The US and Australia have said they would invite Japanese soldiers into three-way turns, promising a unified front even with China’s fast military advances.
During talks with their counterparts in Washington on Tuesday, Australia’s defense and foreign ministers said they had agreed to accelerate their military interactions with the United States. They will then fly to Tokyo.
“It’s really important that we are doing this from the point of view of providing balance within our region and involving other countries within our region,” Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles stated at a news conference. “We look forward to being able to have more engagement with Japan.”
In the first such talks since Australia’s Labor government took office six months ago, Marles stated, “We can go to Japan at the end of this week with an invitation for Japan to be participating in more exercises with Australia and the United States.”
According to US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, the allies would like Japanese participation in joint operations in Australia. Since 2011, the US has been rotating Marines through Darwin, the strategic northern city that imperial Japan attacked during World War II.
Austin stated that Australia and the United States of America had reached an agreement to increase the rotations of the US Army and Navy, bomber task forces, and fighter jets.
According to a person with knowledge of the situation, the United States intends to send up to six nuclear-capable B-52 bombers to an air base in northern Australia in October.
Austin stated, “We agreed to invite Japan to integrate into our force posture initiatives in Australia” and “to enhance trilateral defense cooperation.”
Japan, a settlement bound partner of the US, has as of late looked for developing discretionary collaboration with Australia, however safeguard attaches have been more delicate because of Tokyo’s true pacificism since its loss in The Second Great War.
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Warning to China
Due to China’s increasing assertiveness under President Xi Jinping, the three nations have increasingly recognized a common cause.
Austin asserted, “China’s dangerous and coercive actions throughout the Indo-Pacific [Asia-Pacific], including around Taiwan, in the East and South China Seas, toward the Pacific Island countries, and threaten regional peace and stability.”
Australia signed a three-way security agreement with the United States, Britain, and China last year to acquire nuclear-powered submarines with an eye toward China. This enraged France, which stopped selling conventional submarines.
“Delivering on that promise at the earliest possible time” was the pledge made by the United States by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to the Australians.
Blinken is scheduled to make the first visit by a top US diplomat to Beijing in more than four years at the beginning of next year, and the defense ties come despite a relative ease in tensions between the United States and China.
His trip follows President Joe Biden’s meeting with Xi in November in Bali, where the two agreed to talk about key differences.
One of them is Taiwan, an island that China considers its breakaway province. When US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August, the island reacted violently.
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‘No change to status quo’
Earlier on Tuesday, despite Beijing’s warnings, a group of Australian lawmakers from both parties visited the island.
Penny Wong, the Australian foreign minister, stated in Washington that Canberra valued “our longstanding unofficial relationship with Taiwan” and that there should be “no unilateral change to the status quo” regarding Taiwan.
Through the so-called Quad, Australia, Japan, and the United States have also collaborated in recent years with India, which has been more cautious than the other three about appearing to form an alliance with China in mind.
Source: AFP
