Japan and the United States are strengthening military cooperation

The US and Japan will review and strengthen their defense alliance. Financial Times reported this. The US and Japan have had a defense treaty since 1960. US President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will unveil the new plan at the White House on April 10.

“It has everything to do with the ongoing geopolitical competition and the bloc-building of the East against the West,” says Patrick Boulder, a security expert at The Hague Center for Strategic Studies. The plan would help reorganize the US military command in Japan. It should, among other things, improve planning for joint military exercises between the two countries.

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Complex system

It is urgently needed because the current communication and coordination is completely impractical and complex. According to Boulder, there could be a regional US military headquarters in Japan that would work directly with the Japanese armed forces. “Until now, Japan has always had to do business with the US headquarters in Honolulu, which is on the other side of the date line,” Boulder said. He points out that there is a 5-hour time difference, but it's actually 19 hours. 'That makes integration more complicated.'

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An important partner

Japan is an important ally for the US in the East Asia-Pacific region, and cooperation with China, North Korea and other Asian security issues is a strategic pillar of US strategy. Postwar military cooperation between the United States and Japan was always limited, with Japan's armed forces being meager and used only for defensive purposes.

But change is evident in both. Now that China is acting increasingly assertively and aggressively in the region, Japan is not only expanding its military, but also increasingly seeking cooperation with the Americans.

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Taiwan

“Tensions around Taiwan are really rising, and that has consequences for unfettered maritime trade and chip production,” Boulder said. The defense expert points to Taiwan's importance as the world's largest chipmaker to the Japanese economy. “What's going on over there is very important,” says Boulder, who emphasizes the importance of a reactive force to prevent China from going its own way, for example, continuing its maritime blockade of Taiwan.

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