US command in ‘warrior’ Japan being upgraded to deter China
TOKYO—US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth described Japan on Sunday as indispensable for tackling Chinese aggression and said implementing of a plan to upgrade the US military command in the country would get under way.
“We share a warrior ethos that defines our forces,” Hegseth told Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani at a meeting in Tokyo. “Japan is our indispensable partner in deterring communist Chinese military aggression,” including across the Taiwan Strait, he said.
Calling Japan a “cornerstone of peace and security in the Indo-Pacific,” he said President Donald Trump’s government would continue to work closely with its key Asian ally.
In July, then-President Joe Biden’s White House announced a major revamp of the US military command in Japan to deepen coordination with Tokyo’s forces, as the two countries labeled China their “greatest strategic challenge.”
Contrast
That change will place a combined operational commander in Japan, who would be a counterpart to the head of a joint operation command established by the Japan’s Self Defense Forces last week.
Hegseth’s praise of Japan contrasts with the criticism he leveled at European allies in February, telling them they should not assume the US presence there would last forever. Trump has complained that the bilateral defense treaty, in which Washington pledges to defend Tokyo, is not reciprocal. In his first term, he said Japan should pay more to host US troops.
Japan hosts 50,000 US military personnel, squadrons of fighter jets and Washington’s only forward-deployed aircraft carrier strike group along a 3,000-kilometers East Asian archipelago that hems in Chinese military power.
It comes as Japan doubles military spending, including money to purchase longer-range missiles. The operational scope of its forces, however, is constrained by its US-authored constitution, adopted after its World War II defeat, which renounces the right to make war.
Hegseth and Nakatani agreed to accelerate a plan to jointly produce beyond-visual-range air-to-air AMRAAM (advanced medium-range air-to-air missile) and to consider collaborating on production of SM-6 surface-to-air defense missiles to help ease a shortage of munitions, Nakatani said.
Islands access
Hegseth said he asked his counterpart for greater access to Japan’s strategic southwest islands, along the edge of the contested East China Sea close to Taiwan.
The Chinese foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Hegseth, on his first official visit to Asia, traveled to Japan from the Philippines. On Saturday he attended a memorial service on Iwo Jima, the site 80 years ago of fierce fighting between US and Japanese forces.
His trip has been overshadowed by revelations he texted about an imminent US strikes on Yemen on a Signal messaging app group that included Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of the Atlantic magazine.
