Trump fa infuriare il suo alleato chiave, il Giappone, proprio mentre la Cina svela un punto di s…

Trump fa infuriare il suo alleato chiave, il Giappone, proprio mentre la Cina svela un punto di s…

many in the United States are saying that there are urgent reasons to begin focusing on the potential threat posed by China they thought themselves pretty well invulnerable in the past but events in Ukraine and now in Israel have been a wakeup call and a terrifying new Chinese weapon considered a complete gamecher is just about to be launched so why you might ask is the Trump administration apparently pushing key Indo-Pacific allies like Japan into China’s arms exactly at the point when they can least afford it well let’s discuss having left the G7 meeting early Trump will soon be back in a room with the leaders of countries formerly known as allies of the United States for the coming NATO summit during the Joe Biden era there was work being undertaken to reorientate NATO’s focus alongside American zone onto the growing military threat of China and potential action in the South China Sea vladimir Putin invading Ukraine slightly distracted attention from that idea but in the 2024 summit Communique v Indo-Pacific was still referenced as an important focus for the organization but in any case in the Trump era the last thing he apparently wants is those dreary Europeans clogging up the space so it is reported that for this NATO summit the current draft to be released next week does not mention the region stick to your own area is the message instead the US will need to focus on regional partners and yet the Trump administration is continuing its tradition to date of acting as though it really doesn’t need anybody in the entire world there is no ally whose support is considered so useful that they can’t go out of their way to alienate them case in point yesterday Japan announced that it was scrapping the annual security meeting with the United States apparently due to an angry response to the US pressing it to spend yet more money on defense the US had already asked Japan to boost defense spending to 3% but then suddenly as seems to be the pattern the administration just turned on a dime and demanded that be raised to 3.5% as though that would be the easiest thing in the world to do overnight us Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hgsef had been due to meet their counterparts from Japan on July the 1st no longer christopher Johnston of the Asia Group told the Financial Times that normally these annual summits with the US are seen as high priority because they highlight the US Japan alliance in the face of growing Chinese strength so it says a lot he said that they have put them off he said Tokyo appeared to have concluded that the political risk of going ahead outweighed the potential gain he added that it showed significant unease in Tokyo about the outlook for the bilateral relationship indeed it was only a couple of weeks earlier that the former deputy head of national security Noukatsu Kenshara was telling the New York Times that the country’s buildup of forces was largely there to reassure the US to show China sure but to reassure the US we want to be sure the US has our backs and enhancing our conventional military capabilities is the way to do that we want to show President Trump that we are a valuable and essential ally well that was two weeks ago now they seem to be rapidly coming to the conclusion that all of that is pulses before swine so why is the US behaving like this because it thinks it can one defense official told DFT “The US is now playing hard ball with allies in the Asia-Pacific there are already signs that this wasn’t going down well when Elbridge Colby in his confirmation hearing for his posters number three in the Pentagon called on Japan to increase its defense spending Prime Minister Shigaru Ishiba said that Japan would decide its own budget thank you very much zack Cooper of the American Enterprise Institute said this the Trump administration’s inconsistent and unrealistic message on its expectations for allied defense spending levels in Asia risks backfiring and undermining those officials and experts who are most supportive of the United States in some key foreign capitals the fact that such people still exist might be the most surprising revelation in that comment this comes on top of course of the tension over trade talks sparked by Trump’s unilateral imposition of tariffs on Japan and not to mention the rest of the world whereas the Trump team had been expecting that their act of extortion would have a string of world leaders begging them for a deal the reported US arrogance in presuming that they had leverage to force highly unequal deals on the other countries seems to be backfiring as well and certainly with countries like Japan where saving face is a big cultural priority and that is used to shrewd and logical negotiation scenarios not just a particularly crass form of bullying this has had Trump complaining about Japan’s trade negotiators being too tough not offering what he believes to be a fair deal bearing in mind this is something of a distortion of what you would previously consider a fair deal because it’s based on Trump’s distinctive and nonfactual premise that having a trade deficit with a country somehow means that country is ripping you off in the real world Japan like much of the rest of the world is trying to work through what it needs to do to protect itself from the United States both in terms of its sudden unreliability as a security partner plus its tariffs in theory all of Japan’s output will be hit by a 24% so-called reciprocal tariff from July the 9th assuming that Trump