US-Japan military drills take place amid 'escalating tensions' from China, Russia

Fighter aircraft and tanks are conducting live-fire drills while a US multiple rocket system has been deployed as American and Japanese troops carry out one of their largest joint military drills in recent years.

The Exercise Resolute Dragon, which runs through December 17 at locations from Okinawa in the far south of Japan to Hokkaido in the north, involves 2,600 US Marines and some 1,400 Japanese military personnel participating in a wide range of military scenarios on land, sea and in the air.

Analysts say the drills - which come shortly after bilateral sea-air exercises in the South China Sea and in waters off Okinawa prefecture, as well as a series of manoeuvres with military units from Britain, Australia, France, the Netherlands and Germany - underline Tokyo's desire to deepen its security and military cooperation with its allies.

Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.

And while Japan is closely watching developments in North Korea and Russia - which recently deployed a battery of its Bastion coastal missile defence system to an island in the Kurils off Hokkaido, part of which Japan claims as its territory - observers say the primary target of the wide-ranging manoeuvres remains China.

"We are seeing an increase in both the number of military exercises with the US and Japan's other partners, and a deepening of the level of the joint training in recent months and years. That is a direct result of the increased threat posed by China to the stability of the region," said an analyst with Japan's National Institute of Defence Studies.

"It is also interesting that the Chinese are keeping a close watch on these latest drills, with one analysis I read claiming that the exercises are a simulation of the joint response to Chinese military aggression against one of Japan's outlying islands, which is why HIMARS was deployed," said the analyst, who declined to be identified.

As part of the drill, the US Marine Corps carried out the first air transport within Japan of the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) from Okinawa to Aomori on December 7. Once deployed, the US troops trained with a unit from Japan's Ground Self-Defence Forces, equipped with anti-ship missile systems.

James Brown, an associate professor of international relations at the Tokyo campus of Temple University, said the increase in activities by Chinese and Russian forces in the region were provoking a "clear escalatory cycle" that was prompting even Nato nations to send military assets to Japan to take part in exercises.

"Japan does seem to be doing more with the US than it has done in the past, although I'd suggest that is more of a gradual increase in the face of these escalating tensions," Brown said.

"The most significant development in the last year or so has been Japan carrying out these drills with British and Australian forces to supplement their defence ties with the US," he added.

That stepped-up training, Brown said, comes in tandem with an increase in defence spending with Japan, which might have caused a public outcry a decade ago but is now simply being accepted as necessary by the Japanese public.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has faced virtually no backlash after he last month announced the government would spend an additional 773.8 billion yen (US$6.7 billion) on defence, raising the defence budget to more than 6 trillion yen for the first time.

That figure broke a longstanding practice of keeping defence spending to 1 per cent of GDP. Kishida has indicated spending will continue to rise to as high as 2 per cent of GDP.

The sole voice of dissent in the political world has been Kazuo Shii, head of the Japanese Communist Party, who told party members earlier this month that former prime minister Shinzo Abe had done "dangerous things" while in power. "The current prime minister is trying to do even more dangerous things without batting an eye. I want to clearly criticise that this is a major danger," he said.

Brown said the lack of public criticism suggested that after years of growing tensions with China and North Korea, "the majority of people accept that it is necessary".

But it was also possible Kishida had received fewer complaints as he is widely perceived to be a dove, Brown said.

"Kishida's advantage is that he has that reputation and the sense is that he is taking this step of increased military spending and more joint exercises with reluctance," he said.

"In many senses, that makes Kishida the ideal person to take Japan in a direction in which it is much more muscular in its military capabilities while attracting less criticism for that policy."

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

Copyright (c) 2021. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.