Japan Seeks Friends in Asia—but Not China

China needs to think twice before taking aggressive actions in the South China Sea

By Bruce Einhorn and Matthew Philips 

Prime Minister Shinzō Abe is the first Japanese premier to visit all 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. 

In late November, Emperor Akihito will make the first visit by a Japanese monarch to India. 

Not on either dignitary’s itinerary—China. 

And that’s no accident.
Abe, a foreign-policy hawk who’s clashed with the Chinese over the ownership of some Japanese islands, wants to shore up relations with the swath of nations forming a semicircle around China. 

Some have their own beefs, including India, which shares a disputed border with China. 

Abe will visit India next year, and in mid-December will host Asean leaders. 

It’s all part of his campaign to thwart China’s rulers, who, as he wrote in a column last December, see the South China Sea as “Lake Beijing.”

This is powerful talk. 

China is throwing its considerable weight around more in the region, and it may react aggressively.

As all sides buy more warships, missiles, and fighter jets, such confrontations could escalate. 

“Nobody has said this is surrounding China,” says Chiaki Akimoto, director of RUSI Japan, an arm of Britain’s Royal United Services Institute, a think tank. 

What Abe wants “is just a friendship network with nations around China.”
Whatever Japan’s policy is called, Abe is even pursuing it in areas within China’s sphere of influence. 

In November, he took his charm campaign to Cambodia and Laos. 

Despite a pacifist tradition dating to the end of World War II, Japan is increasing military cooperation with Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines, which have felt China’s wrath over territorial claims. 

Abe’s actions, says Tetsuo Kotani, research fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs, make clear that “China needs to think twice before taking assertive actions” in the South China Sea. 

The official China Daily dismissively says Abe has been “hyping South China Sea tension to gain popularity in the region.”
One reason Abe is getting a warm welcome is that China’s defense spending hit $172 billion last year, up 64 percent from 2008, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. 

India has one Russian-made nuclear submarine and may lease a second. 

It just took delivery of its third aircraft carrier. 

It has test-fired a supersonic cruise missile that can reach Beijing.
In the same Dec. 27 column where he made his “Lake Beijing” comment, Abe wrote, “The ongoing disputes... mean that Japan’s top foreign-policy priority must be to expand the country’s strategic horizons... I envisage a strategy whereby Australia, India, Japan, and the U.S. state of Hawaii form a diamond to safeguard the maritime commons from the Indian Ocean region to the western Pacific.” 

Abe also wants Japan to join the Five Power Defence Arrangements of Britain, Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Singapore.

Operation Dawn Blitz: retaking the Senkaku islands

In June, Japan and the U.S. conducted Dawn Blitz, a military exercise in California that included a mock assault on a remote island. 

Japan’s self-defense force wouldn’t have joined such an exercise five years ago, says James Brown, a military fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney. 

The stress on offensive action has spread to the navy. 

“We see the commissioning of warships that in external appearance look like assault ships,” says Dean Cheng, East Asian military analyst for the Heritage Foundation. 

“These are things that Japan shied away from.” 

Abe has long backed repealing the article of the country’s constitution that renounces war forever.
As the region’s militaries get bigger, so do the risks. 

“It strikes me how much the current situation in Asia looks like a replay of the 1930s in Europe,” says Daniel Goure, a vice president with the Lexington Institute, a think tank in Arlington, Va. 

Brown warns that “there are going to be a lot more submarines, a lot more amphibious vessels, a lot more aircraft, and we haven’t gotten agreement on how everybody is going to avoid accidents. It’s a huge problem.”

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Japa Looks for Asian Allies to Say No to China

By Bruce Einhorn
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reviews a guard of honor with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on Nov. 16

Two of the poorest countries in Asia suddenly were front and center over the weekend in the growing battle for influence between Japan and China. 

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited Laos and Cambodia, the first trip by a Japanese leader to the two Southeast Asian countries since 2000. 

Abe left with some modest achievements, such as agreements to help fund road, bridge, and rail infrastructure.
The point of the trip, though, was more about sending a message to Beijing. 

Abe took office less than a year ago and has already visited all 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. 

