The Japan-Australia Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA) was signed in January 2022 in order to strengthen “deterrence” against China, according to a document released by the Japanese Ministry of Defense, “DEFENSE of JAPAN 2023.” The RAA went into effect on Aug. 13, 2023.
The defense document has an introduction by Japanese Defense Minister Hamada Yasukazu, who writes: “China is rapidly enhancing its military capability qualitatively and quantitatively, including nuclear and missile forces, while continuing and amplifying its unilateral changes to the status quo by force and such attempts in the East China Sea and the South China Sea…. China’s current external stance, military activities, and other activities have become a matter of serious concern for Japan and the international community, and present an unprecedented and the greatest strategic challenge.”
Professor Joseph Siracusa, at Curtin University in Perth, Australia told Sputnik Sunday, Aug. 13: “The agreement looks forward to deepening defense cooperation, intelligence sharing, economic security cooperation, climate and energy security. But it’s not designed to replace the Japanese-American mutual military alliance or the Australian ‘ANZU.S.’ treaty—this sort of supplementary—they call them here ‘minilateralisms'—but it is just bilateral agreements that reinforce the deepening ties….”
“What America is trying to do is get everybody in this part of the world to choose between Beijing and Washington,” said Siracusa. “When it comes to Tokyo and Canberra there’s no discussion. There’s going to be no discussion. If there were a war Monday morning, [they’d] both be in—that’s the end of the discussion….
