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CNN
16-07-2025
- Politics
- CNN
China, North Korea and Russia represent biggest security challenge since World War II, Japan says
Japan is facing its most severe security environment since World War II as three potential adversaries in East Asia – China, Russia and North Korea – ramp up military activities in the region, the country's defense minister said Tuesday. 'The existing order of world peace is being seriously challenged, and Japan finds itself in the most severe and complex security environment of the post-war era,' Defense Minister Gen Nakatani said in an introduction to the ministry's annual defense white paper. China's military activities present 'an unprecedented and the greatest strategic challenge' to Japan, the report said. Beijing is 'rapidly enhancing its military capability in a qualitative and quantitative manner' while 'intensifying' activities around the region, Nakatani said, specifically mentioning the Senkaku Islands, a chain in the East China Sea that Tokyo controls but which is also claimed by Beijing, which calls them the Diaoyus. The 34-page document gives a dire outlook on the future of the region, especially on the rivalry between China and the United States, Tokyo's most important ally. 'The global balance of power is shifting dramatically and competition among states continues. In particular, the inter-state competition between the United States and China is likely to intensify even further in future,' the white paper says. The paper says escalating Chinese military activity around the democratically controlled island of Taiwan poses a threat. 'China seeks to create a fait accompli where the People's Liberation Army (PLA) is operating, and improve its actual combat capabilities,' it says. It cites a similar situation in the South China Sea and says PLA actions there are a legitimate Japanese concern because Tokyo has major sea lanes running through the waterway. Jiang Bin, a spokesperson for China's Defense Ministry, said Wednesday that Japan was 'hyping up the 'China threat,' and grossly interfering in China's internal affairs.' 'The Japanese side is fabricating false narratives to find excuses for loosening its military constraints,' Jiang said, referring to Japan's strict post-war constitution, which limits its military forces to self-defense only. And Japan's invocation of World War II is controversial in a region where fissures over Tokyo's devastating militarism during the period sour relations with many of its neighbors to this day. 'We urge the Japanese side to deeply learn from history, cease slandering and accusing China,' Jiang said. But the Japanese paper didn't only focus on Beijing's unilateral actions. As part of its expanded activities, the PLA is increasing cooperation with Russian armed forces, including joint bomber flights and naval patrols near Japan, the paper says. 'These repeated joint activities are clearly intended for demonstration of force against Japan,' it says. The report says that in the past fiscal year Japanese fighter jets scrambled 704 times, including 464 times in response to approaching Chinese aircraft and 237 times for Russian aircraft, a rate of almost two scrambles a day. Russia's three-and-a-half-year-old invasion of Ukraine, along with the buildup in the Russian military that has come with it, is a worry for Japan, especially because of its status as a key US ally, the report says. 'The security of Europe and the Indo-Pacific is inseparable,' it says, and warns that a Ukraine-like war is possible in the region – without specifically mentioning where that might occur. The report says some of Russia's newest military hardware has been deployed to the Pacific. Moscow has added troops, missiles and warplanes to islands north of Japan, which the Soviet Union took toward the end of World War II, but which Japan says are sovereign Japanese territory illegally occupied now by Russia. North Korea, meanwhile, is further developing nuclear weapons and the ballistic missiles to deliver them, the report says. Pyongyang's ballistic missiles, believed to be capable of carrying nuclear warheads, can cover the entirety of the Japanese archipelago, it says. 'North Korea's military activities are posing an even more grave and imminent threat to Japan's security than ever before,' the paper says. The Japanese paper echoed many of the concerns the head of the US military's Indo-Pacific Command, Adm. Samuel Paparo, voiced in a posture paper in April. 'China continues to pursue unprecedented military modernization and increasingly aggressive behavior that threatens the U.S. homeland, our allies, and our partners,' Paparo said. The US commander also said the deepening cooperation between China and Russia as well as North Korea presents an increasing threat in the Pacific. 'Together, these countries' growing ties create a complex, interconnected challenge to U.S. national security and regional stability,' Paparo said. CNN's Joyce Jiang contributed to this report.