That’s a first for a Japanese leader. 

With Japan and China continuing to squabble over islands in the East China Sea, Abe is looking to win support among countries in Southeast Asia, even such places as Cambodia and Laos that traditionally have been close to China. 

Meanwhile, Abe has yet to sit down with Chinese President Xi Jinping or Premier Li Keqiang.
Since many ASEAN nations have territorial disputes of their own with China, Abe no doubt sees an opportunity to build Japanese influence with countries that can agree on the threat posed by their common rival. 

Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam, for instance, are all facing challenges from China, which claims nearby islands.
As he tries to solidify ties with the Southeast Asians, Abe has gotten a boost from China’s clumsy response to the tragedy in the Philippines. 

Angry at President Benigno Aquino over the Philippines’s unwillingness to recognize China’s claims for some South China Sea rocks, the Chinese government initially offered a measly $100,000 to assist in the recovery from Typhoon Haiyan. 

While the Chinese government later boosted the amount to $1.6 million, the assistance is still peanuts compared with the $10 million from Japan, not to mention the even more generous offers from Japanese allies: The U.S has pledged $20 million and Australia $28 million.

Japan could hardly have asked for a better reminder that China may not be the friendliest of neighbors. Countries like the Philippines are especially open to Abe’s message, since their economies and militaries are tiny compared with China’s. 

Japan is providing ships for the Philippine coast guard and considering selling vessels to Vietnam, too. 

Japan is also conducting counterterrorism exercises with Indonesia.
The Japanese aid should help combat another common enemy—pirates in the Indian Ocean—and perhaps help ASEAN’s member states withstand heat from their giant neighbor. 

“Some Asean member countries are very much vulnerable to China’s economic and political influence,” says Tetsuo Kotani, research fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs. 

By boosting military cooperation, “we are giving assurance we will stand by those ASEAN member countries,” he says. 

“As China’s neighboring countries develop their own capability, China needs to think twice before taking assertive actions.”
China’s official media is not amused. 

“Abe is trying to hijack some countries that are not contending parties to the South China Sea issue, forcing them to take sides,” Lu Yaodong, director of the department of diplomacy at the Chinese Academy of Social Science’s Institute of Japanese Studies, told the official China Daily newspaper, in a story headlined, “Abe busy in ASEAN blitz aimed at Beijing.” 

According to the China Daily, experts in China believe the Japanese have been “hyping South China Sea tension to gain popularity in the region.”

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Off China's coast, U.S. carrier displays teeth behind the pivot

By Greg Torode

A U.S. Navy personnel works in the control room of the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS George Washington, during a tour of the ship in the South China Sea November 7, 2013.

ABOARD THE USS GEORGE WASHINGTON, South China Sea -- While cuts in Pentagon budgets and political gridlock in Washington have cast doubt on the sustainability of a U.S. "pivot" back to Asia, its military realities are all too clear from the flight deck of the USS George Washington aircraft carrier.
F-18 Super Hornet jet fighters roar from its decks with chest-thumping velocity less than 300 km (185 miles) from the Chinese coast -- a symbol of U.S. naval dominance in Asia that Chinese analysts fear could contain Beijing's rising power for decades.
Yet just 30 km (19 miles) away is a lone Chinese naval frigate, well within the protective screen of U.S. ships and aircraft that protect the carrier across a vast swathe of the disputed South China Sea.
The officers of the Washington are hosting People's Liberation Army officers on-board as part of efforts to engage a Chinese military wary of being contained by U.S. forces across Asia.
The frigate has not been invited.
The Washington strike group commander, Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, stretches his arm to the left horizon where the frigate is obscured by haze and acknowledges such encounters by the rival powers are now more common.
"You can definitely see the Chinese navy is modernizing and expanding," he said.
"It would be a natural conclusion they would be operating in the vicinity of us."
Montgomery said routine communication with Chinese naval ships was "professional" and that the U.S. navy was determined to aid the long-troubled relationship with "transparency and openness".
"I don't have any issues with them operating in the vicinity of our ships," he said.
The Washington strike group -- that often includes destroyers, cruisers and a fast-attack submarine backed by up to 90 aircraft -- protects the only one of 10 carriers deployed permanently outside the continental United States.
Based in Yokosuka, Japan, the Washington is the most visible sign of an increased U.S. naval presence across Asia that has been steadily growing for the last five years -- a key element in the controversial U.S. "pivot".
On Friday, it is due to arrive in the financial hub of Hong Kong after months across the region running joint exercises, maneuvers and training.
While U.S. military brass attempt to ease China's fears that the United States is determined to hem China in, as it re-engages the region, its old allies and newer friends are wanting reassurances the United States is going to stay around.
Last month, U.S. President Barack Obama said China had probably taken advantage of his absence from two summits in Asia which he could not attend because of the partial U.S. government shutdown and fiscal debate.

