(Washington) The United States and Japan on Wednesday displayed their “strategic alignment” on defense that extends to space, amid growing concerns over China and tensions around Taiwan and North Korea.
“We agree that China poses the most important strategic challenge” to the two countries, said the head of the American diplomacy, Antony Blinken, at the end of a meeting in Washington with his Japanese counterpart Yoshimasa Hayashi, as well as the American and Japanese defense chiefs.
Speaking at a joint press conference, Mr Blinken assured that the United States “warmly welcomes” the new Japanese defense posture and specified that the security and defense agreement between the two countries applies also in space.
Any incident in space could activate Article 5 of the defense treaty between the two countries which states that an attack on one is an attack on the other, he said.
For his part, the United States Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, announced the deployment by 2025 of a rapid reaction force of Marines in the Japanese island of Okinawa to strengthen the defense of Japan which is worried about growing Chinese activities in the region.
“We are going to replace an artillery regiment with this force which will be more lethal and more mobile,” Austin said at the press conference.
He felt that this force “will make a major contribution to improving Japan’s defense and promoting a free and open Indo-Pacific region”, the expression commonly used in the United States to refer to the Asia-Pacific without domination. Chinese.
More than half of the approximately 50,000 American soldiers present in the archipelago are stationed on the island of Okinawa.
“Modern Alliance”
Wednesday’s meeting comes ahead of Friday’s meeting between President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who is touring Europe and North America.
Mr. Kishida, whose country holds the presidency of the G7 in 2023, visited France and Italy, and was on Wednesday in Great Britain where he signed a “reciprocal access agreement” bringing together their armed forces. He must also go to Canada on Thursday.
In Washington, the secretaries welcomed this “modernized alliance” in the face of a new era “of strategic competition with China”, according to the head of Japanese diplomacy.
Japan approved in December a major revision of its defense doctrine, which notably provides for a colossal increase in its military expenditure over five years, as well as the strengthening of its “response” capacity, including by targeting missile launch sites. in case of attack.
This is a crucial turning point for the country, whose pacifist constitution, adopted the day after its defeat at the end of the Second World War, forbids it in principle to equip itself with a real army.
The issue of Taiwan and the denuclearization of North Korea were also the focus of the talks, the officials said.
“I’m not going to play guess with Mr. Xi (the Chinese president) but I can tell you what we’ve been seeing for some time is very provocative behavior on the part of the Chinese forces,” Austin said. while expressing “serious doubts” about an imminent attack on Taiwan.