CNN
16-07-2025
- Politics
- CNN
China, North Korea and Russia represent biggest security challenge since World War II, Japan says
Japan is facing its most severe security environment since World War II as three potential adversaries in East Asia – China, Russia and North Korea – ramp up military activities in the region, the country's defense minister said Tuesday. 'The existing order of world peace is being seriously challenged, and Japan finds itself in the most severe and complex security environment of the post-war era,' Defense Minister Gen Nakatani said in an introduction to the ministry's annual defense white paper. China's military activities present 'an unprecedented and the greatest strategic challenge' to Japan, the report said. Beijing is 'rapidly enhancing its military capability in a qualitative and quantitative manner' while 'intensifying' activities around the region, Nakatani said, specifically mentioning the Senkaku Islands, a chain in the East China Sea that Tokyo controls but which is also claimed by Beijing, which calls them the Diaoyus. The 34-page document gives a dire outlook on the future of the region, especially on the rivalry between China and the United States, Tokyo's most important ally. 'The global balance of power is shifting dramatically and competition among states continues. In particular, the inter-state competition between the United States and China is likely to intensify even further in future,' the white paper says. The paper says escalating Chinese military activity around the democratically controlled island of Taiwan poses a threat. 'China seeks to create a fait accompli where the People's Liberation Army (PLA) is operating, and improve its actual combat capabilities,' it says. It cites a similar situation in the South China Sea and says PLA actions there are a legitimate Japanese concern because Tokyo has major sea lanes running through the waterway. Jiang Bin, a spokesperson for China's Defense Ministry, said Wednesday that Japan was 'hyping up the 'China threat,' and grossly interfering in China's internal affairs.' 'The Japanese side is fabricating false narratives to find excuses for loosening its military constraints,' Jiang said, referring to Japan's strict post-war constitution, which limits its military forces to self-defense only. And Japan's invocation of World War II is controversial in a region where fissures over Tokyo's devastating militarism during the period sour relations with many of its neighbors to this day. 'We urge the Japanese side to deeply learn from history, cease slandering and accusing China,' Jiang said. But the Japanese paper didn't only focus on Beijing's unilateral actions. As part of its expanded activities, the PLA is increasing cooperation with Russian armed forces, including joint bomber flights and naval patrols near Japan, the paper says. 'These repeated joint activities are clearly intended for demonstration of force against Japan,' it says. The report says that in the past fiscal year Japanese fighter jets scrambled 704 times, including 464 times in response to approaching Chinese aircraft and 237 times for Russian aircraft, a rate of almost two scrambles a day. Russia's three-and-a-half-year-old invasion of Ukraine, along with the buildup in the Russian military that has come with it, is a worry for Japan, especially because of its status as a key US ally, the report says. 'The security of Europe and the Indo-Pacific is inseparable,' it says, and warns that a Ukraine-like war is possible in the region – without specifically mentioning where that might occur. The report says some of Russia's newest military hardware has been deployed to the Pacific. Moscow has added troops, missiles and warplanes to islands north of Japan, which the Soviet Union took toward the end of World War II, but which Japan says are sovereign Japanese territory illegally occupied now by Russia. North Korea, meanwhile, is further developing nuclear weapons and the ballistic missiles to deliver them, the report says. Pyongyang's ballistic missiles, believed to be capable of carrying nuclear warheads, can cover the entirety of the Japanese archipelago, it says. 'North Korea's military activities are posing an even more grave and imminent threat to Japan's security than ever before,' the paper says. The Japanese paper echoed many of the concerns the head of the US military's Indo-Pacific Command, Adm. Samuel Paparo, voiced in a posture paper in April. 'China continues to pursue unprecedented military modernization and increasingly aggressive behavior that threatens the U.S. homeland, our allies, and our partners,' Paparo said. The US commander also said the deepening cooperation between China and Russia as well as North Korea presents an increasing threat in the Pacific. 'Together, these countries' growing ties create a complex, interconnected challenge to U.S. national security and regional stability,' Paparo said. CNN's Joyce Jiang contributed to this report.
