Washington’s marines will be deployed to the Okinawan islands, equipped with anti-ship missiles and drones, to keep the Chinese navy at bay. After the military reform, Japan will play a more active role alongside the Americans. Countries like the Philippines or Indonesia are unlikely to allow the deployment of new combat units from the United States.
Rome () – The United States is changing its military strategy to contain China’s geopolitical rise in the Western Pacific. A turning point in which Japan acquires an increasingly important role, especially in the defense of Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion.
In the meeting that he will have today at the White House with Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will seal the agreement to strengthen security cooperation between the two countries, as agreed in recent days by the respective ministers of Foreign Affairs and Defending.
Last month Japan announced that it has decided to give itself the ability to counterattack enemy bases in an emergency and ordered a significant increase in military spending. According to critics, the decision violates the country’s “pacifist” constitution after 1945; for the government, on the other hand, it is a “minimum measure of self-defense” against threats from China and North Korea. Kishida’s plan is to double the military budget to 2% of GDP in five years.
For its part, the Pentagon has confirmed its intention to create a new marine regiment by 2025: 2,000 men who will deploy to the islands of Okinawa prefecture, in the far south of Japan. They will be equipped with light weapons to be able to move quickly from island to island. Using anti-ship missiles and drones, your goal will be to keep Chinese naval forces at a distance, preventing them from leaving the East China Sea. It is about giving Washington time to reinforce its Navy in the face of Beijing’s advances in this area.
The Okinawa archipelago extends 100 km from Taiwanese territory. In response to Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of the US House of Representatives, visiting Taipei in August last year, the Chinese conducted missile “exercises” in northeast Taiwan, in an area that overlaps with the exclusive economic zone of Japan, near the Sakishima Islands. In two of them, Yonaguni and Miyako, there are bases of the Japanese Armed Forces; in a third, Ishigaki, an outpost with surface-to-air and anti-ship missile systems is being built.
Tokyo fears that if Taiwan falls to China, its maritime supply lines will be threatened. Washington, on the other hand, is bound by bilateral agreements to defend Taipei, which Beijing considers a “rebel” province that must be reconquered.
According to Chinese military strategist Guodong Chen, the US decision to change the deployment of its forces in Japan, equipping them with man-portable missiles and drones, is a “correct strategic direction.” Speaking to , the expert, whose studies on the use of missile forces to retake Taiwan are used by the Chinese army, recalled that a military plan is only valid “if the enemy’s is not better.”
In this regard, all of Beijing’s air and naval capabilities will be put to the test in a real conflict. But critics of the Pentagon’s new approach to East Asia warn that, to be effective, it should cover the entire “first island chain,” from southern Japan to eastern Indonesia. There are serious doubts that Jakarta (and Manila) will accept the presence of the new rapid response units of the US Marines.
