Last month, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull traveled to Japan for what has become an annual summit with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, highlighting the sustained growth of strategic relations between Tokyo and Canberra. During the visit, both sides agreed on the importance of working together in the Indo-Pacific and combining their shared interests in the rule of law and the freedom of navigation—a signal toward China, with its increasingly aggressive claims in the South China Sea, and the United States, at a time when the Trump administration has raised unfamiliar questions about America’s position in Asia. In a joint [...]
Over the past five years, no country in Southeast Asia has challenged China’s regional strategic ambitions more assertively than Vietnam. Repeatedly standing up to Beijing’s aims in the South China Sea, Vietnam has attempted to allow foreign oil exploration in disputed maritime areas and, like China, built up the submerged reefs, small islets and banks it occupies and added installations, though on a much smaller scale. It has, at times, tried to work with its neighbors, such as the Philippines under former President Benigno Aquino III, to highlight what it sees as China’s illegal behavior in the South China Sea. [...]
Four accidents involving the U.S. surface Navy in the Pacific in recent months, two of them deadly, have led to warnings of a readiness crisis at sea. These warnings received additional salience when a Navy resupply aircraft crashed in the Philippines Sea on Nov. 22, killing three of the 11 crew and passengers. The spate of deadly incidents has led the Navy to examine how it trains, equips and sustains its force to operate ever more complex missions with a shrinking fleet. The Navy’s leadership in late October released the findings of investigations into the collisions involving the USS John [...]
