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President Biden told Japan’s new Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in a phone call on Monday that the US would defend the Senkaku Islands in the event of a Chinese attack. The Senkakus, known as the Diayous in China, are a group of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea. They are currently controlled by Japan and are also claimed by China and Taiwan. Via Tokyo Review In a statement on the call, Japan’s Foreign Ministry said that Biden had “reaffirmed the US’s unwavering commitment to the defense of Japan including the application of Article V of the Japan-US Security Treaty...

The Japanese are growing increasingly concerned that China will someday move to occupy — Bejing says ‘reclaim’ — the Senkaku Islands, which China calls the Diaoyu Islands, and thus is arming up for that potential confrontation. The development comes as Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, pushes for a more muscular military in the face of a rising revisionist China. In April 2014, for instance, he lifted a ban on sales of Japanese weapons systems to other countries, though defense firms have not actually sold any systems.

Japan's Coast Guard says 4 Chinese patrol ships temporarily entered Japanese territorial waters near the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea on Friday. Coast Guard officials said the ships breached the territorial waters off Uotsuri Island in Okinawa Prefecture shortly after 10 AM. Foreign Ministry officials lodged a protest with the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo. They said intrusions into Japan's waters are an infringement of its sovereignty, and demanded that the vessels leave the area at once. The 4 ships stayed in Japan's waters for about 90 minutes before moving away. Japan controls the Senkaku Islands. The Japanese government...

The power vacuum created by the Obama administration’s withdrawal from world leadership and resistance to tyranny is not only being filled by the Islamic State and its terrorist affiliates like Boko Haram and state sponsors of terror like soon-to-be nuclear Iran but also by an increasingly belligerent and resurgent China. China’s State Council, the Communist giant’s version of our cabinet, has issued a policy paper declaring that Beijing is facing “a grave and complex array of security threats” that forces it to switch its strategy from defense to offense and that as a result China will increase its “open seas...

Defense: War clouds gather in the East China Sea as China, in one of a series of territorial claims against its neighbors, builds a helicopter base within attack range of Japan's Senkaku Islands, which Beijing claims as its own. When President Obama traveled to China last November, we don't suppose that he discussed with his Chinese counterparts their military buildup in the East and South China Seas and their ambitious territorial claims on island chains such as the Spratly, Paracel and Senkaku. As Bill Gertz reports in the Washington Free Beacon, commercial satellites observed construction of a Chinese military helicopter...

Military Spending: In the face of an expansionist China seeking to dominate the East and South China Seas, Tokyo has set its largest defense budget ever to help defend islands that it rightfully considers Japanese territory. As its military, economy and ambitions grow, so too does China's assertiveness about control of the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea and the larger South China Sea. Chinese military doctrine refers to establishing dominance over what it calls the "first island chain," which encompasses the East China Sea. Beijing has long declared the South China Sea to be its territorial waters and has...

(Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama said that islands at the center of a territorial dispute between Japan and China fall within the scope of the U.S.-Japan security treaty, the Yomiuri Shimbun daily said on Wednesday. Obama, who arrives in Japan later on Wednesday on the first step of a four-nation Asian visit, made the remarks in written replies to questions.

Japan began its first military expansion at the western end of its island chain in more than 40 years on Saturday, breaking ground on a radar station on a tropical island off Taiwan. The move risks angering China, locked in a dispute with Japan over nearby islands which they both claim. Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera, who attended a ceremony on Yonaguni island to mark the start of construction, suggested the military presence could be enlarged to other islands in the seas southwest of Japan's main islands. "This is the first deployment since the U.S. returned Okinawa (1972) and calls...

US President Barack Obama has assured Japan that islands at the centre of its territorial dispute with China are covered by a bilateral defence treaty. In an interview ahead of his Asian tour, Mr Obama said the US would oppose any attempt to undermine Japan's control over the islands.

Happy Easter, Happy Passover. On this Good Friday, we mark the tenth anniversary of Mel's movie, and over the weekend we'll have something with a lighter touch. Caroline Glick, my old colleague from The Jerusalem Post, has a column using a very Steynian word, "The Disappearance of America's Will": The most terrifying aspect of the collapse of US power worldwide is the US's indifferent response to it. In Europe, in Asia, in the Middle East and beyond, America's most dangerous foes are engaging in aggression and brinkmanship unseen in decades.

