Defense chiefs from the US, Australia, Japan and the Philippines on Thursday vowed to deepen their cooperation as they gathered in Hawaii for their second-ever joint meeting amid concerns about China’s operations in the South China Sea.
The meeting came after the four countries last month held their first joint naval exercises in the South China Sea.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin at a news conference after their discussion told reporters that the drills strengthened the nations’ ability to work together, build bonds among their forces and underscore their shared commitment to international law in the waterway.
Photo: AP
Australian Minister for Defense Richard Marles said the defense chiefs talked about increasing the tempo of their defense exercises.
“Today, the meetings that we have held represent a very significant message to the region and to the world about four democracies which are committed to the global rules-based order,” Marles said.
Austin hosted the defense chiefs at the US military’s regional headquarters, US Indo-Pacific Command at Camp H. M. Smith in the hills above Pearl Harbor. Earlier in the day, Austin had separate bilateral meetings with Australia and Japan followed by a trilateral meeting with Australia and Japan.
Defense chiefs from the four nations held their first meeting in Singapore last year.
Washington has decades-old defense treaties with all three nations.
The US lays no claims to the South China Sea, but has deployed navy ships and fighter jets in what it calls freedom of navigation operations that have challenged China’s claims to virtually the entire waterway. The US says freedom of navigation and overflight in the waters is in its national interest.
Aside from China and the Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei also have overlapping claims in the resource-rich sea.
Beijing has refused to recognize a 2016 international arbitration ruling that invalidated its expansive claims on historical grounds.
Skirmishes between Beijing and Manila in particular have flared since last year. Earlier this week, China’s coast guard ships fired water cannons at two Philippine patrol vessels off of Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島), damaging them.
The repeated confrontations have sparked fears of a larger conflict that could put China and the US on a collision course. The US has repeatedly said that it is obligated to defend the Philippines — its oldest treaty ally in Asia — if its forces, ships or aircraft come under an armed attack, including in the South China Sea.
US President Joe Biden’s administration has said it aims to build what it calls a “latticework” of alliances in the Indo-Pacific even as the US grapples with the Israel-Hamas war and Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
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