actually does something on that date other than simply extend the deadline backwards last week Tokyo approved a $6.3 billion spending package to support businesses that will be impacted by Trump’s tariffs brought in you know on the whims of a single man and this is happening all over the world on the security side Japan as mentioned is engaged on a military buildup but underpinning the current activity according to Saturo Mori of KO University in Tokyo is the fear that unpredictable and self-referential deal maker Trump could undercut them without a second’s notice for example he might do a strategic deal with China Xiinping to seed Japan to his sphere of influence he said this “We need to convince Mr trump and the MAGA camp that Japan is too good to give away it’s in the US interest not to let Japan fall into China’s sphere well that would be an uphill battle I would suggest trump recently questioned the fairness of the US Japan security treaty because of course he did we have to protect them he complained but they don’t have to protect us and by the way they make a fortune with us economically who makes these deals one question have you got a big airplane with lots of gold stuff on it that you could give Trump japan is working out its alternative options because while it has been caught out by the phenomenon of Trump it isn’t stupid it has a fighter plane developed recently with Britain and Italy and has strengthened defense relations with Australia who may also be looking for more serious partners still if the US cancels the Orcus project that was supposed to give them nuclearpowered submarines tokyo sent a warship to the Philippines last month to join a multinational military exercise for the first time this is no longer just stepping up in order to impress Trump it is stepping up because Trump has become part of the problem however Japan won’t force that realization into the public sphere until it feels like it has no choice so for now we pretend at least no more than it already has done by cancelling the summit this is really the time you would have expected the US to seek all the help it could get in the face of China for example it’s reported that US defense officials have had a shock awakening that has made them realize they are a great deal more exposed than they had previously thought two things from observing war in action one the way Ukraine transported drones over time to locations within Russia where they could suddenly release them as a strike against Putin’s air bases america realized that its bases on home territory were incredibly vulnerable to that approach because it had never crossed their mind as a possibility and then secondly and most recently the Israeli strike against Iran and particularly the way that it quickly became known that Israel security services had been infiltrating Iran for years and had created a number of undercover locations where drones had been stockpiled waiting for the time when they could strike as Gabriel Nurona president of Polaris National Security told Fox News “After Ukraine and Israel success with deep penetration drone strikes the concern was clear america’s enemies are studying that playbook possibly preparing to use it on US soil.” And one red flag China has been busy buying up land some of which is near US military bases for years then there’s that new weapon I mentioned at the start the Zutya SS UAV it’s an enormous unmanned aerial drone carrier it flies high at 50,000 ft and its payload of more than 100 attack drones which are designed to strike simultaneously using a swarm pattern called a hive attack led some to claim that it would rewrite the rules of war because that swarm could overwhelm enemy defenses locate targets carry out precision strikes one retired general told as.com “This is a tool that could incapacitate a country within minutes.” 10 of these planes could disperse a thousand autonomous drones towards power grids an energy infrastructure or even gas stations most countries in the world wouldn’t be able to withstand that kind of scenario well it’s expected to be taking its maiden flight anytime around now but yeah America can afford to alienate its allies make them poorer by slapping tariffs on them while at the same time suggesting maybe they should spend a lot more on defense and you know just generally behaving like a toddler plane with a loaded gun china I should point out does not have its military run by a Fox television host and while America is busy playing amateurishly with the idea of authoritarianism China mastered that art long ago so while America has gone by the rest of the world has to work out pretty quickly how it responds to the rapidly changing world situation i’ll tell you this much it doesn’t involve sitting back and hoping that MAGA doesn’t win the next US presidential election

The Trump Administration’s trademark aggression has just led to key regional ally Japan cancelling an annual security summit. Between America’s sudden unreliable ally status, and its assault on Japan’s economy via tariffs, it is now quickly re-evaluating its options. Just as all that is happening, the US has woken up with a start to not one, but two ways they might be directly threatened by China that they hadn’t seen coming. Not exactly the best time to be losing allies left, right and centre you might think.

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The ‘Faultlines’ channel by Mallen Baker covers news, current affairs, science and politics. A rational, reasoned and non-partisan approach to some of the difficult issues of our time, looking for how we can best survive and thrive in the modern world.

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