News.com.au
10-07-2025
- Business
- News.com.au
Donald Trump's review into AUKUS deal could send price of submarines soaring with a worrying new China clause
Australia could face demands for a public declaration or private guarantee that US-made nuclear submarines would be used in concert with the United States in any future conflict with China. As the Prime Minister prepares for a six-day tour of China on Saturday there are fresh reports that the Trump administration could demand new conditions for providing nuclear submarines to Australia including even more cash. It follows the Prime Minister's speech over the weekend affirming support for the US alliance but cautioning that Australia will always pursue its own interests first. The move comes as both Australia and the UK face pressure from the White House to lift military spending, demands that the Albanese government has resisted to date. But Australia is now facing the prospect of a Trump administration review demanding it pay more for submarines under the $368 billion AUKUS pact and a guarantee the boats support the US in a conflict over Taiwan. The Sydney Morning Herald has reported that big changes are expected as a result of the US review into the deal brokered by former leaders Joe Biden, Scott Morrison and Boris Johnson. 'Pissing everyone off' The man US President Donald Trump deputised to call an investigation into Australia's nuclear submarine deal is also 'pissing everyone off', according to a fresh report in the United States. The Pentagon's Deputy Under Secretary of Defence for Policy, Elbridge Colby is one of the biggest AUKUS sceptics who has raised concerns about the $363 billion deal. The US has launched a review of its multi-billion dollar submarine deal with the UK and Australia, insisting the security pact must fit its 'America First' agenda. But amid predictions that the US will drive a tougher bargain and demand even more cash from Australia for the submarine deal, reports have surfaced over divisions in the Trump administration. The Politico website has reported that he surprised top officials at the State Department and the National Security Council in June when he decided to review America's submarine pact with Australia and the U.K. 'He is pissing off just about everyone I know inside the administration,' said one person familiar with the situation. 'They all view him as the guy who's going to make the US do less in the world in general.' 'He has basically decided that he's going to be the intellectual driving force behind a kind of neo-isolationism that believes that the United States should act more alone, that allies and friends are kind of encumbering.' Politico also reported that when the British defense team came to the Pentagon in June and spoke about the U.K.'s decision to send an aircraft carrier to Asia on a routine deployment, Colby interjected. 'He basically asked them, 'Is it too late to call it back?'' said the person familiar with Trump administration dynamics. 'Because we don't want you there.' 'He was basically saying, 'You have no business being in the Indo-Pacific,'' a British source told Politico. Crucial juncture in US-Aus diplomacy Opposition finance spokesman James Paterson warned divisions in the US showed diplomacy was at a crucial juncture. 'We are entitled to try and influence that process and any country with any diplomatic heft or ability to move quickly would be all over this and I've got no sense at all that's happening from the Albanese government,' he told Sky News. 'It is now 247 days since President Trump was elected and Prime Minister Albanese is one of the only world leaders not to have a face-to-face meeting with him, not to have sat down to him, not to even make an attempt to go to Washington DC to meet with the President and that is alarming. 'Now we've also got a problem where there are credible media reports that speculate that our US Ambassador Kevin Rudd is not able to get a meeting in the White House. Now if that is true then that is making this even harder task for us. 'So we should be able to save AUKUS but we are not going to save AUKUS if we just let this thing on cruise, if we don't take charge of it, if the Prime Minister doesn't personally take charge of it, get over to Washington DC and persuade the President in person of the merits of this deal and the things that America gains from this deal which are very significant.' Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young was critical of the 'dud deal' during an interview after news of the AUKUS complications broke on Thursday.. 'The US is already starting to put up the flagpole that Australians, Australian taxpayers are going to have to pay more for it,' Ms Hanson-Young told Sky News Australia. 'We've already coughed up the money.
