By Mike Dodd, USMC (Ret.)
The announcement came over the last weekend of July. A Sunday is not generally considered a great day to push out significant news, but this was an exception because this news was monumental; the U.S. is creating a new joint force headquarters in Japan, led by a three-star officer reporting to the commander of INDOPACOM.
"This will be the most significant change to U.S. Forces Japan since its creation, and one of the strongest improvements in our military ties with Japan in 70 years," said Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. "Japan's new Joint Operations Command will further allow our forces to work together more closely than ever. And these new operational capabilities and responsibilities will advance our collective deterrence."
While Secretary Austin said the move is based on a “desire to work more closely with Japan and enhance the effectiveness of the existing relationship,” you don’t need to be an expert in international affairs to read between the lines. This is about China and the mounting threat that the Communist nation poses to Taiwan, the Indo-Pacific region and the rest of the world.
The announcement came after an unusually high-level meeting between Secretary Austin, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and their Japanese counterparts, the so-called, “two-plus-two" ministerial meeting in Tokyo. For the first time, the ministers also discussed "extended deterrence", a term used to describe the U.S. commitment to use its nuclear forces to deter attacks on allies.
On paper, the move means the joint forces HQ will have “expanded missions and operational responsibilities.” In practice, it’s putting up a huge billboard in the South China Sea that reads, DON’T TREAD ON ME!
The U.S. relationship with China is complicated. On one hand, China is a massive trade partner. Don’t believe me? Check your Amazon shopping cart (75% of Amazon products come from China). On the other, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which rules China, poses a massive national security risk to the United States. As the State Department pointed out in a 2021 report, “Across much of the Indo-Pacific region, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is using military and economic coercion to bully its neighbors, advance unlawful maritime claims, threaten maritime shipping lanes, and destabilize territory…”
And that’s the real reason why we are heavily leaning into the Indo-Pacific region with partnerships like the Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) trilateral agreement to accelerate submarine building and technology advancement specifically for use in INDOPACOM. It’s why the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) has personnel embedded at INDOPACOM to rapidly field the most advanced technologies available. And it’s why on a sleepy Sunday morning in July, four cabinet-level officials advanced U.S.-Japan relations to a degree we haven’t seen in generations.
At the end of the day, we don’t want a kinetic conflict with China. A big piece of the commitment reached at the two-plus-two meeting is about deterring China. So much of U.S. foreign policy revolves around the simple idea of walking softly but carrying a big stick. Our 26th president, Theodore Roosevelt, came up with that phrase—opting for diplomacy but having the ability to strike if necessary.
We absolutely want China to stop its aggressions, and we want to use every diplomatic tool and economic pressure to convince the CCP that peaceful, and even prosperous coexistence, is the preferred route. However, we also need to remind and warn the Chinese that the entirety of the U.S. military stands at the ready. If walking softly doesn’t work, the United States of America has other options.
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