The French Navy-led “La Perouse” multinational joint exercise, this year, in addition to the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force, the United States and the Australian Navy to participate, India will also participate for the first time. Japanese scholars believe that the future may develop into the creation of the Asian version of NATO to counteract the Chinese Communist Party.
Japan’s Fuji Evening News reported today that the U.S.-Japan-Australia-India Quadripartite Security Dialogue (Quad) held its first summit on March 12, impressing the international community with its gesture of cooperation against China’s expanding military hegemony. This joint military exercise is not only for the four countries, but also for the United Kingdom and Germany, which are scheduled to send ships to the Indo-Pacific region in the future, and may accelerate the establishment of a collective security system.
The “La Perouse” (La Perouse) exercise was held for the first time in 2019, with the fleets of Japan, the United States, Australia and France participating in the year, and this year is scheduled to be held in the Bay of Bengal from April 5 to 7.
The French Embassy in India announced on March 31 that India will participate in the exercise for the first time this year, and stressed that the joint exercise of five countries will be an opportunity to promote “free and open Indo-Pacific” cooperation.
Schematic diagram.
France has a dependency in the South Pacific, the island of New Caledonia, and overseas territories in the Indian Ocean. France, like Japan, the United States, Australia and India, is concerned about China’s access to the sea, and in February this year, French naval patrol ships conducted joint training with the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force and the U.S. Navy in the East China Sea, west of Kyushu, Japan.
The joint military exercise can be seen as an attempt to expand the collective security system radially with Quad as the core, which is in line with the Biden administration’s attitude of “attaching importance to allies,” said Kawakami Takashi, director of the Institute of Overseas Studies at Takushoku University. As the protection of free navigation in the Indo-Pacific is directly related to European interests, not only France, but also the UK and Germany are scheduled to send ships to the Indo-Pacific region, which may develop into the creation of an “Asian version of NATO” to counter China in the future, the key is to create a strong structure of what extent.
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