U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was set to announce Sunday an upgrade to U.S. command structures in Japan, as Washington and Tokyo overhaul military cooperation in the face of an increasingly assertive China.
The United States has around 54,000 military personnel in Japan who currently report back to Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii, around 6,500 kilometers (4,000 miles) away and 19 hours behind.
But Austin, who on Sunday joined U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken for “2+2” talks with their counterparts in Tokyo, will announce a new Joint Force Headquarters headed by a three-star commander, a U.S. military official said.
This will serve as a counterpart to Japan’s planned Joint Operations Command for all its armed forces, making the two militaries more nimble in the case of a crisis over Taiwan or the Korean peninsula.
Prompted by unease about China and alarm 바카라게임 about North Korea, Japan has in recent years been shedding its strict pacifist stance, ramping up defense spending and moving to obtain “counterstrike” capabilities.
In April President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced a “new era” in cooperation at a summit at the White House.
This month Japan and the Philippines — Blinken and Austin’s next stop for a “2+2” — signed a defense pact that will allow the deployment of troops on each other’s territory.
This followed the first trilateral summit in April between the leaders of Japan, the Philippines and the United States in Washington.