COMBAT READINESS
The presence of the strike group in the South China Sea appears geared to addressing the core of U.S. engagement in the region.
The overlapping claims of China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei and Malaysia in the oil- and gas-rich sea is emerging as a regional flashpoint.
The United States has said it is neutral in the dispute -- centered on China's controversial historic claim of waters deep in the maritime heart of Southeast Asia -- but is determined to preserve peace and ensure that sea-lanes vital for the world economy are not hindered.
Even as it grapples with budget cuts, over the next few years the United States will significantly expand joint exercises, live-firing tests and anti-submarine drills in the region, in part to cope with advancing Chinese weaponry, according to the Stars and Stripes, the U.S. military newspaper.
And on board the George Washington, officers and crew say combat readiness is being maintained through costly flight schedules that see 100 sorties routinely flown from the ship on most days.
Chinese officials and commentators often bristle at the U.S. efforts.
Despite years of double-digit increases in defense spending by China, it lags far behind the United States in terms of firepower.
Chinese pilots are still testing landings aboard the Liaoning, a Soviet-era ship that has been re-tooled as China's first aircraft carrier.
China's first domestically built carriers are not expected to be completed before 2020, according to military analysts, even as its shipyards produce new nuclear and conventional submarines, destroyers and other heavily armed surface ships faster than any other nation.
Its expanding fleet has started routinely exercising far beyond China's coastal waters, moving beyond the so-called first island chain that has long effectively contained China's navy and into open ocean east of Japan.
Both Asian and Western analysts, however, believe China's navy would struggle for some years to sustain protracted battles far from its shores.
Assessing the situation from the bridge, high above the flight deck, Montgomery insists his navy is committed, both in terms of operational capabilities and engagement.
Put simply, he says: "There are more ships involved here."

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U.S. looks to Asian nations to build militaries as bulwark to China

AP

Military muscle: A Ground Self-Defense Force member launches a hand-held anti-tank rocket during an annual live-fire exercises at the Higashi Fuji range in Gotemba, Shizuoka Prefecture, in August
WASHINGTON – U.S. lawmakers voiced bipartisan support Tuesday for the Obama administration’s strategic pivot to Asia but stressed the need for partner nations to strengthen their military capabilities and contribute more to their own defense.
Members of the House Armed Services Committee plan to step up scrutiny of U.S. military policy in the fast-growing region, where despite budget pressure, Washington wants to increase its presence as it draws down forces in Afghanistan.
Lawmakers said they plan a wide-ranging examination of U.S. force deployments and how to optimize security relationships. 

They plan a series of five hearings between now and early 2014, mostly focused on the growing military power of China. 

Topics will include its capabilities in space, the modernization of its navy and air force, and maritime disputes.
Congress does not set U.S. policy but it can influence it and controls the purse strings. 

The lawmakers said part of the committee’s intent is to explain to the rest of Congress and the American public about the strategic importance of the U.S. remaining engaged in the Asia-Pacific, where it has been the dominant force since World War II. 

Some in Asia, however, are voicing doubts about Washington’s staying power in the region as it grapples with political divisions at home and crises in the Mideast.
“The biggest thing for us is presence. If we have presence there it’s the greatest stability you can have in that region,” said Republican Rep. Randy Forbes, one of six lawmakers briefing reporters on the upcoming hearings.
Democratic Rep. Adam Smith said the committee would look at how the U.S. can guarantee its alliance commitments with nations like South Korea and Japan, while building on its many other relationships in the region.
“One of the keys to making this work is partner capacity,” he said, citing as an example U.S. counterinsurgency support for Philippine forces fighting Islamic rebels. 

