Japan’s prime minister met with Filipino officials upon a Philippine naval patrol ship off the coast of Manilla on Saturday November 4th. This meeting was to show the world Japan’s and Philippine’s resolve to fight back against China’s ever so present assertiveness in the heavily disputed area of the South China sea.
This meeting between Japan and the Philippines shows how involved American allies are now having to become because of the Israeli and Ukrainian fighting taking place across the globe. Because of these fighting Japan has began to push its influence within Southeast Asian countries in order to protect the weaker countries from China’s pushing claims regarding the maritime disputes. This area is full of oil and fishing and if expanded can give China not only money but also a bigger buffer from their homeland.
This will become more and more important to IR in the later stages of diplomacy as we must watch to see how aggressive China gets with Japan as well as how involved the U.S can get when it comes to other disputes around the globe. Will the U.S get involved? or will they be too occupied with keeping Israel and Ukraine safe to even begin to bother with China and its increasing efforts to expand?