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OFFICIALS, ANALYSTS SAY

US 'only option' to effectively deter China aggression against PH, Japan


US 'only option' to effectively deter China aggression against PH, Japan

YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE – In the chilly winter breeze, the flags of the United States and Japan flutter together in this strategic naval base where the military allies’ firepower is in rare public display - a docked U.S. aircraft carrier, warships, a stealth submarine, destroyers, and minesweepers.

Aboard a cruise ship, Western and Japanese tourists snap pictures with their cellphones and cameras. A small group of Japanese personnel on a docked navy ship smiled and waved back at the visitors in the sprawling naval facility near Tokyo where Japanese Self-Defense Force contingents are based and the U.S. Navy maintains its largest installation in the Western Pacific.

It’s a post-World War II alliance of the military powers that Japanese officials say has helped keep security threats in Asia in check, including a more aggressive China in the disputed South China Sea and East China Sea. 

There is an urgent need for Asian allies and partner countries to push newly elected President Donald Trump to commit to maintain a formidable American military presence in the region because no other major power can fill the U.S. role as an effective counterweight to aggressors, several Japanese officials and analysts told GMA News Online in separate interviews and briefings in Japan.

“We have to make sure that Trump is completely on board,” a senior official of Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said in an interview.

“We need to send a message together to make China understand that certain behaviors and policies are not tolerable. If we don't have this one voice, I think the leverage we have over the Chinese is going to be very weak,” said the MOFA official, who spoke on customary condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.

Professor Naoko Eto, senior fellow and group head at China Institute of Geoeconomics, said it’s strategically important for the U.S. under Trump to remain deeply committed to the region for its credibility to allies and friends like Japan, the Philippines, and Taiwan.

“We need to persuade the U.S. that the Indo-Pacific is very important. If they lose Taiwan, the U.S. will totally lose face. That is something Trump cannot afford,” Eto said.

Another MOFA official, in a separate interview, said that the Trump administration should be convinced that a freely accessible and peaceful South China Sea and regional stability in general would foster global trade and commerce that is extremely important to the U.S. economy and interests.

“The important message is that keeping peace and stability and rule of law in the region is beneficial to the U.S. and not only to Japan,” the official said.

Japan and other like-minded states can help but will not be able to thoroughly fill a security void should Trump step back from supporting Asian allies, according to Professor Matake Kamiya of the Graduate School of Security Studies in the National Defense Academy of Japan.

“Japan cannot do that alone,” Kamiya said. “We need American power.”

There have been mixed signs so far of how Trump’s external policy will eventually unfold in the early days of his new four-year term, a crucial time to reach out to him and his key Cabinet members as they set their priorities and focus.

On his historic return to the White House, Trump signed an executive order that temporarily suspended all American foreign assistance programs for 90 days pending reviews to determine whether they are aligned with his policy goals. It was not immediately clear how much and what exact types of assistance would be affected and where, including defense and military support.

A $500-million assistance pledged by the former Biden administration last year to shore up the defense capability of the Philippines, longtime U.S. ally in Asia, has received initial bipartisan support in the U.S. Congress last year, a Philippine official said.

On his first day as U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio held talks with counterparts on Jan. 21 from Australia, India and Japan, all members of the “QUAD” security bloc, which includes the U.S., in a meeting that sent a signal that Washington would stay committed to its regional allies.

A joint statement issued after the QUAD meeting, the first under Trump, reaffirmed “shared commitment to strengthening a Free and Open Indo-Pacific, where the rule of law, democratic values, sovereignty and territorial integrity are upheld and defended” amid “increasing threats.”

Without naming China, they expressed strong opposition to “any unilateral actions that seek to change the status quo by force or coercion.”

Meanwhile, China has launched a charm offensive, holding key meetings with U.S. allies, including Japan, amid uncertainties over Trump’s unsettling remarks against Washington’s leading security and economic allies.

“China will argue to regional states that the U.S. is an unreliable ally and none of them have the power to resist Chinese intimidation and coercion,” South China Sea analyst Carl Thayer, professor emeritus at the University of New South Wales, said in an e-mailed reply to queries about the increased Chinese meetings with US allies.

The top diplomat of Japan met his Chinese counterpart in Beijing last Dec. 25 to discuss over-all relations and concerns.

“We’re neighbors so we can't run away from each other. We have to keep the dialogue,” a MOFA official said, but warned that China’s offensive is “only a tactical change.”

“China has not changed. It’s very tactical and this is the message we sent to our partner countries.”

Japanese officials say the U.S. under Trump may also engage with China but they expressed confidence that Trump will not sell them out.

“There is a principle, there are values that we share that we do not share with China,” one official said. “I don’t think the U.S. administration will sell out Japan to China because they do believe that one of the most important allies in Asia is Japan. I think Donald Trump understands that.”

Other US allies like the Philippines have also been reaching out to Trump and his key advisers. On the same day, that Rubio held a meeting with QUAD counterparts, he spoke with Philippine Foreign Secretary Enrique Manalo and discussed issues of mutual concern, including China’s “dangerous and destabilizing actions in the South China Sea,” according to a US State Department readout of the discussions.

Rubio, who reiterated America’s “iron-clad” commitment to the Philippines, told Manalo that China’s behavior “undermines regional peace and stability and is inconsistent with international law.”

Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro and Manila’s ambassador to Washington, Jose Manuel Romualdez, also held separate talks with Trump’s National Security Adviser Mike Waltz at the White House where they expressed commitment “to deepen defense and security cooperation in the years ahead.”

While Japanese officials welcomed these engagements, they expressed cautious optimism. They acknowledged that it was still too early to draw any concrete conclusions as Trump had only been in office for several days this month.

“We expect that the Trump administration would respect the multi-layered multilateral frameworks in the region. Under the Biden administration, we successfully made a lot of multilateral frameworks in this region. So, we strongly hope that President Trump’s administration will keep this stance.” said one of the senior MOFA officials.

There have been both red flags and encouraging signs from Trump’s first presidential term.

One of the Japanese MOFA officials said the first Trump administration called China “a regional threat” and vowed to push back against it under his National Security Strategy that was released in 2017.

“If Mr. Trump decides to change his policy, that would be denying his own legacy,” a MOFA official said.

During his first term in 2019, Trump asked the Japan government to increase its annual payments to the U.S. for the 54,000 American troops stationed in Japan to about $8 billion. That was part of Trump’s overall effort to pressure allies to “pay their share” by increasing defense spending.

Under former President Biden, the U.S., Japan and the Philippines - the most vocal critics of China’s aggressive actions in the South China Sea - had boosted their security alliance and deepened economic cooperation.

A third MOFA official in another briefing acknowledged that there was going to be more back and forth diplomatic spade work under Trump than during Biden’s administration.

Although challenges had abounded during Biden’s time and his engagements with U.S. allies, Japanese officials say a more difficult era for the U.S.-led alliances has dawned.

“In a way the last few years were pretty easy for us. We talked with the same language, we had the same interest,” the MOFA official said of engagements with the former Biden administration but added that with Trump, “that's going to be a challenge.” —AOL, GMA Integrated News