“What other options are out there to build capacity in forces so it doesn’t all fall on us?”
Republican committee Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon supported a more active role for Japan’s military in response to assertive behavior by China.

Japan has the region’s second strongest military after China but it remains constrained by its pacifist Constitution.
“It’s incumbent upon us to do all we can to build up and strengthen our partners so they can bring more to the table when they are needed,” McKeon said.

Democratic Rep. Colleen Hanabusa said the U.S. needs to be more mindful of historical conflicts between its allies like South Korea and Japan, and recognize that Washington won’t be able to solve them.
“They have got to, on their own, decide that this is either a conflict they can park on the side for a little or resolve. We are not going to be able to resolve history,” she said.

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US 'pivot' to Asia gaining strength

By Martin Abbugao

A US fighter jet lands on the USS George Washington aircraft carrier in the South China Sea on October 24, 2013

A US navy crew member looks through a telescope on the USS George Washington aircraft carrier in the South China Sea on October 24, 2013 

ABOARD THE USS GEORGE WASHINGTON — The United States has significantly increased its warships and aircraft deployed in Asia despite Washington's budget woes, adding punch to its "pivot" to the region, a senior naval commander said.
Rear Admiral Mark C. Montgomery, commander of an aircraft carrier strike group homeported in Yokosuka, Japan, said the expanded military presence would have a calming effect on simmering tensions and territorial disputes in the region.
"The strategic rebalancing has resulted in an extremely higher number of surface combatants, cruisers and destroyers that support the strike group," Montgomery told AFP in an interview on Wednesday aboard the aircraft carrier USS George Washington in the South China Sea.
"What we've seen is an increase in surface combatant presence here in the Western Pacific... so these ships are spread throughout those areas," he said, in the interview at the flag bridge of the nuclear-powered supercarrier as fighter jets took off and landed on the deck as part of drills.
"Having more ships gives us more presence. It allows us to have a greater force."
Montgomery said US defence budget cuts and the recent 16-day partial US government shutdown have not affected his command.
The shutdown forced President Barack Obama to skip two Asian summits this month, triggering concerns about the extent of US commitment to the region as China becomes more assertive.
"Operations and maintenance decisions have not affected us. The strategic rebalance is continuing in earnest," the admiral said.
"We have sufficient funds for our operations... there is in fact a strategic rebalancing in place that has resulted in more ships and aircraft being out here."
Last year, then US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in Singapore that the Pentagon would shift 60 percent of US naval assets to the Pacific region by 2020 as part of an Asian "pivot" announced by Washington.
Montgomery, a 25-year veteran in the US Navy, said ships and planes from San Diego, California and Pearl Harbor in Hawaii are being deployed to Asia for up to eight months as part of the rebalancing.
"That gives me a lot more flexibility, a lot more presence," he said.

US presence has 'calming effect' 
Montgomery commands Carrier Strike Group Five from the the nuclear-powered George Washington, which was in international waters in the South China Sea on Wednesday when journalists and other visitors were flown in from Singapore.
A carrier strike group packs a powerful punch as it comprises an aircraft carrier, backed by at least one guided missile cruiser, a destroyer, a supply ship and a fast attack submarine.
It is a key element in the US strategy of projecting its military power across the world.
The George Washington heads the US Navy's largest carrier strike group and the only one homeported outside the US.

