July 28 (UPI) — The United States and Japan on Sunday announced “historic” wide-ranging steps to deepen and modernize their military alliance, amid growing threats in the Indo-Pacific from primarily China, but also North Korea and Russia.
Washington during the Biden administration has sought to bolster military ties with Tokyo, along with other Asian partners, as part of a deterrence strategy focused on Beijing, which is attempting to exert its influence in the Indo-Pacific and beyond.
Steps announced Sunday to bolster that deterrence strategy include the reconstitution of U.S. Forces Japan as a joint force headquarters that would report directly to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. According to a statement from the Pentagon, doing so will enhance USFJ’s capabilities and operational cooperation as it assumes primary responsibility for coordinating security activities in and around the Asian nation.
The Pentagon framed the move as “historic,” and the expansion of USFJ’s mission and operational responsibilities as “the most signifiant change” since its creation in the late 1950s.
“Today, we unveil some of the most important advances in the U.S.-Japan defense ties in the history of our alliance,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said during a press conference held in Tokyo on Sunday with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and their Japanese counterparts, Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa and Defense Minister Minoru Kihara.
The announcements came as Blinken and Austin were in Japan for their so-called 2+2 ministerial dialogue, during which the two nations’ diplomats and defense leaders reaffirmed their commitment to a free Indo-Pacific region while acknowledging “the evolving security environment and the challenges posed to the alliance.”
The foreign and defense leaders of both nations stressed the threat China poses in the region, agreeing in a statement that Beijing “foreign policy seeks to reshape the international order for its own benefit at the expense of others.”
The officials said their governments reiterated their “strong opposition” to China’s intensifying efforts to “unilaterally change the status quo by force or coercion.”
The statement is lined with concerns about Beijing, including over its growing nuclear arsenal, its destabilizing aerial and maritime actions, its dismantling of freedoms in Hong Kong, human rights abuses committed in Xinjiang and Tibet and its harassment of Filipino vessels in the South China Sea.
While China may be at the forefront of concerns, North Korea and Russia, whose relationship has deepened amid the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine, have also been a cause for concern for Japan and the United States as well as South Korea.
Pyongyang has continued with its flurry of ballistic missile launches into the East Sea in violation of United Nation Security Council resolutions, and Russia has also sought to deepen its military cooperation with both North Korea and China.
“They also highlighted with concern Russia’s growing and provocative strategic military cooperation with the PRC, including through joint operations and drills in the vicinity of Japan, and the PRC’s support for Russia’s defense industrial base,” the ministers of Japan and the United States said Sunday.
The People’s Republic of China is China’s official name.
The announcement comes nearly a month after the Pentagon announced it will deploy dozens of advanced fighter jets to multiple bases in Japan as part of a modernization plan.
There has been much emphasis placed on the United States’ military presence in the region during the Biden administration, which has actively fostered growing trilateral military ties with Japan and South Korea.
In April of last year, the United States and South Korea signed what is known as the Washington Declaration, which has been viewed as a recommitment from Washington to protect Seoul from any North Korean nuclear attack.
It also established the Nuclear Consultative Group, which experts say gives Seoul more say over the use of the United States’ nuclear arsenal.
In recognition of these growing relations, President Joe Biden has hosted both South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to state visits.
