France Advertises Its Naval Wargame With Japan and the US as “Sending a Message to China”

The Chinese fleet

Last week, a US Navy guided-missile destroyer held anti-submarine warfare drills with a French submarine and a Japanese carrier in the Philippine Sea. The drill was a rare joint exercise with France in the Pacific and is a sign of things to come as both the US and its European allies are looking to counter China in the region.

“Although one of the US’s long-standing allies, it is a rare opportunity for US Navy maritime forces to conduct operations with their French Navy counterparts in the Seventh Fleet area of operations,” The US Navy’s Seventh Fleet said in a statement. The fleet is based out of Japan and operates across the Indo-Pacific region.

Earlier this month, Reuters reported that the US, Japan, and France will hold their first joint land and sea military exercises in May 2021. In comments to Japan’s Sankei newspaper, a French naval leader made it clear that the future exercises are aimed at Beijing.

“We want to demonstrate our presence to the region and send a message about Japan-France cooperation,” French Admiral Pierre Vandier said. “This is a message aimed at China. This is a message about multi-lateral partnerships and the freedom of passage.”

Japan is looking to build stronger partnerships with European nations to counter Beijing. Last week, Japan’s defense minister called on Germany to send a warship to the region. Germany is planning to send a navy ship to the region next year to join Australia for military exercises.

Japan is also boosting cooperation with Australia. In November, Japan and Australia signed a preliminary agreement for a defense pact that would pave the way for an Australian military presence in Japan. If Tokyo’s parliament approves the pact, it will mark the first time in 60 years that Japan allows another foreign military besides the US on its soil.

The US, Japan, Australia, and India form the informal alliance known as the Quad, which some US officials believe should be the basis for a NATO-style alliance in Asia. In November, the four countries held military exercises together for the first time in over a decade.

Source: Antiwar.com

15 Comments
  1. Albert Mesrine says

    ”The US, Japan, Australia, and India form the informal alliance known as the Quad, which some US officials believe should be the basis for a NATO-style alliance in Asia. In November, the four countries held military exercises together for the first time in over a decade.”

    So, the Japanese will be willing to declare war on China in defence of India(and vice versa)?

  2. cechas vodobenikov says

    LGBT navies sending message about sexual repression and fear of superior Chinese culture

  3. Canosin says

    in the Western Pacific and in the South China Sea the fate of NATO incl. Japan will be decided (spoiler alert: China will prevail, the French, British, Japanese and American navies won’t be there anymore in future )

    1. Le Ruse says

      Nahh Canosin, you don’t understand, our beloved President Ma Crotte has Corona Virus & you should know, that the French Corona Virus that the French & other western politicians have acquired, doesn’t affect the lungs, it only attack the few brain cells that it can find in those heads, not many to find IMO …

  4. Charles Homer says

    Here is an article that looks at how recent actions by the United States Missile Defense Agency is creating a great deal of concern in both China and Russia:

    http://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2020/11/americas-missile-defence-agency-is.html

    Unfortunately, in the case of a nuclear exchange, there are no winners, only billions of overcooked human beings.

    1. itchyvet says

      Such tests are really meaningless, and serve only as propoganda fodder. To stand up and make extraordinary claims, as is done in that media release, does not mention that if events were to escalate to the firing of such missiles, there’d be MANY such missiles in the air, and if Russian ones, they’d be so fast, Americans would have no means of combating them at all, as they have readily, more than once, already admitted. So the whole article is nothing but meaningless propaganda.

  5. ke4ram says

    The West is destroying itself with the fake virus. Parading around their old and dilapidated ships trying to intimidate is laughable. Like the battleships in WWII which were useless. The corruption factor is so high in the West that nothing can be built that actually works. The US brags, and rightly so, that they won WWII because they could out produce the Axis. Today the west has to get their toaster ovens from China as it produces very little. It’s unskilled overweight pansies hooked on free crap, social media, freaking out over a virus with a 99.87 recovery rate, while trying to out woke each other,,, fighting a war would be a Laurel and Hardy comedy act. They’d be too busy calling each other racists, homophobes and misogynists.

    1. XRGRSF says

      Dude, why are you saying misogynists like it’s a bad thing ????

    2. Иван says

      I keep hearing about this ‘west’ … What is it? In real wold west is a direction on the compass.

      1. kierandsouza says

        a better term could be ZOG or Zionist owned govts

  6. XRGRSF says

    France takes on China in China’s sea ? Would that come under the category of a tempest in a tea pot or a fart in a bath tub ??

  7. itchyvet says

    Can’t see Japan’s parliament approving this pact, especially considering the ramifications of Australian troops on Japanese soil. Many WW 2 dead veterans would be turning over in their graves at this news, and live ones probably getting closer to their graves at this news. Makes a mockery of everything these people endured during WW 2 and the attacks on Australia from these people. IMHO, this alleged pact is WRONG in so many ways. Can’t understand how our politicians can stoop so low.

    1. didactic1 says

      Japan and Germany won WW2. China, devastated more than any other country by that war, including Russia, in less than a century has put itself in position to control most of Asia, the real purpose of the US and Japan in WW2(no the saintly FDR did not care how many Russian or Jews the Nazis killed. He simply had a few Jews and his beastly wife nearby to get the labor and compassion vote).

  8. David Bedford says

    You can hardly blame China for getting defensive when the free world are making provocative actions like this. I back China and Russia all the way

    1. didactic1 says

      I understand(perhaps read in War on rocks newsletter blog) that China has missiles operational that can sink our very visible, very expensive, very obsolete in 2020 aircraft carriers.

      Of course our stupid congress would then spend trilliions with contractors to replace these dinosaurs with the upgraded models that would be obsolete the day they were christened USS Hillary Clinton or whatever.

      What a joke. US spent billions under FDR and Truman to keep Communists from taking China(a massive accomplishment by Mao and his simple but motivated armies given the Japanese occupiers plus the Nationalist but corrupt forces financed by USA).

      War against China or Russia is unthinkable; Americans can’t deal with COVID; they certainly can’t cope with havoc a hundred or more nuclear warheads plus cyber hell attacks would wreak on transportation, energy supply, water supplies, and “health care’. Your f ing Medicare would buy you nada. No internet! Suicides would soar.

      The Chinese and Russians have endured scarcity unimaginable to Americans. Cut the confrontation crap out.

      I do not care what kind of gvt other large nations have. I am beginning to not care what gvt the USA has.

      The current culture deserves to go extinct anyway, and it will without any help from “Russia” as the mad women on MSNBC term what they perceive without a shred of evidence as the existential threat that keeps them up in their Brooklyn hipster waterbeds.

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