HONOLULU—The military balance is “shifting dramatically and rapidly” in the Indo-Pacific, and “provocative military activities are intensifying” in the western and southern Pacific, Japan’s minister of defense said this week.
“The boundary lines between peacetime and contingency, between military and non military, between truth and fake news, these are no longer clearly visible,” Shinjiro Koizumi said during a Monday keynote speech at the Honolulu Defense Forum. “Right now, we can see tensions that are on the brink of war across the globe.”
Alluding to China without mentioning it by name, Koizumi noted “the routinization of military coercion,” “opaque military buildups,” and “attempts to change the status quo by force” in the East China Sea and South China Sea.
To maintain peace, Japan “will become stronger” by reinforcing its defense capabilities and increasing its defense spending, Koizumi said. Additionally, “we will expand Japan-U.S. bilateral joint presence in Japan’s southwestern region,” work with the United States to co-produce and co-sustain equipment and strengthen the defense industrial base, and “spread a multi-layer network of interconnectivity across the entire region.”
In a keynote speech to begin the forum, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command leader Adm. Sam Paparo called alliances and partnerships “our strategic center of gravity.”
“When we operate with allies and partners, we multiply capability and we raise the threshold for aggression,” he said.
The range of allies and partners was evident throughout the event, with military representatives from several countries in Europe, Asia, and Oceana in the audience and on stage.
Brig. Gen. Roy Anthonthy Derilo, the Philippines’ defense and military attaché to the United States, told reporters his country has a key role to play in maintaining security in the region.
“We are witnessing a significant shift in the global security landscape,” Derilo said. “This situation calls for a strong and coordinated response … The Philippines had to take a hard look at its situation in reflection of the bigger regional situation and their global effects.”
Instead of acting alone, Derilo said, “We have deliberately became a major contributor and co-architect of the kind of coordination and allyship that could cut through this new and emergent security challenges.”
And while reports of Chinese aggression toward the island nation have made headlines across the world in recent years, Derilo said the country has been more careful lately to not go too far, so as to not jeopardize their bigger political objectives.
France, which has several territories and 7,000 troops permanently based in the region, is also committed to security in the Indo-Pacific, and working with the United States and other allies and partners to preserve it, Rear Adm. Guillaume Pinget, commander of French joint forces in French Polynesia, told Defense One. And while Germany has no territory in the Indo-Pacific, the region is very important for economic reasons, said Maj. Gen. Wolfgang Ohl, deputy director general for the German Armed Forces.
About 40 percent of the country’s goods travel through the Indo-Pacific, Ohl said in an interview, and if “something from a security point of view” were to happen—such as a Chinese move to seize Taiwan—“this would have an impact on the European economy.
But, he said, Germany also believes that “it is necessary that those of us who believe in the rules-based international order, and those who share some values, those who are like-minded, stick together.”
Ohl was speaking as Danish officials were en route to the White House to speak to President Trump about Greenland; after the meeting ended with “fundamental disagreements,” Germany, France and other European nations sent troops to Greenland.
On Tuesday, he said the Indo-Pacific has “become more volatile” in the past 10 years. “At the end of the day, it’s not a region we can turn our back to.”
