Japan’s plan –

Seas increasingly agitated by joint exercises. The Philippines, Japan, the United States and Australia have planned naval and air exercises for today, Sunday 7 April, in response to the growing determination shown by China in the South China Sea (an area over which Beijing claims less questionable sovereignty). Trying to increase deterrence once morest Beijing is the common objective of Tokyo and Manila, which also seem very close to making a pact to guarantee greater security. “Mutual access agreement” is the formula used to define the agreement that would allow the militaries of the two countries to train and conduct exercises in the territories of both.

Jose Manuel Romualdez, Philippine ambassador to the United States, spoke of a rotational troop deployment. “This is something we have discussed in the past and we will continue to consider it once more as part of our cooperation between our countries,” he explained. When might this decision be reached? According to what was communicated by Romualdez, following the trilateral summit between Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., which will be held on April 12 in Washington. As stated in an article in the Financial Times, an assistant press secretary of the Japanese ministry assured that “the implementation of this agreement will improve the interoperability of troops (between the two countries), but it is not true that we are discussing deploying the Self-Defense Forces in the Philippines”.