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Faced with the military rise of China, Japan and Australia sign a historic security agreement

Australia and Japan on Saturday signed a historic security pact aimed at countering China’s military rise by exchanging more sensitive information and strengthening military cooperation.

Prime ministers Fumio Kishida and Anthony Albanese signed the deal in Perth, Western Australia, renewing an agreement reached 15 years ago when terrorism and gun proliferation were major concerns.

The Australian Prime Minister praised the “Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation” as the agreement was called, noting that this historic text “sends a strong signal to the region about our strategic alliance”.

Australian officials claimed that in under the agreement, the two countries agreed that military forces would conduct joint exercises in northern Australia. They explained that the agreement “will broaden and improve cooperation in defense matters and intelligence sharing “.

Without mentioning China or North Korea by name, Kishida said the deal was in response to an “increasingly harsh strategic environment”.

Neither Australia nor Japan have extensive foreign intelligence networks and services equivalent to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), British or Russian intelligence services.

But expert Bryce Wakefield believes Australia and Japan have tremendous capabilities in areas of geospatial signal and intelligence, such as electronic eavesdropping and high-tech satellites that provide valuable enemy intelligence.

Wakefield, director of the Australian Institute of International Affairs, said the deal could also have more significance, as it provides Japan with a model to accelerate intelligence relations with countries like Britain.

Some see the deal as a step towards Japan joining the powerful “Five Eyes” alliance to share information between Australia, Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States.

“Japan’s ability to share signal information with a foreign country other than the United States is a watershed event,” Ken Kotani, a Japanese intelligence history expert at Nihon University, told AFP.

“This will strengthen the framework of the ‘Quad’ (Australia, India, Japan and the United States) and the first step in Japan’s membership of the Five Eyes,” he added.

Such a proposal would have been unthinkable a few decades ago, but events in the vicinity of Japan forced Tokyo to review the country’s pacifist policies developed in the aftermath of World War II.

In recent years, North Korea has repeatedly launched missiles over and around Japan, while China has built the largest navy in the world, renovated the world’s largest standing army, and amassed a nuclear and ballistic arsenal on Japan’s doorstep.

losses

But there are still obstacles to Tokyo’s close security cooperation with allies. Japan’s intelligence sharing with the United States and other allies has been hampered by longstanding concerns about Tokyo’s ability to manage and transfer in sensitive confidential material security.

“Let’s face it: losses occur traditionally in Japan, “said Brad Williams, author of a book on Japanese intelligence politics and a professor at City University of Hong Kong.

They have been put in act laws to punish information leaks in more rigorously, but for now Australia may have to collect all the information it transmits to Japan after obtaining it from the Five Eyes network.

The Japanese and Australian prime ministers also pledged greater cooperation in the field of energy security.

Japan is a major importer of Australian gas and hopes to get the hydrogen energy produced in Australia to try to compensate for the shortage of domestic energy production and dependence on fossil fuels.

A Japanese official said before the meeting that “Japan imports forty percent of its liquefied natural gas from Australia. Therefore, it is very important that Japan has a stable relationship with Australia. in terms of energy “.

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