It operates in three theatres, including the waters off the Korean Peninsula where tensions between North and South Korea are simmering.
It also operates in the sea off Japan where Tokyo and Beijing are locked in a territorial dispute, and in the South China Sea, where China and four Southeast Asian states as well as Taiwan have overlapping claims over territories.
Montgomery's carrier strike group held military exercises with South Korea and Japan off the Korean peninsula this month, sparking a sharp rebuke from Pyongyang which denounced the drills as a "serious military provocation" and an "attack on our efforts for peace".
This week the group was cruising the South China Sea while holding smaller military exercises with the Malaysian navy and air force and later in the month with its Singaporean allies.
"I'm an element of any contingency response. I think a carrier strike group is always a critical element of it," Montgomery said, when asked about the role of his command in any military conflict in the region.
China claims almost all of the waters in the South China Sea, including those approaching the shores of smaller countries like the Philippines, a former US colony with which Washington has a mutual defence treaty.
Manila, which is the most vocal in criticising China's alleged aggressive moves in the sea, and Washington are in talks over a deal that will expand US military presence in the Philippines, which evicted fixed US military bases in the early 1990s.
Montgomery said the increased US military presence in the region is a stabilising factor.
"Presence always has an assuring and calming effect," he said.
"I think the fact that we're here (now) says a lot whether or not we will be here if there was a crisis."

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New U.S. Drone Base in Japan is America's Latest Move to Contain China

Japan is looking at expanding its defense budget, strengthening its capability to defend its sovereign territory, and broadening regional contributions, including capacity-building efforts vis-à-vis Southeast Asian countries

By John Reed

U.S. officials swear that America's military and diplomatic build-up in Asia is not an attempt to contain a rising China.

But they sure are parking lots of advanced firepower on Beijing's doorstep. 

The U.S. is even welcoming the increased militarization of Japan, the country America barred from having an offensive force in the aftermath of World War II.
On October 3, U.S. and Japanese officials announced that the U.S. Air Force will be stationing RQ-4 Global Hawk drones in Japan. 

The Global Hawk is a large, long-range spy jet meant to compliment its 50-year old counterpart, the legendary U-2 Dragon Lady.
This not only marks the first time U.S. drones will be based in Japan. 

The basing of the [Global Hawks] puts an American long-range intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capability in the heart of Asia.
U.S. officials say two or three of the high-flying drones will be stationed somewhere in Japan next spring. While no one said this explicitly, the high-tech aircraft will be able to easily monitor the East China Sea including the uninhabited Senkaku Islands. 

The Japanese Senkakus sit in a potentially oil-rich section of the sea less than 150 miles northeast of Taiwan.
In addition to the Global Hawks, U.S. and Japanese officials announced plans to base several other types of America's newest combat aircraft in Japan soon.
The Global Hawks will be joined in Japan by two squadrons of U.S. Marine Corps MV-22 Osprey tiltrotors. 

An MV-22 can haul a couple dozen Marines over long distances at airplane speeds with the ability to take off and land vertically like a helicopter. 

Needless to say, these craft could be very useful in responding to emergencies in the Pacific, where American defense officials often lament "the tyranny of distance."            
The Marines will also station F-35B Joint Strike Fighters in Japan starting in 2017, officials announced. 

The Marines are following the U.S. Air Force's lead by positioning the stealth fighters in Japan. 

The air service announced last year that the first overseas bases for its fleet of F-35As will be in Japan. 

In addition to the American F-35 squadrons, the Japanese, Australian and possibly Singaporean air forces will all fly the Joint Strike Fighter, ringing China's southeast flank with the stealth jets.     

It's worth pointing out that the U.S. Navy will base some of its brand new P-8 Poseidon submarine and ship hunting jets in Japan starting in December. 

The P-8 is navalized version of Boeing's 737 airliner equipped with sonar gear, powerful radars, torpedos and even Harpoon anti-ship missiles. (Chinese-made counterfeit parts have been found on P-8s, causing their critical ice-detection systems to fail.)
Defense officials also announced that Japan will get another powerful X-band radar capable of detecting missile launches from places like North Korea. 

The U.S. and Japan will also up cooperation on cybersecurity and intelligence efforts. 

The whole weapons package is part of a revised agreement between the U.S. and Japan that aims to bolster the longtime American ally's defenses in the face of an increasingly aggressive China.
The agreement is framed by a U.S.-Japanese "strategic vision" for East Asia and the Pacific that reflects "our shared values of democracy, the rule of law, free and open markets, and respect for human rights, will effectively promote peace, security, stability, and economic prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region," according to a State Department announcement.
Tokyo is actively consideration a revision of its constitution to allow it to enter combat to defend an ally that has been attacked. 

