Quad foreign ministers decry dangerous South China Sea actions

Editor’s Note: This piece is based on an interview with CSP Senior Fellow, Grant Newsham.

TOKYO: Foreign ministers from Australia, India, Japan and the United States said on Monday (Jul 29) that they were seriously concerned about intimidating and dangerous manoeuvres in the South China Sea and pledged to bolster maritime security in the region.

The joint statement came after talks between the so-called “Quad” countries in Tokyo, attended by Australia’s Penny Wong, India’s Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Japan’s Yoko Kamikawa and Antony Blinken from the US.

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A “GOOD FIRST STEP”

Grant Newsham, senior research fellow at Japanese think tank Japan Forum for Strategic Studies, said the US-Japan deal is a “good first step” and a “good reaffirmation” of increasing cooperation between both nations.

The relationship has turned into a practical one with concrete outcomes that have been in the works for about five years, added the retired US Marine.

The significance of the deal, he noted, was how the Americans agreed to turn their headquarters for US forces in Japan into “operational headquarters”.

“Currently, it’s just an administrative outfit that apologises to the Japanese when the Americans do something wrong,” Newsham told CNA’s Asia First programme.

“But if you turn it into a real warfighting headquarters, and have that go along with what the Japanese have just started to do – which is get their own joint operation headquarters – it offers some real possibilities in the future for the Americans and the Japanese to actually have a useful defence relationship, in the sense that it can do real-world short-notice operations.”

In the Quad’s joint statement, Tokyo also signed off on what the US calls “extended deterrence”, which refers to America’s commitment to use its nuclear forces to deter attacks on allies.

This was an issue once off-limits in Japan, which is the only nation to have suffered atomic bombing. It has previously called on all nuclear weapon states to take measures toward nuclear disarmament.

Newsham said Japan has always been glad to have the US available to protect them, but he expressed uncertainty about whether the Americans’ added reassurances during the Quad meeting would be enough.

“The Japanese just might have a feeling that’s a promise the Americans will do something. There’s no guarantee they’ll do anything,” he added.

In terms of how Beijing could respond, Newsham said the Chinese can talk but it would not amount to much diplomatically.

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