U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced Sunday a plan to upgrade the U.S. military command in Japan, a country he described as indispensable in combating Chinese aggression.
“We share a warrior ethos that defines our forces,” Hegseth told Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani in Tokyo, adding that Japan is “our indispensable partner” in “deterring communist Chinese military aggression,” including across the Taiwan Strait.
Hegseth said Japan is a “cornerstone of peace and security in the Indo-Pacific” and that the Trump administration would continue to work closely with the Asian country.
Last year, then-President Joe Biden’s administration announced a major restructuring of the U.S. military command in Japan to deepen coordination with the country’s forces, as the two allied countries called China their “greatest strategic challenge.”
The change will place a combined operational commander in Japan, who would be a counterpart to the head of a joint operations command established last week by Japan’s Self-Defense Forces.
Hegseth’s high praise for Japan contrasts with his criticism of European allies in February, telling them they should not assume the U.S. presence in the region would last forever.
U.S. President Donald Trump has complained that the bilateral defense treaty in which the U.S. government vows to defend Japan is not reciprocal. In his first term, Trump said Japan should fork over more money to host U.S. troops.
Japan hosts 50,000 U.S. military personnel, squadrons of fighter jets and America’s only forward-deployed aircraft carrier strike group along a 1,900-mile East Asian archipelago that hems in Chinese military power.
This comes as Japan doubles military spending, including money to purchase longer-range missiles. But the operational scope of its forces is limited by its U.S.-authored constitution – adopted after its defeat in World War Two – which renounces the right to start war.
Hegseth and Nakatani agreed to accelerate a plan to jointly produce beyond-visual-range air-to-air AMRAAM missiles and to consider working together on the production of SM-6 surface-to-air defense missiles to support a shortage of munitions, Nakatani said.
The Pentagon chief said he asked Nakatani for greater access to Japan’s strategic southwest islands, along the edge of the contested East China Sea near Taiwan.
In his first official visit to Asia, Hegseth traveled to Japan from the Philippines.
On Saturday, he attended a memorial service on Iwo Jima, the site of fighting between U.S. and Japanese forces 80 years ago.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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