British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida signed a "reciprocal access agreement" in London on Wednesday (January 11th) bringing their armies closer together, in a context of growing Chinese ambitions in Asia-Pacific.

This treaty, for which negotiations began in 2021, is both a sign of the United Kingdom's growing interest in Asia-Pacific and of Japan's efforts to strengthen its alliances in the face of China, in particular, qualified by the Japanese government of "unprecedented strategic challenge" for its security.

This agreement will seal "the United Kingdom's commitment to security in the Indo-Pacific", Downing Street said in a statement.

Thanks to this treaty, the most important in terms of defense between the two countries since the Anglo-Japanese alliance of 1902 against Russia, the United Kingdom will become the first European country to have such an agreement with Japan.

The latter allows the armies of each country to deploy on the territory of the other, and more generally establishes a legal framework for their cooperation.

"This is a fairly significant step forward for both countries," said Euan Graham, a researcher at the International Institute for Strategic Studies interviewed by AFP on Wednesday.

Because the absence of such an agreement has so far restricted their bilateral cooperation in defense matters, and each operation was "more complicated at the diplomatic level" by involving a green light from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, explained Euan Graham.

The treaty should allow the armed forces of the two countries to "plan and implement more complex and larger-scale military exercises and deployments", according to Downing Street.

"The Asia-Pacific region is a hotbed of peaceful development, not an arena for geopolitical games," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said.

"Defence cooperation should promote the improvement of mutual understanding, trust and cooperation between countries", he continued, and not "create imaginary enemies, let alone introduce the old bloc confrontation mentality in the region".       

G7 tour

China and Japan, the world's second and third largest economies respectively, are important trading partners, but their relationship has deteriorated considerably in recent years.

Japan regularly complains about Chinese maritime activity around the Senkaku Islands, administered by Tokyo but which Beijing claims as Diaoyu.

Japan, which signed a similar deal with Australia last January, is undergoing a major overhaul of its defense policy to counter Chinese military power.

In December, it approved a new "national security strategy" that plans to double its annual defense budget from around 1% of its GDP to 2% by 2027.

This is a major turning point for the country, whose pacifist Constitution, adopted the day after its defeat at the end of the Second World War, forbids it in principle to equip itself with a real army.

The head of the British government, who is showing an increasingly firm posture towards China, insisted on the need to cooperate in the face of the "unprecedented global challenges of our time".

The United Kingdom and Japan are also associated with Italy to develop a new generation combat aircraft by 2035.

On tour in several G7 countries since Monday, Fumio Kishida first went to Paris and Rome.

After London on Wednesday, he is expected in Ottawa, the capital of Canada, on Thursday, before meeting US President Joe Biden on Friday in Washington.

In France, Fumio Kishida and President Emmanuel Macron expressed their desire to strengthen the partnership between their countries in security matters in the Asia-Pacific region, against "unilateral attempts to change the status quo by force", a phrase used by Fumio Kishida in reference to China.

With AFP

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