Japan's constitution, written after World War II, only allows it to engage in combat when it has been attacked.
Japan is also looking at expanding its defense budget, "strengthening its capability to defend its sovereign territory, and broadening regional contributions, [and] including capacity-building efforts vis-à-vis Southeast Asian countries," reads the announcement. 

All of these moves are welcomed by the United States.
The latest news out of Japan comes several months after the top U.S. Air Force general in the Pacific revealed that American fighters, bombers and tankers will constantly deploy to a string of bases in the Pacific and Indian ocean regions. 

These facilities aren't slated for permanent occupation by American aircraft -- or at least that's what American commanders say. 

Instead, these sites will see a steady stream of U.S. units visiting on a regular basis.
These temporary American bases range from Tinian and Saipan to Australia, Singapore, Thailand, India and possibly sites in the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia. 

American jets permanently stationed at dozens of U.S. bases in the Pacific -- as well as bases in the U.S. -- will rotate in an out of these airfields under a concept that harkens back to the Cold War.
"Back in the late, great days of the Cold War, we had a thing called Checkered Flag: We rotated almost every CONUS [Continental United States] unit to Europe," said Gen. Herbert "Hawk" Carlisle last July. "Every two years, every unit would go and work out of a collateral operating base in Europe. We're turning to that in the Pacific."

View Bases of the U.S.'s  Pacific Pivot in a larger map

Interestingly, Japan is helping to pay for the construction of bare bones bases on Tinian and Saipan, according to the State Department announcement. 

This is partially in exchange for the the U.S. Marines pulling some troops out of Okinawa and partially to allow the Japanese military access to the bases for training purposes. 

But the bottom line is that the U.S. is prepositioning forces around China. 

And Japan is only too happy to help.

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Abe Shunned by China Gets Warmer Welcome Southeast Asia

By Isabel Reynolds and Kyoko Shimodoi

Shinzo Abe, Japan's prime minister, gestures during a news conference at the prime minister's official residence in Tokyo on Oct. 1, 2013.

Shinzo Abe, Japan's prime minister, left, prepares to shake hands with Benigno Aquino, Philippines' president, in front of a map of Mindanao island, after reading their joint statements at Malacanang Palace in Manila on July 27, 2013.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, beset by festering ties with China that have barred a bilateral summit since he took office, is overseeing an unprecedented expansion in ties with Southeast Asia as a counterbalance.
Abe, who heads to Indonesia next week for a gathering of Asia-Pacific leaders, has already visited Southeast Asia three times since taking office in December. 

His administration is building on Japan’s economic links with the region by developing security relationships, offering coast-guard vessels to the Philippines, conducting counter-terrorism exercises with Indonesia and considering the provision of ships for Vietnam.
The broadening relationship comes two generations after Abe’s grandfather, Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, reopened ties with the region following the turmoil of World War II.

The initiative provides China with an incentive to dial back its aggression in pressing maritime-jurisdiction claims in the region.

“Japan’s power is being eclipsed by China’s and it needs friends and allies beyond just the U.S.,” said Michael Green, who served on the National Security Council and is senior vice president for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. 

“The new element with Abe is that he is now prepared to help them on the defense side” in Southeast Asia, rather than focus just on economic ties.

Abe’s efforts to broaden the interpretation of Japan’s constitution -- which bans an official military and has until now been regarded as barring defense of an ally -- raise the possibility of further security links with Southeast Asia. 

Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party is discussing the adoption of so-called collective defense, though no deadline has been set for a decision.
“If we say we can’t expand our military, we can’t carry out collective self-defense and will only act behind the scenes, then we can’t gain the respect of other Asian countries or have a proper relationship with them,” said LDP lawmaker Hiroshi Imazu, a former deputy defense chief who serves on the parliamentary security committee.
“We caused trouble for them in the war, but now we are saying we will make the international contributions appropriate for a major economy.”

APEC Summit
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum leaders’ meeting in Bali next week gives Abe the chance to meet his counterparts from across Southeast Asia. 

He pledged in July to help provide 10 coast guard vessels to the Philippines, one of the countries at odds with China over waters in the South China Sea rich with oil, gas and fish. 