Against the backdrop of Russia’s takeover of Ukraine’s Crimean region, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Saturday a key message he will deliver to leaders in Tokyo this weekend is that the U.S. is strongly committed to protecting Japan’s security. Hagel said it is understandable for nations to be concerned as they watch the events unfold in Ukraine, where Russian troops are still massed along the border. The issue reverberates in Asia where China, Japan and other nations are locked in bitter territorial disputes, including over disputed islands in the East China Sea. …

"If these negotiations [with Iran] fail, there are two grim alternatives," said Sen. Richard Durbin, "a nuclear Iran, or war, or perhaps both." Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham returned from the Munich security conference saying that even John Kerry agrees that President Obama's Syrian policy has failed. They are urging another look at air strikes. North Korea is warning that should the annual U.S.-South Korean military exercises go forward in March, it could mean war, possibly nuclear war. Philippines President Benigno Aquino III this week compared his country's situation to Czechoslovakia in 1938, and the disputed islets off his...

Enlarge Caption TOKYO: Chinese ships sailed through disputed waters off Tokyo-controlled islands on Sunday as diplomatic tension between Tokyo and Beijing intensifies. Three Chinese coastguard vessels entered the 12-nautical-mile territorial waters off one of the Senkakus, which China claims and calls the Diaoyus, at about 10:00am (0100 GMT), Japan's coastguard said. It came days after a diplomatic battle over Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's visit to a contested war shrine reached the UN Security Council, with China and Japan accusing each other of threatening stability.

National Security: As the media praised the president for sending two B-52s through disputed air space claimed by China, the administration instructed U.S. airlines to get approval as demanded from the Chinese government. After China declared an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea encompassing the Japanese Senkaku Islands, two U.S. B-52s flew through the claimed air space without informing Beijing. It was an appropriate response. Not so appropriate, however, was the Obama administration's instructions to U.S. carriers that they accede to China's demands for prior notification. China announced last week that all aircraft entering the zone...

Unlike the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which faces no existential threat, our Asian ally faces an increasingly belligerent and well-armed China. Yet only one gets the latest weaponry and the question is why. On Jan. 30, a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyer in the East China Sea near the disputed Senkaku Islands just north of Taiwan was "painted" by fire control-radar from two People's Liberation Army warships, believed to be the Chinese frigates Linyungang and Wenzhou. This was just the latest provocation by a China flexing its deep water naval muscle as it asserts itself in the East and South...

Far East: Wars have started over less weighty issues than the sovereignty of islands in the East China Sea called Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China. They are barely rocks above water, but they sit atop valuable resources and are rapidly becoming a flash point as a rising power confronts one whose sun has set. These islands have become involved in a three-way tug of war between China, Taiwan and Japan with each sending fishing boats, even armed vessels, to the area. Private boats from Japan recently journeyed to the Senkakus to plant the Japanese flag one more time....

Defense: Beijing announces another double-digit jump in military spending as the U.S. disarms and sacrifices its defense budget on the altar of entitlement spending. We have many duties; the Chinese have but one target. China announced this week that its military budget this year would rise 11.2% on top of a 12.7% increase last year. This does not bode well as the U.S. defense budget and force levels decline as a result of cuts mandated by our failure to come to grips with runaway spending. As China ramps up military spending, President Obama's budget contains $487 billion in cuts that,...

Defense: China's first flattop begins its sea trials, setting the stage for a fleet that eventually will challenge the U.S. and back up its claims to territory that would make the South China Sea a virtual Chinese lake. Very soon a jet fighter will lift off the deck of a carrier in the Western Pacific. For the very first time its pilot will be Chinese. China sent its first aircraft carrier, the refurbished ex-Soviet Varyag, to sea on Wednesday, virtually unnoticed among the news about the stock market, our credit rating and the debt ceiling debate. It is not yet...

Asian Security: As Korea festers, our friends in Beijing have deployed near Taiwan a powerful missile designed to take out U.S. aircraft carriers as Beijing strengthens its ability to prevent U.S. forces from aiding Taiwan. When North Korea announced the 1953 Armistice was considered null and void and threatened renewed missile tests, the U.S. rushed naval assets to the region, including two destroyers equipped with the Aegis anti-missile defense system. We presumably would do so if things heated up between Beijing and its claimed "lost province," Taiwan. That option became increasingly problematical when news of China's deployment of an anti-ship...

Maritime Grab: Iran isn't the only nuclear threat to worry about. As its military and economy have grown, so too have China's dreams of dominating an island chain centered on Taiwan and including Japan's Senkakus. China's increased belligerence in the region is part of its plan to control the Yellow Sea, the South China Sea and the larger East China Sea. Its military doctrine refers to dominance over the "first island chain," which encompasses the East China Sea. The next step is dominance over what Beijing calls the second island chain extending from Japan to Indonesia. Some analysts have even...