Japan is set to take part in joint naval exercises with India and the US in the Indian Ocean in October, military and diplomatic sources said, a drill that so riled China eight years ago that Delhi has not since hosted such a multilateral wargame.
The Indian Ocean has emerged as a new arena of competition between China making inroads and India trying to recover its position as the dominant maritime power in the region.
New Delhi’s decision to expand the “Malabar” exercises that it conducts with the US each year to include Japan suggests a tightening of military relations between three major maritime powers in Asia, analysts said.
Military officials from India, the US and Japan met at a US navy base in Yokosuka, near Tokyo, on Wednesday and yesterday to plan the exercises, a navy and a diplomatic source in New Delhi said.
A Japanese government official in Tokyo confirmed the meeting and said representatives from the three navies were discussing Tokyo’s participation in the wargames. He declined to be identified.
India and the US have fielded aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines in previous bilateral exercises.
An Indian Ministry of Defense official declined any comment on Malabar 2015, saying announcements will only be made closer to the event.
A spokesman for Japan’s Maritime Self Defense Force said no decision had yet been taken on Japan’s participation.
However, Jeff Smith, a South Asia specialist at the American Foreign Policy Council, said Japan was keen to take part in the exercises this year at a time when it is expanding the role of its military against a more assertive China.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s inclusion of Japan after some hesitation was part of a trending pattern of forging close ties with the US and its allies.
“I’d view aircraft carrier participation in this year’s drill as yet another signal from the Modi government that it was shedding the [previous] government’s anxiety about a more overt balancing posture toward China and a more robust strategic embrace of the US and Japan,” Smith said.
India last hosted a multilateral exercise in 2007 when it invited Japan, Australia and Singapore to join its drills with the US navy in the Bay of Bengal, prompting disquiet in Beijing where some saw it as a US-inspired security grouping in the making along the lines of NATO in Europe.
Beijing activated diplomatic channels seeking an explanation, and the exercises held in the Indian Ocean were scaled back in the following years.
However, China’s expanding naval footprint in the Indian Ocean, including submarines docking in Sri Lanka, just off the toe of India last year, and again in Karachi, Pakistan, in May, has prompted Modi’s administration to accelerate naval modernization, as well as shore up ties with maritime nations.
“Modi’s Delhi is no longer willing to give Beijing a veto over its defense partnerships,” top Indian foreign policy expert C. Raja Mohan said.
Just as China had overridden India’s concerns about archenemy Pakistan and was building ports and roads under a US$46 billion economic corridor, New Delhi was free to pursue closer security cooperation with the West and its partners, Mohan said.
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
SHIFT: Taiwan’s better-than-expected first-quarter GDP and signs of weakness in the US have driven global capital back to emerging markets, the central bank head said The central bank yesterday blamed market speculation for the steep rise in the local currency, and urged exporters and financial institutions to stay calm and stop panic sell-offs to avoid hurting their own profitability. The nation’s top monetary policymaker said that it would step in, if necessary, to maintain order and stability in the foreign exchange market. The remarks came as the NT dollar yesterday closed up NT$0.919 to NT$30.145 against the US dollar in Taipei trading, after rising as high as NT$29.59 in intraday trading. The local currency has surged 5.85 percent against the greenback over the past two sessions, central
RSS