News.com.au
06-07-2025
- Business
- News.com.au
China ties should not come at ‘expense of the US', Coalition heavyweight warns
A Coalition heavyweight has called on Anthony Albanese to prioritise the US alliance, warning that countering China without Washington's backing would cost Australian 'hundreds of billions'. It comes ahead of the Prime Minister's state visit to China next week. Mr Albanese will meet Xi Jinping for a fourth time since 2022. Meanwhile, a firm date for a face-to-face with Donald Trump is yet to be set. Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce said on Monday Mr Albanese was playing a 'very dangerous' game. 'The Prime Minister must have a great hand of cards because he has really got the chips on the table on this one,' the former deputy prime minister told Seven's Sunrise. 'You need to understand the United States is the cornerstone of our defence … it is not going well. 'This is the fourth meeting he has had with the leader of China but that is a totalitarian regime.' Mr Joyce said he was 'truly concerned' that Mr Albanese has not met the US President, pointing to the Trump administration's snap review of AUKUS. China is Australia's biggest trading partner, with two-way trade worth $325bn in 2023-24. The Albanese government has negotiated the removal of some $20bn in residual trade barriers from the Australia-China trade war waged under the former Coalition government. At the same time, it has pumped billions into countering Beijing's influence in the Pacific and committed tens of billions to defence spending. Asked if it was not good for Australia to 'make friends with China', Mr Joyce said it should 'but not at the expense of the US'. 'You need to understand that we live in the realm of the Western Pacific,' he said. 'If things go pear-shaped, we are in trouble – real trouble. 'If we … have a defence policy that doesn't include the United States, we need to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on defence. 'We are way, way behind where we need to be.'
News.com.au
06-07-2025
- Politics
- News.com.au
Albanese declares Australia ‘not shackled to the past' in pointed speech on US alliance
Anthony Albanese has hinted at a growing disconnect with the United States in a landmark speech observers say will annoy the Trump administration at a critical time in the strategic partnership. The Prime Minister delivered a keynote speech in Sydney on Saturday night paying homage John Curtin on the 80th anniversary of the former Labor PM's death, pointedly declaring that Australia would pursue its interests as a 'sovereign nation' and not be 'shackled to the past'. 'The great creative tension of Australian Labor is that while we love our history, we are not hostages to it,' Mr Albanese told the audience at the John Curtin Research Centre. 'We are links in a long chain — but we are not shackled to our past. We draw from it, we build on it and we learn from it.' Mr Albanese described Mr Curtin as not just the leader who founded Australia's long-held alliance with the US, but one who stood up against allied super powers, in pointed comments amid concerns over Australia's relationship with America. 'Undoubtedly, Albanese is sending a message to Washington and the Trump administration that Australia is ultimately in control of its own destiny,' Professor James Curran of University of Sydney told 9News. 'Here we are talking about the opportunity to run a more independent course from Washington. I'd say this will ruffle feathers of Uncle Sam.' Prof Curran previously noted it was 'easily the most significant' speech Mr Albanese had delivered in office. The Australian 's foreign editor Greg Sheridan wrote in a Sunday op-ed that Mr Albanese had 'achieved something astonishing for an Australian Prime Minister, only ever accomplished once before'. 'He now knows, relates to and benefits from the leadership of the People's Republic of China much better than he knows the leadership of the United States of America,' he wrote. 'The Prime Minister is about to embark on an extended trip to China, where he will have his fourth meeting with President Xi Jinping. 'By contrast, he has never met Donald Trump, who served as president for four years from 2016 and who was elected president again more than eight months ago. 'Albanese finds political comfort in Beijing and apparently political terror in Washington.' In his speech, the PM noted Mr Curtin's decision to stand up to the US and the United Kingdom, then led by Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, in his decision not to send Australian troops to then Burma, now Myanmar, in what would have been days before it fell to the Japanese. 