquarters in Washington. A release on Wednesday from NASA said the agreement will “build on the nations’ commitment to the peaceful, transparent exploration of space.” china wok
The US has watched closely as China has rapidly developed its hypersonic weapon systems, including one missile in 2021 that circled the globe before launching a hypersonic glider that struck its target. It was a wake-up call for the United States, which has fallen behind China and Russia in advanced hypersonic technology. china wok
The two countries will also build on their joint use of facilities in Japan and carry out more exercises on Japan’s southwest islands, a move sure to draw the ire of Beijing, given its proximity to Taiwan and even mainland China. US officials added that the US will temporarily deploy MQ-9 Reaper drones to Japan for maritime surveillance of the East China Sea, as well as launch a bilateral group to analyze and share the information.
Japan’s biggest military buildup since World War II
The announcements came less than a month after Japan unveiled a new national security plan that signals the country’s biggest military buildup since World War II, doubling defense spending and veering from its pacifist constitution in the face of growing threats from regional rivals, including China.
China has been growing its naval and air forces in areas near Japan while claiming the Senkaku Islands, an uninhabited Japanese-controlled chain in the East China Sea, as its sovereign territory.
In late December, Japan said Chinese government vessels had been spotted in the contiguous zone around the Senkakus, known as the Diaoyus in China, 334 days in 2022, the most since 2012 when Tokyo acquired some of the islands from a private Japanese landowner, public broadcaster NHK reported. From December 22 to 25, Chinese government vessels spent almost 73 consecutive hours in Japanese territorial waters off the islands, the longest such incursion since 2012, the NHK report said.
China has also been upping its military pressure on Taiwan, the self-governing island, whose security Japanese leaders have said is vital to the security of Japan itself. In August, that pressure included Beijing firing five missiles that landed in Japan’s exclusive economic zone near Taiwan in response to the visit of then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taipei.
Before the announcement of the increased partnership between the US and Japan was even made public, Chinese government officials were reacting to reports in Japanese media.
“US-Japan military cooperation should not harm the interests of any third party or undermine peace and stability in the region,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a regular press briefing Tuesday in Beijing.
A State Department official explained that the Ukraine war and strengthening of the China-Russia relationship have spurred the US and Japan to come to a series of new agreements that have been under consideration for some time.
“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, sort of moved things on warp drive a little bit,” the official said. “The relationship between Putin and Xi Jinping that we saw in the lead up to the Beijing Olympics, that kind of showed, wait a minute, the Russians and the Chinese are working in new ways. We’re facing new challenges.”
And it’s not just the US – Japan and Britain also announced on Wednesday that the two countries would be signing a “historic defense agreement” that would allow them to deploy forces in each other’s countries.
The Reciprocal Access Agreement will allow both forces to plan military exercises and deployments on a larger and more complex scale, making it the “most significant defense agreement between the two countries in more than a century,” according to a statement on Wednesday from Downing Street.
The agreement still needs to be ratified by the respective parliaments before taking effect. It will be laid before Japan’s Diet and the UK Parliament in the coming weeks, according to the statement.
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