Japan is discussing a similar arrangement with Vietnam, Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera told reporters during a visit to Hanoi in mid September.
Philippine Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin has said he’d be happy to see Japanese involvement in Philippine military bases and last December Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario told the Financial Times the Philippines would “welcome” a rearmed Japan as a “significant balancing factor” in the region.
“I think it is very helpful for the Japanese to be out,” Admiral Samuel Locklear, Commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, told reporters in Seoul on Oct. 1. 

“They are in many ways a great power. They’re a very credible military defense capability. They understand the region through all aspects of economics and culture”, he added.

Japan’s Foreign Ministry held its first-ever seminar on building marine security last month, involving Indonesia, Thailand and Myanmar, as well as the Philippines and Malaysia.

Containing China
Japanese Marine Self-Defense Forces ships paid their first ever visit to Myanmar this week. 

Indonesia has agreed to increased military cooperation, state news agency Antara reported on Feb. 2, and Japan sent maritime personnel to give the Indonesian Navy a seminar on marine meteorology in February.
The moves by Japan have drawn concern in Beijing. 

Abe’s policies amount to a “plot to contain China,” the official Xinhua news agency said in June.
“It is in our interest to get allies lined up against China,” said Clarita Carlos, a political science professor at the University of the Philippines, who has studied Philippine politics for 50 years.

“The enemy of your enemy is your friend.”

Code of Conduct
The Philippines, whose defense budget was about $3 billion for the 2012 fiscal year, compared with China’s $166 billion, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, asked the United Nations in January to rule on its dispute with China. 

Beijing took effective control of the Scarborough Shoal, a fertile fishing ground, a year after a standoff between ships from the two countries.
China has agreed to talks on developing a code of conduct for ships operating in the South China Sea, while making advances to Cambodia and Vietnam. 

Premier Li Keqiang called for better ties during a meeting with Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung on Sept. 2, Xinhua reported. 

President Xi Jinping is visiting Indonesia and Malaysia this week while Li plans to attend the Association of Southeast Asian Nations meeting and then make officials visits to Brunei, Thailand and Vietnam later this month.
Xi today signed a new pact aimed at increasing bilateral trade with Malaysia to $160 billion by 2017, and arranged to exchange army and navy personnel.
Last year the Asean countries failed to release a final communique from their summit for the first time, after a split over the maritime conflicts with China.

‘Same Situation’
In some places Japan is breaking new ground. 

Onodera told reporters on Sept. 17 he was the first non-Vietnamese defense official to see military areas of the Cam Ranh naval base during his visit earlier in the month. 

Vietnam took part in a submarine rescue training exercise in Japan at the end of September, he said. 

Vietnam’s relations with China have at times been strained by the countries’ competing claims to the Spratly Islands and the Paracel Islands.
“In a sense, Japan and Vietnam are in the same situation, one in the East China Sea and one in the South China Sea,” Onodera said on Sept. 17.
Japan is mired in its own dispute with China after it bought three uninhabited islets coveted by China in the East China Sea last year, triggering violent demonstrations and damaging trade ties between Asia’s two largest economies. 

Since then, Chinese and Japanese patrol boats and aircraft have tailed one another around Japan's Senkaku islands.

Scarborough Shoal
“The strategy is if China were to place pressure on Japan in the East China Sea, Japan can try to defuse it by putting pressure on China in the South China Sea, by backing up Vietnam and the Philippines,” said Dr Lam Peng Er of the East Asian Institute at the National University of Singapore, who has written a book about Japan’s ties with the region.
China last month denied starting to build a structure on the Scarborough Shoal. 

The Philippines protested in June what it called the “massive presence of Chinese military and paramilitary ships” around territory it claims. 

In March China fired on a Vietnamese fishing vessel, sparking a protest from the government, and it has used patrol ships to disrupt hydrocarbon surveys by the Philippines and Vietnam.
The rocky relationship with China is reflected in a redirection of Japanese funds. 

Direct investment in Asean countries roughly quadrupled in the first six months of this year to 998.6 billion yen ($10.2 billion), more than twice the 470.1 billion yen that went to China. 