'Hundreds if not thousands of Australians would have been killed, or taken prisoner,' Mr Albanese said. 'It would have been a disaster every bit as crushing to national morale as the fall of Singapore.' Mr Curtin's leadership from 1941 to 1945 lasted during the Pacific War and the bombing of Darwin and Broome by the Japanese. He died while in office, before peace was declared. 'John Curtin is rightly honoured as the founder of Australia's alliance with the United States,' Mr Albanese said. 'A pillar of our foreign policy. Our most important defence and security partnership. And a relationship that commands bipartisan support, respect and affection in both our nations.' But Mr Albanese said the Australian-US alliance 'ought to be remembered as a product of Curtin's leadership in defence and foreign policy, not the extent of it'. Instead, Mr Curtin had the 'confidence and determination to think and act for ourselves'. 'Because Curtin's famous statement that Australia 'looked to America' was much more than the idea of trading one strategic guarantor for another,' he said. 'Or swapping an alliance with the old world for one with the new. It was a recognition that Australia's fate would be decided in our region. It followed the decision Curtin had made in 1941 that Australia would issue its own declaration of war with Japan. Speaking for ourselves, as a sovereign nation.' Mr Albanese added 'we remember Curtin not just because he looked to America … we honour him because he spoke for Australia'. 'For Australia and for Labor, that independence has never meant isolationism,' he said. 'Choosing our own way, doesn't mean going it alone.' Mr Albanese highlighted the 'rights and the role of middle powers and smaller nations' and spoke of the importance of collective responsibility in the Indo-Pacific, despite fears of China's increasing aggression in the area. Ensuring that the 'sovereignty of every nation is respected and the dignity of every individual is upheld' was another priority, he said. The PM said his government would continue to rebuild Australia 'standing as a leader and partner in the Pacific', deepen economic engagement in South East Asia, while 'patiently and deliberately working to stabilise our relationship with China'. Despite touting initiatives to enhance co-operation with Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and India, Mr Albanese made no mention of the AUKUS agreement. His remarks come as the Albanese government is under pressure by the Trump administration to amp up defence spending to 3.5 per cent, comes amid concerns of fragile global stability and claims from US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth that China would imminently invade Taiwan. Mr Albanese has frequently rejected US pressure to amp up defence spending, stating that investment will be calculated according to Australia's needs. Labor is also under pressure to negotiate a tariff carveout, however on Friday he said he believed the levy applied to non steel and aluminium imports would remain at 10 per cent after President Trump's July 9 deadline. Hudson Institute senior fellow John Lee told The Australian that Mr Albanese 'calling for a more independent foreign policy would be understandable and credible if we are prepared to spend more to meet our defence needs rather than rely as much on American capacity, technology and presence as we currently do'. 'It does not appear that the Albanese government is prepared to do that,' Dr Lee said. 'Therefore, if Albanese is really serious about a strategic divergence away from the US, this will leave Australia more isolated and vulnerable.' Dr Lee added that if Mr Albanese's speech was intended more for domestic political consumption it would 'nevertheless add further weight to the suspicion in the White House that the Albanese government is not taking its own agreed strategic assessments about a worsening environment seriously'. The Pentagon is currently undertaking a snap 30-day review of AUKUS, the trilateral security partnership between the US, UK and Australia announced in September 2021. Dr Lee said Mr Albanese's speech would be 'likely to affect how the White House responds to the findings of the AUKUS review' and the White House response would be more 'influenced by assessments of Australian intent and willingness to pull its weight'. 'Bear in mind that Australia has become an outlier,' he said. 'The NATO countries (with the exception of Spain), and the Asian allies have all increased spending on defence and put more emphasis on the importance of their alliance with the US.'
