TOKYO — Japan on Tuesday approved a plan to increase defense spending by 5 percent over the next five years to purchase its first surveillance drones, more jet fighters and naval destroyers in the face of China’s military expansion. The revised five-year defense plan was adopted by the Cabinet along with a new national security […]
China’s growing geopolitical heft is emboldening its territorial creep in Asia. After laying claim to 80 percent of the South China Sea, it has just established a so-called air defense identification zone in the East China Sea, raising the odds of armed conflict with Japan and threatening the principle of freedom of navigation of the […]
The tension surrounding the East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) is being covered in the kind of exhaustive detail that is rarely given to Asia’s maritime disputes. Many reports have surfaced claiming that the move might have been a strategic blunder for China. Yet, I’ve yet to see any reports explaining in precise […]
TOKYO — China’s assertive demarcation of the airspace over the East China Sea hints at an ambitious yet risky long-term strategy of maritime control. “I thought this would happen one day, but never that they would go ahead so soon,” said a Japanese national security source after China declared its new air defense identification zone last Saturday. Chinese national […]
Sino-Japanese relations do not look promising at the moment. Obviously, the Diaoyu-Senkaku dispute is not the only factor in play, but it does focus nationalist passions on both sides. Yet both countries are capable of wiser conduct if their leaders can manage to rise above the dangerous temptations to beat military drums. As China and […]
WASHINGTON–US President Barack Obama warned China on Thursday against the using force or intimidation in its tense maritime disputes with its neighbors and urged a peaceful resolution. Obama, meeting Chinese officials who were in Washington for wide-ranging talks, “urged China to manage its maritime disputes with its neighbors peacefully, without the use of intimidation or […]