Japan’s big banks such as Mitsubishi UFJ are seeking new markets by investing in Vietnamese counterparts, while Japan agreed in May to give Myanmar 51 billion yen in development loans and about 2 billion yen in grants.

Japan’s Image
Japan’s image in Southeast Asia is more favorable than in China. 

A Pew survey including about 9,400 people in eight Asia-Pacific countries in March and April found Japan was viewed positively by about 80 percent of respondents in Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, compared with only 4 percent in China.
Seventy-eight percent of respondents to the survey in China said Japan had not sufficiently apologized for its war actions, compared with 47 percent in the Philippines.
“There’s a lot to be gained for the Japanese in doing this kind of thing,” said Daniel Sneider, associate director for research at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University in California. 

“I think Abe is very happy to go around Southeast Asia in a very visible way.”

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US, PH launch war games near South China Sea

AFP

SAN ANTONIO -- The Philippines and the United States launched war games Wednesday at a naval base facing turbulent waters claimed by China, as the allies sought to highlight their expanding military alliance.
About 2,300 marines from both sides are taking part in the annual maneuvers which this year are being staged alongside the South China Sea and come ahead of US President Barack Obama's planned first visit to the Philippines next month.
The Philippines, which has been seeking US military support to counter a growing Chinese threat to its South China Sea territory, welcomed the exercises as another important plank in building its defense capabilities.
"Multilateral exercises and agreements are essential in our cooperation and operational readiness as a multi-capable force, ready to defend our country's sovereignty and integrity," Philippine Navy vice-commander Rear Admiral Jaime Bernardino said in a speech at the opening of the exercises.
The three-week Philippine-US Amphibious Landing Exercises (Phiblex) will involve two US warships and live ground fire exercises, according to the Philippine military.
The Filipino exercises commander, Brigadier-General Remigio Valdez, said they would also include simulated amphibious assaults to capture islands held by hostile forces.
"We are building our capability on amphibious operations, so it's part of the scenario," he told reporters, although no specific hostile country was named.

Scarborough Shoal a flashpoint for tensions
The exercises were launched at a naval base in San Antonio, a town on the western coast of Luzon island that faces the South China Sea.
The naval base is about 220 kilometers (135 miles) from Scarborough Shoal, a group of rocky outcrops that is one of the flashpoint areas in the territorial dispute between the Philippines and China.
The Philippines insists it has sovereign rights to the shoal, which fishermen from coastal towns near San Antonio have sailed to for decades, because it is well within its internationally recognized exclusive economic zone.
The nearest major Chinese land mass to Scarborough Shoal is Hainan island, about 650 kilometers away.
But China claims nearly all of the South China Sea, even waters and land formations close to the other countries.
Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei, as well as the Philippines, have overlapping claims to parts of the sea,
The rivalries have for decades made the sea, home to vital global shipping lanes, a potential trigger for military conflict.
Tensions have risen sharply in recent years amid accusations by the Philippines and Vietnam of increasing Chinese aggressiveness.
The Philippines says Chinese vessels have occupied Scarborough Shoal since last year, preventing Filipino fishermen from going there.
This month the Philippines accused China of erecting concrete structures there to begin a permanent presence.
However neither the US nor Philippine side would say exactly where the Phiblex exercises would be held, and Valdez said the drill to retake islands was not for Scarborough Shoal.
"There is no specific activity in the exercises designed (for) the Scarborough," Valdez said.
The exercises take place as the allies are moving closer to a planned deal that would expand the US military presence in the Philippines.
The pact would allow the United States to bring military hardware on to local bases, and formalize more US troop visits.
The Philippines has said it wants the pact signed as soon as possible.
Speaking at the opening ceremony, Brigadier-General Paul Kennedy, commander of the US 3rd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, said he did not know if the agreement would be ready in time for Obama's visit to the Philippines.
"If it comes out of the president's visit and if it's politically mature enough to have been signed at that point it would be fortuitous, but I don't have any idea where it stands at this point," Kennedy told reporters.
The United States had a permanent military presence at two bases in the Philippines until 1992, when they were closed amid nationalist opposition.

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