Over the last month, the PRC has become more aggressive against Japan, especially in the region of Japan’s Senkaku Island group. More provocatively, the PRC may be beginning to coordinate its aggression with Russia in the region.
In mid-June, PRC fighters threatened Japanese fighters in the airspace around the Senkakus, and a PRC deep sea combat ship sailed directly at the islands while a Russian destroyer approached from a different direction as though the one was going to stage a landing while the other provided cover for the maneuver.
This sort of behavior has been going on for the last couple of years in the South China Sea, now it’s resuming in the East China Sea, and it comes at the backdrop of President Barack Obama’s (D) so-called pivot to Asia, which is proving more and more to be all hat and no cattle.
The PRC is not any friend of Japan. Nor is it any friend of ours. These behaviors are purely acquisitive. We need to get quite a bit firmer, in actual deed, not just chit-chat, or our friends and allies be forced to make their own accommodations with their, and our, enemy.