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(CNN) – Tens of thousands of US and Japanese troops will begin a massive island landing exercise in the Pacific this week as part of joint military operations seen as a warning to China that Washington is backing Tokyo over Beijing’s claim on the islands controlled by Japan.
Speaking aboard a Japanese warship on Monday, Lt. Gen. Kevin Schneider, commander of the US Forces in Japan, said the exercises would demonstrate the ability of the US-Japan alliance “to deliver combat troops to defend the Senkakus or respond to other crises or contingencies. “
Both Tokyo and Beijing claim the Senkaku Islands, known as Diaoyus in China, as their own, but Japan has administered them since 1972.
The stresses over the uninhabited rocky chain, 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers) southwest of Tokyo, have simmered for years, and with claims on them dating back centuries, neither Japan nor China is likely to back down.
Chinese ships have been spending record amounts of time in the waters around the islands this year, prompting the condemnation of Tokyo.
The exercises between the United States and Japan, called Keen Sword 21, have been conducted every two years for more than 30 years. This year’s exercises will run until November 5.
America’s commitment
The prospect of any military confrontation between Japan and China over the disputed islands is even more serious because the mutual defense treaty between the United States and Japan obliges Washington to defend the islands as if they were US territory.
The United States has remained steadfast in that commitment, as echoed in Schneider’s comments on Monday.
In July, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo listed the Senkakus dispute as one of the areas in the Indo-Pacific where he said China was “instigating territorial disputes” as part of a pattern of “intimidation” of its citizens. Asian neighbors.
So the huge military presence of the United States and Japan in the Pacific this week adds visual weight to the claims that Tokyo and Washington are united by the Senkakus and beyond.
The fleets include some 9,000 American troops, an American carrier strike group, more than 100 American military aircraft, more than 37,000 Japanese troops, a flotilla of 20 warships from the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, 100 Japanese military aircraft and a frigate from Canada. – all focused on landing large forces on islands around Okinawa, 250 miles (400 kilometers) east of the Senkakus.
Since he became Japanese prime minister in September, Yoshihide Suga has been pushing Japan’s support for a “free and open Indo-Pacific.” He has overseen Japanese naval deployments in the South China Sea, which Beijing claims almost entirely, visiting Vietnam and Indonesia to strengthen Japanese ties with those countries that also have claims on the vast waterway. Suga has also reaffirmed defense ties with India and Australia, which along with the United States and Japan are known as “the Quad.”
While not a formal military alliance like NATO, the Quad is seen by some as a possible counterweight to growing Chinese influence and alleged Asia-Pacific aggression. Beijing has denounced the collation as an anti-China bloc.
Naval forces from the four Quad nations will participate in large-scale Malabar military exercises in the Indian Ocean next month.
But first China’s eyes will probably focus on what is happening with Keen Sword.
A statement from the US Pacific Fleet in Hawaii said US and Japanese forces “will train in a comprehensive scenario designed to exercise the critical capabilities necessary to support Japan’s defense and respond to a crisis or contingency in the region of the Indo-Pacific “.
The troops “will exercise a wide range of combat capabilities and demonstrate the inherent flexibility and capabilities of the US and Japanese armies,” the Pacific Fleet statement said.
Photos released by the US Navy on Monday showed 16 US, Japanese and Canadian warships sailing in formation in the Philippine Sea when the Keen Sword began.
‘Deterrent value’
The large-scale exercises have a strong “deterrent value” toward China, said Carl Schuster, former director of operations for the US Pacific Command Joint Intelligence Center.
“They show that the seizure (of the island) is not going to be cheap or indisputable,” he said.
Corey Wallace, an assistant professor who focuses on Japanese foreign policy at Kanagawa University, said the exercises are showing new levels of interoperability between the Japanese and US militaries.
The United States will land the MV-22 Osprey transport plane on Japan’s largest warship, the JS Kaga, Wallace said. And it could be just a glimpse of what the two armies could do in the future with their stealth fighters.
“This speaks to the increasingly intense nature of amphibious exercises, but also to the future possibilities of more cross-deck, perhaps first with American F-35Bs on Japanese ships, and later, possibly with Japanese F-35Bs. on American amphibious ships, “Wallace said. “Demonstrating interoperability between the two forces in realistic scenarios is just as important, if not more so, than showing off any shiny new hardware.”
Meanwhile, with much less fanfare, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army is in the middle of two series of military exercises in the Bohai Sea and the Yellow Sea, according to a post on the PLA’s official English website. The nature of the exercises was not disclosed.
Those exercises, scheduled to end on November 10 and October 30, respectively, are just the last in a busy few months for China’s military, which has recently had up to five exercises running simultaneously.
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