U.S. Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro, whose “strategic guidance” for the U.S. Navy released in early October orients it primarily toward fighting China, told reporters in Tokyo this morning that it is Russia and China, by sailing ships through two narrow straits between Japanese home islands, that are trying to “bully” the nations of the region. “The relationship between China and Russia perhaps recently has evolved in ways where they’re trying to intimidate other nations with their actions that don’t abide by a rules-based international order,” he said, reported the Nikkei Asia Journal. He was referring to the passage of a flotilla of five each Chinese and Russian ships that passed through the Tsugaru Strait between Honshu and Hokkaido on Oct. 18 and their passage through the Osumi Strait in Kagoshima on Oct. 22, thus circumnavigating Japan. “It’s necessary to certainly deter them from bullying other countries and being aggressors in any possible way. ... We want to maintain peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific,” Del Toro said.
Del Toro said that the U.S. would seek to deter such provocations by continuing to remind China and Russia that “good nations” abide by a rules-based international order. “When nations behave aggressively in violation of other countries’ expanded economic zones, for example, all those actions lead to behavior that simply cannot be tolerated.” Apparently, the fact that the waters that the combined flotilla passed through are all international waters was not acknowledged by Del Toro.
The Japanese Defense Ministry, in contrast to del Torro, has followed the progress of the Russian-Chinese flotilla very closely but has also acknowledged that it has stayed in international waters throughout its transit.
